The Marne, 1914

by Holger H. Herwig

  It began at the Marne in 1914. It ended at Versailles in 1919. In between, about sixty million young men had been mobilized, ten million killed, and twenty million wounded. With the 20/20 vision of hindsight, the great tragedy of the Marne is that it was strategically indecisive. Had German First Army destroyed French Sixth Army east of Paris; had French Fifth Army and the BEF driven through the gap between German First and Second armies expeditiously; had French Fifth Army pursued German Second Army more energetically beyond the Marne; then perhaps the world would have been spared the greater catastrophe that was to follow in 1939–45.

  * Ineffective commanders were “retired” to Limoges, four hundred kilometers southwest of the nerve center of Paris.

  * The chancellor demanded German domination of Central Europe “for all imaginable time,” annexation of Luxembourg, reduction of France and Russia to second-rate powers, “vassal” status for Belgium and the Netherlands, and a German colonial empire in Central Africa.

  ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

  THE FEDERAL STRUCTURE OF THE GERMAN LAND FORCES IN 1914 forced me to trace down all the various army, corps, brigade, division, and regiment primary materials for this book. The task was made much easier by the cheerful and professional assistance that I received from a host of archivists in all parts of Germany: the Bayerisches Hauptstaatsarchiv, III Geheimes Hausarchiv, and IV Kriegsarchiv, at Munich; the Generallandesarchiv at Karlsruhe; the Hauptstaatsarchiv at Stuttgart; and the Sächsisches Hauptstaatsarchiv at Dresden. The Bundesarchiv-Militärarchiv at Freiburg proved a veritable treasure trove with the new record Group RH 61: Kriegsgeschichtliche Forschungsanstalt des Heeres, consisting of some three thousand Prussian and German army files previously thought destroyed by Allied bombing raids on Potsdam in 1945.

  For French archival records, I am grateful to my research assistant, Dr. Stephanie Cousineau of the University of Northern British Columbia, who gave up what little free time she had from teaching to research the files of the Service Historique de la Défense at the Château de Vincennes; the Historial de la Grande Guerre at the Château de Péronne; and the Document Service of Le Mémorial de Verdun. As well, she checked countless of my inelegant French translations and cheerfully collected French books and pamphlets either out of print or recently reprinted (and generally unavailable outside France).

  Truly yeoman service above and beyond the call of duty was carried out by the staff of the Document Delivery/Interlibrary Loan Services of the University of Calgary. For two years, they chased down 153 of even the most obscure requests that I made of them—and never complained (much less faltered) even once. Conversely, I wish to thank their (to me anonymous) colleagues at the University of Alberta at Edmonton, who sent to Calgary virtually all the memoir literature for both French and German military and political leaders as well as the weighty tomes of the German official history, Der Weltkrieg 1914 bis 1918. Die militärischen Operationen zu Lande, and its French counterpart, Les armées françaises dans la grande guerre, all in record time.

  Special thanks are due three people who made this book happen: Rob Cowley, founding editor of MHQ: The Quarterly Journal of Military History, who first proposed the topic to me; Jonathan Jao, editor at Random House, who expeditiously approved and encouraged the project; and Linda McKnight, my literary agent at Westwood Creative Artists in Toronto, who as always crossed all the t’s and dotted all the i’s of the contract. They were a pleasure to work with.

  The Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council (SSHRC) of Canada has funded my research since 1990. Without this steadfast support, research at the numerous German archives would not have been possible. And finally, I once again owe more than I can express to my severest critic and dearest wife, Lorraine Parrish Herwig, who read far too many drafts of this work. As always, what errors remain are all of my own making.

  ABBREVIATIONS

  AFGG Les armées françaises dans la grande guerre, 11 tomes, 111 annexes (Paris: Imprimerie nationale, 1922–37)

  AOK Armeeoberkommando (German army command)

  BA-MA Bundesarchiv-Militärarchiv, Freiburg

  BEF British Expeditionary Force

  BHStA-GH Bayerisches Hauptstaatsarchiv, Geheimes Hausarchiv, Munich

  BHStA-KA Bayerisches Hauptstaatsarchiv-Kriegsarchiv, Munich

  CD Cavalry division

  GD Guard division

  GHQ General Headquarters (British)

  GLA Generallandesarchiv, Karlsruhe

  GQG Grand quartier général (French military headquarters)

  HGW-MO History of the Great War: Military Operations, 23 vols. (London: Macmillan, 1922–48)

  HHStA Haus-, Hof-und Staatsarchiv, Vienna

  HstA Hauptstaatsarchiv, Stuttgart

  IB Infantry brigade

  ID Infantry division

  IR Infantry regiment

  Joffre Joseph Joffre, Mémoires du maréchal Joffre (1910–1917) (Paris: Plon, 1932), 2 vols.

  KTB Kriegstagebuch (war diary)

  Moltke Helmuth von Moltke, Erinnerungen Briefe Dokumente 1877–1916. Ein Bild vom Kriegsausbruch, erster Kriegsführung und Persönlichkeit des ersten militärischen Führers des Krieges, ed. Eliza von Moltke (Stuttgart: Der Kommende Tag, 1922)

  OHL Oberste Heeresleitung (German Army Supreme Command)

  RID Reserve infantry division RIR Reserve infantry regiment

  SHD Service Historique de la Défense (formerly Service historique de l’armée de terre), Château de Vincennes

  SHStA Sächsisches Hauptstaatsarchiv, Dresden

  WK Reichsarchiv, Der Weltkrieg 1914 bis 1918. Die militärischen Operationen zu Lande (Berlin: E. S. Mittler, 1925–56), 14 vols.

  A NOTE ON SOURCES

  Historians of the German armies in World War I for decades were restricted to archives accessible in the Federal Republic of Germany. These mainly centered on documentary records for the federal armies of Baden, Bavaria, and Württemberg, housed at Karlsruhe, Munich, and Stuttgart, respectively. Unlike those of the Prussian army at Potsdam, they were not destroyed by the Allied bombing offensives of World War II and hence witnessed a great deal of first-class research. I began by working through these materials.

  For XIV Army Corps of the Grand Duchy of Baden, which provided most of the units fighting in Alsace, I consulted its war diary (Kriegstagebuch, or KTB) at the Generallandesarchiv at Karlsruhe (GLA). Deputy Commander Hans Gaede’s XIV Corps reports to Grand Duke Friedrich II are in 59 Weltkrieg 1914—Schriftwechsel Gaede 316. A summary of fortress shelling is in 59 Denkschrift der Beschiessungen der Forts 1914, General v. Bailer 365. Brigade commands are in 456 F58 Brigadebefehle 27. A special collection of war letters and diaries was most useful: S Kriegsbriefe und Kriegstagebücher 52, 53. Of greatest value were the war diaries of the various regiments and their battalions in Alsace, under the general file 456: F37 Inf. Regt. 111; F38 Inf. Regt. 112; F39 Inf. Regt. 113; F42 Inf. Regt. 169; F43 Inf. Regt. 170; and F58 Inf. Regt. 40. All service records were cross-checked in the regimental muster rolls: 456 D Kriegsrangliste. At the military-political level, the reports by Baden’s acting military plenipotentiary to the Army Supreme Command (OHL) were most useful: 222 Politische Berichte des Großherzogl. Gesandten in Berlin und München über den Kriegsausbruch 34816.

  Research into Duke Albrecht of Württemberg’s Fourth Army, which was closely linked in all but name with the Prussian army and in 1914 was composed largely of Prussian formations, and into Württemberg XIII Army Corps, which fought under Crown Prince Rupprecht of Bavaria in Lorraine, was conducted at the Hauptstaatsarchiv Stuttgart (HStA), Landesarchiv Baden-Württemberg. The reports of its military plenipotentiary to General Headquarters are in M 1/2 Berichte des Militärbevollmächtigten beim Grossen Hauptquartier und des stellv. Militärbevollmächtigten in Berlin August–September 1914, vols. 54–58. The war diary of XIII Army Corps is in M 33/2 Gen. Kdo. XIII A.K. 1914–1918, Kriegstagebuch 28.7.14–21.1.15, vol. 884; and its operational orders in ibid., vol. 9. Württemberg war losses were tabulated by the War
Ministry in M 1/11 Kriegsarchiv, Kriegsverluste, vol. 1048; the War Ministry also recorded all matters pertaining to war equipment in M 1/4 Kriegsminsterium, Allg. Armee-Angelegenheiten 1524. A special postwar collection of studies, M 738 Sammlung zur Militärgeschichte, dealt with issues such as communications during the war (36) and battalion histories (23). Given the near-total destruction of the records of the Prussian General Staff in 1945, of special value was a compendium of fifty situation reports by the chief of the General Staff to the Württemberg War Ministry: M 1/2 Kriegsministerium 109, Mitteilungen des Chefs des Feldheeres Nr. 1–50, 27.7.1914–3.1.1915.

  One of the richest veins for historians is the military records of Crown Prince Rupprecht’s Sixth Army at the Bayerisches Hauptstaatsarchiv, IV, Kriegsarchiv (BHStA-KA), Munich. Bavarian forces were initially deployed in Lorraine and then shunted to the right flank of the German armies in Picardy, Artois, and Flanders. Critical files consulted included its war diary: Armeeoberkommando 6, Kriegstagebuch der 6. Armee 2.8.14– 14.3.1915; as well as its prewar mobilization orders in Folder 369, Gedanken über die ersten Operationen der 6. und 7. Armee and Aufmarsch-Anweisungen. The Sixth Army KTB was then checked against the war diaries of the General Commands of the various Bavarian Army Corps: Generalkommando I AK, KTB 31.7.14–28.2.15; Ge. Kdo. II. bayer. AK, KTB 1.8.1914–31.12.1914; Generalkommando III AK, Kriegstagebuch 29.7.14–31.12.1914; and the war diary for Bavarian I Reserve Army Corps, Auszug aus dem Kriegstagebuch des Generals d. Inftr. Ritter von Fasbender, komd. General I.b.R.K. Extremely valuable was the rich war diary of Sixth Army’s chief of staff, Konrad Krafft von Dellmensingen: KTB 1914, Nachlaß Krafft von Dellmensingen 145; and the (albeit fragmentary) diary of one of his brightest staff officers in Nachlaß Rudolf von Xylander 12, Kriegstagebuch 1914/18. An incomplete list of Bavarian war dead for 1914 is in AOK 6, Feldzug 1914, Verlustliste. The reports of the Bavarian military plenipotentiary to the OHL are at the Bayerisches Hauptstaatsarchiv-Ministerium des Äußeren: MA 3076–3085 Militärbevollmächtigter Berlin, Tagebuch Karl von Wenninger. Most critically, I AM indebted to Dr. Gerhard Immler for garnering permission from HRH Prince Luitpold, head of the House of Wittelsbach, for me to research Crown Prince Rupprecht’s war diary: Tagebuch Rupprecht, Nachlaß Kronprinz Rupprecht 699, at the Bayerisches Hauptstaatsarchiv, III, Geheimes Hausarchiv (BHStA-GH).

  Over the past three decades, I researched fragments of personal files pertaining to leading figures of the General Staff and senior military commanders at the Bundesarchiv-Militärarchiv (BA-MA) in Freiburg: Beseler (N 30); Boetticher (N 323); Dommes (N 512); Einem (N 324); Groener (N 46); Haeften (N 35); Kluck (N 550); Moltke (N 78); Schlieffen (N 43); Tappen (N 56); and Wild v. Hohenborn (N 44). A very few prewar records from the Prussian army also exist in PH 3, Großer Generalstab: 256 Aufmarsch und operative Absichten der Franzosen in einem zukünftigen deutsch-französischen Kriege; 443 Mobilmachungsplan für das deutsche Heer zum 1. April 1914; 663 Große Generalstabsreise 1905/06; and 6546 Berichte über fremde Armeen, 1907–1911. Data on general officers were gleaned from the roughly twenty-volume collection MSg 109. Soldiers’ letters came from several files, including MSg 2/3112 and 2/4537.

  The collapse of the German Democratic Republic in 1989–90 proved to be a boon to scholars of World War I. First and foremost, its demise allowed research in the records of the Saxon Third Army at the Sächsisches Hauptstaatsarchiv (SHStA) at Dresden. The reports of the Saxon military plenipotentiary at General Headquarters are in 11250 Sächsischer Militärbevollmächtigter in Berlin Nr. 71. Geheimakten A: Verschiedenes. Third Army Commander Max von Hausen left two sets of personal recollections: 12693 Personalnachlaß Max Klemens Lothar Freiherr von Hausen (1846–1922) Nr. 38 and Nr. 43b; and 12693 “Meine Erlebnisse u. Erfahrungen als Oberbefehlshaber der 3. Armee im Bewegungskrieg 1914” Nr. 43a. The latter was most valuable as it contains the general’s handwritten memoirs, penned in July 1918; much of this material (and especially the critical sections) was exorcised from his published memoir, Erinnerungen an den Marnefeldzug 1914 (Leipzig: K. F. Koehler, 1920). I also worked through the war diary of Third Army Supreme Command, 11353 Armee-Oberkommando 3. Unfortunately, the files for its Strategic (Ia) and Tactical (Ib) Sections were lost, most likely during Allied bombing raids on Potsdam in 1945 (see below). Fortunately, I was able to compensate for this by researching the records of the General Commands of Third Army, 11355 Generalkommando des XII Armee-Korps, as well as those of XII Reserve Corps, 11356 Generalkommando des XII Reservekorps Nrs. 139 and 273, which contain copies of Hausen’s most important orders. The SHStA also has several superb collections of war diaries and letters: 11372 Militärgeschichtliche Sammlung, Nrs. 103, 105, and 371. All service records were cross-checked in the Ehrenrangliste des ehemaligen Deutschen Heeres auf Grund der Ranglisten von 1914 (Berlin: E. S. Mittler, 1926), 2 vols. Saxon regimental histories were published as Erinnerungsblätter deutscher Regimenter Sächsischer Armee (Dresden: v. Baensch, 1921–39), 88 vols.

  While it was widely assumed by Western historians that the Royal Air Force’s bombings of the Kriegsgeschichtliche Forschungsanstalt on 14 February 1945 and of the Reichsarchiv on 14 April 1945 (both at Potsdam) had totally destroyed the archives of the Prussian army, that in fact was not the case. Although East German officials steadfastly maintained for half a century that as a “peaceful socialist country” they maintained no “military archives,” a great number of files from the former Kriegsgeschichtliche Forschungsanstalt had escaped the bombing and been taken to Moscow by the Red Army. In 1988 the Soviet Union returned forty tons of documents—including some three thousand Prussian and German army files—to the Militärarchiv der Deutschen Demokratischen Republik, also at Potsdam.

  To both the surprise and the delight of scholars, in 1994 these documents were removed to the BA-MA in Freiburg, where they were initially deposited as Special Collection W-10 and where they are now being recataloged as RH 61: Kriegsgeschichtliche Forschungsanstalt des Heeres, Teil 1, Teil 2. The unfortunate outcome is a confusing crescendo of old “W-10” and new “RH 61” file numbers. For prewar planning by the Prussian General Staff, the most important collections include: 96 Aufmarschanweisungen für die Jahre 1893/94 bis 1914/15; 406 Die militärpolitische Lage Deutschlands in den letzten 5 Jahren vor dem Kriege; and 50315 Gemeinsame Kriegsvorbereitungen Deutschland-Österreich-Ungarn. Frage eines gemeinsamen Oberbefehls im Kriege. As well, much of Alfred von Schlieffen’s war planning survived in N 323/9, Nachlaß Boetticher, Gr. Generlstabsreise 1905.

  Fragmentary documentary records for the first year of the war in general and for the Battle of the Marne in particular are in a series of compilations in RH 61: 83 Vorgänge im Großen Hauptquartier des Generalstabes 1914–1915; 84 Beurteilung der Lage zwischen den Flügeln der 1. und 2. Armee AM 9.9.1914; 161 Die Fahrten Moltkes, Dommes, Steins und Tappens zur Front AM 11., 12., 13. und 14.9.1914; 948 Der Krieg im Westen 1914–1916; 50443 Die Finanzierung des ersten Kriegsjahres 1914/15; 50603 Kriegsverluste, Verstärkungen, Munitionsverbrauch und Kriegsgefangene im Ersten Weltkrieg; 50631 Tagebücher Beseler; 50634 Generaloberst v. Einem; 50635 Falkenhayn-Tagebuch; 50652 Kriegserinnerungen von General v. Kuhl; 50656 Tagebuch v. Plessen; 50661 Kriegserinnerungen und Kriegstagebuch des Generalleutnants v. [sic] Tappen; 50676 Der Krieg im Westen 1914–1916; 50677 Auszüge aus Feldbriefen von Januar 1914—November 1918; 50730 Der Chef des Generalstabes von Moltke; 50739 Generalleutnant von Stein, der Generalquartiermeister der sechs ersten Kriegs-wochen; 50775 Die Verluste an Pferden 1914–1918; 50850 Die Tätigkeit der Feldfliegerverbände der 1. und 2. Armee 2.-9. September 1914; and 51060–064 Die OHL und die Marne-Schlacht vom 4.–9.9.1914. Countless others are to be found in the chapter notes.

  During the 1920s, the senior commanders of especially the Bavarian and Prussian armies conducted a vitriolic paper war concerning both roles and responsibilities for the campaign in the west in 1914. A great many of their personal papers were circulated to fellow officers and to the Reichsarchiv at Potsdam. The result was a
plethora of war diaries copied and annotated by postwar investigators. Wherever possible, I used only the original war diaries.

  Given that neutral Belgium was truly a victim rather than an instigator of the July Crisis, I eschewed research in the General State Archives at Brussels and instead relied on several solid histories based on that country’s documentary record for 1914: Émile Joseph Galet, S. M. le Roi Albert, commandant en chef devant l’invasion allemande (Paris: Plon, 1931); Marie-Rose Thielemans and Emile Vandewoulde, Le Roi Albert au travers de ses lettres inédites, 1882–1916 (Brussels: Office international de librairie, 1982); Luc de Vos, Het effectief van de Belgische krijgsmacht en de militiewetgeving, 1830–1914 (Brussels: Koninklijk Legermuseum, 1985); and Histoire de l’armée belge (Brussels: Editions Centre de Documentation historique des forces armées, 1982–88), 2 vols. The German invasion and occupation of 1914 are detailed at length by Jeff Lipkes, Rehearsals: The German Army in Belgium, August 1914 (Leuven: Leuven University Press, 2007).