The Marne, 1914

by Holger H. Herwig

  In one of the few bright moments for the French in this early part of the campaign, Mangin picked up a cavalry regiment along the way and headed for Onhaye. En route, he encountered the shattered remains of French 33d Battalion stumbling back from Dinant. Trooper Christian Mallet, 22d Dragoons, was “stupefied” at seeing

  terrifying beings, livid, stumbling along, with horrible wounds. One has his lips carried away, an officer has a crushed hand, another has his arm fractured by a shell splinter. Their uniforms are torn, white with dust, and drip with blood. Amongst the last comers the wounds are more villainous, in the wagons one sees bare legs that hang limp, bloodless faces.15

  Mangin pushed on. Two kilometers west of Dinant, he reorganized Boutegourd’s shattered reserve division and ordered a gallant bayonet charge that drove the enemy back from Dinant. The situation had been thus stabilized by the time Franchet d’Espèrey’s I Corps arrived on the scene. Still, losses had been severe.

  Among the thousand French casualties at Dinant was Lieutenant Charles de Gaulle, serving in Colonel Henri-Philippe Pétain’s 4th IB. He later recalled the fierce fight around the city:

  Suddenly the enemy’s fire was precise and concentrated. Second by second the hail of bullets and the thunder of the shells grew stronger. Those who survived lay flat on the ground, amid the screaming wounded and the humble corpses. With affected calm, the officers let themselves be killed standing upright, some obstinate platoons stuck their bayonets in their rifles, bugles sounded the charge, isolated heroes made fantastic leaps, but all to no purpose. In an instant it had become clear that not all the courage in the world could withstand this fire.16

  To the south, Olenhusen’s forces—in the strength of a brigade—had fallen prey to Carl von Clausewitz’s “friction” of war and “fog of uncertainty.” Advancing down the eastern shore of the Meuse, Olenhusen’s troops planned to make Fumay by 23 August, and then to march southwest on Rocroi. But the troops never reached Fumay. The sun beat mercilessly on them. The roads were narrow and twisted, the woods dense, the slopes steep. Legs gave out. Horses collapsed. Units got lost. Orders were misread. West of Onhaye, it was this force that had the misfortune of running into Mangin’s fierce bayonet charges. Their advance ground to a halt on the heights north of Bourseigne-Neuve.17 And so, Hausen’s opportunity to become a great captain was lost.

  Late on 23 August, d’Elsa’s XII Corps finally seized the smoking ruins of Dinant, lustily singing “Deutschland über alles.” The Saxon 1st Jäger Regiment, bayonets fixed, stormed the citadel. Angered by having their anticipated easy march through neutral Belgium halted and having received reports of civilians firing on soldiers, d’Elsa’s troops took their revenge.18 For most, including Major Johannes Niemann of 9th Infantry Regiment (IR), this took the form of burning the homes of known resisters, executing suspected civilian shooters, and “requisitioning” stocks of “marmalade, pineapples, champagne, red wine, and other delicacies.”19 What then followed, in the words of historians John Horne and Alan Kramer, was “the systematic, premeditated elimination of presumed civilian resistance.”20 For those with historical interest, it was a repeat of 1466, when Charles the Bold had sacked the city and murdered its inhabitants.

  Almost one resident in ten was killed. Corporal Franz Stiebing, 3d Company, 178th IR, noted the violence at Leffe: “We pushed on house by house, under fire from almost every building, and we arrested the male inhabitants, who almost all carried weapons. They were summarily executed in the street.” Groups of suspected resisters were put up against city walls and shot; others were gunned down in the city’s squares or in their places of work. An anonymous lieutenant in the same 178th IR wrote home on 21 August:

  The battle now becomes a wild melee, a street brawl. These mean-spirited brothers bring us assassin’s losses from cellar windows, from apartments, from attics, from trees. The doors are broken down with rifle butts and hatchets, the houses searched with bayonets fixed, the guilty arrested. They are all taken down to the local prefecture. … The scoundrels are executed in groups in front of all witnesses. A terrible sight.21

  Private Kurt Rasch informed his parents in Dresden that his battalion had been selected to storm Dinant with but one purpose: “to level everything in sight and to make one part [of the city] left of the Maas disappear from view.” They did their jobs well. “Dinant has fallen, everything burned to the ground. … We shoot the men, plunder and burn down the houses.”22 A. Rückauer, a noncommissioned officer with 9th Foot Artillery Regiment, wrote home in a similar manner. Priests had led the civilian assaults on the Saxons. They were “rounded up and gunned down. [Dinant’s] inhabitants lay about in heaps.” Cattle and horses roamed the streets bellowing in terror. “By nightfall, Dinant resembled only a sea of fire and a heap of rubbish.”23 Eight villages on the ridge above the city likewise were ablaze.

  On the Belgian side, Public Prosecutor Maurice Tschoffen recalled the manner of execution.24 “The [Germans] marched in two columns down the deserted street, those on the right aiming their rifles at the houses on the left, and inversely, all with their fingers on the trigger and ready to fire. At each door a group stopped and riddled the houses, especially the windows, with bullets.” Almost as if to change the routine, other soldiers threw grenades and small bombs into the cellars of homes.

  The killings continued into 24 August. Some houses still burned; others were already cold, smoking shells. Public and historic buildings that had escaped the original orgy of destruction were systematically set to the torch. The stench of bodies decomposing under the searing sun became almost unbearable for inhabitants and occupiers alike. When it was all over, somewhere between 640 and 674 civilians had been killed and 400 deported to Germany. Two-thirds of the city’s houses had been torched; twelve hundred were but burned-out shells.25

  At the height of the orgy of fire and death, around 5:30 PM, Bülow rudely interrupted Hausen’s operations: Another frontal assault by Karl von Plettenberg’s Guard Corps had been stopped cold at Saint-Gérard. Relief by the right wing of Third Army was “urgently wanted.” The demand hit Hausen like a cold shower. Confusion and uncertainty reigned at his headquarters. What to do? Follow Moltke’s orders to advance across the Meuse south of Dinant at Fumay? Recall Olenhusen’s units and rush them to Houx, north of Dinant, to come to Plettenberg’s aid? It was a cruel dilemma. Hausen resolved it as he had done before: “giving ear to Second Army’s distress,” as Chief of Staff von Hoeppner later put it,26 Third Army grudgingly recalled most of its units from the south. Chaos ensued as Olenhusen’s weary units dutifully about-faced to retrace their steps to Dinant.

  Still, Hausen believed that all was not yet lost. Although having sustained almost 1,275 dead and 3,000 wounded at Dinant, he planned to drive his remaining forces southwest, belatedly to cross the Meuse south of Givet and to strike French Fifth Army in the right flank. Saxon XII Corps and XII Reserve Corps were to march on Rocroi, XIX Corps on Fumay and Revin. But no sooner had Hausen issued his orders than an emissary (Major von Fouqué) arrived from Bülow’s headquarters at 3 AM on 24 August and “urgently requested” that Third Army wheel around on a westerly course toward Mettet to take the pressure off Second Army’s left wing. No fewer than five French corps were assaulting Second Army.27

  Sunrise was less than three hours away. A decision had to be made at once. For the second time in half a day, Bülow had directly interfered with Hausen’s command. And for the second time in half a day, Hausen yielded. Within ninety minutes of Fouqué’s arrival, he issued new orders for Third Army to fall into line with Bülow’s demand. By then, the weakened vanguard of Third Army had failed in its attempt to cross the Meuse in force at Fumay, Revin, or Monthermé. French sappers had dynamited the bridges, and enemy infantry was entrenched on the river’s west bank. In a bitter twist of fortune, six hours after Fouché’s mission pleading “urgent” help from Third Army, Bülow cavalierly informed Hausen that Second Army was no longer in danger.28

  Max von Hausen had
failed to bring about the war’s first “climacteric,” to borrow a phrase from Winston S. Churchill. By his actions, as the German official history noted, Hausen “gave away the brilliant prospect of an operational pursuit” of Lanrezac’s Fifth Army in order to “secure the tactical victory” scored at Dinant.29 In truth, Third Army’s commander had squandered a magnificent opportunity to help destroy an entire French army (or at least major parts thereof) because he could not bring himself to make an independent decision against the will of his Prussian superior.30

  Artur Baumgarten-Crusius, the historian of Third Army, shifted the blame to Moltke. At no time had the chief of the General Staff offered Hausen the support he needed (and deserved). Prospects had been brilliant in the triangle of the Sambre and Meuse. While Max von Gallwitz’s Guard Reserve Corps anchored the German front at Namur, Moltke should have ordered Hausen to deliver a “left hook” against Lanrezac by advancing from Givet to Rocroi; concurrently, he should have instructed First and Second armies to halt their advance southwest and instead to march from Mons to Maubeuge and deliver a “right hook” against Lanrezac. As well, he should have dispatched Manfred von Richthofen’s I Cavalry Corps to Fumay, instead of wasting it on endless battles north of Binche as part of Bülow’s Second Army.31 French Fifth Army escaped the German “pincers” to fight another day. At Koblenz, Moltke incredibly informed the Saxon military plenipotentiary, Traugott Leuckart von Weißdort, “Operations are running … according to plan.”32

  Moltke’s insouciance was no doubt occasioned by the flood of self-congratulatory reports that came in from the front.33 On 23 August, Fifth Army’s chief of staff, Konstantin Schmidt von Knobelsdorf, informed Moltke that the main French armies had been “reduced to rubble” (zertrümmert) and that the rest were in full flight.34 Within hours, Duke Albrecht of Fourth Army was downright triumphalist in his report to Koblenz. “Total victory achieved; thousands of prisoners, including generals; and countless guns. Started pursuit of the beaten foe. … Troops fought valiantly; losses in many cases are great.”35 The next day, Bülow also signaled victory. “Enemy right wing decisively beaten by II Army;” and on 25 August, “II Army has decisively defeated the enemy.” Hausen reported the French in “full retreat” and in danger of encirclement.36 At the corps level, Max von Fabeck (XIII Corps) between 27 August and 2 September bombarded the OHL with a steady barrage of telegrams reporting French units “thrown back” from the front and “fleeing” the scene of battle; in short, a steady string of “unending victories against the Belgian-English army masses.”37

  The OHL readily accepted the rosy news from its field commanders. Colonel Wilhelm Groener, chief of the Field Railway Service, on 25 August crowed that the campaign in the west had been decided in Germany’s favor. Lieutenant Colonel Gerhard Tappen, Moltke’s chief of operations, cheerily announced: “The whole thing will be done in six weeks.”38 It seemed to be 1870–71 all over again. The French simply were no match for the Prussian-German war machine. They were soft and effeminate, too much devoted to food and wine. They bolted at the first serious “storm of steel” from the Krupp guns. They blanched and ran at the first sign of massed waves of field-gray warriors coming at them with bayonets fixed.

  The euphoria was contagious. Karl von Wenninger, the Bavarian military plenipotentiary, reported to Munich that the French armies had been reduced to “riff-raff” already on the first morning of the Battle of the Saar.39 Fritz Nieser, his counterpart from the Grand Duchy of Baden, informed Karlsruhe that “military circles” considered the campaign against France already won. “What is still to follow comes under [the heading] occupation measures.”40

  Moltke at last agreed with critics in the General Staff who stressed that the OHL needed to be closer to the front—but not too close! He remained concerned that the closer Wilhelm II was to the fighting, the more active the role he might take in command decision making. He felt personal responsibility for the kaiser’s safety. And he was aware that General Moriz von Lyncker, chief of the Military Cabinet, since 9 August (!) had been interviewing candidates to succeed him in case of a major setback. Rather than Namur or Charleroi, Moltke settled on Luxembourg.41

  It was a poor choice. Whereas Alfred von Schlieffen in 1908 had envisioned a distant, highly centralized command-and-control system, one in which the “modern Napoleon” would conduct operations from a “comfortable chair at a broad table” in a “house with roomy bureaus” by way of “wire and wireless telegraphy, telephone and signal apparatus, as well as hordes of trucks and motorcycles,”42 Moltke on 30 August had to settle for a small, dingy girls’ schoolhouse. “We have neither gas nor electric lights, only dim petroleum lamps,” he wrote his wife that day.43 An officer on Moltke’s operations staff was brutal in his assessment of the new headquarters. “Work conditions were simply scandalous. Desks consisted of several rough boards and trestles. There was no light at all.” Moltke worked out of a small schoolroom and Tappen out of an adjacent closet, “where operational discussions took place.”44 The “modern Napoleon’s” communications system consisted of a single radio transmitter.

  IN TRUTH, COMMUNICATIONS REMAINED the Achilles’ heel of the German armies in the west. One scholar has acidly noted, “The war began with an end to communications.”45 The OHL’s single Morse-type telegraph transmitter had a reach of just three hundred kilometers, which meant that by the time of the Battle of the Marne, Moltke could reach First Army only by way of relay stations at Péronne, Noyon, Compiègne, and Villers-Cotterêts; Second Army, only via Marle, Laon, and Soissons.46 Unsurprisingly, transmission delays of up to twenty hours were not uncommon. As late as 3 September, German wire connections had been established only as far as Esch-sur-Alzette on the Luxembourg-Lorraine border. The Field Telegraph Corps was headed by a “total novice,” General William Balcke, who had been promoted to the post from command of 82d IB and who neither understood nor cared about modern electronic communications.47 Moreover, his corps of eight hundred officers and twenty-five thousand men was too small to handle the daily traffic emanating from seven armies and nearly two million soldiers. “Troops, individual units and private parties” all vied with headquarters for time on the radio-telegraph. The two critical “strike” armies on the German right wing were without radio connection to each other, much less to their individual corps. First Army established electronic connections to its corps headquarters only after the Battle of Mons. Second Army likewise failed to connect to its corps headquarters before the Battle of Saint-Quentin. Neither the four higher cavalry commanders nor any of the army’s ninety-two infantry divisions possessed a telegraph section. To compound this neglect, what little existed in the way of communications was designed to function “from the bottom to the top, rather than the other way around,” for the simple reason that army commanders wanted to be free of direct “interference” from General Staff headquarters. Finally, the Germans in the west, like the Russians in the east, sent most of their messages in clear because ciphers were cumbersome to use and speedy transmission was required.48

  IN TERMS OF FUTURE operations, Moltke and Tappen on 27 August issued a new General Directive to their field commanders.49 They assumed that the Belgian army was in a “complete state of disintegration,” that the British would not be able to raise new armies “before from four to six months,” and that the French center and northern armies were “in full retreat in a westerly or southwesterly direction, that is, on Paris.” Thus, on the critical right wing, First Army was to advance to the lower Seine River, driving west of the Oise River; Second Army on Paris via La Fère and Laon; and Third Army on Château-Thierry by way of Neufchâtel-sur-Aisne. In the center, Fourth Army was to seize Reims on its way to Épernay, and Fifth Army to pass Châlons-sur-Marne and head for French army headquarters at Vitry-le-François. Sixth and Seventh armies were to secure the front in Lorraine—and, in case of a French withdrawal, to pursue the enemy across the Moselle River in the direction of Neufchâteau. Each army was to press the attack vigorously
while simultaneously securing the flank of its neighbor(s). If the much anticipated French stand first along the Aisne and later along the Marne developed, “a turn by the armies from a southwesterly to a southerly direction can be required.”50

  Three conclusions are warranted. First, Moltke, Stein, and Tappen had basically abandoned Moltke’s modified Schlieffen Plan. By 27 August, that concept had degenerated into individual operations by the various army commanders in the west, each designed to achieve local successes in a separate theater. Second, Moltke, Stein, and Tappen had also abandoned the concept of a vast envelopment of Paris from the north and the west. The right wing was now no longer pursuing an envelopment strategy, but simply one of flank protection. Third, the entire German advance had slid off in a general southeasterly direction, away from Paris. Moltke was “advancing on all points,” but no longer southwest; rather, south and even southeast. This meant that if each army advanced as instructed by Moltke, securing the flank of its neighbor, “the overall alignment would be set by the left and by the centre, and not by the right.”51 The chief of the General Staff’s instructions of 27 August—with their advance warning that the armies might be “required” to change course “from a southwesterly to a southerly direction”—were a vote of confidence for Bülow’s concept of a purely tactical victory over Kluck’s design of a strategic envelopment of the enemy. The nagging question at the OHL was whether the right wing—depleted by 265,000 casualties, by Hans von Beseler’s III Corps detached to invest Antwerp, by Hans von Zwehl’s VII Reserve Corps sent to seal off Maubeuge, and by XI Corps and Guard Reserve Corps dispatched to East Prussia—remained sufficiently strong to crush Allied forces still in the field.