The seeds of German failure were being sown. They could see, as one of their men noted wryly, ‘how magnificently equipped’ British soldiers were, with leather jerkins, quality puttees and boots. The contrast with the Germans’ own threadbare existence was pronounced, and soldiers began wearing items of captured British kit.
‘Our men are hardly to be distinguished from English soldiers,’ wrote German officer Rudolph Binding.
Everyone wears at least a leather jerkin, a waterproof [cape] either short or long, English boots or some other beautiful thing . . . Today [27 March] I was mildly hit, so mildly that it only raised a weal. A rifle bullet went through two coats which I was wearing in the early morning on account of the cold and struck my thigh like a blow from a hammer. I was wearing a pair of riding-breeches of English cloth, against which the English bullet stopped respectfully, and fell to earth. I picked it up almost like a friendly greeting . . .
The Germans overran field canteens and depots in which astonishing quantities of food and other provisions were piled high. As men filled their empty stomachs, halted to scoop up cigarettes, or knelt down to smother their boots with British dubbin, it became increasingly difficult for officers to stop a serious and concomitant loss of momentum.
Within days, the Germans captured the town of Albert and, in doing so, passed out of the annihilated Somme battlefield of 1916 and into almost pristine territory. With farms and villages intact, food was in abundance, and chickens, cows and pigeons were taken from civilians as soldiers gorged themselves. ‘There is no doubt the army is looting with zest,’ wrote Binding. And therein lay the problem. In Albert, thousands of German troops of a Marine Division showed no interest in advancing, to the intense frustration of their officers. They knew that retiring British forces must be harried at all times and not allowed to gain a fresh footing. The strategically vital Allied city of Amiens lay a few miles down the road, but the advance was already stalling.
On 29 March, Binding was billeted in a British artillery repair shop. Around him lay new guns of the latest type and gun parts made of brass. There were also cables, axles, wheels and gun carriages in colossal qualities, amazing Binding, who felt as though he were a visitor at an exhibition.
Under normal conditions wealth does not attract such attention, but when even the rottenest hut has brass hinges and latches, when every electric-light switch is entirely composed of brass, when one sees depots of thousands of pairs of rubber trench-boots, piles of rubber tyres, a pyramid of iron nails of every sort, when one sees bath-houses with enormous rubber baths and so on, then one realizes the difference between poverty and privations and wealth.
In the distance, Binding could clearly see the spire of Amiens cathedral but neither he nor any other German troops would set foot in the city. Brilliant and tenacious Allied defensive actions helped to save Amiens, and by unintentionally advertising to the enemy the sheer extent of the Allied material advantage, a critical blow was also delivered to German morale.
As the Germans strove to secure a decisive breakthrough, they switched the thrust of their attacks from one region to the next, tactics that led to the inexorable dissipation and degradation of their forces. From the Somme region, they tried their hand further north at Armentières, then in May they switched to the area north-east of Paris, and the Chemin des Dames. On each occasion, early success was thwarted as supply lines became stretched and Allied resistance stiffened. During May, the Germans managed to secure themselves the prize of a well-regarded and experienced British officer, Brigadier General Hubert Rees, commanding 150th Brigade, 50th Division. Rees’s memoirs describe how quickly the Germans launched their attack, forcing him to withdraw with whoever was to hand from village to village and always with the impression that the Germans were already to his rear. At one point his only chance of escape was to hide in a wood until it was dark, then try to swim across the River Aisne in the hope of catching up with retreating British forces.
After dark, we set off and reached the Aisne about 11 p.m. After some consideration, we decided that we had better get a log to help to ferry the party across and set off downstream to find one, or an unguarded bridge. Unfortunately, in crossing a road we were seen by a man on horseback, who trotted up, shouting to us to halt. We ran into a barbed wire entanglement and struggled through it, whilst the man on the horse emptied his pistol at us, without effect. Running away on the other side, I thought we had come off rather well, but almost at once, we ran into a line of transport carts, right across our front. There was nothing left to be done then except ask the nearest man where his officer was.
Rees was taken to the headquarters of the 231st German Division, which, by pure coincidence, had been his headquarters three weeks earlier. Here his personal possessions were taken away, including notebooks that, he was pleased to record, contained little of military value. That night he was reunited with one of his officers, Captain Edgar Laverack, whom he had last seen in a village a few hours before capture.
At eleven o’clock the following morning, Rees, Laverack and a third British officer were ordered into a car that took them to the nearby town of Craonne. Here they were directed to the top of a plateau. Rees was angry.
I imagined that we were being taken to see some corps commander and thought it was deliberately humiliating. I made a remark to Captain Laverack to this effect. The German staff officer with us overheard it and said, ‘When you reach the top, you will see His Imperial Majesty the Kaiser, who wishes to speak to you.’ When we approached, the Kaiser was apparently having lunch but stepped forward onto a bank and told me to come and speak to him.
In the short but telling interview, Rees spoke to the Kaiser who was in a reflective, almost weary, mood that, with the benefit of historical hindsight, appears to suggest he was aware of the gravity of Germany’s military position.
He asked me numerous questions with regard to my personal history and having discovered I was a Welshman said ‘Then you are a kinsman of Lloyd George.’ He asked no questions which I could not answer without giving away information and made no indirect attempts to secure information of this character either. Presently, he said, ‘Your country and mine ought not to be fighting against each other, we ought to be fighting together against a third. I had no idea that you would fight me. I was very friendly with your royal family, with whom I am related. That, of course, has now all changed and this war drags on with its terrible misery and bloodshed for which I am not responsible.’ He added some further comments on the intense hatred of Germany shown by the French and then asked, ‘Does England wish for peace?’ ‘Everyone wishes for peace,’ I replied. He then after a pause said, ‘My troops made a successful attack yesterday. I saw some of your men, who have been taken prisoner; they looked as if they had been through a bad hour. Many of them were very young.’ I then said that I hoped my troops had fought well against him. He said, ‘The English always fight well’ and bowed to intimate that the interview was at an end. I withdrew. He talked English with practically no accent.
I rejoined Laverack and the GSO3 of the 25th Division who had stood some distance away whilst I talked to the Kaiser and we went down the hill again to the car. Just as we got into the car, I saw Hindenburg coming up the road on foot, followed by a large staff. He was unmistakably like his caricatures. The German staff officer with us said rather excitedly, ‘Here is von Hindenburg,’ and as I made no comment, he said in explanation, ‘He is our generalissimo, the same as your Foch,’ as if I had never heard of the man. I was rather amused.
In ten weeks from the launch of the German March offensive, the British Army reported that nearly 111,000 men were missing, a far higher figure than during the last German offensive against the British in April and May 1915, when 9,100 men were reported missing in six weeks’ fighting. The vast majority of the men missing in the spring of 1918 were prisoners and they were taken precisely at a time when Germany was least capable of looking after them. For some, capture was only the start of a living nigh
tmare.
At one camp near St Quentin conditions were beyond appalling and, according to survivors, the behaviour of the commandant and erstwhile civilian barrister, Captain Emil Müller, was atrocious. The camp was called Flavy-le-Martel and, in the immediate aftermath of the German assault in March, prisoners were corralled there in excessive numbers. These men were to be kept where they were and used as labour behind the lines.
The camp consisted of three large huts built for no more than 400 men. Into these huts around 1,200 were squashed, forcing many to sleep outside: no beds or blankets were provided. There were no washing facilities and drinking water was tipped into a wooden trough. Rations consisted of one slice of bread and acorn ‘coffee’, and a very unpalatable soup made with dried vegetables and sauerkraut. Within weeks dysentery had broken out and it spread quickly among prisoners who were, regardless of their physical condition, expected to work carrying ammunition (illegal under international law), mending roads and building light railways. According to eyewitnesses, the men were frequently struck by Müller or by one of the guards using a rifle butt. Gunner Nathan Sacof, of the Royal Field Artillery, captured on 21 March 1918, acted as an interpreter for the commandant and witnessed how sick men were sent out to work, many collapsing on the road.
Up to seventy prisoners were said to have died in the camp by June, after which a new regime was introduced and conditions improved. At no time did the Red Cross know of the prisoners’ whereabouts and no parcels, upon which prisoners in general depended, arrived at the camp.
In interviews conducted at the end of the war, which were used in the first international effort to conduct war crimes trials, a number of soldiers gave damning evidence of the camp’s conditions and its notorious commandant, Captain Müller.
In Germany, reports of success on the Western Front were soon tempered by the news that no decisive breakthrough had occurred. In her journal, Princess Evelyn Blücher recorded the darkening mood that summer.
Through news gleaned from friends and from my husband, who is continually meeting military men, I learn that the offensive has not been successful enough to justify the confidence proclaimed in the newspapers. Everything has been staked on their breaking through the enemy’s lines, and they have not done so, although they have driven the enemy back. Indeed, I hear the German troops are even being scattered and separated . . . We hear universally that the pluck shown by the English was almost superhuman.
In late April, the Princess received news of the death of her English nephew, Osmund, a nineteen-year-old officer and only son of her eldest brother, Frederick Bretherton-Stapleton. He had been serving with the 9th Lancers and was killed on the second day of the offensive. Poignantly, news of Osmund’s death arrived just as nineteen-year-old Norbert, a German nephew and an officer in the German army, was visiting his aunt.
He is on leave, after having been through the whole of the Western offensive. His descriptions of it are terrible. For six days and nights, he says, they lay in the front trenches, with nothing to eat but what they found in the English trenches on the first day. From these they obtained a perfect banquet, such food as none in Germany is accustomed to any longer, with cigarettes and other luxuries. He described to me the friendly manner with which they discussed the war with English officers who were taken prisoner. One Englishman, on being asked when peace would be, answered: ‘Well, I suppose it will take two years more before you are really beaten.’
He told that the Americans are daily becoming a more serious asset to the enemy, as each day more troops are pouring in, all fresh and well equipped, a contrast to the tired-out troops opposing them.
In Germany, rumours persisted of peace proposals but they were merely ‘ghostly birds of despair’, as the Princess described them. The Germans hoped conferences at The Hague, which discussed issues such as prisoner exchanges, would turn into peace congresses; such wishful thinking was brought on by war-weariness and fears for the future. The poor summer weather dangerously affected the potato crop and in the towns and cities people were down to one pound of potatoes a week. By July, it was clear that, while some might hope to scrape by in the summer, the winter held out great horror. The Princess noticed how shabbily people were dressed, wearing wooden clogs instead of shoes, ‘the unwilling fashion of the hour’, while children ran about barefoot. A friend who managed to track down a pair of boots for her child found that they cracked and split in a dozen places. The boots were not leather, as presumed, but cotton, covered with a thin veneer of polish.
Living in Berlin, the Reverend Williams could see the precipitous decline in morale. He watched with alarm the rise in dishonesty and theft, and the growth of the black market. On one occasion he overheard a distinguished German lawyer negotiating over the telephone for an illicit supply of meat. The lawyer turned down the offer of meat as he had yet to sell on all that he had bought before.
Everything of value that could be taken away was stolen; not only stair-carpets but brass stair-rods disappeared from the main stair-cases leading to flats. More than once I had to get up at night to prevent the brass knocker and plate on my front door from being removed. Railway carriages were stripped of their upholstery which occasionally reappeared unmistakable in small boys’ nether-garments. A thieves’ market was set up in the Rosenheimer Strasse, under the very nose of the Police Presidency, where stolen goods of every description from valuable jewels to household utensils were offered for sale.
Given his high-profile position and the relatively small size of the British community in Berlin, Williams had spoken to Princess Blücher on many occasions and often visited her. He believed the Germans were desperate for the war to end but some still clung to the belief that Germany might ultimately prevail: Princess Blücher disagreed.
I notice a great change in the people here from what they were last year. They are all ‘tired of suffering,’ as they express it. ‘We want our sons and husbands back, and we want food,’ is all they say. And the priests and clergymen too say how difficult it is to hold them in now. Any moment they fear them breaking all control. A man whose business it is, as he puts it, to go round begging for the new war loan, told us that it is very difficult now to persuade people to subscribe, not that they have got any money, for they have more than they know what to do with; but ‘patriotism’ is dead, it does not ‘catch on’ any longer, and he can only get them to subscribe by exerting real pressure, and telling them that if they do not do so they will lose everything they have already invested . . .
By the end of July, Germany was talking of defeat. There was even speculation that the Kaiser would choose to die at the head of his troops rather than return with a beaten army. According to Princess Blücher, others said openly that if ‘he only had the courage to abdicate now, he might save his whole country from the terrible fate impending . . .’
German newspapers could no longer disguise the seriousness of the position. Stories of the Germans shortening their lines were now taken by the public as an admission of loss and retreat, while at home the constant military and political merry-go-round of sackings and hasty appointments gave the impression that an implosion was nigh. The fear of spreading Bolshevism grew daily. Stories abounded of a nascent rebellion in the army and of wounded men refusing operations for fear that successful treatment would hasten their return to action.
‘It is sadly tragical to look on and see the slow fate of Germany overtaking her,’ wrote the Princess. ‘I, who have watched the people struggling, and seen their unheard-of sacrifices and stolid resignation, cannot but pity them from my heart.’
The public were tired in Britain, too: tired of shortages of food and ever-increasing state control over their lives; tired and bitter at the losses incurred at the front. The German offensive, and the national anxiety at the idea of defeat after such sacrifice, chipped away at public resolve. In their exhaustion civilians were too willing to be swayed by any rabble-rousers who once more returned to the threat offered by uninterned Germans at hom
e. Why, they asked, should they be tolerated and not all be sent home?
The desire to repatriate uninterned Germans grew throughout 1917 and 1918 and in the press there were constant reappraisals of the numbers interned and at large. For some, the figures were always too high, whatever they were, and were used to berate the government. During the war there had been two peaks of Germanophobia: October 1914 and May 1915. In July 1918 there was a third and final surge.
After The Hague agreement of July 1917, some MPs had asked why all enemy aliens could not be sent back in one great exchange. Yet their wish to exchange ‘All for All’ civilian prisoners hit the intractable problem that the British held far more Germans of combat age. The point was conceded and an agreement was made to allow men aged over forty-five to leave, regardless of numbers, even if it meant ten Germans being exchanged for every Briton. In the Lords, questions were put as to whether the government would reconsider sending back Germans of military age, perhaps to a neutral country for continued internment. If nothing else, Britain would be relieved of the expense of looking after these aliens, while returning these Germans would also release an estimated 2,500 men charged with guarding them.
Meeting the Enemy Page 29
