Catastrophe 1914: Europe Goes to War (62 page)

Some historians argue that Bülow suffered a collapse of nerve less explicable, and more serious in its consequences, than that of Moltke. But this seems to ignore the simple fact that by 9 September Second Army’s commander had been outfought by Franchet d’Espèrey. As for Kluck, if he considered Moltke’s – or rather Hentsch’s – intervention unmerited, why did he not contest it, as he had disputed many previous directives from OHL? It is more plausible that he, too, tacitly recognised that the German armies in the west had overreached themselves strategically, tactically and logistically. Not for a moment did Kluck and his peers suppose that the 9 September decisions implied that Germany was losing the war. But they acknowledged a need to draw back and regroup.

Thereafter the allies failed to seize their moment to transform the enemy’s discomfiture into his destruction, because they lacked sufficient means and energy after the traumas of August. The BEF might have achieved important results by pressing hard upon the retreating Germans, but declined to do so. The British suffered only 1,701 casualties in the entire Marne battle – less than some French brigades. Had the matter been left in the C-in-C’s hands, the BEF would not have participated at all. It was the decision of Asquith and Kitchener, not that of Sir John French, to join the counter-offensive. It is unlikely that more vigorous British action
could have turned Joffre’s victory into German catastrophe, but it could certainly have increased the enemy’s losses, especially in prisoners, and made the retirement of Kluck and Bülow a less comfortable affair.

After weeks of gloom and terrible fears for the outcome of the war, success on the Marne inspired an outbreak of euphoria in the allied camp. Sir Edward Grey wrote to a government colleague on 14 September: ‘The general news of the war is almost too good to be true.’ Lt. Charles de Gaulle was among those who deluded himself that the Marne offensive would prove the decisive stroke of the war: ‘The enemy will not be able to halt our pursuit … and we shall have all the glory of having beaten the army that thought itself the finest in the world … and this without the Russians having been absolutely necessary to us.’ Other soldiers were more cautious, however. Edouard Cœurdevey welcomed the discovery that the Germans had abandoned a village in the path of his unit, but declined to join the extravagant rejoicing: ‘This would be marvellous if France was to be quickly liberated … but I am sceptical about the illusions of my comrades who already imagine themselves on the Rhine. I know the Germans’ organisation, their immense reserves of energy, impressive scales of equipment. I believe it will be hard. My comrades mock my doubts but they don’t know Germany – its pride and Prussian organisation.’

But it was plain to informed Germans that they had lost their bet on a swift outcome. At the Navy Department, Albert Hopman wrung his hands: ‘The whole situation is very unfortunate,’ he wrote, and resulted from the ‘sins of earlier years’. He castigated the government as feeble, lacking strong personalities: ‘Our system did not know how to bring strength and intellect into the front rank of politics and government … It is sad, too sad, poor Germany.’ A few days later, he described the war as an ‘incredible folly’ by those responsible for Germany’s foreign policy. The only consolation he could identify was ‘the spirit of the nation. This can only be sustained by extensive democratic concessions. Otherwise there undoubtedly will be revolution, and the [Hohenzollern] dynasty will fall. It is doubtful that our politicians have the sense [to act to pre-empt this].’

A surge of overpowering relief swept France. On 15 September Edouard Vaillant wrote in
l’Humanité
: ‘it is the beginning of the annihilation of Prussian imperialism. It is, indeed, the beginning of the definitive victory of the allied armies.’ The term ‘the miracle of the Marne’ was first coined in December by Maurice Barrès. He described the battle as the ‘eternal French miracle, the miracle of Joan of Arc, the saint and patron of France’.
At that time, the Catholic Church in France was calling for a religious revival: a cleric followed Barrès by publishing leaflets entitled ‘The Miracle of the Marne’. Soldiers’ view of the September experience was, unsurprisingly, warier and less romantic. A colonel named Desfontaines wrote on the 25th: ‘we have experienced the most painful period of war: physical exhaustion; lack of supplies; irreplaceable losses of officers’.

After 1918, the Marne became part of the German army’s invention of the ‘stab in the back’. Its official history asserted: ‘The massive, historic battle on the Ourq and the Marne was stopped! The German right-wing armies created a retreat out of assured victory!’ Ludendorff wrote in 1934: ‘The army was not defeated on the Marne in 1914. It was the victor.’ This was fantasy. The myth of German invincibility had been laid bare, and the French army had risen superbly from the ashes of defeat. Joffre’s men experienced a spiritual renewal in the exultation of their advance, regaining from the occupiers many precious miles of the soil of France. Capt. Plieux de Diusse found himself billeted one night with an unfriendly old woman who had lately had the Germans staying in her house. As he climbed into bed, de Diusse momentarily wondered whether she had changed the sheets since their departure. Then he shrugged: ‘What a question for a soldier in the middle of a campaign … I shall sleep well.’

2 ‘STALEMATE IN OUR FAVOUR’

The Germans withdrew in good order from the Marne, and chose with skill their ground on which to turn and stand. Moltke, in the last significant orders he issued before surrendering command, directed the armies south of Reims to abandon their assaults – notably around Verdun and Nancy – and dig in. Troops thus became available for new initiatives elsewhere, notably in the great void of western Belgium and northern France, still unharrowed by the armies. On 14 September, the chief of staff received the Kaiser’s command to report himself sick, though since the news was concealed from the German people, for weeks he lingered wretchedly at OHL, which he quit only for a frustrating sortie to the Antwerp front.

Falkenhayn, who assumed Moltke’s operational responsibilities, was younger at fifty-three than any other army commander, a chilly, unclubbable Guards officer who was socially acceptable to the Kaiser, as Ludendorff, for instance, was not. He was quick and shrewd – among those who from the outset predicted a long war – but sometimes
indecisive. A driven man who required little sleep and would often commune with corps commanders in the small hours, he was also a lonely one, and intensely secretive. A much stabler personality than Moltke, in the course of the ensuing two years as Germany’s principal warlord, Falkenhayn would display considerable gifts. He nonetheless faced the same intractable problems as his predecessor. Col. Gerhard Tappen, architect of Germany’s invasion of France, remained operations officer, which made it unlikely that strategy would change. Falkenhayn at first refused to regard the setback on the Marne as decisive. His immediate task was to take a grip, exercise authority and impose coordination upon the army commanders as Moltke had so lamentably failed to do.

Almost immediately, tensions developed between himself and Tappen. The new chief of staff favoured a resurrection of the grand envelopment plan, shifting troops into Belgium to sweep around behind the allied flank, where it hung in the air with almost two hundred miles of empty space beyond. Tappen, by contrast, wanted to resume the attack in the centre, between Soissons and Reims. In the short term the operations officer’s view prevailed, partly because only limited railway capacity was available to move troops across the front: most lines ran east–west rather than south–north, and the heavily sabotaged Belgian system was in chaos. The Germans staged a series of attacks which were ill-planned, costly and unsuccessful.

The allies, meanwhile, sought to convert success on the Marne into strategic triumph twenty-five miles further north, in a month-long series of clashes which became known as the Battle of the Aisne. The slow-flowing river lies in a valley, behind which a wooded hill rises steeply for three hundred feet. Northwards beyond the ridge crest is open farmland, climbing gently, along which runs a road, some twenty-one miles long, modestly famous in French history as Le Chemin des Dames, named for Louis XV’s daughters Adélaïde and Victoire, who drove along it to visit the Countess of Narbonne at the Château de la Bove.

As the French advanced, some men scavenged ‘vulgar trophies from the bodies of the Germans, covered in mud and blood … they load sacks with German coats and helmets which they will not be able to keep’, in the disdainful words of Edouard Cœurdevey. One September night, Cœurdevey’s sergeant dragged in an enemy soldier who had lain for five days and nights in the open, immobilised by a broken thigh. ‘We shudder with horror at the thought of the agony of these wounded men, unable to move to save themselves either from the heat of the sun or the cold of the night or shelter from the rain. This poor man gave his saviour his medals, his buttons and offered him money.’

Eastwards lay the hills around Reims and the woods of the Argonne, where Franchet d’Espèrey’s Fifth Army was attacking. Its formations had advanced from the Marne as slowly as the British, but with better excuse after their travails of the preceding month. They retook Reims, then maintained attacks beyond it well into October, at high cost and making small progress. From 17 to 19 September, the Germans shelled the city, inflicting massive damage on its cathedral. This vandalism prompted outrage and a new surge of alarm in the French capital: Parisians became convinced that if their own city came within German artillery range the Louvre, Invalides, Notre Dame and every other treasure of their heritage would be condemned, and it is hard to suppose their fears groundless.

Between Manoury and Franchet d’Espèrey, through the second week of September the British continued their slow advance northwards, meeting heavy rain but little resistance. ‘As I feared,’ wrote Alexander Johnston on the 11th, ‘we have let the Germans get clear away with very little loss … Surely we should have harried the enemy as much as possible.’ But most of the BEF succumbed to a surge of optimism. On 13 September Capt. Harry Dillon of the Oxf & Bucks wrote home: ‘Everything is going well and I think the Germans are done. Yesterday after sleeping out in the rain we came up with them. We were under pretty sharp infantry fire for some time but no casualties, the regiment captured 116 prisoners including 5 officers … I don’t mind this show except for marching and being always wet and short of sleep etc.’

Yet even as the BEF closed up on the Aisne, a new German Seventh Army hastened forward to fill the gap between Kluck and Bülow. Some of these reinforcements force-marched to the river, taking up positions mere hours or even minutes before the British arrived. The German VII Reserve Corps covered forty miles, to reach the crest just in time to forestall Sir John French’s vanguard. On 13 September a month of bloody fighting began, in which the allies strove for a breakthrough on the Chemin des Dames. Joffre’s forces north and east of Reims bore a heavy share, but subsequent attention has focused chiefly upon operations in the British sector, because there it was thought – probably mistakenly – that spectacular opportunities existed for unhinging the German line, by crossing the river, cresting the ridge, then pushing on across the open country beyond. ‘Looking back,’ wrote Louis Spears, ‘I am deeply thankful that none of those who gazed across the Aisne … had the faintest glimmering of what
was awaiting them. They were untroubled by visions of mud and soaking trenches … years of misery ahead.’

The first British crossing was the most successful. On the evening of 12 September, the 11th Infantry Brigade settled into billets at Septmonts, tired after a fifteen-mile march and soaked through by a long spell of rain. They had been resting for only two hours, however, when the men were roused, ordered to don their stiff, sodden webbing and equipment, and set forth again. Brigadier Aylmer Hunter-Weston learned that the Germans had bungled demolition of the Aisne bridge at Venizel, a few miles ahead. The span was fractured, but not severed: a reconnaissance party reported that it should be passable by careful men.

Hunter-Weston, with an urgency unusual among BEF commanders that autumn, insisted that his brigade should make the crossing immediately, exploiting darkness. Staff officer Lionel Tennyson wrote of the brigadier: ‘As a man I do not like him much, nor does anybody. He is very fussy and has the reputation of rather losing his head, and being rather incompetent.’ But that night before the Aisne, Hunter-Weston for once acted effectively. At 2 a.m., in single file with five-yard intervals between each man, the infantry started to shuffle over the rickety structure, guided only by a single hooded light on the eastern shore. The fractured ironwork quivered and shook as each man made his nervous passage, sixty feet above the flow. Within an hour, the reassembled battalions were squelching in water meadows below the ridge on the north bank. The troops had not eaten for twenty-four hours, and were cold and miserably wet – not a man of the BEF possessed clothing that was genuinely weatherproof. But with less than three hours of darkness remaining, Hunter-Weston once more imposed a driving will, insisting that the exhausted infantry press on to the high ground. His enterprise was rewarded: at dawn the men of the Somersets, Hampshires and Rifle Brigade surprised German pickets, who fled to their main line.