Battle Of The Marne

Germany Loses Her Chance of Victory Never to Regain It

The Great War began with the enthusiastic consent of most of the peoples in the countries of Europe. All imagined they were fighting for the Right and for Justice. Rupert Brooke’s words:

“Now God he thanked Who has matched us with His hour And caught our youth, and wakened us from sleeping”

were echoed all over the Continent which was so soon to be full of misery, of dead and dying. Everyone imagined too that the war would be short, and very few people imagined that it would be a total war involving the whole population of Europe. There was confidence on both sides that the enemy could be taught a sharp lesson. And so the war began with great offensives by the principal Continental powers. The Austrians, who had invaded Serbia, advanced into Russian Poland, and, by mid-August, two huge Russian armies, badly equipped but full of a belief in the might of Holy Russia, crossed into East Prussia. The Germans violated the neutrality of Belgium and brought Britain into the war on 4 August. The French on 7 August advanced into upper Alsace and reached the Rhine on 19 August, whilst the main French offensive by the First and Second Armies advanced into Lorraine.

For some ten years before 1914, the French Ecole de Guerre and the High Command had accepted a doctrine that war was won by the nation which most resolutely adopted the offensive, and Napoleon’s phrase that “morale is to the physical as three to one” had been elevated into a sacred dogma by those who constituted the brains of the French Army. Had not the Germans “marched to the sound of cannon” in 1870? At manoeuvres; held before 1914, the commander who showed the greatest impulsiveness in searching out the enemy and bringing him to battle won the greatest praise from the High Command. And so at Morhange-Saarebourg on 14 August, the French infantry, still clad in the red and blue uniforms of 1870, were launched into a furious attack on the army of Prince Ruprecht of Bavaria. The attackers were shattered by the German machine-guns and rapid rifle-fire from defensive positions, and the same story occurred in other battles along the Alsace-Lorraine Front. As happened in 1940, the French General Staff had planned to fight a war on the lines of the last war. They paid the penalty in 1914 of huge losses in the finest divisions of the French Army.

The German campaign was based on the Schlieffen Plan which consisted in the invasion of Belgium, the descent into France from the north and north-west and the turning of the French armies which were expected to be massed, and indeed were massed, on the Franco-German frontiers. The German invasion of Belgium did not at first alarm the French General Staff. The huge fortress of Liege fell after repeated attacks and the use of very heavy guns of a calibre not possessed by the Allies: but its capture had taken some time and cost the Germans 40,000 men.

The French High Command considered the German activities in Belgium were a costly diversion of German strength and that the main attack was bound to come through the Ardennes, and, harking back to 1870, once more large French forces were stationed along the Meuse where the Ardennes break down. It is strange to think that in 1940, when Guderian’s Panzers began their dash to the sea by crossing the Meuse and breaking through the French Army stationed there, the French considered that this was the least likely area for a serious attack.

In 1914, the wideness of the German sweep through Belgium was not only not expected but not even noticed until almost too late. In addition to this error, the French High Command was misinformed of the total of German effectives in the West. Accepting that Von Moltke, the German Commander-in-Chief, might employ all his reserve divisions at the outset of the war, French intelligence put down the total German infantry force at 68 divisions of which they identified 45 in action during August. In actual fact the Germans employed 83. So the Kaiser’s armies possessed numerical superiority over the French and the small British Expeditionary Force, “the first 100,000″, which was in line by mid-August; in addition, the Germans had a war plan which the enemy had not understood, and an army trained in accordance with the increased fire-power of modern weapons, which was to show itself for a long time far better adapted to modern war than the French or the British.

Fortunately, on the Western Front the German generals made some grave mistakes. The very first one was made after their victory at Morhange-Saarebourg, when instead of remaining on the defensive and luring the French into further advances in Alsace-Lorraine whilst the German pincer movement through Belgium was taking place, Prince Ruprecht and the Kaiser’s son, the Crown Prince, who also commanded in this sector, took the offensive and drove the French back to a strongly fortified line which they were able to hold fairly easily. Later, in September, when the Battle of the Marne took place after the great French retreat from the Belgian frontier, these French armies on the eastern sector of the Front were able to spare some divisions which were sent to the Western Front, to defend Paris.

But during the last two weeks of August and the beginning of September it was not German mistakes which came to mind but rather the fact that the German armies seemed irresistible. General Joffre, the French Commander-in-Chief, realized too late the danger on his left flank, from the Germans now invading northern France. The French at Charleroi, the British at Mons and Le Cateau offered a momentary, but vain, resistance to the great flow of German field-grey soldiers.

The French general Lanrejac, whose army lay next to the British Expeditionary Force, foresaw sooner than Joffre did the extent of the German pincer movement. Unfortunately Lanrejac did not get on at all with the British commander, Sir John French. French was choleric and suspicious of the French, whom he disliked and whose language he did not speak, and was not very quick-witted in any case. Lanrejac was talkative, tactless, irascible and quick thinking. Co-operation was anything but good. Nonetheless, it was a fighting retreat, and the B.E.F. and the French Fifth Army had plenty of fight left in them.

At Guise, the French won a minor defensive battle and a certain Colonel Petain, who was on the verge of retirement, distinguished himself. Petain, who was an open critic of the French military school, believed that “fire-power kills” and opposed “the offensive at all costs”. Within a few months, Petain was to be an Army commander and later Commander-in-Chief of the French armies. Also in the 33rd Infantry Regiment commanded by Petain was a lieutenant aged twenty-four called Charles de Gaulle, who between 1914 and 1916, when he was wounded and captured at Verdun, was three times mentioned in despatches.

Fortunately, during this retreat, and perhaps because of the fighting power of the B.E.F. and the French Fifth Army, the Germans never occupied the Channel Ports. There was nothing to slop them. Uhlans installed themselves in Amiens but never pene-1 rated as far as Calais or Boulogne. The German High Command was completely preoccupied with crushing the French Army, and presumably, since they did not think the war would be prolonged, (hey did not consider it worth taking the Channel Ports. The Kaiser, the supreme War Lord, a man who easily went from one extreme to the other, was hurrah-ing for victory at the time, as the German armies approached nearer and nearer to Paris. The French Government left Paris for Bordeaux.

Joffre’s plan was to retreat in an orderly fashion to the east of Paris, leaving,the capital to be defended by its garrison, commanded by General Gallieni, and a Sixth Army which was slowly being formed under General Manoury and made up of divisions brought from the eastern end of the French Front. By the beginning of September, Joffre had not made up his mind where he would turn round and stand and fight.

The Battle of the Marne which now took place has aroused more controversy than any other battle in history. Whilst there was very heavy fighting along the whole front from the Rhine to Paris, the key events of this battle took place to the immediate east of Paris where the B.E.F. and the French Army were still retreating in order to come more or less in line with the rest of Joffre’s forces. On the German side, the army on the eastern German flank, commanded by Von Kluck, had outpaced its neighbour, the German Second Army, commanded by Von Bulow; apparently on his own initiative Von Kluck wheeled south-east and away from Paris, following the retreating French and British forces. It was not according to the German war plan which envisaged the investment of Paris by a part of Von Kluck’s army and a sweep right up to the capital.

The German Commander-in-Chief, Von Moltke, who had moved his headquarters no nearer to the battlefront than Luxembourg, was out of touch with the generals commanding the armies in the field, but apparently gave his consent to Von Kluck’s manoeuvre on 4 September. It was then that General Gallieni in Paris realized that now was the moment to attack the exposed German flank. After much telephoning and argument with Joffre, he obtained consent that part of General Manoury’s army should proceed to the offensive.

The German gap between Von Kluck and the German Second Army was enlarged, on 5 September, due to the fact that the B.E.F. opposite to Von Kluck continued to retreat, an error for which Sir John French was bitterly criticized by Joffre, but which, in fact, contributed to the German defeat. On 5 September, in the afternoon, a fresh division arrived in Paris to serve with the Sixth Army of Manoury. There was insufficient rail transport for the forty miles from Paris to the battlefield where Manoury was already attacking the Germans. It was then that the Paris police, on Gallieni’s orders, seized some 600 taxi-cabs in Paris, bundling the fares unceremoniously out on to the pavement. They collected the taxis at a suburb in the east and transported some 3,000 soldiers to the battlefield in a series of rapid journeys.

Von Kluck, when his rear was attacked by Manoury drew back and in doing so now exposed the advanced part of the German Second Army which, on 8 September, was suddenly attacked by the French Fifth Army and the B.E.F. If Manoury’s Sixth Army had been up to strength, it is possible that Von Kluck and the German Second Army would have been encircled. As it was, the threat was enough and on 9 September both the armies on the German right, those of Von Kluck and Von Billow, began to retreat.

On the rest of the Front from the Rhine to the sector next to Paris, German attacks had been launched and had been repulsed with losses, but the German Army was still numerically superior to the French, confident in victory and had not in fact been defeated. Except for the panic which had seized the German right wing as a result of its own disorder and the unexpected attack of General Manoury, nothing decisive had occurred. But battles are won, as Liddell Hart has written, “in the minds of the opposing commanders, not in the bodies of their men”.

The intensity of relief and joy in France after the Battle of the Marne was unbelievable and all the greater in that, until the Germans were almost in sight of Paris, events had moved so fast that the French people had barely realized that France had been near to total defeat. General Joffre’s reputation soared to the sky. He certainly deserved much of his fame. Over-phlegmatic and unimaginative as he was, he and his staff had nonetheless preserved the unity of the French Army during a campaign in which it had met with disaster. The French Army had been able to turn on the Marne, still a disciplined fighting force, capable of hitting back. A proof of Joffre’s power of organization was the moving of a large number of divisions from the French right in the east to the Paris sector during and after a long retreat. He should perhaps have moved more and moved them faster, but all the same on 9 September the French and British outnumbered the Germans in this vital western end of the battlefront.

But Joffre was not a great enough man to acknowledge that it was General Gallieni’s insight and tempestuous action which had really made possible the victory. When the French Army, still retreating, had crossed the Marne, there was no evidence that Joffre intended to fight. Indeed, he ordered the advance point of the French forces at Verdun, in the east, to be abandoned and he was disobeyed by the French commander in the sector, General Sarrail. At first, Joffre had ordered Gallieni and Manoury to attack south of the Marne, and had this order not been countermanded and permission given to attack to the north of the river, the German panic might never have taken place. For, once more, it was the sudden offensive behind their advance lines which made Von Kluck and Von Bulow lose their heads and it was the psychological shock of Manoury’s attack which mattered.

On the German side, the principal factor making for the defeat was the inability of Von Moltke, a shadow of his great father who had commanded in the 1870 war, to control his generals and also his irresolution. The German war plan was to strike with all the force at the disposal of Germany at France and to conduct a holding operation against the Russians. Yet, alarmed by the Russian advance in East Prussia, on 25 August, Von Moltke diverted four divisions from France to the Eastern Front. When, on 6 September, the attack on the German right began, Von Moltke sent a staff officer to contact Bulow and Von Kluck and delegated, to this officer, a Colonel Hentsch, who was later killed in action, the right to make all tactical decisions.

Hentsch, when he arrived at Von Kluck’s headquarters, found that an order to retreat had already been given, and this he himself, in view of his knowledge of the state of the German Second Army, confirmed and then extended to a general retreat.

There was another psychological factor which added to the nervousness of Von Moltke and his staff. There was a fear of a British landing on the coast, a groundless fear for the British Army was almost wholly absorbed in the British Expeditionary Force. There was a fear too of Russian forces being brought over the Channel from Britain. For one of the rumours which had swept through, Britain in early August was that a large Russian army had landed in Scotland and had been taken by trains to the South Coast. A railway porter was said to have found snow on the platform of the station where these trains had stopped. Absurd as it may seem, this rumour was taken seriously by the German General Staff. Sir John French, with great skill and dash, now moved his troops north-west and, outstripping the retreating Germans, joined the small Belgian Army still holding out on the Belgian coast. In two bloody battles outside Ypres, against superior German forces, he safeguarded the vital Channel ports of Calais and Boulogne. During the German retreat and the British dash across country, the Allied generals were full of optimism. It was thought that the French troops would be across the Rhine in a fortnight and Sir John French hoped before then to be in Brussels. In fact, the pursuit of the Germans by the French was disappointingly slow, and though Gallieni had shown a flash of Napoleon’s genius the French generals showed little of that vigour in pursuit which had always characterized the Napoleonic armies.

In any case, the German Army was not broken, and by the winter of 1914 to 1915 a war of movement had given place to a war of attrition and the soldiers of all three countries began the terrible experience of trench warfare. From the Channel to the Vosges the rival armies were, despite desperate courage, to be unable to do more than dent each other’s lines.

The Germans still possessed immense advantages; they had, in 1915, more guns, howitzers and above all machine-guns; their defensive positions were stronger, their troops better trained, and they still held most of Belgium and the industrial regions of France which included nearly all France’s iron and steel resources.

From the winter of 1914 until November, 1918, the Western Front was to witness an orgy of slaughter such as no other war in history has ever paralleled. The fortunes of war were to sway this way and that, with one side or the other gaining a few yards of shell-pocked ground. Throughout the whole of 1916 the great Battle of Verdun raged and most of 1917 saw a huge British Army wasting immense numbers of men in an effort to break the German Army’s morale. In 1918 the ending of the war with Russia enabled the Germans to bring back many divisions from the East, and to make one more desperate attempt to break the Franco-British armies and to take Paris. But the German Army was worn out and the morale of the German people sapped by the blockade. For a few days in the spring of 1918 victory appeared possible to the excited Kaiser, but the Allies were in better heart and reinforced by American supplies and a few divisions.

Germany had lost her only chance of complete victory in September, 1914. No wonder Gallieni’s taxis are a legend and men talked for a long time of the Miracle of the Marne.