Wiest The Western Front 1917-1918

From Vimy Ridge to Amiens and the Armistice
1. Auflage 2014
ISBN: 978-1-908273-11-6
Verlag: Amber Books Ltd
Format: EPUB
Kopierschutz: 0 - No protection

E-Book, Englisch, 224 Seiten

Reihe: History of WWI

The History of World War I series recounts the battles and campaigns that took place during the 'Great War'. From the Falkland Islands to the lakes of Africa, across the Eastern and Western Fronts, to the former German colonies in the Pacific, the World War I series provides a six-volume history of the battles and campaigns that raged on land, at sea and in the air.
Following the climactic battles of Verdun and the Somme the previous year, the Allies sought to finish the war on the Western Front in 1917 through a major French offensive designed to rupture the German front and roll up their position. This attack was to be supported by a diversionary British offensive at Arras in the north, which would draw off both German attention and their reserves.
In the event, the French offensive in Champagne failed to deliver the promised breakthrough, leaving the French Army in a state of open mutiny. While French discipline recovered, the British Expeditionary Force took on the burden of the bulk of the fighting for the rest of the year. The need for an Allied offensive to take the pressure off the French resulted in the Third Battle of Ypres, more commonly known as Passchendaele.
The battle degenerated into a slaughter in the Flanders mud thanks to heavy rain, and the only rays of light for the Allies at the end of 1917 were the arrival of fresh American troops on the Western Front, and the potential for a decisive victory shown by the use of armour at the Battle of Cambrai. However the Russian Revolution brought the fighting on the Eastern Front to an end, releasing numerous battle-hardened divisions to reinforce the Germans in the west.
The year 1918 saw Germany launch her Spring Offensives, desperate attempts to defeat the Allies before the Americans could arrive in force. Although these assaults came close to breaking the Allied line, they eventually petered out in the face of determined resistance and over-extended supply lines.
Following the Battle of Amiens in August, the Allies pressed onwards: the British in Flanders, the French and the Americans in the Meuse-Argonne region. By September it was obvious that Germany was losing the war, and the decision was made to sue for peace before Allied troops reached German soil. The Armistice came into force at 11am on the morning of 11 November 1918, although the war did not officially end until the signing of the Treaty of Versailles in June 1919.
With the aid of over 300 black and white and colour photographs, complemented by full-colour maps, The Western Front 1917-1918 provides a detailed guide to the background and conduct of the conflict on the Western Front in the final years of World War I.

Autoren/Hrsg.

Wiest, Andrew

Leseproben

German troops pass through a French village as part of Germany’s strategic retreat on the Western Front in 1917. The withdrawal, meant to shorten German lines to allow for the accumulation of much-needed reserves, threw complicated Allied plans for attack in 1917 into disarray. INTRODUCTION
Pause for Breath
After three years of brutal warfare on the Western Front, and after the twin bloodlettings of Verdun and the Somme, the combatant nations paused to take stock of the strategic situation at the beginning of 1917. Fearing a repetition of the horrible attritional battles, each of the belligerent powers would gamble everything on victory in 1917 but would fall short. The carnage of Verdun and the Somme had a pervasive effect on World War I as a whole and on the Western Front in particular. The twin battles shattered lives, ended some military careers and advanced others, toppled governments and altered strategic planning. At the most personal level, Verdun and the Somme had fundamentally altered the lives of their soldier participants. Far from the quick and glorious victories that many had expected in 1914, the titanic battles for many had instead epitomized slow, senseless slaughter and the sacrifice of a generation. German lieutenant Ernst Jünger spoke for many: Field Marshal Paul von Hindenburg (centre), who had risen to fame first at the Battle of Tannenberg, and then as the overall commander of the Eastern Front, in 1916 took control of Germany’s overall military policy, working in tandem with General Erich Ludendorff. ‘For I cannot too often repeat, a battle was no longer an episode that spent itself in blood and fire; it was a condition of things that dug itself in remorselessly week after week and even month after month. What was a man’s life in this wilderness whose vapour was laden with the stench of thousands upon thousands of decaying bodies? Death lay in ambush for each one in every shell-hole, merciless, and making one merciless in return. ... There it was [at the Somme] that the dust first drank the blood of our trained and disciplined youth. Those fine qualities which had raised the German race to greatness leapt once more in dazzling flame and then slowly went out in a sea of mud and blood.’ At the strategic level, Junger’s commander, General Erich Ludendorff, who along with Field Marshal Paul von Hindenburg had effectively taken control of the German war effort, had to come to terms with the legacy of 1916. Admitting in his memoirs that the battles of Verdun and the Somme had left Germany ‘completely exhausted on the Western Front’, Ludendorff summarized the strategic implications of the resulting situation: ‘The Supreme Army Command had to bear in mind that the enemy’s great superiority in men and material would be even more painfully felt in 1917 than in 1916. It was plainly to be feared that early in the year “Somme fighting” would burst out at various points on our fronts, and that even our troops would not be able to withstand such attacks indefinitely, especially if the enemy gave us no time for rest and for the accumulation of material. Our position was unusually difficult, and no way of escape was visible. ... The future looked dark.’ Although Field Marshal Sir Douglas Haig, in command of the British Expeditionary Force, and General Joseph Joffre, who led the French forces on the Western Front, were fully conscious of the fearsome butcher’s bill that their nations had paid during the fighting of 1916, they interpreted Verdun and the Somme as costly victories. Working within that military analytical framework, on 16 November 1916, Haig and Joffre met at the Chantilly Conference to begin work on the strategic plan for the coming year and were primarily concerned with maintaining an unrelenting pressure on the Germans in both France and Flanders. Joffre explained his plan for 1917 rather bluntly: ‘I have decided to seek the rupture of the enemy’s forces by a general offensive executed between the Somme and the Oise at the same time as the British Armies carry out a similar operation between Bapaume and Vimy.’ It also became clear at Chantilly that, due to the price of Verdun, Britain would have to shoulder an ever-increasing military load on the Western Front. The changed Allied strategic balance, coupled with instructions from Prime Minister Herbert Asquith regarding the pivotal value of the German submarine bases on the Belgian coast, prompted Haig to press Joffre to agree that a British offensive in Flanders form the first part of Allied planning for the coming year, to which Joffre reluctantly agreed. Joffre and Haig’s desire doggedly to pursue strategic victory on the Western Front, as well as their interpretations of Verdun and the Somme as victories, however, resulted in immediate conflict with their own governments, who defined both the experience of 1916 and the most effective military route to victory quite differently. British wartime Prime Minister Herbert Asquith, whose indecisive wartime leadership led to the fracture of the Liberal Party and the rise of a coalition government under the fiery and fractious David Lloyd George. Asquith’s eldest son, Raymond, was killed at the Battle of the Somme. Industrial War World War I was the first major conflict after the industrial revolution, which provided Western nations with the economic and technological strength first to arm millions of men and then to keep them in the field for years on end. By 1914, due to advancements in both agriculture and industry, seven countries were able to field armies numbering in excess of one million men, which meant that World War I would not pit professional army against professional army; rather it would pit nations, their militaries, their populations and their economies, against nations in total war. Dwarfing all that came before, the twin battles of the Somme and Verdun best personified the new and terrible era of total war. Together the two battles lasted 16 months and cost two million casualties. During the two battles, both sides fired off 35 million artillery shells and in excess of 60 million machine-gun bullets, a feat of industrial production never before witnessed. In addition to this, the men involved in the Somme and Verdun also consumed vast amounts of additional industrial and agricultural goods, ranging from food to gas respirators, which in the end meant that the two great battles of 1916 cost more than the gross national products of the vast majority of countries in the world. For nations to survive in the world of modern, total war, their populations had to accept great sacrifice, a fact that would also serve to transform World War I into a massive engine of both social and cultural change. The Western Front at the beginning of 1917. Following grievous losses at Verdun and the Somme, the Germans felt unable to defend their holdings in France, which followed a circuitous route from the English Channel to the Swiss border, and chose instead to opt for a strategic withdrawal. Even as Haig was presenting his revised plan to Joffre, a seismic shift took place in British politics. Unhappy both with the tactical direction of the war and the indecisive leadership of Asquith, a coalition of Liberals, Conservatives and Labour took control of the House of Commons and elevated David Lloyd George to the position of Prime Minister. Haig had little in common with his new political master. Indeed the two were often at odds, with Haig regarding the Prime Minister as ‘shifty and unreliable’, while Lloyd George judged Haig to be but an ‘arid strategist’. In matters of strategy, Lloyd George had long favoured shifting Britain’s military might away from the Western Front to other, possibly more profitable, theatres of war. As such, the new Prime Minister’s continuing devotion to the ‘easterner’ school of thought ran contrary to Haig’s unwavering belief that the Allies had to destroy the might of the German Army in France and Flanders. Differing strategic visions set the two men on a collision course, for Lloyd George believed that the planning of Haig and Joffre would only result in another Somme; he later recalled in his memoirs: General Robert Nivelle, who had risen to fame at the Battle of Verdun, by 1917 had taken command of French forces on the Western Front. His overconfidence and continued devotion to the power of the offensive resulted in disaster and mutiny in the ranks of the French military for much of 1917. A lieutenant, serving with the elite French Escadrille No. 3, Groupe de Chasse 12. This squadron, known as the ‘storks’, was home to Georges Guynemer, one of the top French air aces of World War I who achieved 53 victories before his death in September 1917. ‘The possibility never entered into the computation of these master minds that the survivors [of another Somme] might sooner or later object to this method of ‘forming fours’ by taking their turn in the slaughter house from which such multitude of their comrades never emerged. ... Was there any other chance left except once more to sprinkle the western portal of the temple of Moloch with blood from what remained of the most valiant hearts amongst the youth of France and Britain’? I decided to explore every possibility before surrendering to a renewal of the horrors of the West.’ The spectre of 1916 also haunted the halls of power in France. In December, the once unassailable General Joffre, who...