Carroll Quigley - Tragedy and Hope - A History of the World in Our Time

The failure of the barrage made it necessary to devise new methods, but military men were reluctant to try any innovations. In April, 1915, the Germans were forced by civilian pressure to use poison gas, as had been suggested by the famous chemist Fritz Haber. Accordingly, without any effort at concealment and with no plans to exploit a breakthrough if it came, they sent a wave of chlorine gas at the place where the French and British lines joined. The junction was wiped out, and a great gap was opened through the line. Although it was not closed for five weeks, nothing was done by the Germans to use it. The first use of gas by the Western Powers (the British) in September, 1915, was no more successful. At the terrible Battle of Passchendaele in July 1917, the Germans introduced mustard gas, a weapon which was copied by the British in July 1918. This was the most effective gas used in the war, but it served to strengthen the defense rather than the offense, and was especially valuable to the Germans in their retreat in the autumn of 1918, serving to slow up the pursuit and making difficult any really decisive blow against them.

The tank as an offensive weapon devised to overcome the defensive strength of machine-gun fire was invented by Ernest Swinton in 1915. Only his personal contacts with the members of the Committee of Imperial Defence succeeded in bringing his idea to some kind of realization. The suggestion was resisted by the generals. When continued resistance proved impossible, the new weapon was misused, orders for more were canceled, and all military supporters of the new weapon were removed from responsible positions and replaced by men who were distrustful or at least ignorant of the tanks. Swinton sent detailed instructions to Headquarters, emphasizing that they must be used for the first time in large numbers, in a surprise assault, without any preliminary artillery barrage, and with close support by infantry reserves. Instead they were used quite incorrectly. While Swinton was still training crews for the first 150 tanks, fifty were taken to France, the commander who had been trained in their use was replaced by an inexperienced man, and a mere eighteen were sent against the Germans. This occurred on September 15, 1916, in the waning stages of the Battle of the Somme. An unfavorable report on their performance was sent from General Headquarters to the War Office in London and, as a result, an order for manufacture of a thousand more was canceled without the knowledge of the Cabinet. This was overruled only by direct orders from Lloyd George. Only on November 20, 1917, were tanks used as Swinton had instructed. On that day 381 tanks supported by six infantry divisions struck the Hindenburg Line before Cambrai and burst through into open country. These forces were exhausted by a five-mile gain, and stopped. The gap in the German line was not utilized, for the only available reserves were two divisions of cavalry which were ineffective. Thus the opportunity was lost. Only in 1918 were massed tank attacks used with any success and in the fashion indicated by Swinton.

The year 1917 was a bad one. The French and British suffered through their great disasters at Chemin des Dames and Passchendaele. Romania entered the war and was almost completely overrun, Bucharest being captured on December 5th. Russia suffered a double revolution, and was obliged to surrender to Germany. The Italian Front was completely shattered by a surprise attack at Caporetto and only by a miracle was it reestablished along the Piave (October-December, 1917). The only bright spots in the year were the British conquests of Palestine and Mesopotamia and the entrance into the war of the United States, but the former was not important and the latter was a promise for the future rather than a help to 1917.

Nowhere, perhaps, is the unrealistic character of the thinking of most high military leaders of World War I revealed more clearly than in the British commander in chief, Field Marshal Sir Douglas (later Earl) Haig, scion of a Scottish distillery family. In June, 1917, in spite of a decision of May 4th by the Inter-Allied Conference at Paris against any British offensive, and at a time when Russia and Serbia had been knocked out of the war, French military morale was shattered after the fiasco of the Nivelle offensive, and American help was almost a year in the future, Haig determined on a major offensive against the Germans to win the war. He ignored all discouraging information from his intelligence, wiped from the record the known figures about German reserves, and deceived the Cabinet, both in respect to the situation and to his own plans. Throughout the discussion the civilian political leaders, who were almost universally despised as ignorant amateurs by the military men, were proved more correct in their judgments and expectations. Haig obtained permission for his Passchendaele offensive only because General (later Field Marshal and Baronet) William Robertson, Chief of the Imperial General Staff, covered up Haig’s falsifications about German reserves and because First Sea Lord Admiral John Jellicoe told the Cabinet that unless Haig could capture the submarine bases on the Belgian coast (an utterly impossible objective) he considered it “improbable that we could go on with the war next year for lack of shipping.” On this basis, Haig won approval for a “step by step” offensive “not involving heavy losses.” He was so optimistic that he told his generals that “opportunities for the employment of cavalry in masses are likely to offer.” The offensive, opened on July 31st, developed into the most horrible struggle of the war, fought week after week in a sea of mud, with casualties mounting to 400,000 men after three months. In October, when the situation had been hopeless for weeks, Haig still insisted that the Germans were at the point of collapse, that their casualties were double the British (they were considerably less than the British), and that the breakdown of the Germans, and the opportunity for the tanks and cavalry to rush through them, might come at any moment.

One of the chief reasons for the failure of these offensives was the doctrine of the continuous front, which led commanders to hold back their offensives where resistance was weak and to throw their reserves against the enemy’s strong points. This doctrine was completely reversed by Ludendorff in the spring of 1918 in a new tactic known as “infiltration.” By this method advance was to be made around strong points by penetrating as quickly as possible and with maximum strength through weak resistance, leaving the centers of strong resistance surrounded and isolated for later attention. Although Ludendorff did not carry out this plan with sufficient conviction to give it full success, he did achieve amazing results. The great losses by the British and French in 1917, added to the increase in German strength from forces arriving from the defunct Russian and Romanian fronts, made it possible for Ludendorff to strike a series of sledgehammer blows along the Western Front between Douai and Verdun in March and April 1918. Finally, on May 27th, after a brief but overwhelming bombardment, the German flood burst over Chemin des Dames, poured across the Aisne, and moved relentlessly toward Paris. By May 30th it was on the Marne, thirty-seven miles from the capital. There, in the Second Battle of the Marne, were reenacted the events of September 1914. On June 4th the German advance was stopped temporarily by the Second American Division at Chateau-Thierry. In the next six weeks a series of counterattacks aided by nine American divisions were made on the northern flank of the German penetration. The Germans fell back behind the Vesle River, militarily intact, but so ravaged by influenza that many companies had only thirty men. The crown prince demanded that the war be ended. Before this could be done, on August 8, 1918—”the black day of the German Army,” as Ludendorff called it—the British broke the German line at Amiens by a sudden assault with 456 tanks supported by 13 infantry and 3 cavalry divisions. When the Germans rushed up 18 reserve divisions to support the six which were attacked, the Allied Powers repeated their assault at Saint-Quentin (August 31st) and in Flanders (September 2nd). A German Crown Council, meeting at Spa, decided that victory was no longer possible, but neither civil government nor army leaders would assume the responsibility for opening negotiations for peace. The story of these negotiations will be examined in a moment, as the last of a long series of diplomatic conversations which continued throughout the war.