Actas do Colóquio Internacional A Grande Guerra Um Século Depois, Academia Militar, 2015, pp. 17-22. The German Army and the Beginning of the First World War Coronel Gerhard Gross Head of department «German Military History to 1945 Bundeswehr Center for Military History and Social Sciences The seminal catastrophe of the 20 th century, as George F. Kennan named the First World War, has never lost either its political or its historical relevance as a paramount topic of national, European and World History. If world powers go to war, it leaves an impact on their spheres of interest. If all the world powers of their age go to war, it must lead to a world war, global and total in its dimension and effects. With the unification of Germany a new major power emerged in the heart of Europe 1871. That country bordered Austria, Russia, and France as well as Switzerland, the Netherlands, Belgium, Luxembourg and Denmark. From the perspective of the military and political leadership, Germany s central geographic position inherently carried the danger of a multi- or two-front war. In the end, it was the Chief of German General Staff General Alfred von Schlieffen who devised a grand strategy as brilliant in its precision as it proved fatal in the way that it involved automatic decisions. The main elements of his operational and strategic doctrine were: 1. To pursue war not defensively and reactively, but to take the offensive and wage the kind of warfare based on seizing the initiative.
18 Actas do Colóquio Internacional A Grande Guerra: Um Século Depois 2. To use interior lines to divide the two-front war in two single-front wars, which would then be waged one after the other. In a nutshell, he argued in 1905 that in the case of a German war against either France of Russia, Germany had to fight both anyway because of these countries alliance. As an offensive against Russia promised to be ineffective on a sheerly geometrical basis, it had to start with defeating France quickly at any possible cost. So he established a center of gravity through an offensive in the west and a delay in the east. This latter proviso included marching with a strong right wing through Luxembourg, Belgium and if there was need, the Netherlands in order to avoid fighting the strong and lately modernized French fortifications. At the same time, Russia was estimated to be slow at mobilizing and hopefully not fierce enough to make too much way into the Eastern and Northern provinces of Prussia. In a second stage, the armies no longer needed for the occupation of France would be allowed to assist and in theory win on the Eastern Front. Such a plan had several political as well as strategic problems. Firstly, it ignored international law. At that time, if laws are no longer believed to guarantee a credible equilibrium, governments devised war as an ultima ratio. Notice the fact that war was considered a legitimate, but certainly the last legitimate means of politics to be thought of in the long nineteenth century. Long-term planning against infringing the rights of neutral states, however, was considered as politics of opportunity rather than politics of necessity. Secondly, the Schlieffen Plan had a devilish pressure for speed. In order to eventually outrun Russia, Germany had to make sure that it had to take the initiative if it came to a catastrophe responsibility or guilt, it was the political implementation of this idea that fuelled the long debate. The fact that infringing Belgian neutrality would eventually make the British Parliament declare war must be placed in its appropriate frame: Britain could certainly not have suffered the reduction of France to a minor power and would have been forced to take up action of whatever kind sometime or another. As a third and similar mistake, the German plan involved automatic links which would lead to a chain reaction: No way to threaten and wait; no chance to allow another peace mission; war on two fronts; and with the hotbed of the conflict on the Balkans: adamant loyalty to Austria. A fourth grave risk of the Schlieffen Plan was not Schlieffen s own problem or mistake, but emerged only in the nine years from the plan to the war. Russia s economical development was unmistakably gathering speed, so that the complete notion of the nature of the Eastern front was becoming more and more blurred: Could Germany run the East as a minor theatre of war while quickly trying to fight down France? Or had Russia already closed the gap to the West? The most difficult problems just arose with the frictions, as Clausewitz would have called them, of the real war 1914. Unexpectedly, Belgium would fight and would do so fiercely. Not only did a number of terrible war crimes occur during the first months of the war with the burning of Louvain with its medieval library at its peak. Belgium as a military opponent also cost a lot of time which was eventually given France for a more solid preparation. As a matter of fact, the Schlieffen Plan had seen a number of changes by the hand of
The German Army and the Beginning of the First World War 19 Helmut von Moltke, the Younger. The German army did not occupy the Netherlands to win a larger basis, nor did the military leaders allow for the weak left wing that should let the French armies in and cut them off from supplies as in a trap. Actually, it turned out that the German left wing could even win the battle of Lorraine against the French. During the sixteen days following the start of the mobilization on 2 August 1914, some 1.6 million German soldiers were deployed along the western German border in seven field armies. Five of those armies were on the right wing, and two were deployed on the left wing southeast of the Metz-Diedenhofen fortifications. In accordance with the German operational plans, the center of gravity of the initial deployment was along the Belgian border. The Belgian fortress of Liège was captured on 16 August. On 18 August, two weeks after the German declaration of war on France, the German main attack wing, consisting of the First, Second, and Third Armies, began to advance. Three days later, the German troops arrived at the Belgian-French border. As had been expected by Schlieffen and Moltke the Younger, border battles took place with French and British units. The German troops, which advanced along the entire front, including in Lorraine and the Ardennes, were able to defeat their enemies during what became known as the Battle of the Frontiers, but did not manage to encircle and crush them as planned. The Belgian Army, which fell back toward Antwerp, was not destroyed. The allied forces withdrew south in the direction of Paris, pursued by the units of the German main attack wing. In the course of this pursuit, the advancing First Army passed Paris to the east, instead of to the west as original which was considered a possible solution by Schlieffen. The French high command seized the opportunity and attacked the right flank of the German attack wing on 6 September. That was the beginning of the allied counteroffensive along the entire front from Verdun to Paris. In the opinion of the senior department chiefs of the Oberste Heeresleitung (Army Supreme Command), the hoped-for decisive battle was imminent. The key event took place outside Paris. On 6 September, the newly formed French Sixth Army attacked from Paris against the right flank of the First Army. Colonel General Alexander von Kluck found himself forced to withdraw his units in order to repulse the attack. As a consequence of this withdrawal, a gap of almost fifty kilometers opened between the German First and Second Armies, into which French and British forces advanced. There was a real risk of the German right wing being encircled and annihilated. Consequently, OHL ordered a general withdrawal to reestablish a unified front. The Battle of the Marne ended on 9 September. Germany had been defeated in the sought-for decisive battle. During the following weeks the warring sides attempted in vain to outflank each other to the north in what became known as the Race to the Sea. That ended in October 1914 as both sides arrived at the Channel coast near Ostend. The Western Front then froze into a system of trench positions hundreds of kilometers long, running from the border of Switzerland to the North Sea.
20 Actas do Colóquio Internacional A Grande Guerra: Um Século Depois Brilliant success rested with the Eastern theatre of war. Although the Austrians suffered a number of defeats against the Russians and lost the bulk of their trained soldiers, the German military command found two emerging heroes for the coming four years. Paul von Hindenburg, who had actually already retired a couple of years before, and as his chief of staff Erich Ludendorff found a way to encircle one complete Russian army and fight back another. The so-called Battle of Tannenberg made them the first two generals in public interest, paving the way to their promotion in the Supreme Command (OHL) two years later. What the public was not interested in was the fact that the battle could only by won as the Russian military had sent their messages open without any codes or ciphers. Yet, as soon as it became clear that Germany could not win a short war, the political and military leaders did not consider their plans as obsolete, but continued approximately the same way they had successfully begun. Maybe, such impressive initial triumphs such as Liège in the West or Tannenberg in the East turned out as devils in disguise at the end of the day. The fact that the war was not fought on German soil led to a fragile feeling of strategic success and relative safety. The war in 1914, however, differed from the total of the Great War to a considerable degree: a number of quick movements, quick results and quick death. The average percentage of the soldiers killed on both sides in the first five months in infantry units and for the artillery was indeed higher than in any other later time span of the war until the German attacks in the West in the spring of 1918 brought an aspect of movement back to the battlefields. The fact that the war went subterranean into an elaborate trench system had a double-edged effect: On the one hand, it might offer protection to the individual soldier in a brute moment; on the other hand, it helped or even allowed the war to continue for all the years. It was in 1914 that the casualty lists in the newspapers would first grow and then even excel the space possibly offered to them. Hence, local papers discontinued printing the names of those killed in action because the bulk of war and war-related news outgrew the amount of paper at daily disposal. What applies to trench warfare is also valid for tactics and weapons. Any of the war powers would sooner or later have to come to terms with the new challenges of a war of attrition as Falkenhayn s image of the blood pump visibly suggests. Just picture the beginning and the end of the war with regard to uniforms (red French trousers still in use in 1914), weapons (aerial warfare, trench mortars, chemical weapons) and tactics (snipers, shock troops, attrition). The modern type of fortification, heavy artillery and the spread and development of machine guns eventually made war a static and defensive rather than mobile or offensive business especially on the Western Front. If editions of Clausewitz classic Of War in antebellum Germany sometimes shortened the chapters on defensive tactics and thus altered the intention of the military genius of its original author, they were just fulfilling expectations. Witness the fact that the Prussian army s outstanding experiment with defensive tactics had lead to the abysmal defeat at Jena
The German Army and the Beginning of the First World War 21 and Auerstedt against Napoleon s forces in 1806. The war that followed was tactically unprepared. Trenches were first improvised, later executed in a more and more perfect way, including depths of 9 metres, retreat systems, ventilation, and of course concrete. Still, the German army lost an important aspect of their tradition and expertise: Once in a trench, the options were limited to attacking, retreating and waiting. The advantage of the much broader basis of commands and orders in the German military, which had required an intensive and elaborate training of every military leader from corporal onwards, made little effort in the trenches on the Western front. If it comes to weapons, one of the most striking facts is the delta emerging between industrialized precision of newly developed hi-tech arms and the archaic regression that came up with life and death in the trenches. The new role of the artillery proved quite profound: In the Franco-Prussian War of 1870/71, about eight per cent of the soldiers killed died of wounds inflicted by cannons and howitzers. In the First World War, estimations might yield a number of 57 per cent of the total number of casualties as being killed by artillery shells. Still, artillery preparation alone could never guarantee an easy victory and not even a shadow of a victory at all. The British shelling of the German trenches at the Somme in 1916 was supposed to have been the loudest artificial noise ever produced up to that time and it could be heard in London straight-away. Yet, the following infantry attack on the German lines proved a complete disaster because the duration of the front lines had effectively allowed to make their system ever and ever more solid. Another example is the role and use of machine guns. Leave alone the fact that they could easily call for the end of regular and orderly attacks; their distribution and diversification also reveals the artisan side of warfare. Air-cooled systems did not exist before the war; nor was there a distinction between heavy and light machine guns that came into existence during the trench war; still, the metal shields for the protection of its operators revealed once again the defensive character of warfare that this weapon could force on the armies. This metal protection also serves as a bridge to the fact that while the arrangement of fighting invited more and more technical development, the fighters themselves underwent a different metamorphosis. Knives, daggers, and even maces returned from the museums back into the arena. And when soldiers on either side found themselves unable to aim at targets without risking to serve as a target to the enemy at the same time, they called for the distribution of flame throwers, hand grenades and trench mortars. The most impressive and probably symbolic example of a newly developed weapon of the First World War was certainly the beginning of tank warfare which finally proved successful for the Allies whereas the German reluctance to develop such a weapon and the willingness to rely on a strong and specialized infantry force turned out as failures. Still, the choice and use in the strategic planning of armament also carried a psychological impact with it: What the helplessness of an infantry soldier when facing a tank was on the side, was echoed by the use of heaviest artillery such as the Kaiser- Wilhelm-Geschütz on the German side. Just like bombing London, shelling Paris in 1918
22 Actas do Colóquio Internacional A Grande Guerra: Um Século Depois was not a tactical, but a strategic war aim in that it wanted to shock and impress. The introduction of gas in the spring of 1915 and the subsequent development of ever more vicious chemical weapons showed another example of what modern war could be like. Like the bombs and the bulk of the noise of artillery it had a tremendous psychological impact. While war in the West proved static, there were of course also trenches in the East, but generally there was more mobility left. Soldiers died on either side, but the density of shell fire was lower given the geographic outline of Russia, this point goes without saying. Schlieffen s idea had a strange survival: Once some ground was won in the East, the German army would not try to gain more, but to keep ways short for their own supplies and send as many fighters as possible to the West. A third front in the Alps, a then unusual and hostile place for fighting, was opened when Italy joined the Allies. The pressure of time does not allow dealing with the geographical details nor does it permit the war in the air, on the oceans and in the colonies. 1917 saw a change in world history that would gain effective influence on the First World War in the following year: The USA took a chance to become a superpower by entering the war which was ultimately provoked by Germany s unconditional submarine warfare. Russia faced two revolutions which eventually led to the end of the Empire and, in March 1918, to the end of the war with tremendous losses. This also meant that Germany had a last chance when throwing their infantry into the battle in the West. This plan, however, proved futile in the spring of 1918. Nevertheless, it brought back movement to the front. Unintendedly, the German army could only move backwards afterwards having given up their best shelters and now being faced with a growing force of US soldiers. While it was clear that the war was lost in the summer, Hindenburg admitted it only in the late summer and then did not take the responsibility: It was the political leadership who had to bear the brunt only to be attacked by Hindenburg himself in the following years. The military leadership had assisted the political government in its decisions and long-term plans before the war; it had taken responsibility during the war, allowing it to be fought longer and with an open end for a number of years. The responsibility it did not accept was finishing the war as soon as it had seen its own plans faltered. Finally, after four and a half years a mutiny spread among the seamen who were ordered to board their ships and attack the British fleet. No matter if or how much this action would have offered relief to the Western front the futility then was so obvious that a single occurrence rapidly spread all over Germany, resulting in strikes, the foundation of workers and soldiers councils, and eventually, the admission of the armistice on November 11 th, 1918.