The German Army 1914: conflicting perspectives.

[Pete Hill]

G'Day, Forumers,

A new book on one of the First World War’s opening Great battles was published last year. “Ardennes 1914: The Battle of the Frontiers” (2007) by US author Terence Zuber tells of the Battle fought between the French and the German armies in the forests of the Ardennes August 20-24, 1914.

The book is a very important contribution to the history of the Great War. Before now, there has never been a large-scale study of this Battle, at least not one published in English. Certainly there hasn’t been a book that focuses on the Ardennes battle in such detail and, more significantly, discusses and analyses both the condition of the opposing armies and their tactics in battle.

In remembering the Western Front, our popular imagery has been dominated by Trench warfare and the shell-cratered No-man’s Land. This is perfectly understandable as they are the things that make the Great War so horrifically unique.

Many histories therefore tend to skim over the opening battles of the war as they don’t fit the popular mould of the Great War. Rather, these engagements were fought out in the open, they were mobile battles fought on farms, fields, roads and in villages as yet untouched by war. Many men fighting in them still wore 19th Century-style uniforms, especially the French and indeed much of the fighting, at first glance, seems to resemble the Franco-Prussian War fought 40-years previously.

There are still popular mis-conceptions about the Battle of the Frontiers, of brave but helpless French Infantry making gallant attacks against German machine-gunners safe in their trenches and barbed wire, of field-grey swarms of German Infantry advancing across the Belgian fields like masses of Zulu warriors. And the most popular perception is that of naïve, half-trained but eager and idealistic volunteers marching obediently forward to be mown down like tin soldiers.

Zuber’s book, as he makes very clear in his introduction, seeks to challenge those myths. According to Zuber, in the Battle of the Ardennes in August 1914, there were NO trenches, there was NO barbed wire, except for the livestock fences on the farms and there were precious few bayonet charges. As for the men, they may have been eager and many were, no doubt, determined and idealistic. But they were not naïve youngsters playing dress-ups as some historians still paint them.
The Great War began on August 4th, only two and a half weeks before the Ardennes Battle but it is amazing how some writers still talk of the fresh volunteers answering the call to arms as soon as war is declared and being immediately flung into this battle as if they were merely handed a rifle and helmet and pointed in the direction of the front.

The German army, according to Zuber, was a highly trained, professional force, made up of regulars and reservists, many with a number of years of training and experience. The fresh-faced youths rushing to join up still had their initial training to endure and were months away from the Front.
Zuber, a US historian with a military background and educated at a German University, is full of praise for the German Army of 1914. To him, the army was simply ‘the best in the world in 1914’.
When discussing the third day of the Battle, Zuber writes, “ The Performance of the German Infantry on August 23, 1914 was exceptional, the result of high morale, intelligent doctrine, effective training & excellent leadership…..”

He praises the German Army’s “…passion for tactical excellence” and how the German Infantrymen …”generated far more combat power…”
Zuber then goes on to say, in his conclusion,..…”The German Army’s culture….allowed it to remain superior to Entente Units when the Fronts solidified into Trench Warfare…”

Zuber is right to overturn the popular imagery of the Armies of 1914 resembling a crowd of half-trained teenagers. In his description of the German Army’s training and tactical exercises prior to the war, he makes it vividly clear that this was no bunch of amateurs. Just one example is his description of the amount of equipment each German Infantryman had to carry- uniform, pack, rifle & helmet, weighing a total of between 24- 30kg which had to be carried every step of the 25 kilometres the Germans had to march each day when the Army was on the move (at a rate of 5 or 6 km per hour). On 22nd August, the German VIII Reserve Corps marched over 40km in one day, in warm weather and along dusty roads, carrying all that gear. And these men were Reservists, who three weeks before, had been working in civilian occupations! The level of fitness and discipline that must have been required would put some present-day professional athletes to shame.

He is also right to demolish another popular myth, in that the battle featured wave upon wave of gallant French Infantry charging German defenders manning trenches from behind barbed wire. In reality, most of the clashes were ‘Meeting Encounters’, in which converging units clashed head-on whilst both sides were on the move. The battles were fought out in the open, either in the forests or in the fields and farmyards. The only barbed wire encountered was that on the livestock fences on the farms. Rather than trenches, the only cover the soldiers could use was anything in the vicinity that came to hand:- hedgerows, trees, roadside ditches, embankments, stone-walls etc.

The fighting was savage and bloody. One German regiment, the 50th Infantry, lost almost as many men in a single day (August 22), as it did during the entire Franco-Prussian War 1870-71. The German 4th and 5th Armies clashed head-on with the French 3rd and 4th. It was the fighting between the respective 4th Armies that saw the bloodiest results.
There were a couple of notable participants on the German side. A young Leutnant named Erwin Rommel of the 27th Infantry Division saw action on August 21-22.

On the afternoon of the 21st, he was ordered to lead a 5-man patrol ahead of his Battalion as they advanced towards Cosnes. Entering the town, he found the French troops had withdrawn. Local civilians offered his men some wine and food. Rommel ordered one of the civilians to taste it first in case it was poisoned! The following day (Aug 22), he led his Platoon in an assault on the French-held Hill-325.

Crossing a Potato-field under fire, his unit charged a group of French riflemen and drove them off. Taking 3 men, he patrolled forward and encountered a group of French sheltering near a farmhouse. Rommel and his men opened fire, killing several of the enemy soldiers. Rejoining his Platoon, Rommel then led a flanking attack on a farmhouse from which they were taking heavy fire. He and the section he was leading took the house, killing or capturing the occupants. Advancing further, the Platoon came under fire yet again. Rommel ordered his men to fix bayonets and charge against which the French infantry promptly broke and fled. Throughout the day’s fighting, Rommel’s Platoon didn’t lose a single casualty!

Another soon-to-be-famous participant was a young Leutnant in the 1st Uhlan Cavalry Regiment named Manfred Von Richthofen. On Aug 21, MvR led a 15-man patrol of Uhlans in the vanguard of his division as it advanced towards Etalle. At midday, he encountered a patrol of French Dragoons. Ordering his men to charge, they galloped towards the French Cavalry who wheeled round and withdrew. However, MvR’s success was short-lived as their advance brought them within range of nearby French Infantry who opened fire. The Uhlan patrol was cut to pieces within moments as horses crashed to the ground, throwing their riders. Only MvR and 4 other men managed to get themselves and their mounts to safety (although a couple of other members of the patrol later turned up on foot). As MvR remarked, “this baptism of fire was not as much fun as I thought…”

MvR saw further action the following day (Aug 22) as his unit came under small-arms fire whilst advancing north of Virton in the early afternoon. Nonetheless, he survived the battle intact. One could probably guess what was going through his mind as he might have looked up from his saddle and gazed at the occasional Reconnaissance aeroplane flying overhead.

Part 2 coming. Pete

[Pete Hill]

Part 2

Zuber praises the tactics used by the Germans in the battle. The Infantry would advance by ‘Bounds’, one group dashing forward a short distance whilst their partner group gave covering fire and then vice-versa, leap-frogging forward. Whilst advancing across open areas, they would move in extended lines with wide intervals between each successive wave. Whether attacking or defending, the German’s fire-power, according to Zuber, was superior and able to overwhelm or drive back French units, be they advancing or defending.
“…German units moved quickly and deployed smoothly. French movements suffered from friction & their deployment was slow and uncertain. Once engaged, the Germans smothered the French with rifle, MG and artillery fire and gained fire superiority…..”

Zuber is also full of praise for the reconnaissance, artillery support, co-ordination and small-unit leadership of the Germans throughout the battle. He acknowledges the heavy casualties they suffered but praises their success in gaining ground and defeating the French.

It is only the German High-Command and the army’s conduct at the Strategic Level that gets any flak from Zuber. He believes the German Generalship higher up was no better than the French nor was their strategic plans. Indeed Zuber acknowledges that at the strategic level, the French could have just as likely have won the battle as the Germans did.
As he writes, “…The German advance through Belgium was hardly the thing of wonder it has been made out to be. That the French plan did not succeed, while the German plan did, had nothing to do with strategy, but was solely the product of German superiority at the tactical level."
In conclusion, he writes, …”The German Army won the battle of the Frontiers because of superior peacetime doctrine & training.”

In Zuber’s eyes, the German Army in the Ardennes could virtually do no wrong. And at times, a reader gets the impression that the French could do nothing right! Zuber is as critical of the conduct of the French as he is full of admiration for the Germans. According to Zuber, the French had inferior training, were poorly led, were too slow and hesitant and tended to break and go to pieces too easily. Only the French field-artillery gets any real praise from Zuber which he acknowledges to be their most effective weapon.

Zuber asserts that the legacy of the French defeat at the Frontiers Battle impacted negatively on their post-war tactical beliefs and plans and he believes that it contributed to their defeat in 1940. Having sustained such a defeat from the ‘Meeting-Engagements’ on the Ardennes, the French High-Command put their faith in static, linear defence, hence the infamous Maginot Line.

Zuber also downplays and even refutes the most controversial aspect of this campaign, namely the alleged atrocities carried out by German soldiers against Belgian civilians during the former’s advance. In the decades following the war, many historians tended to deny these, or at least the extent of them, putting them down as mere false propaganda spread by the Allies. However, in recent years, there have been a number of revisionist historians who have claimed that the murders and sackings took place and were committed on a considerable scale with little or no provocation. Zuber angrily refuses to believe these writers and he will only acknowledge that certain Belgian civilians were shot but only as reprisals for fifth-column attacks and sabotage. Zuber asserts that the German army maintained its strict discipline and correct conduct throughout the campaign. I don’t have enough knowledge to comment myself but I will say that his opinions are contrary to those of a number of equally well-credentialed current historians.

In my opinion, whilst Zuber is right to overturn certain myths about this Battle, he is somewhat ‘one-eyed’ in his almost unanimous praise of the German army. I am not singling out Zuber as being unique as there have been any number of Australian historians who have been worshipful of the Anzacs to the point of zealousness, stubbornly asserting that they were masters of the Western Front and superior in all respects to their allies and the enemy.

But any reader of this book could not be blamed if they came away wondering how the German Army actually got defeated, such is Zuber’s manifest belief in their superiority in all regards.
A flaw of the book is that he examines the Battle in isolation, not placing it in context with the remainder of the August Campaign. Zuber barely even mentions the German’s defeat on the Marne the following month so there is no explanation as to why the French army, which according to Sober, was inferior in almost every respect, was able to inflict such a defeat on the advancing Germans and halt the campaign into stalemate. If the German army was such a flawless instrument as Sober appears to believe, how did the campaign ultimately not succeed? We are given no explanation in this book.
Neither does he mention the performance of the German 2nd Army to the north which encountered the newly-arrived BEF at Mons, a battle which was fought simultaneously to the Ardennes.

This last point brings us to the perception of the German army’s tactics and reputation as seen by numerous British historians, both in the past and still today. It is not surprising that British Historians focus on the more modest-sized (by Great War standards) battles of Mons and Le Cateau as the BEF encountered the massed weight of the German 2nd Army after the former’s flank was left exposed by the retreat of the French 5th Army.
The impression that these historians give of the German Army is quite different to the picture painted by Zuber.

Historian Robin Neillands in his book “The Old Contemptibles: The British Expeditionary Force 1914” (2004) describes the German Infantry attacking at Mons on Aug 23.
“The German Infantry does not seem to have made any attempt to deploy or use fire and movement tactics in an attempt to suppress this (British) fire and move forward…”
Neillands writes the Germans….”advanced in solid company formations, presenting a perfect target and were swept with a fire so intense and so rapid…..” He goes on to say the Germans resembled “…solid blocks, standing out starkly against the skyline…”
According to Neillands, the British defended concealed positions that the German infantry couldn’t even locate and the shattering rifle fire “….dismayed the Germans”

Neillands, like many other British historians, is full of praise for the British Regular Army of 1914. He describes them as highly trained, superbly motivated and determined and resolutely stubborn in defence. Above all, he praises their spirit, endurance and discipline and, of course, their famous marksmanship. The BEF soldiers were trained to fire 15 rounds-a-minute from their .303 Lee-Enfields. The popular legend of Mons is that the German Commanders were convinced that the defending British were equipped with large numbers of machine-guns such was the density of the rifle fire that greeted the attackers.

Neillands then states..…”the German Infantry continued to come on in solid masses and were shot down in great numbers, not even seeing where this fire was coming from. The German tactic at Mons was both crude and in-effective; it amounted to little more than naked attrition, an attempt to overwhelm the British Line by force of numbers, accepting heavy casualties as the price of success.”
Shortly afterwards, Neillands even states ….”the German troops were not well-handled and their tactics were poor”.
According to Neillands, the Germans prevailed only due to sheer force of numbers and their heavier artillery, crudely swamping the gallant and more-skilled BEF.

Robin Neillands certainly presents a very different perspective on the 1914 German Army to what Terence Zuber has done. It should be pointed out, however, that Neillands gazes with heart-felt reverence and awe for the BEF with an eye that is as un-critical as Zuber’s was when the latter was writing about the Germans. In an earlier book on the 1944 Normandy Campaign, Neillands is determined to re-address the imbalance of what he believes to be the excessive credit given to the US Army at the expense of the British & Canadians. However, such is his zeal, he ends up being as guilty of national bias as the US Historians he criticises.

Part 3 coming. Pete

[Pete Hill]

Part 3.


In his book “Mons” (1960), UK writer John Terraine lays blame upon German General Von Kluck for the heavy losses the Germans sustained at Mons.
“….Von Kluck seems to have exercised…little control. He knew next to nothing about the dispositions of the British Army and his own Army Corps were permitted to stumble into it one by one as they arrived, with no coordination of their activities at all…”

Terraine quotes a vivid description by one British Sargeant;-
“They (the Germans) were in solid square blocks….and you couldn’t help hitting them! We lay in our trenches without a sound or sign to tell them of what was before them. They crept nearer and nearer, and then our officers gave the word….They seemed to stagger like drunk man hit suddenly between the eyes, after which they made a run for us, shouting some outlandish cry that we couldn’t make out…..”

A Gordon Highlander describes the German Infantry as advancing ….”in companies of quite 150 men in files 5-deep, and our rifle has a flat trajectory up to 600 yards. Guess the result. The first company (of Germans) were simply blasted away to heaven by a volley at 700 yards….The other companies kept advancing slowly, using their dead comrades as cover, but they had absolutely no chance.”

Terraine describes the German artillery as being the one thing that broke the British Line, the English soldiers being shocked and awed by its scale, its ferocity, accuracy and volume. The ‘trenches’ the men were defending were nothing like the trenches of the Western Front later in the water. They were more like hastily-dug ditches, sometimes barely waist-high, with the shovelled dirt piled on the forward edge. Other men defended behind hedgerows, slag-heaps and fence-lines. They were very vulnerable to the crushing artillery-fire that descended upon them.
But Terraine does state that… “British tactics, schooled by Boer marksmanship, were distinctly superior to those of the Continental Armies…”

Like Neillands, Terraine describes the eventual retreat of the BEF as being more due to sheer weight of numbers and artillery fire, rather than any tactical finesse displayed by the German Infantry. The BEF withdrew at the end of August 23, most of its units still intact, leaving the Germans shocked by the huge losses they had suffered.

Zuber would be angered by Terraine’s suggestion that the advancing Germans may have used civilians as a human shield on one occasion during the battle. The Fusiliers of the 1st Northumberlands and the 1st Royal Scots were defending the Canal Bridge, after beating back one German assault, were amazed to see a crowd of very young Belgian school-girls walking up the road towards them. The English soldiers lowered their weapons and did not fire and the nearby Germans took advantage of the lull to dash forward on the flanks, forcing the Fusiliers to withdraw. Terraine suggests that this may have been a deliberate act by the Germans in using the civilians as a decoy.

Lyn MacDonald’s “1914: Days of Hope” (1987) and Malcolm Brown’s “1914: the Men who went to War” (2004) both describe the battles of Mons and Le Cateau in vivid detail although MacDonald’s book is a little sketchier as by the time she came to write it (1987), there were precious few participants still living to track down and interview. But both books tell of heavy German losses resulting from their crude, battering-ram tactics against the expertly-trained English soldiers who defended their positions gallantly and stubbornly. At the close of the Mons Battle, MacDonald states, ….”the Germans had not just been thwarted, they had been slaughtered…”

In stark contrast to the skilled attacking tactics (advancing by 'Bounds') used by the Germans in the Ardennes as described by Zuber, these historians present a picture of the Germans making frontal assaults of the crudest kind. Perhaps the German 2nd Army was not as skilled or as highly-trained as the 4th and 5th Armies? Zuber does not mention this and his descriptions of the German tactics are presented by him as applying to the German Army as a whole.

Both books describe the Great Retreats after the BEF was pushed back, first from Mons and then from Le Cateau and how many units suffered heavy casualties and several units were over-run. But despite the casualties, exhaustion and confusion, the majority of the BEF stayed more-or-less intact during the retreat. There were some break-downs of morale, groups of men collapsing exhausted and refusing to keep moving, of men looting shops and houses for food and water. But, according to MacDonald and Brown, these tend to be the exception.

Hew Strachan’s “The First World War” (2003) is quite critical of the German Army of 1914. He quotes Times journalist Charles-a-Court Repington who observed the German Army on manoeuvres in 1911 and wrote, “No other modern army displays such profound contempt for the effect of modern fire”

Strachan also believes that the atrocities denied by Zuber actually took place, stating that the Germans killed over 6,000 Belgian and French civilians during the August advance.

Strachan’s book, a condensed version of a six-volume epic history of the war (still in progress), challenges many myths and assumptions about the war. In the chapter on the beginnings of Trench warfare, Strachan challenges the popular image of the ‘hell of trench-warfare’. As he puts it, ….”To speak of the horror of the trenches is to substitute hyperbole for common-sense; the war would have been far more horrific if there had been no trenches. They protected flesh and blood from the worst effects of the firepower revolution of the late 19th century……The dangers rose when men left the trenches to go over the top, and when the war was fluid and mobile.”

According to Strachan, the rate of deaths-per-month in the German Army reached their peak in 1914 and again in 1918, namely when they were on the offensive.
The monthly-loss rate for the French Army reached its wartime-peak as early as September 1914 where they lost 238,000 casualties. Even at Verdun in 1916, the monthly casualty-toll never exceeded 100,000 by comparison. Although people today tend to remember Verdun as ‘Hell on Earth’, perhaps they should be remembering the battles of 1914 as the true Armageddon of WW1.
For the British Army, it is the Somme and Third Ypres that is generally remembered as their biggest graveyards of the war. But, as Strachan points out, in August 1917, when Ypres was at its height, the British Army’s casualties were 81,000. By comparison, their losses in August 1918, when they were fighting again in the open, totalled 122,000. Yet it is the latter campaign that is generally forgotten and often overlooked by historians.

The common perception of the Western Front is that the slaughter and horror reached its peak in 1916 and 1917, leaving 1914 as a preliminary warm-up, 1915 as the forgotten year and 1918 as a winding-down of affairs. According to Strachan, it is 1914 and 1918 that we should be regarding as the most costly of the war.

At times, Strachan’s writing has a somewhat arrogant tone as if he believes his work to be the absolute last word on the history of the Great War. This can be seen in the recent British-TV documentary on the war that he wrote but refused to let other historians appear, citing as the reason that he disliked the recently-appeared ‘cult of the historian as TV-personality’. But nonetheless, agree with him or not, his book has many fresh perspectives on the war that are thought-provoking.

Turning back to Terence Zuber’s book, it is interesting to ponder his different perceptions and beliefs on the performance and conduct of the German Army and strongly they contrast with the writings of other historians.

I welcome comments from you guys. Pete

[Thomas Trauner]

Pete, your writing made a good reading. Thanks.
I’m not deeply informed about the details, so I cannot give a reasonable comment.

Zuber´s point of view seems to be really a bit “germanophile”. On the other hand, as you wrote, other authors seem to make the same mistake….
But I am convinced that huge differences existed between the conduct of the armies/divisions etc. So I could understand that the BEF encountered these “19-cent-line-tactics” of the German army, the French in the Ardennes are more “Boer-tactic” using one.
I have redden that there was a real discussion within in the German army about which kind of tactic should be used in mobile warfare. The discussion was still in flow in 1914.

I think both happened, tactical superiority and stubborn running into the crossfire. Langemarck is still remembered because all these pupils where ordered to run in linear tactic into the British fire.
So – both happened I think.

Thomas

[Pips]

Thanks for the heads-up Pete, I wasn't aware of the book. I'll have to lay my hands on it and read it.

I always thought it takes two to fight. But from your synopsis it seems that Zuber is primarily focused on the Germans. Still, anything that adds to the knowledge of events in the Great War is always welcome.

What is it about the Germans that has such a fascination for english-speaking historians and authors? One could be forgiven thinking that the Western Front consisted of just the British and Germans fighting, with the Americans arriving late. The poor French hardly figure in english language books, other than for Verdun and the mutiny of '17. And the Aviation Militaiire rarley gets more than a passing mention. Oh how I wish I could read French.

Zuber like many historians is in denial regarding the harsh treatment of the Belgiums by the Germans. The amount of documented evidence is appalling - murders, rape, looting, plunder on an orgainsed scale of national treasures, forced deportations to work in Germany, the burning of Louvain. The list is long. A very good book on the subject is "The Rape Of Belgium" by Larry Zuckerman.

[Catfish]

Hello Pete, and all,

first thanks for the thorough excerpt, this is really interesting.
I can - unfortunately enough - not really contribute because i do not know enough about the tactical situations during WW1.

It is my first impression that Zuber is indeed "germanophile", in describing the german army was an effective one - however this may well have been the case. This "friendly" tone is anyway only true in a former soldier's (Zuber's) attitude admiring tactical or whatever effectiveness, not in considering a people as friendly - what i would think would be "germanophile".

The other authors mentioned seem to be more "ententophile" (sorry for this word), or better "germanophobe" in describing german atrocities against the belgian population.
For what i have read german atrocities did not really surpass the ones of the other belligerent states, and this "german beasts murdering belgian babies" was indeed propaganda. However you cannnot be really sure without real evidence in either direction. What is true is that all sides lost their innocence pretty fast. Not to belittle things but please remember that England also did commit war crimes, only those were not talked about later. Indeed the United States were on the brink of joining an alliance with Germany because of this very procedure. Germany had 750.000 civilian losses already in the first two years.

For what i have read the BE were the first to stop the german advance, after this there was that french mobilization using thousands of taxi cabs to get soldiers to the front and bring the tactical situation to the final standstill.

As i read it was clear that France, even having declared war to Germany, was not really prepared to what Germany then did. It had been Germany's doctrine (the "Schlieffen plan") that it, even with Austro-Hungary and later Bulgaria etc. at his side, was never able to withstand two frontlines.
So after the Austro-Hungary's declaration of war to Russia, and Germany following, it was clear that Germany would do all to quickly end the war on either wing after the declaration of war from France, and England. Speed was all that counted, but german intelligence had not understood the french-english fleet manouevers of 1912, and fast material transports across the channel.
But this is all strategic talk, and has not much to do with the tactical stuation Zuber seems to write about.

Anyway fascinating stuff, thanks and greetings,
Catfish

[josquin]

Pete and Forumites,
As both Pete and Thomas stated very well, Zuber is casting a wide net
and generalizing about an entire army (900,000 peacetime conscripts plus
4,000,000 reserves) on the basis of his case study of a single battle. As
historiography, this is not a sound practice. Simplistic overgeneralization
prospers only in the absence of context, as Pete observed; "context,"
or in other words, what really happened when every battle is included
in the analysis rather than merely a single episode that may be very
non-representative, in fact. Thomas rightly focuses on this problem of
overgeneralization; he mentions a horrific example, Langemarck, that
utterly contradicts Zuber's claims. Let's look at a few examples that
pertain to Zuber's claims of German tactical superiority--a claim John
Mosier makes in his controversial histories, as well.
Examples consistent with Zuber's claims: (1) the Wuerttembergers'
assault at Messines, 31 October 1914: the leading assault waves attacked
in small groups, using short rushes, protected by covering fire from other units, and they took advantage of natural contours and cover provided
by the terrain. (2) Similarly, the assault of the 17th Reserve Infantry
Regiment at Wytschaete, 1 November 1914, used speed, mobility, and
use of "dead ground" (protective terrain features) to quickly dislodge
their adversaries. (3) the obvious example: the success of the "Storm
Troop" (Sturmabteilung & Sturmbattailon) in the early stages of the
Kaiserschlacht, beginning 21 March 1918, and the innovation of the
"Hurricane bombardment" by Oberst Georg Bruchmueller ("Durchbruchmueller").
Examples that diverge from Zuber's position: (1) "the Kindermord von
Ypern" (the Massacre of the Innocents at the First Battle of Ypres), in
which the OC of the German Fourth Army, Duke Albrecht of Wuerttemberg,
ordered mass, frontal attacks on entrenched BEF defenders by inexperienced
student reserves. The Student Volunteers, who were barely trained "had
little power of manoeuvre because their training had been so scanty, but
they were absolutely determined to win or fall. For the most part they
fell" (Cyril Falls, THE FIRST WORLD WAR, Longman, 1960). A German
officer who was present wrote: "...these young fellows we have, only
just trained, are too helpless, particularly when their officers are killed...
In the next division, just such young souls, the intellectual flower of
Germany, went singing into an attack on Langemarck, just as vain and
costly." (Rudolf Binding, AUS DEM KRIEGE, trans. as A FATALIST AT WAR,
Allen & Unwin, 1929). The British may have had Haig and the French had
Nivelle, but the Germans had Falkenhayn and Duke Albrecht! (2) What
about elite units, such as the Prussian Guards? Was their performance
consistent with Zuber's claims? Not always--consider the attack of the
4th Guards Division against the British lines at Gheluvelt, on 11 November
1914. After breaking through the British position, the elite guardsmen
failed to press the attack due to a combination of confusion and uncertainty
about what to do next. The Regimental histories stated: "Among the
garden enclosures the leaderless lines abandoned the forward movement
and drifted to the right...the assault came to a standstill at the third
British line." (Capt. Otto Schwink, German General Staff, DIE SCHLACHT
AN DER YSER UND BEI YPERN IM HERBST 1914 (Gerhard Stalling, 1918).
One problem with the regimental historian's account: there was NO
British third line! A captured German officer asked what was behind
the front line positions; his captors answered, "Divisional headquarters."
Failure to press the attack by the elite guardsmen gave the British
time to regroup and launch a counterattack that threw back the German
advance and restored the original British lines. (3) At the Second Battle of
Ypres, 22 April 1915, the Fourth Army and Duke Albrecht performed poorly,
yet again. After the war's first use of poison gas had opened a 4-mile gap
in the Allied lines, the German assaulting divisions were inactive and did
not press their attack from 23 April onward. The inaction of the Germans
was due to their having been given no specific orders to do more than
dig in on their objectives. No special tactics for the new gas weapons had
been developed to enhance the effectiveness of the assault. If this was
not enough, Falkenhayn also failed to provide enough reserves to ensure
success. Second Ypres, then, gives us three different dimensions of
German performance that hardly exemplifies tactical superiority. (3) the
excellent example Pete gave of the German mass attacks against the
BEF at Mons and Le Cateau. (4) Gen. Alexander von Klueck, OC First Army
during the August, 1914 campaign in France and Belgium, unilaterally
changing his line of march from the southwest (as mandated by the
Schlieffen Plan) to the southeast--which placed the German right wing
to the east of Paris rather than to the west. Klueck did this without
securing permission from his superior, von Moltke, because a gap had
appeared between his army and von Buelow's Second Army. So, two
indications of less than stellar tactical performance here: the development
of the gap between the two German armies and Klueck's unilateral
change in his orders. A serious malfeasance, this: it created the opening
that permitted the Allied victory at the First Battle of the Marne and the
defeat of the German campaign to win the war in 40 days! The only
comparable example I can recall is Daniel Sickles' unilateral decision to
move the Union III Corps from its assigned position at Gettysburg, on
2 July 1863. The outcome was equally unfortunate!
Finally, Zuber's denial of the German atrocities is definitely a clue that
his objectivity is wanting. Even Strachan acknowledges that these
tragic civilian deaths occurred. Barbara Tuchman settled this years ago:
she visited the cemeteries in Belgium and recorded the names, dates of
death, occupations, and so on--and she clearly identified the many
civilians the Germans had executed. Evidently, Zuber prefers to
dissociate the German Army of the Great War from the indelible,
unpardonable record of the Wehrmach & SS in 1939-45. However
queasy the truth makes you when you first encounter it, it is still
the truth. Not surprisingly, the Japanese schools are now really
playing down the legacy of havoc left by their Empire. Suppression
of facts, especially unpleasant facts, may be expedient--but it makes
for poor history. Catfish: I am unfamiliar with the Allied War crimes
of the Great War--please inform me about this. If you are referring
to the Allied blockade of Germany, I beg to differ. Such actions were
strategic choices, as were the U-boat campaigns in both world wars.
Hard choices, yes; war crimes, no. General Sherman was right about
what war really is; don't expect it to bring out the best in people-especially when one side starts to bomb civilians (Guernica, Rotterdam, and so on). In closing, Zuber does not succeed in establishing his
claim of German tactical superiority, as a universal category, when
all of the evidence is examined. More than this, though, I believe his
historical objectivity warrants close scrutiny given both his
unbalanced evaluation of the performance of the French Army and his
categorical denial of the German Army's atrocities in Belgium.
regards josquin

[Catfish]

Hello,
thanks Josquin, from what i have read of you before you are a phantastic contributor to this forum, and i mean it.
To say it again i do not know too much about the battle tactics on the ground, but the tactics certainly did differ from the last war Germany was involved in, in 1871/72. In the dreaded two-front situation Germany tried to gain a quick victory on the western front, to have enough troops and material to concentrate on the remaining front. The speed was certainly unheard of before, but the final victory "somehow" did not happen, and this Zuber makes it hard to believe that Germany was "able" to fail at all, or so it seems.

I did not want to belittle war crimes and atrocities, and there is no "but" or "however" to add to this sentence.
What i wanted to say is that it is important to know how propaganda works, on all sides, what it is used for, and who gains an advantage from it. In this respect some of the atrocities have indeed been made up, or enlarged, to dehumanize the enemy, an excuse to slaughter him without mercy, and it still works today.

::Propaganda and World War One::

About belgien civilians:
Did World War One and British government propaganda affect the culture of publishing during the War?

Additionally every act of help between enemies was suppressed, and there were a lot of them. It is also true that the Kaiser, against public opinion, did a lot to avoid atrocities and war crimes, however he was in command of the German fleet, not the army, and even here he failed, because of the three factions in Germany that lead an "intra-national" war against each other.

Re the war crime thing. Again i do not doubt there were atrocities and war crimes committed by german soldiers.
I agree that the "Far blockade" was not a tactical but a strategical thing, indeed the british fleet was in no need to start a battle - the german fleet was not even able to reach it, as well it was primarily intended to act as a "fleet in being", not to really fight.
As well the blockade may not have been a war crime, but the blockade was, as well as the capturing of german freighters all over the world before the outbreak of the war, a crime against public law. That one of the (intended) colllateral damage was the suffering of the population of Austro-Hungary, Germany and finally also Bulgaria and Turkey, does not make it a war crime per definitionem, but i think this is debatable.
There are no war crimes of the Entente belligerent states i know of aland (after all no Entente nation had invaded a country where it would have been possible to commit war crimes against civilians - and no, i do not say it then would have happened), however the gunning down of survivors of sunken ships, hoisting false flags, using Q-ships, and submarines sinking hospital ships in the baltic sea is indeed handed down. The gunning down in 1920 at Scapa Flow was most probably a mistake.

Thanks and greetings,
Catfish

P.S. There is really no need to blame each other for atrocities of our ancestors, but it certainly has to be talked about, and kept in mind. Our ancestors did not have the knowledge and means to inform themselves like it is nowadays, as well all thinking and action has to be seen in the time it happened.

[josquin]

Catfish,
Greetings to a valuable Forum contributor! I agree completely with your
cautions about propaganda and its distortions of historical fact; yes, all
of the combatant nations practiced it, not least the British. You are right
about not assigning blame, as well. My studies concentrate upon
establishing fact or determining what actually happened--as much as
this can be done almost a century after the fact and with limited
surviving documentation (and much of that distorted by nationalistic
bias, propaganda, and so on). Establishing fact differs from assigning
blame like some rite of public humiliation in a Baltic village; I have no
interest in finger-pointing and blaming--the reality is far too complex
and ambiguous for that. Regarding emblematic events, like the
deaths of civilians in Belgium, I believe that what happened should be
a part of the historical record--just as parallel events in 1939-45
should be as well, such as the massacres of American POWs by the Japanese
(in the Philippines, 1944-45), by the SS (by Joachim Peiper & Eugen
Gnauss at Malmedy, during the Battle of the Bulge, and the Soviets
(the Soviet Army's violation of the German civilian population in 1945
and the mass executions of Polish POWs at the Katyn Forest). War
never leaves a clear, unarguable black-and-white or good vs. bad
because it does bring out the worst, and sometimes the best, in
people. As a case in point, if you talk to veterans--of all armies--
you learn that prisoners were shot not infrequently. This sort of thing never gets in the formal histories, but it did happen. Does this need to get into the formal histories? Yes, it does! As an illustration that IS in the books, the Americans (and presumably other armies in the Great War)
dealt with machine gunners by shooting them rather than making them
prisoners--a rough kind of justice for the losses they had caused.
So, Catfish, with events as complex, ambiguous, and ambivalent as
these to simply learn what happened (or, at best, MAY have happened)
is the challenge facing us all.
regards josquin

[Pete Hill]

To Catfish, Pips, Josquin & Thomas,

thank you for your replies.

Pips,

the book is still only in hardback and I bought my copy from the UK via eBay which was the cheaper option although you might find a cheaper one via Amazon.com. The 'Rape of Belgium' book you mentioned is actually one of several books dealing with the alleged-atrocities that Zuber briefly talks about and then dismisses as unreliable and/or in-accurate. I think Zuber's mind is firmly set in the belief that the German Army were 100% 'proper and correct' in their conduct during the August advance. He offers no real convincing explanation as to why so many other historians believe that the atrocities occured other than that he is the first writer to make a complete study of German Army records, a claim that I find both hard to believe and a little conceited.
The book is an interesting read although designed more for the military-enthusiaist rather than a general reader as, at times, it is a little dry and heavy on detail.

Josquin,

I agree with you in that Zuber has over-generalized his verdicts on the performance of the German Army. I do not think he has approached this study with enough objectivity as he has a zealous-belief in the superiority of the German Army. Again, I must emphasize, that I don't regard Zuber as being unique in this regard as there are a significant number of military historians of ALL nationalities who are also guilty of the same flaw/ mistake. AND I am including a number of Australian historians. A recent biography of the well-known Australian 5th Brigade Commander during WW1- General 'Pompey' Elliot by Australian writer Ross McMullin has, in my opinion, a similar fault.
McMullin approached the study with such a firm belief that the Australian forces were clearly superior to all other Allied forces on the Western Front that any historical facts and material that may challenge this belief have been ignored or down-played. McMullin delights in repeatedly criticizing and dis-missing the battlefield performance of British troops and how time after time, the poor little Tommies had to be rescued by the tough, gallant Aussies. Such blinkered conceit can only breed an arrogant, selfish and false view of history.
I am very sceptical about Zuber's denial of German atrocities in Belgium although I think that British historians should not be too self-righteous or smug in their dealings with this issue, given the conduct of British forces during the campaign in post-war Iraq or during the earlier Boer War in South Africa. Nor should Australian historians, given that there are a number of documented cases of both German and Turkish prisoners being shot out-of-hand by Australian soldiers during WW1. As you very rightly say, Josquin, the war was a nasty business and every-body's hands got dirty at some point.

Pete