Neiberg The Western Front 1914-1916

From the Schlieffen Plan to Verdun and the Somme
1. Auflage 2014
ISBN: 978-1-908273-10-9
Verlag: Amber Books Ltd
Format: EPUB
Kopierschutz: 0 - No protection

E-Book, Englisch, 224 Seiten

Reihe: History of WWI

The Western Front, running from the Belgian coast in the north to the Swiss border in the south, was to prove the decisive battlefront of World War I. It was where the great powers of Germany, France and the British Empire concentrated the bulk of their military might, and it was where many believed the war would be settled before Christmas 1914.
The German General Staff realised the dangers of fighting a two-front war against both France and Russia simultaneously. They sought to knock the French out of the war quickly, making a rapid advance on Paris through neutral Belgium - the infamous 'Schlieffen Plan'.
After desperate delaying actions fought by the French and British armies, the German hope for swift victory in the West was thwarted by their defeat at the First Battle of the Marne. Following a 'Race to the Sea' - where each side sought to outflank the other, culminating in the battles of First Ypres and the Yser - the Western Front settled down into a pattern of trench warfare that would remain little changed until 1917.
The year 1915 proved one of frustration for the Allies as attack after attack - in Champagne, at Neuve Chapelle, Festubert and Loos - all failed to pierce the German defensive lines. To break the deadlock, a joint Allied offensive was planned for 1916 with simultaneous attacks against the Central Powers to take place in all the European theatres.
This planned major effort was pre-empted by the German assault on the fortress city of Verdun, intended to bleed the French Army dry. The joint Somme offensive thus became a largely British and Imperial affair to relieve the pressure on their French allies. The blooding of Kitchener's volunteer New Army on the first day of the Somme has become a byword for the slaughter on the Western Front. By the year's end, it was clear there would be no easy victory for either side.
With the aid of over 300 photographs, complemented by full-colour maps, The Western Front 1914-1916 provides a detailed guide to the background and conduct of the conflict on the Western Front in the first half of the war, up to and including the Battles of the Somme and Verdun.

Autoren/Hrsg.

Neiberg, Michael S

Leseproben

The German High Seas Fleet was supposed to challenge the Royal Navy, but because it never reached anything close to parity it became instead a waste of money and was dismissed as a ‘luxury fleet’. It lost its only large encounter with its British rival and spent most of the war in port. INTRODUCTION
The Entente Cordiale
An 1898 Anglo-French conflict over control of the headwaters of the Nile nearly led to war between two traditional rivals. Although few could have predicted it, the incident led instead to the formation of the alliance that would see the two countries fight side by side for four terrible years. The Anglo-French alliance that formed the heart of the coalition that defeated imperial Germany in 1918 had its origins not in Paris nor in London, but at the oasis of Fashoda at the headwaters of the Nile River in modern-day Sudan. There, in 1898, a French expedition from Senegal under the command of Captain Jean-Baptiste Marchand arrived to stake France's claim to Sudan. Under the terms of the 1884—85 Berlin Conference agreement the region belonged to the British sphere of influence, but the French hoped to exploit a clause in the agreement that required a colonial power to exercise effective control over a region or lose its claim to it. Britain's recent wars with rebellious Sudanese tribes led Marchand and his superiors to the conclusion that a march of more than 3200km (2000 miles) from Senegal to Sudan might be worth the risks involved if it allowed France to claim effective control over Sudan and add it to the growing French African empire. Marchand's force was small, containing just seven officers and 120 Senegalese soldiers, but the British understood well enough the provocation they represented. The British dispatched their own force under the command of Horatio Kitchener, who had recently become a great hero in Britain after his defeat of Islamist Sudanese forces at the Battle of Omdurman. Three months after Marchand staked a French claim to Fashoda, Kitchener arrived there and demanded that Marchand leave British territory at once. Over champagne that Marchand's porters had lugged through jungle and gin that Kitchener's river boats had supplied, the two men politely discussed the situation, but Marchand refused to leave without orders to that effect from his government. Few would have predicted that the clash between the British and French at Fashoda in 1898 would lead to an alliance between the two powers. At the time, war between the two nations seemed a real possibility. Cooler heads quickly prevailed, however, leading to a tectonic shift in the European alliance system. The incident at Fashoda was simply the latest act in the long-running drama between France and Britain for control of imperial possessions. France had lost North America and India to the British as a consequence of the Seven Years War, but the French sensed an advantage over the British as a result of their growing power in Africa. Fashoda would allow France to create a contiguous empire through the middle of Africa, cutting British possessions in Egypt away from her colonies south of the Sahara. Britain saw Sudan in equally grandiose terms as the key to forming a unified ‘Cairo to the Cape’ chain of colonies with the Nile River serving as its backbone. Fashoda thus became important in its own right and as another symbol of the long-running rivalry between the world's two greatest imperial powers. In London and Paris, government officials and members of the general public demanded war to settle the issue. The French shouted that they had suffered enough at the hands of the British, who had outmanoeuvred France for control of Egypt and the French-built Suez Canal in the 1880s. The British, for their part, saw in Fashoda an attempt by the French to threaten their control of the canal and the Red Sea, and thus also British communications to the core of the empire in India. As tensions mounted, the Royal Navy began to mobilize and the French Army to move units closer to port cities in the event that they might need to be transferred overseas quickly. War seemed a real possibility. Paul Cambon, France's ambassador in London, led the small group of cooler heads that sought to avoid war. Cambon saw Fashoda as a distraction from the larger Continental issues central to French security. He argued that a war between France and Britain for control of a relatively insignificant place like Sudan would not be in either's best interests. Given France's naval inferiority, he doubted that France would win the war, and thus had plenty of motivation to find a way to avoid it. Perhaps most importantly, he understood that Anglo-French tensions in Africa played into the hands of Germany, a nation that Cambon saw as the biggest threat to European peace. He hoped to find a way to bind Britain, which had its own suspicions about German intentions, to France in some sort of diplomatic understanding. Tensions in Africa worked against this grand plan, while at the same time they encouraged German aggressiveness, and even opened up the possibility of Germany and Britain signing an alliance at France's expense. The redrawing of post-war Europe resulted in many new states, especially in Eastern Europe. The borders for almost all of them were the result of compromises based on national identity, economic viability and strategic realities. Cambon thus worked out a deal that required France to withdraw from Fashoda in exchange for British recognition of a French sphere of influence in Morocco. The deal, Cambon knew, was far too good for the British to refuse because it gave them the Sudan they coveted without asking them to surrender any territory elsewhere. As Britain had no interests in Morocco, the agreement did not ask the British to do anything except recognize the reality of French influence there. French promises not to fortify its commercial bases in Morocco or put warships in ports near Gibraltar further sweetened the deal. Cambon was criticized by many of his fellow Frenchmen for giving away too much to the British, but he knew that the deal would pay enormous dividends in the future. Germany, not Britain, was France's most important rival for influence in Morocco; the deal bound Britain to support French claims there over the objections of Germany, thus placing a small but significant roadblock in the way of an Anglo-German agreement. Cambon had found a way to avoid war and tie the anti-German parties in France and Britain together. As the dust settled on the Fashoda crisis, the British and French reached the conclusion that Cambon had anticipated. People on both sides of the Channel came to the view that Germany posed the greatest threat to their joint interests, and that Britain and France had more to gain by working together than continuing as rivals. France needed maritime help in the event of hostilities with Germany and the British needed a Continental ally with a powerful army to deter German expansionism. In the wake of Britain's costly war in South Africa (1899–1902) the British also needed time to rebuild their military and allies to help them diplomatically. An agreement with France could resolve many outstanding colonial issues and reduce the possibility of another large colonial war. HMS Dreadnought instantly made all other ships at sea obsolete. Her appearance led to a naval arms race that impacted upon all of the great naval powers. Britain devoted enormous resources to winning that arms race, and as a result was clearly the dominant maritime power in 1914. An Anglo-French agreement would also prove to be valuable to Britain on the high seas. In the same year as Fashoda, Germany passed a naval bill that called for the construction of 19 battleships, eight large cruisers, and 42 small cruisers. Believing the British to be economically strapped and strategically vulnerable after the South African War, the Germans passed another naval bill in 1900 that called for the construction of 38 battleships, 20 large cruisers, and 38 light cruisers within 20 years. The obvious target of this massive increase in naval construction was the British Home Fleet, which then had 32 battleships. These two German appropriation bills proved to be money ill spent, as the British met the German challenge easily and had little trouble winning the ensuing naval arms race. The German threat to Britain at sea, moreover, inclined the British to talk more seriously with France, the country most threatened by Germany on land. In 1904 British and French discussions led to a series of formal agreements known as the Entente Cordiale. Their official terms did little more than reinforce the realities in the two empires. The French reaffirmed their recognition of Egypt as a British zone of influence and the British reaffirmed their recognition of France's dominance in Morocco. A variety of other minor colonial questions, including the neutrality of Siam and the right of free passage through the Suez Canal, were also settled. The Entente fell far short of being an alliance; neither state committed itself to come to the military aid of the other, nor did the Entente contain any provisions for joint military planning or coordination. Few contemporaries saw it as a landmark event in European diplomacy. Nevertheless, the agreement broke the ice that had existed between the two powers for centuries. The way was now cleared for a future of cooperation instead of competition. Dreadnoughts The original Dreadnoughts displaced almost 22,000 tonnes (as opposed to the 15,000 tonnes displaced by most battleships...