Battle of Passchendaele: 31 July - 6 November 1917



Three Famous Battles: Verdun, Somme, Passchendaele

Battle of Verdun: 21 February 1916 – 18 December 1916

One of the costliest battles of World War One, Verdun exemplified the 'war of attrition' pursued by both sides and which cost so many lives. A war of attrition seeks to wear down the other side until they give up.

By the winter of 1915-16, German General Erich von Falkenhayn was convinced that the war could only be won in the west. He decided on a massive attack on a French position 'for the retention of which the French Command would be compelled to throw in every man they have'. Once the French army had bled to death, Britain would be fighting alone on the Western Front and could be brought down by Germany's submarine blockade.

Falkenhayn targeted the town of Verdun and its surrounding forts. …Falkenhayn knew that the French would throw as many men as necessary into its defense. He realized that this would enable him to inflict the maximum possible casualties.

He massed artillery to the north and east of Verdun to pre-empt the infantry advance with intensive artillery bombardment. Although French intelligence had warned of his plans, these warnings were ignored by the French Command. Consequently, Verdun was utterly unprepared for the initial bombardment on the morning of 21 February 1916. German infantry attacks followed that afternoon and met little resistance for the first four days.

… Over March and April the hills and ridges north of Verdun exchanged hands, always under heavy bombardment. Meanwhile, Pétain organized repeated counter-attacks to slow the German advance. He also ensured that the Bar-le-Duc road into Verdun - the only one to survive German shelling - remained open. It became known as La Voie Sacrée ('the Sacred Way') because it continued to carry vital supplies and reinforcements into the Verdun front despite constant artillery attack.

German gains continued in June, but slowly. … Pétain was preparing to evacuate the east bank of the Meuse when the Allies' offensive on the Somme River was launched on 1 July, partly to relieve the French. The Germans could no longer afford to commit new troops to Verdun and, at a cost of some 400,000 French casualties and a similar number of Germans, the attack was called off. Germany had failed to bleed France to death and from October to the end of the year, French offensives regained the forts and territory they had lost earlier. …

Battle of the Somme: 1 July - 13 November 1916

Intended to be a decisive breakthrough, the Battle of the Somme instead became a byword for futile and indiscriminate slaughter, with General Haig's tactics remaining controversial even today.

The British planned to attack on a 24km (15 mile) front between Serre, north of the Ancre, and Curlu, north of the Somme. Five French divisions would attack at 13km (eight mile) front south of the Somme, between Curlu and Peronne. To ensure a rapid advance, Allied artillery pounded German lines for a week before the attack, firing 1.6 million shells. British commanders were so confident they ordered their troops to walk slowly towards the German lines. Once they had been seized, cavalry units would pour through to pursue the fleeing Germans.

However, unconcealed preparations for the assault and the week-long bombardment gave the Germans clear warning. Happy to remain on French soil, German trenches were heavily fortified and, furthermore, many of the British shells failed to explode. When the bombardment began, the Germans simply moved underground and waited. Around 7.30am on 1 July, whistles blew to signal the start of the attack. With the shelling over, the Germans left their bunkers and set up their positions.

As the 11 British divisions walked towards the German lines, the machine guns started and the slaughter began. Although a few units managed to reach German trenches, they could not exploit their gains and were driven back. By the end of the day, the British had suffered 60,000 casualties, of whom 20,000 were dead: their largest single loss. Sixty per cent of all officers involved on the first day were killed.

It was a baptism of fire for Britain's new volunteer armies. Many 'Pals' Battalions, comprising men from the same town, had enlisted together to serve together. They suffered catastrophic losses: whole units died together and for weeks after the initial assault, local newspapers would be filled with lists of dead, wounded and missing.

The French advance was considerably more successful. They had more guns and faced weaker defenses, yet were unable to exploit their gains without British backup and had to fall back to earlier positions.

… The next two months saw bloody stalemate, with the Allies gaining little ground. On 15 September Haig renewed the offensive, using tanks for the first time. However, lightly armed, small in number and often subject to mechanical failure, they made little impact.

Torrential rains in October turned the battlegrounds into a muddy quagmire and in mid-November the battle ended, with the Allies having advanced only 8km (five miles). The British suffered around 420,000 casualties, the French 195,000 and the Germans around 650,000. Only in the sense of relieving the French at Verdun can the British have claimed any measure of success.

Battle of Passchendaele: 31 July - 6 November 1917

Officially known as the Third Battle of Ypres, Passchendaele became infamous not only for the scale of casualties, but also for the mud.

Ypres was the principal town within a salient (or bulge) in the British lines and the site of two previous battles: First Ypres (October-November 1914) and Second Ypres (April-May 1915). Haig had long wanted a British offensive in Flanders and, following a warning that the German blockade would soon cripple the British war effort, wanted to reach the Belgian coast to destroy the German submarine bases there. On top of this, the possibility of a Russian withdrawal from the war threatened German redeployment from the Eastern front to increase their reserve strength dramatically.

… the flatness of the plain made stealth impossible: as with the Somme, the Germans knew an attack was imminent and the initial bombardment served as final warning. It lasted two weeks, with 4.5 million shells fired from 3,000 guns, but again failed to destroy the heavily fortified German positions.

The infantry attack began on 31 July. Constant shelling had churned the clay soil and smashed the drainage systems. The left wing of the attack achieved its objectives but the right wing failed completely. Within a few days, the heaviest rain for 30 years had turned the soil into a quagmire, producing thick mud that clogged up rifles and immobilized tanks. It eventually became so deep that men and horses drowned in it.

On 16 August the attack was resumed, to little effect. … Further attacks in October failed to make much progress. The eventual capture of what little remained of Passchendaele village by British and Canadian forces on 6 November finally gave Haig an excuse to call off the offensive and claim success.

However, Passchendaele village lay barely five miles beyond the starting point of his offensive. Having prophesied a decisive success, it had taken over three months, 325,000 Allied and 260,000 German casualties to do little more than make the bump of the Ypres salient somewhat larger.

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