The Western Front, 1916

The Military History of the Great War, 1916

The Western Front

Among historians of the Great War, 1916 is considered a pivotal year. On the Western Front, both of the warring coalitions temporarily gained a strategic advantage at different points, and for brief moments, the more volatile manuever warfare of 1914 emerged once again. Some have argued that there were real possibilities for each of the main combatants to win the war by year’s end. The failure of either of the power blocs to fully exploit these opportunities belied terminal structural issues in the military and civilian leadership structures of the leading powers in each coalition.

In 1915, the Hindenburg-Ludendoff Polish Offensive had brought Germany brilliant victories and permanently changed the strategic situation in the east. Yet, in a crucial sense, it failed: the offensive was meant to force Russia to make peace, and did nothing of the sort. Falkenhayn, disgraced by the disastrous First Battle of the Somme, was vindicated by the Russian disinterest in peace overtures. The Tsar felt a sense of loyalty to his entente allies, and, perhaps more importantly, the devastating defeats of 1915 nurtured in the Russian elite a desire to avenge the loss of Poland. When Hindenburg and Ludendorff advocated for offensives further into the Baltics and Byelorussia, they were overruled by a coalition that included the Kaiser, Bethmann Hollweg, and Falkenhayn. Their newfound position as national folk-heroes would not allow them to dictate policy. Not yet.

The massive Polish offensive had required significant German forces to be transferred from the western trenches. In late 1915, only around 1.7 million German troops stood opposite a force of 2.5 million French and British ones. Entente forces launched several minor offensives, but made no sustained and large-scale attempt to break the German lines, in retrospect a major strategic failure. By the end of the Polish offensive, there were shortages of artillery pieces, shells, and even more basic supplies like textiles. While early 1916 saw several dozen German divisions ferried into the west, these shortages of materiel would persist for significantly longer as Germany ramped up its industrial production to replenish its stocks of war supplies. Perhaps most importantly, this forced Germany to post-pone Falkenhayn’s plan to attack the fortress of Verdun until later in the year.

Entente war strategy in 1916 called for a series of concentric offensives on the Central Powers. The British and French General Staff reasoned that the major advantage of the Central Powers was their interior lines of communication, which allowed them to easily divert troops to more vulnerable fronts. It was hoped that a simultaneous assault on many different fronts would paralyze the Central Powers, steadily deplete their man-power, and allow for multiple break-throughs that would end the war by the year’s end.

This plan was plagued by two problems. Firstly, the position of Russia left it in little room to conduct genuine offensive operations in 1916. The destruction of the 1st and 2nd armies and the loss of much of the officer corps meant that the freshly raised divisions had little capacity for sustained offensive operations against Austria-Hungary. Secondly, British aid to Russia in the form of both raw materiel and financial assistance was already waning under the fiscal burden of supporting the rapidly swelling 2.5-million strong British volunteer army, which in 1916 began to be supplemented by the first conscripted soldiers. The successes of Germany in the east led American financiers to offer less favorable terms to Britain, who they knew was directing a large portion of the money raised in New York to Russia. Although the British suspected interference from Bryan, there was little evidence to prove such suspicions.

Eventually, the British government would turn to its wealthy domestic market to raise funds, but this would take time. In the mean-time, Lloyd George and Bonar Law both endorsed concentrating Britain’s still considerable fiscal resources into bolstering the British Army. Of course, notwithstanding any expansion of Britain’s armed forces, the failure to properly coordinate the military policy of “Concentric offensives” with the fiscal and strategic realities confronting Britain’s allies would have consequences.

The French and British military staff considered two possible axis of attack for the planned summer offensive. Firstly, there was the Somme. German soldiers had already been pushed back in the area, and the trench system there was somewhat less extensive. Pushing into the salient around Noyon would threaten the substantial German concentration to the south, along the Aisne river. The second option was to attack in the North, around Ypres and Passcendaele. Such an attack would offer the opportunity of “folding up” the German front to its south, and liberating the key industrial city of Lille.

Although certain elements in the French command favored an attack around the Somme to immediately liberate French territory, Joffre and Haig’s joint endorsement of the northern axis of advance led to the scuttling of the Somme plan. Several factors militated in favor of an attack on Ypres. Firstly, the German forces in the area were weaker and more dispersed than those elsewhere in the front. Secondly, the Somme region had already seen heavy fighting, which meant that French and British command assumed that Germany would be more prepared for any offensive in the area. Thirdly, the position of the offensive in the far north would give the Germans fewer potential directions from which to launch a counter-offensive. Fourthly, the British hoped that a break-through toward the Netherlands and the eventual presence of Entente troops along its border would force the government to stop accepting American goods destined for Germany. Finally, the similarity of the basic plan of the offensive to the Battle of Oise, which saved Paris and the French Army from destruction, cannot be ignored. A flanking attack from the north to fold up the German front and force a general retreat had worked once; with the Entente now having a decisive superiority of materiel, there was little reason why it would not work again.

On June 16th, two weeks after the beginning of Italian and Russian offensives in Trentino and Galicia, the German positions north and south of the city of Ypres fell under apocalyptic artillery bombardment. The first three days of the battle saw a series of devestating defeats inflicted on the German divisions in the area, which were outgunned and outmanned. The position was sufficiently removed from the rest of the front that German officers had trouble ferrying reinforcements rapidly into the area. German soldiers were foced to retreat east; Ypres fell within a week. The next target was Passchendaele. Rather than fighting against the superior entente force, Falkenhayn called the troops back from the city, setting up lines to its east and south. This decision triggered a torrent of criticism from the more militaristic aspects of the German government, but the decision to make a fighting retreat likely minimized German casualties and allowed for more extensive fortifications to be built up.

The fall of Passchendaele on July 8th and Messines on July 15th signalled the success of the first phase of the offensive. In truth, however, the entente command were quite frustrated: the paucity of German troops in the area had meant that an enormous amount of entente war materiel had been expended on the destruction of a few German divisions and the seziure of a relatively small strip of land. The initial offensive called for an offensive south, toward Lille, but the increased concentration of German troops in the area would make an advance in that direction more costly. The British wished to break out toward Bruges, but there were not insubstantial fears that such an attack would render the army vulnerable to a counter-attack from the south. The French suspected that the British were more interested in placing pressure on the Dutch than in reclaiming French territory. Delays in determining the next point of attack allowed the Germans to finally concentrate troops in the region, and the disaster of Russian offensives in the east permitted even more troops to be ferried in from the Galician front.

The battle of Lille was an unmitigated disaster for the Entente. Whereas a quick advance east may have forced the Germans to withdraw from the area, or at least enter into a campaign of manuever in which the Entente’s superior local numbers may have helped them, the decision to launch the better part of Kitchener’s volunteer army against the extensive system of trenches north of the city would have been costly in the best of scenarios. On July 27th, the French Sixth and British Fourth Army advanced toward Lille, taking 70,000 combined casualties on a single day. The trenches were breached at several points, but were mostly recaptured by German counter-attacks on the next day. Over the next three months, British and French losses would steadily mount as Germany made good its shortage of artillery. Perhaps most disastrous for French morale was the shelling of Lille by French guns in a futile attempt to disrupt German logistics.

By late August, the strategic initiative had shifted against the Entente. The British volunteer force was not defeated, but it was exhausted, and the rate of training in Britain was not sufficient to replace British causalties. The cartelization of the German armaments industry was at last showing results, and Germany had taken the time to stock-pile shells for a counter-offensive. Additionally, the defeat of the Russian and Italian offensives and the Austrian incursion into Italy forced British reserves to be diverted from France.

In Germany, the general staff poured over their options. Falkenhayn wished to commence with the original assault on Verdun to draw the French into an attritional battle that would exhaust their remaining reserves and allow for a front-wide offensive. Hindenburg and Ludendorff favored an enveloping counter-offensive around Lille which would shatter entente lines and allow the Schlieffen Plan to be re-enacted. The Kaiser and Bethmann Hollweg expressed skepticism around both of these plans, instead favoring an offensive in the Somme that could break through to Amiens and then Paris.

Ultimately, it was Falkenhayn’s plan that was selected. He had been credited with the defeats inflicted on the British around Lille, which did much to shore up his waning reputation. There was little desire to expend more German lives on a costly, Cannae-style “enveloping offensive”; Falkenhayn promised to use geography and artillery to reduce the actual toll that the fighting would take on the German Army.

On September 3rd, the Battle of Verdun began. The Germans had assembled an overwhelming superiority of forces and materiel in the area, and aimed to seize the heights along the Meuse river, which would allow them to direct heavy artillery fire down on the Verdun forts. Within two days, the powerful fort Douaumont fell. Joffre believed that the main axis of the German offensive was still set to begin elsewhere, and did not divert significant reserves to the area. On September 20th, the vital fort Vaux fell. Despite the German successes, the offensive was far costlier than planned, with the French troops in the region putting up fanatical resistance to the German advance. The fall of Fort Vaux, closer to the main forts of verdun, prompted Joffre to commit his reserves to the area. This slowed down, but did not stop the German advance. On October 7th, panic set in as German troops surrounded and successfully stormed Souville.

With the centrally situated Souville secured, the Germans now had control of the “Meuse Heights”. In accord with Falkenhayn’s predictions, a series of counter-offensives attempted to dislodge the Germans from their position, only to be devestated by the elevated heavy artillery positioned in the area around fort Souville. Then, however, the French offensives stopped. They had learned their lesson at Lille, and though the loss of the fort constituted a significant blow to prestige, deteriorating morale within the French army had prompted Joffre to go over to the defensive. A month after capturing Souville, all was quiet on the western front.

This was a problem for German plans, and particularly for Falkenhayn, who had promised a sweeping offensive toward Paris by the end of the year. Despite the heavy blow dealt to the French Army, there was no decisive breakthrough; nor was there a complete shattering of the French reserves despite the higher proportion of causalties suffered by the French Army in the opening stage of the battle of Verdun. Fearing the loss of his own position, Falkenhayn staked his reputation on a November offensive toward the two forts of Belleville and St.Michel. He believed that this would force the French to throw their remaining reserves into the area. While Joffre did direct some additional troops to the area, they were hardly sufficient to hold back the German advance, which now proceeded under heavy artillery fire from the Meuse heights. Within three weeks, both of the forts had fallen, and the town of Verdun itself stood within reach of the German Army.

However, the offensive south had neglected the safety of the German right flank. On the western bank of the Meuse, a concentration of British troops had been built up over the last month. The british draft had begun to kick into high gear, and slowly but surely the vast resources of the British empire had been marshalled to create a force with more artillery and heavy guns per capita than any other army on earth. As the first snows of December fell, the soldiers of the 3rd and 5th army groups smashed into the German lines east north of Belleville, spreading panic and confusion. The Christmas Offensive had begun.