89. Diary entry dated 25 August 1914. BHStA-KA, Kriegstagebuch 1914/18, Nachlaß R. Xylander 12. Unfortunately, Xylander’s diary exists only for 22–25 August 1914; the rest was burned by the family as the Russians entered Berlin in 1945.
90. Diary entry dated 28 August 1914. Tagebuch Rupprecht, BHStA-GH, Nachlaß Kronprinz Rupprecht 699.
91. Reports dated 22 and 26 August 1914. GLA, 233 Politische Berichte des Großherzogl. Gesandten in Berlin und München über den Kriegsausbruch 34816.
92. WK, 1:279.
93. Letter dated 20–21 August 1914. GLA, S Kriegsbriefe und Kriegstagebücher 53.
94. Aufzeichnungen von Karl Gruber über die ersten Kriegstage 1914, 23–24 August 1914. BA-MA, MSg 2/3112, 22.
95. Deuringer, Die Schlacht in Lothringen, 1:354–55.
96. Ibid., 531–32.
97. Ibid., 544.
98. WK, 1:301, 575, 582.
99. Das Bayernbuch vom Weltkriege 1914–1918. Ein Volksbuch, ed. Konrad Krafft von Dellmensingen (Stuttgart: Chr. Belser, 1930), 2:11–23.
100. Deuringer, Die Schlacht in Lothringen, 1:366–67.
101. Friedrich Stuhlmann, Die deutsche Feldpost in Geschichte und Tätigkeit (Berlin: R. Claassen, 1939), 14ff. There exist no figures for the Bavarian mail.
102. Bernd Ulrich, Die Augenzeugen. Deutsche Feldpostbriefe in Kriegs-und Nachkriegszeit 1914–1933 (Essen: Klartext, 1997), 45–46.
103. Das Elsass von 1870–1932, ed. J. Rossé et. al (Colmar: Alsatia, 1936), 1:337.
104. Gaede to Friedrich II, 10 October 1914. GLA, 59 Weltkrieg 1914–Schriftwechsel Gaede 316.
105. Ordre particulière No. 18, 21 August 1914, AFGG, 1-1:693–94; Joffre, 1:286.
106. See AFGG, 2:426–32.
107. For a detailed eyewitness account, see General Otto Kreppel in Das Bayernbuch, 2:49–51; also Rupprecht, Mein Kriegstagebuch, 1:59, 63–65.
108. Letter dated 1 September 1914. GLA, S Kriegsbriefe und Kriegstagebücher 53.
109. War diary entry dated 27 August 1914. Tagebuch Rupprecht, BHStA-GH, Nachlaß Kronprinz Rupprecht 699.
110. Wenninger to War Ministry, 31 August 1914. Berichte Ml. Bev. Wenninger, BHStA-KA, Nachlaß Krafft von Dellmensingen 145.
111. WK, 1:569.
CHAPTER 4. The Bloody Road West: Liège to Louvain
1. D. J. Goodspeed, Ludendorff: Soldier: Dictator: Revolutionary (London: Hart-Davis, 1966), 1.
2. Cited in Sewell Tyng, The Campaign of the Marne, 1914 (New York and Toronto: Longmans, Green, 1935), 53.
3. WK, 1:105–06.
4. Jeff Lipkes, Rehearsals: The German Army in Belgium, August 1914 (Leuven: Leuven University Press, 2007), 42.
5. Ibid., 90–103; Maximilian v. Poseck, Die Deutsche Kavallerie 1914 in Belgien und Frankreich (Berlin: E. S. Mittler, 1921), 10–11.
6. WK, 1:109–10.
7. Ibid., 108.
8. Ibid., 111–13, 115.
9. Ibid., 111; Lipkes, Rehearsals, 61.
10. Joffre, 1:286–87.
11. Cited in Source Records of the Great War, ed. Charles F. Horne (USA: National Alumni, 1923), 2:49.
12. BA-MA, RH 61/50220, Wilhelm Dieckmann, “Der Schlieffenplan,” 53–57.
13. WK, 1:112.
14. John Horne and Alan Kramer, German Atrocities, 1914: A History of Denial (New Haven, CT, and London: Yale University Press, 2001), 13; Lipkes, Rehearsals, 110ff.
15. Erich Ludendorff, Meine Kriegserinnerungen 1914–1918 (Berlin: E. S. Mittler, 1919), 29.
16. Ibid., 29.
17. Moltke, 24.
18. Cited in Tyng, Campaign of the Marne, 56.
19. Research report dated 11 April 1938. BA-MA, RH 61/50739, Generalleutnant von Stein, der Generalquartiermeister der sechs ersten Kriegswochen, 7, 9.
20. Ein Armeeführer erlebt den Weltkrieg. Persönliche Aufzeichnungen des Generalobersten v. Einem, ed. Junius Alter (Leipzig: Hase u. Koehler, 1938), 35–37; Keiner fühlt sich hier mehr als Mensch … Erlebnis und Wirkung des Weltkriegs, ed. Gerhard Hirschfeld and Gerd Krumeich (Essen: Klartext, 1993), 88–89.
21. Diary entries dated 8 and 11 August 1914. Ein Armeeführer erlebt den Weltkrieg, 35–37.
22. Barbara Tuchman, The Guns of August (New York: Ballantine Books, 1994), 226.
23. WK, 1:120.
24. Ludendorff, Kriegserinnerungen, 31.
25. “German Letter from an Officer in the Assault,” undated. Cited in Source Records of the Great War, 2:48.
26. Émile Galet, Albert, King of the Belgians in the Great War: His Military Activities and Experiences Set Down with his Approval (Boston and New York: Houghton Mifflin, 1931), 126.
27. WK, 1:120.
28. There is much debate on the matter. German commanders after the war argued that Liège caused them no delay. French and Belgian military histories insist on a delay of ten days. The British official history suggests a halt of “four or five days.” HGW-MO, 1:35, n. 1.
29. AFGG, 1:158–59; Harald van Nes, “Die ‘Kavalleriedebatte’ vor dem Ersten Weltkrieg und das Gefecht von Halen am 12. August 1914,” Militärgeschichte 3 (1993): 25–30.
30. The only biography remains Artur Brabant, Generaloberst Max Freiherr von Hausen: Ein deutscher Soldat (Dresden: v. Baensch, 1926).
31. Peter Graf Kielmansegg, Deutschland und der Erste Weltkrieg (Frankfurt: Athenaion, 1968), 34.
32. Diary entries dated 16 and 17 August 1914. Tagebücher General von Wenninger, BHStA-KA, HS 2543–46. Published in Bernd F. Schulte, “Neue Dokumente zu Kriegsausbruch und Kriegsverlauf 1914,” Militärgeschichtliche Mitteilungen 25 (1979): 146–49.
33. The Kaiser and His Court: The Diaries, Note Books and Letters of Admiral Georg Alexander von Müller, Chief of the Naval Cabinet, 1914–1918, ed. Walter Görlitz (New York: Harcourt, Brace & World, 1959), 22–23.
34. WK, 1:258.
35. Ibid., 187, 259; Robert T. Foley, “Preparing the German Army for the First World War: The Operational Ideas of Alfred von Schlieffen and Helmuth von Moltke the Younger,” War & Society 22 (October 2004): 19.
36. Detailed in Lipkes, Rehearsals, 125–70, 171–206.
37. Military Plenipotentiary Traugott Leuckart von Weißdort to War Minister Adolph von Carlowitz, 17 August 1914. SHStA, 11250 Sächsischer Militäbevollmächtigter in Berlin 71. Geheimakten A: Verschiedenes.
38. Diary entries dated 20 and 21 August 1914. BA-MA, N 324/11 and N 324/26, Nachlaß v. Einem.
39. Entry dated 19 August 1914. Joffre, 1:277–78.
40. WK, 1:186.
41. Tyng, Campaign of the Marne, 96.
42. See Antonin Selliers de Moranville, Pourquoi l’armée belge s’est-elle retirée vers la position fortifiée d’Anvers le 18 août 1914 (Brussels: Dewit, 1921).
43. Brand Whitlock, Belgium Under the German Occupation: A Personal Narrative (London: W. Heinemann, 1919), 1:81.
44. Entry dated 21 August 1914. Evelyn Princess Blücher, An English Wife in Berlin: A Private Memoir of Events, Politics, and Daily Life in Germany Throughout the War and the Social Revolution of 1918 (London: Constable, 1920), 21.
45. From Horne and Kramer, German Atrocities, 39–42; Lipkes, Rehearsals, 401ff.
46. Hugh Gibson, A Journal from Our Legation in Belgium (Toronto: William Briggs, 1917), 155–59.
47. Alexander von Kluck, Der Marsch auf Paris und die Marneschlacht 1914 (Berlin: E. S. Mittler, 1920), 24.
48. BA-MA, RH 61/208, Franktireurkrieg in Belgien 1914; WK, 3:328–29.
49. Peter Paret et al., eds., Persuasive Images: Posters of War and Revolution from the Hoover Institution Archives (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1992), 25.
50. Horne and Kramer, German Atrocities, 41.
51. Ibid., 74.
52. See La guerre de 1914. L’action de l’armée belge pour la defense du pays et le respect de sa neu-tralité: rapport/du commandement de l’armée (periode du 21 juillet au 31 decembre) (Paris: Chapelot, 1915).
53. WK, 1:408.
54. Ibid., 223; Max von Hausen, Erinn
erungen an den Marnefeldzug 1914 (Leipzig: K. F. Koehler, 1920), 112–13.
55. Cited in Tyng, Campaign of the Marne, 100.
56. WK, 1:401, 406, 416.
57. GLA, 59, Nr. 365, Denkschrift der Beschiessungen der Forts 1914, General v. Bailer, 12. Bailer was with the Engineer Corps.
58. Galet, Albert, King of the Belgians in the Great War, 146. The German official history gives slightly different totals: six thousand soldiers, forty heavy guns, and one hundred trucks captured. WK, 1:512.
59. Letter dated 20 August 1914. SHStA, 11356 Generalkommando des XII. Reservekorps 139.
60. Keiner fühlt sich hier mehr als Mensch, 101–02.
61. Letter dated 23 August 1914. SHStA, 11372 Militärgeschichtliche Sammlung Nr. 105.
62. The following from Horne and Kramer, German Atrocities, 35–36.
63. Report dated 24 August 1914. SHStA, 11356 Generaldommando des XII. Reservekorps 139.
CHAPTER 5. Deadly Deadlock: The Ardennes
1. WK, 1:354.
2. Ibid., 366–67.
3. Dated 13 August 1914. AFGG, 1:165–66; and 1-1:240–41; Joffre, 1:269.
4. Ibid., 1:266–68; Anthony Clayton, Paths of Glory: The French Army, 1914–18 (London: Cassell, 2003), 46–47.
5. Sewell Tyng, The Campaign of the Marne, 1914 (New York and Toronto: Longmans, Green, 1935), 191–92.
6. AFGG, 1:163.
7. Cited in Gabriel Rouquerol, La bataille de Guise (Paris: Berger-Levrault, 1921), 110.
8. Charles Lanrezac, Le plan de campagne français et le premier mois de la guerre (2 août–3 sep-tembre 1914) (Paris: Payot, 1921), 77.
9. Instruction particulière No. 10, 15 August 1914. AFGG, 1-1:307–08.
10. Instruction particulière No. 13, 18 August 1914. AFGG, 1-1:424–25.
11. AFGG, 1-1:529; Joffre, 1:273–76; Robert A. Doughty, Pyrrhic Victory: French Strategy and Operations in the Great War (Cambridge, MA, and London: The Belknap Press of Harvard University Press, 2005), 65.
12. AFGG, 1-1:598; Joffre, 1:289.
13. Hew Strachan, The First World War (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2001), 1:225.
14. Joffre to Messimy, 21 August 1914. AFGG, 1:205.
15. Barbara W. Tuchman, The Guns of August (New York: Ballantine Books, 1994), 258.
16. AFGG, 1:503–04. Joffre, 1:270–71, speaks bravely of “covering” the BEF’s movements.
17. Charles J. Huguet, Britain and the War: A French Indictment (London: Cassell, 1927), 51; AFGG, 1:504–05.
18. Field-Marshal Sir Henry Wilson: His Life and Diaries, ed. C. E. Callwell (London: Cassell, 1927), 1:164. French chose to leave these discussions with Joffre and Lanrezac out of his memoirs: 1914 (Boston and New York: Houghton Mifflin, 1919), 34–36.
19. AFGG, 1:509.
20. HGW-MO, 1:10.
21. Tyng, Campaign of the Marne, 369.
22. Field-Marshal Sir Henry Wilson, 1:165.
23. AFGG, 1:474.
24. Ibid., 1:479.
25. Ibid., 1:484ff.
26. Lanrezac to Joffre, 22 August 1914. AFGG, 1-1:729. “L’armée W” refers to the BEF guarding Lanrezac’s left flank.
27. AFGG, 1:498.
28. The Commentaries of Caesar, ed. William Duncan (London: J. Cuthell, 1819), 1:422–25.
29. Ordre particulière No. 17 to Third and Fourth armies, 21 August 1914. AFGG, 1-1:604.
30. Tyng, Campaign of the Marne, 82.
31. Cited in ibid., 79.
32. Official German figures as of 22 August 1914. Fourth Army was listed as 117 battalions and 640 guns; Fifth Army as 119 battalions and 680 guns. WK, 1:646.
33. Ibid., 1:306.
34. Crown Prince Wilhelm, Meine Erinnerungen aus Deutschlands Heldenkampf (Berlin: E. S. Mittler, 1923), 46. He would later blame the failure to achieve his “Cannae” on Bruno von Mudra’s XVI Corps for interpreting the royal order to advance as one to withdraw, after having been attacked by superior French forces.
35. Tyng, Campaign of the Marne, 81.
36. Edmond Valarché, La bataille des frontiers (Paris: Berger-Levrault, 1932), 136.
37. For the attack, see Barthélemy Edmond Palat, La grande guerre sur le front occidental (Paris: Chapelot, 1917–29), 3:173ff. AFGG, 1:369ff.
38. WK, 1:472.
39. AFGG, 2:255.
40. Tuchman, Guns of August, 284–85; AFGG 1:376ff.
41. Jean Galtier-Boissière, En rase campagne, 1914. Un hiver à Souchez 1915–1916 (Paris: Berger-Levrault, 1917), 48, 54.
42. AFGG, 1:387–88.
43. Ibid., 2:248ff.
44. Ibid., 1:401ff.
45. See Bruce I. Gudmundsson, “Unexpected Encounter at Bertrix,” in Robert Cowley, ed., The Great War: Perspectives on the First World War (New York: Random House, 2003), 25–36.
46. Cited in Jean-Pierre Guéno and Yves Laplume, eds., Paroles de poilus: lettres et carnets du front 1914–1918 (Paris: Librio, 1998), 27–28.
47. Report dated 23 August 1914. AFGG, 1-1:871.
48. Gudmundsson, “Unexpected Encounter,” 26, 35.
49. Langle de Cary to Joffre, 1 September 1914. AFGG, 2-2:315.
50. Sanitätsbericht über das deutsche Heer im Weltkriege 1914/1918 (Berlin: E. S. Mittler, 1934), 3:36, 37–38.
51. Letter to his wife dated 24 August 1914. BA-MA, RH 61/948 Der Krieg im Westen 1914–1916.
52. WK, 1:399.
53. Letter to his wife dated 24 August 1914. BA-MA, RH 61/948 Der Krieg im Westen 1914–1916.
54. WK, 1:394.
55. Ibid., 1:399.
56. Robin Neillands, The Old Contemptibles: The British Expeditionary Force 1914 (London: John Murray, 2004), 2.
57. WK, 1:420.
58. The detailed British account is in HGW-MO, 1:7ff.; the German, in Raimund von Gleichen-Rußwurm, Die Schlacht bei Mons (Oldenburg: Gerhard Stalling, 1919), 1–68.
59. John F. Lucy, There’s a Devil in the Drum (London: Faber, 1938), 734.
60. Walter Bloem, The Advance from Mons 1914 (London: Peter Davies, 1930), 60, 63.
61. David Clarke, The Angel of Mons: Phantom Soldiers and Ghostly Guardians (Chichester: John Wiley & Sons, 2004), 1–2.
62. Huguet, Britain and the War, 58–59.
63. Marc Bloch, Memoirs of War, 1914–15 (Ithaca, NY, and London: Cornell University Press, 1980), 81–85.
64. Diary entry dated 25 August 1914. BA-MA, RH 61/50661 Kriegserinnerungen des Generalleunants v. [sic] Tappen, 29.
65. BA-MA, RH 61/50739 Generalleutnant von Stein, der Generalquartiermeister der sechs ersten Kriegswochen, 17.
66. Tyng, Campaign of the Marne, 136.
67. Der Sanitätsdienst im Gefechts-und Schlachtenverlauf im Weltkriege 1914/1918 (Berlin: E. S. Mittler, 1938), 2:31. Some battalions reported as many as four hundred men down with foot sores.
68. Ibid., 2:93.
69. Sanitätsbericht über das Deutsche Heer im Weltkriege 1914/1918, 3:36.
70. Joffre to Messimy, 23 August 1914. AFGG, 1:213.
71. Joffre to Messimy, 24 August 1914. AFGG, 2:1, 124–25. Also Doughty, Pyrrhic Victory, 75.
72. Messimy to Joffre, 24 August 1914. SHD, 1 K 268.
73. Raymond Poincaré, Au service de la France (Paris: Plon, 1928), 5:155.
74. Cited in Mark Sullivan, Our Times, 1900–1925 (New York and London: Charles Scribner’s Sons, 1936), 5:26.
CHAPTER 6. Squandered Climacterics
1. Roland Kleinhenz, “La percée saxonne sur le front du centre,” Les batailles de la Marne de l’Ourc à Verdun (1914 et 1918) (Soteca: Éditions, 2004), 147.
2. Undated letter from Hausen’s chief of staff, Ernst von Hoeppner. SHStA, 12693 Personennachlaß Max Klemens Lothar Freiherr von Hausen 43b.
3. Max von Hausen, Erinnerungen an den Marnefeldzug 1914 (Leipzig: K. F. Koehler, 1920), 108, 117.
4. “Meine Erlebnisse u. Erfahrungen als Oberbefehlshabers der 3. Armee im Bewegungskrieg 1914,” SHStA, 12693 Personalnachlaß Max Klemens Lothar Freiherr von Hausen (1846–1922) 43a, 39
, 41, 46. This is Hausen’s unexpurgated handwritten memoir of July 1918, and will be used in place of the “cleansed” published version cited in note 3.
5. Ibid., 42.
6. WK, 1:371.
7. Hausen, “Meine Erlebnisse,” SHStA 12693, 54.
8. WK, 1:372.
9. Hausen, “Meine Erlebnisse,” SHStA 12693, 56.
10. Ibid. The best account of Hausen at Dinant is by Artur Baumgarten-Crusius, Die Marneschlacht insbesondere auf der Front der deutschen dritten Armee (Leipzig: R. M. Lippold, 1919), 28ff.
11. WK, 1:373–74.
12. Ibid., 1:379.
13. Sewell Tyng, The Campaign of the Marne, 1914 (New York and Toronto: Longmans, Green, 1935), 115.
14. Ibid.
15. Christian Mallet, Impressions and Experiences of a French Trooper, 1914–1915 (London: Constable, 1916), 33.
16. Cited in Paul-Marie de la Gorce, The French Army: A Military-Political History (London: Weidenfeld & Nicolson, 1963), 102.
17. WK, 1:381–82.
18. The terror of Dinant is detailed in Jeff Lipkes, Rehearsals: The German Army in Belgium, August 1914 (Leuven: University of Leuven Press, 2007), 257–377.
19. Johannes Niemann, Das 9. Königlich Sächsische Infanterie-Regiment Nr. 133 im Weltkrieg 1914–18 (Hamburg-Grossflottbek: Selbstverlag, 1969), 10.
20. John Horne and Alan Kramer, German Atrocities, 1914: A History of Denial (New Haven, CT, and London: Yale University Press, 2001), 43–53.
21. Wir Kämpfer im Weltkrieg. Selbstzeugnisse deutscher Frontsoldaten, ed. Wolfgang Foer-ster and Helmuth Greiner (Berlin: F. W. Peters, 1937), 39.
22. Letters dated 22 and 25 August 1914. SHStA, 11372 Militärgeschichtliche Sammlung Nr. 105.
23. Letter dated 6 September 1914. Ibid.
24. Cited in Horne and Kramer, German Atrocities, 48.
25. See the initial compilation by Édouard Gérard, Tod Dinants. Geschichte eines Verbrechens (Brussels: Brian Hill, 1919), 39–40. Lipkes, Rehearsals, gives figures of 685 civilians killed and eleven hundred homes and buildings burned.
26. Hoeppner to Hausen, undated (1918?). SHStA, 12693 Personennachlaß Hausen 43b.
The Marne, 1914 Page 42
