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The fighting during the first few months of the First World War was very different to the trench bound image we have of the conflict. This was a war of movement, with vast armies moving impressive distances, including one of the longest retreats in British military history (from Mons to the Marne), the almost total conquest of Belgium and significant parts of the French industrial heartland. It was only on the Aisne, in the aftermath of the French counter-attack on the Marne that had finally stopped the German offensive that we see the start of trench warfare. Even then there was still a long period of movement to come, as the armies rushed north – both sides hoping to get around the northern end of the line, but also to make sure their enemies didn’t, and to decide where the line met the channel coast.
Cowley provides a more balanced account of this period than is often the case in English accounts. There is a good account of the outbreak of war, and the role Moltke the Younger and his inflexible plans played in ensuring that Germany went to war with France. We then get detailed accounts of the major Franco-German clashes – the battle of the Frontiers, the failure of the early French offensives and the grand sweeping German advance on their right. This saw some of the most costly fighting of the entire war – open warfare, close-order tactics and a general belief in the power of the offensive on both sides combined with modern weaponry – machine guns, artillery and mass rapid rifle fire – to cause huge losses on both sides. In contrast the battle of Mons only gets two pages.
The bulk of the book covers the fighting in Flanders – the ‘dash to the sea’ – which turned into a series of separate battles as the two sides kept attempting to outflank each other and kept failing. Further north the survivors of the Belgium army were retreating slowly along the coast, eventually making at stand on the Yser (and we get a very interesting account of the inundations that saved the Belgian front). The BEF comes more firmly into the picture at Ypres. This began as an encounter battle, with both sides unaware that the other was nearby. The British were even planning an offensive of their own, thrusting east from Ypres, but luckily the local commanders on the ground sensed that this would run into trouble and managed to delay it long enough to make sure it never happened. The fighting around Ypres demonstrated the power of the defensive once trench warfare had begun – the British were badly outnumbered, but managed to hold out against the advancing Germans.
Cowley is firmly of the opinion that the Germans had effectively lost the war once the Western Front had stabilised – his argument is that their strategy was to knock the French out of the war quickly (a repeat of the Franco-Prussian War) so they could concentrate on the Eastern Front (in the belief that the larger Russian army and vast spaces would make a victory in the east slower and harder to achieve). I’m not sure I entirely agree with this – there were moments later in the war where the Germans could have achieved victory – if they had known about the French mutinies of 1917, or if they had come up with a better strategic plan in the spring of 1918, but the autumn of 1914 was certainly the last time they could have achieved the worthwhile quick victory that they wanted. We do see a loss of confidence on the German side, with Moltke sacked in mid September 1914 after the failure of his plan. Cowley also argues that the decision to retreat from the Marne owed more to a loss of confidence than a defeat on the battlefield.
We get a better understanding of the significance of the fighting at Ypres than is often the case. The focus is often on the symbolic significance – Ypres was the last major town in Belgium not occupied by the Germans, but it also had a more tangible importance. A major German breakthrough here might have threatened the key channel ports being used by the BEF – Calais was only 44 miles to the west, Boulogne 55 miles – this was the same area that would see the evacuation from Dunkirk in the next war. A breakthrough at Ypres might also have trapped the hard-pressed Belgian army, fighting to the north on the line of the Yser River. While it might not have had the same disastrous impact as the German breakthrough in 1940, which reached the coast somewhat further to the south, it would still have been a major disaster for the Entente powers.
Overall this is an excellent account of this costly part of the Great War, providing a significant amount of material on all four of the armies involved - British, French, Belgian and German – to explain just why this fighting was so costly, why trench warfare was adopted and how the German offensive eventually failed.
Chapters
I: The Shadow of Schlieffen
1 – ‘The Virtuosity of Sheer Audacity’
2 – The Man Who Willed a War
II: The Flanders Convergence
3 – ‘The Strength of Despair’
4 – The Antwerp Diversion
5 – Testimony of the Spade
6 – Race to the Sea
7 – Accidental Tourists
8 – October Surprise
III: Arc of Fire
9 – The Salient
10 – Shoulder to Shoulder
11 – Singers in the Mist
12 – The River Redoubt
13 – The Great Fear
14 – ‘Hanging on by Our Eyelids’
15 – One Day
IV: New Plus Ultra
16 – The Bargeman’s Solution
17 – Dead Sea
18 – The Gap
19 – ‘Fancy Meeting You Here’
20 – The Kaiser’s Battle
21 – The Invention of No-Man’s-Land
Epilogue: November 17-18, 1914, Near Klein Zillebeke, Belgium