The Price of Glory (36 page)

FOCH

D
URING
the months of March, April and May, while at Verdun the Germans were painfully inching forward towards the summits of Le Mort Homme and Côte 304, in the world outside there was little enough the belligerents could find of positive comfort. For the first time in British history, and after a long struggle, Conscription had become law; but in Dublin the ‘Easter Rising’ had set the spark to Ireland, and in Mesopotamia General Townshend had surrendered to the Turks at Kut. The Russians had taken Trebizond from the Turks, but had suffered bloodily in the Narocz marshes after a noble response to Joffre’s plea for a diversionary offensive to relieve Verdun. On the seas, the packet-steamer
Sussex
had been torpedoed with several Americans aboard, bringing a sharp ultimatum from President Wilson; and both sides were shortly to claim victory in the Battle of Jutland. In Berlin’s Potsdamer Platz, Liebknecht had tried to hold an anti-war rally, leading to Germany’s first war-time strikes. In Switzerland, Socialists from all over the world had met to condemn the war and prophesy mutual exhaustion. The war went on. At the other end of the world, Shackleton had reached South Georgia Island after two years’ isolation in Antarctica:

‘Tell me, when was the war over?’ I asked.

‘The war is not over,’ he answered. ‘Millions are being killed. Europe is mad. The world is mad.’

At Verdun, the three months represented the period when the least progress was made by either side, for the highest cost. We have already seen how, on the Left Bank, with a fearful expenditure of lives, the German all-out offensive had bought possession of two hills of secondary importance. On the Right Bank the fighting surged back and forth within a small area, well named the ‘Deadly Quadrilateral’, at the southerly approaches to Fort Douaumont. In a series
of sharp, local attacks, the initiative lay alternatively with either side. During most of April, von Zwehl’s VII Reserve Corps found itself preoccupied in a see-saw battle for one small feature, the stone quarries at Haudromont. Over the whole period, the front on the Right Bank never shifted as much as 1,000 yards; for the Germans, a bitter contrast to the five miles they had advanced in the first four days of the offensive. Meanwhile, never for a second was there any lifting in the murderous artillery blanket laid down by the cannon of the opposing sides, now nearly 4,000 strong.

Have so many ever died for so little gain? Between April 1st and May 1st, the casualty totals had mounted from 81,607 Germans and 89,000 French to 120,000 and 133,000 respectively; by the end of the month, French losses alone had reached approximately 185,000 (roughly equal to the overall German losses in the Battle of Stalingrad).

As the casualty lists mounted, so signs of strain began to appear within the higher commands on both sides, almost simultaneously. At the end of March, the Crown Prince and his Chief-of-Staff, von Knobelsdorf, were still dedicated to the capture of Verdun, come what may; equally, Falkenhayn was still true (in his indecisive fashion) to his aim of bleeding the French Army to death at Verdun, regardless of whether or not the city fell in the process. But gradually a change in positions becomes apparent.

On February 29th, it will be recalled that Falkenhayn had agreed to a spreading of the offensive, to ‘clear’ the Left Bank, and had allocated some of his jealously guarded reserves for the purpose. Now, after the Fifth Army’s first abortive assaults on the Mort Homme, Falkenhayn wrote on March 30th to the Crown Prince, noting that ‘the employment of four fresh divisions… had led to no successes’, and asking for information as to his future intent and expectations. A reply framed by Knobelsdorf on the following day, still full of optimism, declared that the offensive had already forced the French to bring ‘by far and away the largest part of their reserves to Verdun’. (Falkenhayn wrote caustically in the margin: ‘unfortunately not!’) Because of their losses at Verdun, continued Knobelsdorf, the French were capable of carrying out local attacks, but no major operation. (Falkenhayn: ‘Wrong; because there are also fourteen British divisions available!’) Summing up, Knobelsdorf said, ‘I therefore incline unreservedly towards the view that the fate of the French Army will be decided at Verdun.’ He urged a
continuation of the offensive, recommending that the thrust be resumed on the Right Bank as well, with the object of pushing for ward to the line
Ouvrage de Thiaumont
— Fleury — Fort Souville — Fort Tavannes. But, said Knobelsdorf, the new attacks would demand the ‘same replacements as before’. (Falkenhayn’s marginal note: ‘That is impossible!’)

Four days later, the Fifth Army leaders received a cold and curiously revealing reply from Falkenhayn. Their appreciation of March 31st was, he said, ‘not correct in certain essential points’. He criticised them for being ‘too optimistic as to what is and what is not possible to us’, and also for under-estimating the enemy’s ability to launch a major offensive.
¹
He went on to chide the Fifth Army:

The hypothesis that we are in a position to keep up a constant supply of fresh and highly-trained troops to replace those exhausted in battle, and also of the necessary supplies and ammunition, is erroneous. Even with the best will in the world, we could not do it.

With this
caveat,
he endorsed the Fifth Army proposal for resuming the offensive on the Right Bank. Then, in a remarkable display of vacillation, he proceeded to pour cold water on Knobelsdorf’s assertion that ‘the fate of the French Army will be decided at Verdun’, though this had been the very foundation of his own Memorandum of less than four months earlier. As soon as it becomes clear that the new attacks would not achieve their objectives within a reasonable period, then we must abandon them and ‘seek a decision elsewhere’, said Falkenhayn half-heartedly, adding:

Our chances of ending the war quickly would certainly be greatly increased if the battle were won; but if we failed to win it, even after what had already been achieved, our victory would merely be postponed and not rendered impossible, especially if we resolved in good time not to persist with our useless efforts at Verdun, but to take the initiative of attack elsewhere.

To an Army Commander, plunged up to the hilt by his superior in the most desperate battle of the war, this last can have provided little of encouragement or inspiration. Nevertheless, says the Crown Prince, ‘I agreed absolutely with his proposal that the question as to whether the offensive should be continued or broken off should be settled by the result of the partial attack on the East [Right] Bank.’ It was the last time he and Falkenhayn would be in such agreement.

Now it is clear that Falkenhayn was already beginning to lose interest in the ‘bleeding white’ experiment. On April 6th, unbeknown to the Hohenzollern Crown Prince, he was asking Crown Prince Rupprecht whether his Sixth Army might not be able to carry out a swift blow at Arras, against the British Army, whose anticipated (by Falkenhayn) relief attack had not yet materialised. This latest change of mind must have thoroughly exasperated Rupprecht. On March 21st, a despatch from Falkenhayn admitted that Rupprecht had been right about the British not being able to take the offensive, and at the same time it ordered the withdrawal of three of his divisions for the general reserve. Ten days later, Falkenhayn was on the telephone himself, expressing the fear that the British were after all about to attempt a relief operation, ‘and probably a landing attempt’. It was hardly surprising that on April 17th Rupprecht — irritated and not keen to be involved in another of Falkenhayn’s half-measure offensives that he deplored — coolly declined his invitation to attack the British, pointing to the strong reinforcements now in the line. Reluctantly, Falkenhayn was forced to switch his gaze back to Verdun.

Meanwhile, a blow that would add still further to Falkenhayn’s disillusion was about to fall from a totally different direction. The ‘second pillar’ of his Memorandum had been the launching of unrestricted submarine warfare, to cut off supplies bound for the French front. Initially, the new campaign had shown great promise, but the sinking of the
Sussex
provoked an unexpectedly violent reaction from President Wilson. This alarmed the Kaiser and his Chancellor, Falkenhayn’s arch-enemy,
¹
‘the Good Theobold’ Bethmann Hollweg, who from the beginning had opposed unleashing the U-boats. In a walk around the garden of GHQ on April 30th, Falkenhayn, with that sure touch of his, managed to reassure his master,
who then declared to Bethmann: ‘Now you have the choice between America and Verdun!’ But the next day a conversation with Gerard, the American Ambassador, convinced the Kaiser that the United States would indeed sever diplomatic relations if the sinkings continued, and, abruptly changing his mind, he promised an immediate ban on unrestricted submarine warfare. Piqued, Falkenhayn tendered his resignation to the Kaiser, but it was rejected.

* * *

Following Falkenhayn’s letter of April 4th, the Fifth Army energetically began preparations for its offensive towards Fort Souville on the Right Bank. But April passed, and then May, without it materialising. Three factors combined to cause repeated postponement; firstly, bad weather throughout most of April impeded the digging of jumping-off trenches; secondly, the French — under a new local commander on the Right Bank — had taken to launching a series of costly, but annoying, counter-attacks; but thirdly, and most important, the attack along the Left Bank had fallen far behind schedule, and before those deadly flanking batteries could be mastered there was little prospect of an advance on the Right Bank. Instead, General von Mudra, the commander on the Right Bank, recommended a system of local advances on a small scale. However, after the spirited French defence of April 9th-11th, even von Mudra admitted that this new technique was not likely to succeed. A sharp row flared between himself and Knobelsdorf, with von Mudra — one of the ablest German Corps Commanders—expressing pessimism as to the whole future of the Verdun offensive. On April 21st, he was sent back to his corps in the Argonne by Knobelsdorf, but before departing he gave vent to his doubts in a memo to the Crown Prince.

April 21st was a red-letter date for the German Command at Verdun. It was the day the Crown Prince, swayed by von Mudra, came to the irrevocable conclusion that ‘Operation GERICHT’ had failed, and should be called off altogether. He writes:

I was now convinced, after the stubborn to-and-fro contest for every foot of ground which had continued throughout the whole of April, that although we had more than once changed our methods of attack, a decisive success at Verdun could only be assured at the price of heavy sacrifices, out of all proportion to the desired gains. I naturally came to this conclusion only with the greatest reluctance; it was no easy matter for me, the responsible commander, to abandon my dreams of hope and victory!

The Crown Prince could recall how, the previous year, when Hindenburg and Ludendorff had stood seemingly on the very brink of a Russian collapse, Falkenhayn had terminated the immensely successful Gorlice offensive. More recently, it was impossible to forget how he personally had been let down over the reserves pledged for the first phase at Verdun. On top of Falkenhayn’s natural indecisiveness, the Crown Prince now knew enough of what lay behind his frequent references to ‘bleeding the French white’ to suspect that, even once a critical point had been reached in the battle, the C-in-C could not be relied upon to provide replenishments for ‘heavy sacrifices’ involved. Thus all the Fifth Army’s efforts would end in a futile waste.

With one exception, says the Crown Prince, his views were supported by the Operations Staff of the Fifth Army; ‘that exception was my Chief-of-Staff’. That same day, Knobelsdorf replaced the pessimistic von Mudra by General von Lochow, the commander of the Prussian III Corps, who in his views on warfare was roughly equivalent to the more ardent disciples of the
‘attaque à outrance
’ in France. His rôle was to ‘introduce a quicker tempo’ in the Verdun offensive. Also that day, to the Crown Prince’s surprise and considerable annoyance, Knobelsdorf engineered — without consulting him — the transfer of his own personal staff officer, Lieutenant-Colonel von Heymann, who was evidently the only officer in the Crown Prince’s entourage who could stand up to the iron will of Knobelsdorf. War was now declared between the Hohenzollern heir and his Chief-of-Staff.

On May 8th, the Crown Prince’s resolve was strengthened by a dreadful disaster that occurred inside Fort Douaumont. Repeatedly the Fort’s Artillery Officer had warned, in vain, against the danger of an accidental explosion. Though no eye-witness survived, there is reason to believe that it all began with some Bavarian soldiers brewing up coffee — in a delightfully careless South German way — on upturned cordite cases, using explosive scooped out of hand grenades as fuel! A small explosion resulted which detonated a store of hand grenades, which in turn set off a number of flame-thrower fuel containers. In a matter of minutes, the flaming liquid was flowing through the corridors of the fort. Before any action could
be taken, it had reached a magazine full of 155 mm. shells. It exploded. Those of the fort’s garrison who were not instantly blown to pieces had their lungs burst by the blast waves travelling along the corridors. Further away, others that survived the explosion became asphyxiated by its fumes. All lights were extinguished, and panic broke out. An even more tragic fate befell many who, amid the crazed stampede, were able to get out of the fort. As they emerged through the smoke and chaos, with uniforms shredded and faces blackened, they were taken by their countrymen defending the fort outside to be that most feared of enemies — French African troops — and were relentlessly mown down. Six hundred and fifty Germans, including the whole Regimental Staff of the 12th Grenadiers, perished. To this day most of them lie walled-up in one of Douaumont’s casemates that were devastated by the explosion.