Abstract
Bruno Cabanes, August 1914: France, The Great War, and a Month that Changed the World Forever, Yale University Press: New Haven, CT, 2016; 256 pp., 1 b/w illus.; 9780300208276, $27.50 (hbk)
Tim Gale, The French Army’s Tank Force and Armoured Warfare in the Great War: The Artillerie Spéciale, Ashgate: Farnham, 2013; 280 pp.; 9781409466611, £115.00 (hbk); 9781138247208, £39.99 (pbk); 9781315558004, £20.00 (ebook)
William Mulligan, The Great War for Peace, Yale University Press: New Haven, CT, 2014; 456 pp., 15 b/w illus.; 9780300173772, $35.00 (hbk)
Thomas Otte, July Crisis: The World’s Descent into War, Summer 1914, Cambridge University Press: Cambridge, 2014; 555 pp., 32 b/w illus., 2 maps; 9781107064904, £18.99 (hbk); 9781107695276, £16.00 (pbk); 9781139991032, $17.00 (ebook)
Thomas Otte, An Historian in Peace and War: The Diaries of Harold Temperley, Ashgate: Farnham, 2014, 606 pp.; 9780754663935, £115.00 (hbk); 9781138248229, £39.99 (pbk); 9781315566801, £20.00 (ebook)
The range of conflict in the 1910s, from China to Mexico, provides a way to contextualize the First World War in terms of a global variety of warfare. This variety is also the case for the war itself. The dominant image for that cataclysmic conflict, that of the apparent bloody stasis and senseless slaughter of trench warfare, is endlessly repeated and became the leitmotiv of public commemoration during the anniversary occasions from 2014 to 2018. Indeed, many public myths invest in this account of the First World War. In particular, it serves as a way to discredit the ancien régimes of Europe, to provide a counterpoint to military conduct subsequently, notably in the Second World War, and as an allegedly key background to the foundation in 1958 of what became the European Union. The last was symbolized in 1984 by President Mitterrand of France and Chancellor Kohl of West Germany holding hands when visiting the deadly battlefield of Verdun, the site of a major and sustained Franco-German clash in 1916. The ceremonies in 1984 were preceded by joint military exercises. Family narratives, and influential literary constructions based on the novels and poems deemed worthy of attention, also look back to these views of the war. Explanations of the Russian Revolution, the development of Fascism, the rise of the United States to great-power status, the origins of instability in the Middle East, the foundation of Israel, and much else, all focus on the conflict.
So it should surprise no one that the situation was in fact far more complex. To take the most basic points, those of tactical stasis, operational failure, strategic nullity and indecisive conflict, none in fact is well founded if the war as a whole is considered, as opposed to many individual offensives; while certain offensives were indeed successful, decisive and effective. This is a contrast more generally true of warfare. From the perspectives of Eastern Europe, the Balkans, the Middle East and Germany’s overseas colonies, the war saw much movement. Moreover, Serbia and Romania were in effect knocked out of the war in 1915 and 1916 respectively, while, in 1917, Russia was knocked out, and Italy nearly was. In 1918, Bulgaria, Turkey, Austria and Germany were all defeated to the point of surrender.
Even if attention is shifted solely to the Western Front, that in France and Belgium, the concentration of so much force and resource did not prevent near victories for Germany in 1914 and 1918, and victory for its opponents (principally Britain, France and the United States) in 1918. Moreover, as part of this process, the major tactical problems posed by trench warfare were overcome, and at the tactical, operational and strategic levels. The Western Front was never in stasis, although it did appear to be static. The Allies worked out how to direct unprecedented firepower with effect, German trench systems were broken into and through, fresh advances were made, and it proved possible in 1918 for the Allies (although not earlier the Germans) to coincide and sustain attacks along a broad front in order to prevent the sealing of any breakthrough by means of concentrating reserves.
Problems that had confronted perceptive commentators in the pre-war decades were overcome; but so were longer-lasting command issues, notably that of the combination of firepower and mobility. Technology played a role, not so much with the tank, as its potential, at once undoubted and problematic, was not yet brought to fruition, but rather with the use of effective aerial reconnaissance in order to map opposing trench systems so that artillery fire could be accurately directed and monitored. The net effect was a conflict that, despite its being between advanced economies deploying unprecedented resources, was, nevertheless, able to deliver a decisive military and political result, and in fewer campaigning seasons than in the Second World War.
These points offer a perspective from which to consider some of the other conflicts of the decade. Comparisons (and contrasts) are generally with those that immediately preceded the war, notably the two Balkans wars of 1912–1913 and, further back, the Russo-Japanese War of 1904–1905. While valuable, that approach does not consider the range of use of force in the 1910s, which included the Chinese revolution of 1911, the Mexican revolution, notably a civil war after a coup in 1913, and American interventions in Nicaragua, Haiti, the Dominican Republic and Mexico. All delivered results, all involved equations of firepower and mobility, and therefore comparisons with the First World War are instructive. The most significant are that, in each case, resource availability was lower than in the First World War, and also that civil conflicts had a different dynamic, with a much more important focus on swiftly ensuring a political outcome. To that extent, the obvious comparison in the First World War for these other conflicts of the 1910s was with the two Russian revolutions of 1917.
It is instructive to reconsider the First World War in light of these other conflicts, because the key element that emerges is that the campaigns of movement in that war were not as it were falling away from the ‘true state’ of the conflict, that on the Western Front, but, instead, campaigns that were more consistent with those elsewhere. The major contrast is that of the political dimension, in that the conflicts in Mexico and China were civil wars, whereas the different aspect of the First World War was that it did not involve much civil warfare. This contrast serves to remind us of the need to assess the varied strands of war in terms of their political context. Wars between states necessarily focused on frontier zones, unless there was a collapse of one state and occupation became a key means through which the continuing conflict was pursued. In contrast, the capture of the capital and of other major cities was the central means in civil warfare of any scale, as opposed simply to regional insurrections. As a result, capitals were the crucial settings for the Irish rising in 1916, the Bolshevik takeover of Russia in 1917, and the nationalist movements in the Austro-Hungarian empire at the close of the war.
The First World War was intended by each of its participants as a short and manageable, albeit costly, international war between regular forces, indeed as a reprise of the Franco-Prussian and Russo-Japanese wars. It was understood that there would be heavy casualties due to the nature of military technology, a point driven home by the Russo-Japanese War, but it was believed that a speedy victory could be delivered by the side that attacked. Speedy victory, the ideas of Nietzsche calling on what were understood as those of Clausewitz in the case of Germany, was what was attempted by all the major powers in 1914 once war had begun.
That did not mean that all the powers were equally to blame for the war. The anniversary in 2014 of the opening of the war led to even more division among scholars than might have been anticipated. This division related not only to discussion about the nature of the conflict, but also to the responsibility for the war. This debate, often contentious in character, was not always terribly helpful. Indeed, much of it repeated themes already seen in the 1920s in the discussion over war guilt.
There was also a widespread failure adequately to integrate into the discussion of the diplomacy the often excellent scholarly work on the military preparations for the conflict. In particular, the nature of Austrian and German planning scarcely accords with the unconvincing argument that Europe somehow slid or sleepwalked into war, an approach that turns perpetrators into victims. 1 Instead, a degree of preparedness encourages support for the argument that war was intended. In Austria, the army leadership, which believed that war would be socially rejuvenating, failed to inform civilian ministers about the reality of the military situation. 2
This approach suggests that the war was not so much a failure of statecraft, as some have argued, but, instead, a breakdown of deterrence. If the latter was combined with a strategic confusion at the heart of decision-making, then the combination was deadly. Alongside this came the extent to which the dynamic of the crisis, which is brilliantly handled by Otte in July Crisis, meant that constructive ambiguity was no longer credible. Moreover, as he argues, it is unhelpful to assume that there were system-appropriate policies, as this approach underplays the divisions within decision-making elites.
While planning for a war is not simple proof of intent, pressure from the military was highly significant. The decision-makers had lost the sense of the fragility of peace and order. The politicians used the threat of war to put the other side at a disadvantage with the aim of increasing their own leverage, and, in doing so, they miscalculated. Everyone, Otte argues, made mistakes. Austria wanted war (albeit only a Balkan one); Germany was criminally negligent, and, through fumbling, created a situation in which she could not rein in Vienna or retreat in the face of Franco-Russian opposition; France was rigid; and Russian policy was incompetent. Britain comes out better than others on balance. With respect to the British government, criticisms fail to take into account simple parliamentary arithmetic. Any attempts to issue a warning to Germany before the invasion of Belgium that such an invasion would bring Britain into the war were likely to be hollow because of the make-up of Asquith’s cabinet and because the governing Liberals were dependent on Labour and Irish support for a majority in the House of Commons. To Otte, the inherent logic of Britain’s geopolitical position, both European and global, meant that she had to enter the war.
There was long a complaint among British military historians that there was a major disjuncture between their work, notably on the learning curve of the British army during the First World War, and, on the other hand, the understanding of the war in contemporary popular culture. Now as an example of differing tramlines, we can add much of the recent work on the diplomatic background to the war. The military dimension had been largely sidelined. Thus, Gordon Martel has argued: ‘Premeditation is not to be proven by the existence of war plans or by the warlike pronouncements of military men. Strategists are expected to plan for the next war: the politicians and diplomats decide when that war is most likely to occur’. 3
That, however, is a highly unconvincing account of the role of military planning, procurement and preparations in the situation in 1914, let alone of military influences in the decision-making process, and of cultural bellicosity. These factors were present for all powers – even the Swiss mobilized; but they were crucially different in character, context and consequences. Moreover this difference can be underplayed. Moltke considered using the opportunity for war, but did not push for it until late July. What mattered was the balance of forces at Berlin. For much of July, the civilians held the military in check. Indeed, Bethmann was in control, Otte argues, until 30/31 July. The political elite in Germany, he concludes, demonstrated incompetence, with less organization and forethought than is often assumed.
At one level, the obvious contrast in considering war planning and the move to war is between France and Britain on one side, and Austria, Germany and Russia on the other; with the difference linked to the nature of the individual states. It is instructive to note, for example, that pre-war, the French government had decided not to pursue the military option of advancing against Germany via neutral Belgium, while Germany took a very different view of conflict with France, and made its attacking military operational plan central to its war strategy. Yet, that point about the political system is insufficient, for, even in the case of Austria, Germany and Russia, there were important contrasts. In particular, what mobilization meant for Germany was very different to what it entailed for Russia, a point widely neglected in much of the discussion in 2014. For the former, mobilization was a move to immediate conflict, which was not the same for Russia. 4
Such distinctions are important because they counter a widespread intellectual tendency, considering both past and present, to focus on the supposed faults of ‘the system’, rather than of particular actors and groups within it. The consequence is a form of transferred responsibility, so that, to take another prominent example, Appeasement by Britain and France in the 1930s is somehow made responsible for Hitler’s expansionism and for Stalin’s decision to join in himself in this expansionism. This approach takes responsibility from where it truly lies, with Hitler and Stalin.
In 1914, the British sought to rely on the traditional means of addressing an international crisis, that of the Concert of Europe, which indeed had succeeded in the case of the First Balkan War (1912–13) in preventing a wider war. However, operating to different purposes and on other timetables, Austria and Germany were unwilling to do so. Their policies and attitudes caused the war, and not the varied errors of the statesmen struggling with the developing crisis. It is also of course necessary to locate this German preference in the political and cultural bellicosity that was so strong in Germany in particular in the early 1910s. A fervent national patriotism was linked to a strong fear of falling behind and a sense that the opportunity that existed to attack might not continue.
British participation in the war helped ensure that Germany would not win. This participation was not itself responsible for the serious failures to achieve victory in 1914 at the operational level, notably that of Germany, but was of strategic significance from the outset. That the attempt for victory, nevertheless, was continued, with a degree of success against weaker states, until finally it led to the defeat of all the German-led Central Powers in 1918 is a dimension that deserves attention. There is an obvious contrast in duration with the Franco-Prussian (1870–1871) and Russo-Japanese (1904–1905) wars, but this was due not to a change in weapons technology, but to the scale of conflict. The key scale was strategic, not operational, notably the extent to which alliance systems made it difficult to isolate a conflict and, instead, ensured that a military-political outcome involved the overthrow of an entire alliance. But for that it was possible that the 1914 German campaign would have led to the overthrow of France, rather as the 1870 one had done. The involvement of an alliance made the First World War, and, indeed, the Second, very different to any major war since the Napoleonic Wars; and in the latter the alliance system had essentially been one-sided in that it was the case of Napoleon’s opponents.
The primacy of the political dimension of strategy was demonstrated by the failure of the German alternative of dictating victory by means of pushing military factors to the fore. Germany subordinated political to military considerations in bringing Britain and the United States into the war against her, respectively in 1914 and 1917. In each case, although policies were justified on military grounds, those of advancing more easily via Belgium and of trying to knock out British trade by submarine attack respectively, this was a serious strategic mistake and one that contributed greatly to eventual German failure.
The German campaign had failed already in 1914 before the Allied counterattack in the battle of the Marne and the subsequent stabilization of what became a Western Front in France and Belgium. This failure was because Britain’s entry into the war promised that what was already, due to Russian involvement, a two-front war would become a longer and more difficult struggle. This was so as long as France did not collapse, as it was to do in 1940 when Germany only faced a one-front war. In 1864–1871, there had been no two-front wars for Prussia/Germany.
By late 1914, the carefully prepared German pre-war strategic planning appeared precarious and over-optimistic. A dangerous over-confidence was apparent at every level. The Germans were apt to consider the enemy a ‘constant’ instead of an ‘opposing variable’. Germany had envisaged a repeat of the Franco-Prussian War, with France collapsing, having suffered similar command failures to those in 1870. Austria similarly believed that a war would be quick and decisive. Nothing really played out according to the script, as their opponents proved to be tougher to break than anticipated, which led to exhaustion, as well as very high casualties. Austria failed badly in an attempt to conquer Serbia, whose army was less well resourced, but much better commanded, 5 and Austria was also put under heavy pressure by Russia.
The 1914 campaign showed, moreover, that German war-making, with its emphasis on surprise, speed and overwhelming and dynamic force at the chosen point of contact, was not effective against a French defence that retained the capacity to use reserves by redeploying troops by rail during the course of operations. Cabanes is acute on French morale and also underlines the consequences of brutal German anti-societal war-making. He is far less perceptive on the reasons for German military failure, to which he devotes comparatively little space in what is anyway a short book. The Germans underrated the potential use of fortifications as a base of manoeuvre. During their gaming for an invasion of France, they at times encountered arms in the entrenched camps at Paris or elsewhere. In almost every game, the German officers playing the French put up a stout defence, but did not attack the forces moving past their positions, apart from in a 1911 wargame when the French player made some spoiling attacks from Paris. All senior German commanders appear to have been convinced that entrenched camps need only be bypassed after being screened, a task for which they made inadequate preparations. Their neglect of the ability of French troops to attack out of their defences contributed to the German failure of 1914 when the French Sixth Army attacked out of Paris, initiating the Battle of the Marne.
In 1918, the Germans failed to display the resolve and persistence offered at very heavy cost by the French. In part, this was because of the strains in the German alliance system and on the home front in 1918. The Germans were living off and eating into the substance of their military machinery. Even the transport infrastructure was degraded by them. The key element, however, was the defeat of the German army on its main battlefront, a defeat different from, but equivalent to, that of the Wehrmacht by the Soviet army in 1944. British scholars are apt to concentrate on the successful British focus in 1917–18 on improving artillery firepower and accuracy, so as to dominate the three-dimensional battlefield and apply firepower more effectively than in earlier attacks. Improved artillery-infantry coordination was also significant. The unexpectedly early end of the war left unclear the consequences of the development of the tank.
As the means of, and to, manoeuvrability, tanks were to be seen as the antithesis of the frontline. That, however, underplayed the problems involved in sustaining mobility in the late 1910s. Indeed, tanks, essentially a tool for operating on the frontline, were suited in 1918 more for assisting in transforming static into manoeuvre warfare, rather than for the latter itself. In providing, like light mortars, moving firepower, tanks helped overcome the problems that trenches posed to attackers. They offered precise tactical fire to exploit the consequences of the massed bombardments that preceded attacks.
In practice, however, durability, firepower, protection, speed, range, mobility, command and control, and reliability, were all major problems with tanks in 1918, which would have still been the case had the war continued into 1919. These problems were accentuated by the rapid development by the Germans of anti-tank techniques and weaponry, a process already seen in countering airships and aircraft. As a consequence, tanks were most successful if part of a combined-arms force.
Tim Gale provides the first academic study in English on the French tank force, the Artillerie Spéciale, highlighting the impressive nature of French practice considering the constraints of the available technology. He argues that it took the French a comparatively short amount of time to arrive at a relatively successful system of all-arms coordination, that there was an impressive learning curve in 1917–18, and that the French army’s performance in 1940 has cast an inappropriate shadow over that across the century as a whole. Instead, Gale emphasizes the sensible nature during the First World War of employing the tank in the form of ‘infantry tanks’, i.e. tanks moving to support infantry, and the mistake of arguing back from the greater mobility shown in 1940. This impressive work deserves consideration not only from those interested in the French army but also from specialists in tank conflict. The failure of the German army in 1918 emerges more clearly.
The aftermath of the war is ably approached in the superb edition by Otte of the diary of Harold Temperley, an historian who served as a general staff officer from 1916 and offered a perspective on British policy in the latter stages of the war and immediately afterwards. Temperley also records the more personal impact of the war, as from Montenegro on 1 January 1919: I saw a sad looking woman in an inn, with deep marks of suffering in her eyes and her face defaced with small scars. I found on enquiry that she had torn her hair and face with her nails because of her brother’s death.
Temperley offers comments on the war from the perspective of London, but also reflecting the views gained on his extensive travels and from the range of individuals with whom he discussed matters. His opinions were clear. Thus, in response to Lansdowne’s letter in the Daily Telegraph on 29 November 1917, Temperley reflected that: where it gives us a blow in the face is in the statement that all we have fought for is already won, and that nothing justifies the continuance of slaughter and destruction of wealth now going on. That spirit is fatal. The only true spirit is victory first, which, once secured, secures everything else.
Mulligan demonstrates how the war proved a crucible of ideas about peace, and thus looks forward, to link the war years to those that follow. The strains of the war created the demand for a new order that was conceptualized in terms of peace. Yet, there were peaces as much as peace, and their contradictory character helped cause conflict. Moreover, the utopianism offered by peace caused different conflicts in terms of the violent transformation of societies, notably in Russia in 1917, but more widely thereafter; so also with international intervention as peace-making, whether by the United States in Europe in 1917 or by the international anti-Bolshevik coalition in Russia.
Each of the books has much to offer. They also reflect the breadth of the engagement at the scholarly level. Choices are invidious, but the time of readers is precious. The most scholarly analysis is the Otte’s July Crisis, the most original works the Gale and the Mulligan, while the Cabanes, though a good read, is somewhat slight, indeed ephemeral. The edition of Temperley serves as a powerful reminder of the importance of editing sources, and of doing so at a scholarly level.