Verdun 1916

by J E Kauffman

  38. Reddemann was a Landwehr officer before the war, and in April 1916 commanded a Reserve Guard Engineer Regiment with three four-company battalions each. Each of these companies had thirty to forty portable flamethrowers and about a dozen heavy models. Fiedler, a civilian engineer, patented the first flamethrower in 1901 and received funds from the army to continue working on it. In 1905 the army engineers authorized him to conduct further tests using an army Pioneer (Engineer) company. Reddemann had been working on his own version at the time using a converted steam pumper from the city’s fire brigade at a fort of Fortress Posen in 1907. The two men joined forces in 1908. (Source: The Soldier’s Burden at http://www.kaiserscross.com/40029/76401.html.)

  39. By March 1915, additional flamethrower companies formed and they included portable flamethrowers.

  40. The 155mm GPF cannon, one of the most important artillery pieces used by the French and Americans, was not available before 1917. Several other modified or new types of large calibre artillery did not become available to the French until mid-1916 or after.

  41. A proper siege is conducted in stages, i.e. methodically.

  42. Except for the first British ‘hurricane barrage’ and Nivelle’s creeping barrages, there is not much agreement among various historians about types of barrages and when they came into use. The Germans used a procedure called ‘drum fire’ which was supposed to be a constant barrage with guns firing in succession.

  43. An English version of the pamphlet was published in the Infantry Journal (Washington, DC: The US Infantry Association, 1916) and translated as ‘The Attack in Trench Warfare’.

  44. It seems unlikely his pamphlet inspired the Germans.

  45. Late in the war they were among the first troops to receive the new Bergmann MP18 9mm sub-machine guns.

  46. His forts were completed in concrete before the French and others started adding reinforced concrete to their forts. The Belgian government apparently felt it unnecessary or too expensive to modify their forts.

  47. Both these weapons identified as Mörser or mortars were howitzers.

  48. Some sources estimate 127,000 troops, which was over 70,000 men more than the garrison. There were also about 18,000 civilians. In The First World War: Germany and Austria-Hungary 1914–1918 (New York: Arnold, 1997), Herwig gives a similar number of 127,800 troops and 18,000 civilians for the second siege indicating the civilians had not left.

  49. Actually about half a dozen divisions, most of the 3rd Army, remained to deal with the fortress.

  50. Most of the data on the defence of the fortress and numbers comes from Tomasz Idzikowski and his book Forty Twierdzy Przemysł (Przemyśl: Regionalny Osrodek Kultury, Edukacji I Nauki w Przemyślu, 2001). He specializes on the history of this fortress and has the most reliable information, so all details of both sieges are based on his work.

  51. This may well have been the first attempt to supply a major encircled force by air, although nothing substantial could be delivered. It may also be the first air mail service.

  52. Most of the dates and statistics come from Herwig’s The First World War. Most sources disagree on the details.

  53. In The Eastern Front 1914–1917 (New York: Penguin, 1998), pp. 30–1, Norman Stone describes the Novogeorgievsk fortress as one in which the ring of outer forts was not at a sufficient distance to protect the citadel from new artillery. In addition the new ring of forts, although built of concrete and then changed to brick, were left unfinished. The high command expected the fortress to hold out for six months, but it did not receive quality troops and the weather did not offer an advantage such as mud that helped the Austrians at Przemyśl. He also stated that a single shell blew up one of the forts.

  54. Details from Mark Romanych and Martin Rupp, 42CM ‘Big Bertha’ and German Siege Artillery of World War I (Oxford: Osprey, 2014).

  55. Some sources claim up to 1,600 guns captured. Allied propaganda, as shown in the Illustrated London News of 11 September 1915, presented the surrender at Novogeorgievsk as a kind of victory in that the ‘brave’ rearguard held the fortress as its garrison withdrew. The garrison did not escape and despite the destruction of the forts by the heavy siege guns, much of the garrison appears to have resisted tenaciously. The article also mentions the ‘Polish Quadrilateral’ consisting of the fortresses of Novogeorgievsk, Warsaw, Kovno and Brest-Litovsk. Other sources also refer to this ‘Quadrilateral’, but it is a bit of an exaggeration since Kovno and Brest-Litovsk are too far away to be considered part of such a position that had little in between. Other sources list the Quadrilateral as including Ivangorod instead of Kovno, but the distances are still great.

  56. A Polish source claims captured batteries of Russian 203mm Mle 1877 were used, but that seems doubtful.

  57. See Romanych and Rupp, 42CM ‘Big Bertha’. The siege artillery moved south to join Mackensen’s 11th Army in the attack on Przemyśl in May 1915.

  58. The division was formed with two brigades of two regiments each in Germany during February 1915 and moved to the Russian front along with the 1st, 10th and 15th Landwehr divisions (the latter from the Western Front).

  59. This reduction in troops was not related to the strength or value of the fortresses. Even on the Eastern Front Hindenburg in 1914 had already drawn off troops, mostly not first-line troops, from fortress duty to supplement his army at the front. Falkenhayn in 1915 had to shift troops between fronts, so taking them from garrisons of fortresses not directly threatened by the enemy made sense.

  60. According to a popular author, Sarrail was ineffective in carrying out operations in the Argonne-Verdun regions since he came from Carcassonne in southwest France and apparently was not acquainted with the rest of the country. However, his VIII Corps was at Bourges and his VI at Chalons so he was not utterly unfamiliar with eastern France. Before the war, senior officers had prepared for years for a war in eastern France and not along the border with Spain.

  61. According to Holger Herwig, author of The Marne: 1914 (New York: Random House, 2009), Sarrail boasted of being the ‘Saviour of Verdun’ because of his actions in September 1914.

  62. In this case, the French considered this as ‘stolen’ territory from 1871, not German soil.

  63. Louis Auguste Adrian, a retired officer, re-joined the army in 1915. After realizing that over half the wounds were to the head, he designed the steel helmet named after him. His was lighter and cheaper to produce than the British and German helmets, but less effective against shrapnel or bullets. In 1915, he was involved in developing camouflage techniques and served in the quartermaster section of the army where he designed other items for the troops.

  64. During the war the French army had active and reserve infantry divisions numbered 1–78 available in August 1914. Infantry divisions 120–34, 151–4 and 156–8 formed mostly in 1915 (two began as ad hoc formations in September 1914 and the 134th was created in the summer of 1916). Infantry divisions 161–8 formed in 1916, followed by 169 and 170 in 1917. The territorial infantry divisions numbered 81–92, 96–8 and 100–5. The colonial infantry divisions included numbers 1–3 when the war began, 10, 15–17 formed in 1915 and 11 formed in 1917. One Moroccan division formed in 1914 and another in 1918. Cavalry divisions 1–10 were available in August 1914. (Source: Michael Cox and Graham Watson, Pour la France: A Guide to the Formations and Units of the Land Forces of France 1914–18 (Solihull: Helion & Company, 2012).)

  65. Between November 1916 and December 1917 most of the infantry and cavalry divisions had been converted.

  66. The German reserve divisions numbered 43–54 and included two reserve infantry brigades and one field artillery regiment plus cavalry and pioneers. The next group or reserve divisions numbered 75–82 and the 8th Bavarian had a single infantry brigade with three regiments and an artillery brigade of two regiments.

  67. In 1917, Hindenburg reduced the infantry battalions from 919 to 650 men. (Source: Hermann Cron, Imperial German Army 1914–18 (repr. Solihull: Helion & Co., 2006).)

/>   68. On 18 March 1916, the Russian 2nd Army attacked the Germans at Lake Naroch losing a third of its men in an attempt to put pressure on the Germans during the Verdun offensive.

  69. The situation for the British army changed at the end of December 1915 with the introduction of compulsory service.

  70. The Nieuport X was modified and the observer/gunner in the front seat was eliminated making it a single-seater, but larger than the Nieuport XI and less manoeuvrable.

  71. The standard unit was the Feldflieger Abteilung (Flying Field Company or Detachment) of four aircraft for reconnaissance and artillery spotting (usually two-seater aircraft). The strategic bombing groups of the army high command were the Kampfgeschwader derObersten der Heeresleitung (Kagohl) that were organized into five to seven Kampf Staffels (Kastas) or combat squadrons with six aircraft each. Selected from these groups, the best pilots joined the Kampfeinsitzer Kommand (KEK) or single-seater fighter command, which consisted of two to four Fokker or Pfalz Eindeckers. These were mono-wing aircraft. The Pfalz, a copy of an inferior model, was used to supplement the fewer Fokker models available.

  Chapter 4

  1. The Americans and others protested about the German violation of the Hague Convention. The procedures for sinking unarmed ships required a submarine to surface and then send a warning. Striking without warning was viewed as barbaric, and the Germans wanted to keep America neutral.

  2. This Christmas memorandum is much like the Schlieffen Plan in that no copies exist. Supposedly, an Allied bombing in 1945 destroyed the archive that held both of these documents. Oddly, it seems that no historian had researched and recorded the information on them, although it seems unlikely the Weimar government would have classified them as secret after the war. Falkenhayn quoted the contents in his book and this takes up more than a page in length. There may never have been a memorandum and he may have made the claim to clear his reputation.

  3. Falkenhayn further explained in his book that his allies could not help since the Turks had too few troops, the Bulgarians would not send troops out of the Balkans and the Austro-Hungarian troops did not have sufficient training for operations on the Western Front.

  4. The situation made it impossible to rearm Fort Vaux and Ouvrage Thiaumont with their 75mm casemate guns.

  5. According to Alistair Horne, author of The Price of Glory: Verdun 1916 (New York: Penguin, 1978), Driant set up a line of outposts on the outskirts of Caures Woods. Behind those outposts, he positioned independent strongpoints, each with a platoon. Behind that, in the woods, was a support line and to its rear, the ‘R Line’ consisting of structures he called concrete redoubts, one of which served as his command post.

  6. Horne noted (in the Price of Glory, p. 62) that the Germans had broken up a spy ring before the offensive, which hindered French Intelligence (Deuxième Bureau de l’État-major general or 2nd Bureau of the General Staff, the British counterpart of which was MI5 – Military Intelligence, Section 5).

  7. According to Horne (in the Price of Glory, p. 63), on 17 January, the weather was so bad it was unsuited for aerial photography. However, until 17 February, no officer from the reconnaissance squadrons was attached to General Herr’s headquarters at Verdun to analyse the few available photos. The French aircraft that penetrated the German air screen missed the huge artillery concentrations northeast of Verdun and only spotted a few dozen gun emplacements.

  8. On 15 February, three deserters of 172nd Infantry Regiment warned of the coming offensive. Their unit was part of the 39th Division formed in Alsace. In fact, several Alsatian deserters warned of the impending German offensive.

  9. During the campaign, German Pioneers continued to build stollen including some in October 1916 near the front in advance of Fort Vaux and other locations. These structures were used as shelters for assaulting infantry, pioneers and ammunition. Often built into the slopes of a ravine, they had two entrances and several metres of earthen cover.

  10. Oberste Heeresleitung (OHL), or Supreme Army Command, included the Supreme Warlord (the Kaiser), his Great Headquarters located at Spa for most of the war and the General Staff of the Field Army. The General Staff was the main element of OHL. The Chief of the General Staff of the Field Army (Moltke, Falkenhayn and eventually Hindenburg) headed the General Staff. Ludendorff, Hindenburg’s assistant on the General Staff, took the title of First Quartermaster General.

  11. This is taken from Paul Jankowski, Verdun: The Longest Battle of the Great War (New York: Oxford University Press, 2013), p. 36. The comments of the Kaiser, Tappen, Schulenburg and Groener come from documents in the Bundesarchiv Militärarchiv dating from the 1930s. Post-war accounts are often biased or intended to justify someone’s actions, but they must be considered and evaluated.

  12. The Crown Prince wrote that Knobelsdorf had met with Falkenhayn in Berlin, apparently before the meeting in France that he did not attend. Knobelsdorf submitted a plan for flanking operations by Army Detachment Strantz from St Mihiel and Mudra’s corps in the Ardennes, but Falkenhayn rejected it, forbidding any strategic envelopment to be part of the 5th Army plan. It would appear he did not want to force the French to withdraw and avoid a major battle.

  13. According to the Crown Prince, he and his chief-of-staff argued with Falkenhayn to no avail. Falkenhayn told them he needed the reserves to deal with an expected British relief offensive. They felt that was impossible at the time because the British were in the process of reorganizing their army. Although the Crown Prince claimed these discussions took place before Christmas, other sources are adamant that they did not occur until after Christmas.

  14. It is not clear to which corps these divisions belonged.

  15. Tunnelling and detonating mines in the Argonne, like in the Éparges sector, was almost a continuous affair.

  16. The 72nd Division had been assigned to the Verdun area as a fortress division since the war, just as the 57th Division at Belfort, the 71st Division at Épinal and the 73rd Division at Toul. All four were reserve divisions. Driant’s two chasseur battalions (reserve units) were attached to the 143rd Brigade of the 72nd Division.

  17. Some sources list a 106th Territorial Division consisting of the 212th and 213th Territorial brigades commanded by General Pierron. One of these sources is Nafzinger, who took it from German documents. Michael Cox and Graham Watson, in Pour la France: A Guide to the Formations and Units of the Land Forces of France 1914–18 (Solihull: Helion & Company, 2012), found no such unit in the official French history. The brigades may have been in the vicinity, but employed as a labour force, which was not uncommon with territorial units. There is no indication of any of the brigade’s regiments taking part in a combat role besides caretaker detachments placed in some forts like Douaumont.

  18. The II Corps, commanded by General Denis Duchêne, occupied the south part of the salient. His divisions moved into combat on 22 February between Eix and Éparges. On 21 February, its 4th Division was in reserve. The VII Corps, commanded by General Georges de Bazelaire, included the 37th Division, which was resting at Souilly when the offensive began. Earlier, the 14th Division joined the XXX Corps and took up positions on the northeast corner of the salient. The VII Corps withdrew on 26 March 1916 and returned on 10 April remaining on the line until 5 July. The XXX Corps held the northern section of the Fortified Region of Verdun (RFV) on 21 January 1916 under the command of General Adrien Chrétien.

  19. The 132nd Division, originally formed as the Division de Marche de Verdun, received its number in July 1915. Division de Marche was a provisional division initially created with units available. It was not a previously established division.

  20. See below for Émile Driant’s role in bringing about this meeting.

  21. General Fernand de Langle de Cary had only assumed command of the army group on 12 December 1915 and replaced General Noël Édouard de Castelnau who had moved up the GHQ.

  22. Only the casemate guns and those remaining on the ramparts of the older forts could be considered to be remo
vable. Most were older weapons, except for the 75mm guns. The turret guns remained because they did not have mobile mounts.

  23. Holger Herwig describes this action in The Marne: 1914 (New York: Random House, 2009). However, in My War Experiences, the Crown Prince makes no mention of implying instead that his forces had conducted an orderly withdrawal with few casualties.

  24. Army Group Centre, formed in late June 1915, took over the Verdun sector late in the year.

  25. Castelnau was Joffre’s chief-of-staff and helped develop Plan XVII. In June 1915, he received command of the newly formed Army Group Centre and in December 1915, he was replaced by General de Langle as he returned to serve as Joffre’s chief-of-staff. When Joffre was replaced by Nivelle, Castelnau retired, but he was recalled in 1918 to command Army Group East.

  26. Gallieni had been in charge of the defences of Paris in August 1914 and was one of the men credited with the victory on the Marne in September. He was appointed Minister of War in October 1915. In a conflict with Joffre over control, Gallieni resigned in March 1916 and died a few months later.

  27. Knobelsdorf was relieved in August 1916. The Crown Prince did have some good ideas, but Falkenhayn ignored him. Since the Crown Prince was not in favour with his father, Falkenhayn could do that with impunity.

  28. In November 1914, the prince told the press, ‘Undoubtedly this is the most stupid, senseless and unnecessary war of modern times’ and it was not Germany’s fault.

  29. Falkenhayn was sent to the Middle East after that, but with a Turkish army of inferior quality he was at a disadvantage and he failed to stop the British from taking Jerusalem in 1918.

  30. German time was an hour ahead of French time. The French recorded the time as 7.15 am French time.

  31. A short intense bombardment was called a hurricane bombardment. Although many historians have used the term to describe the bombardment of Verdun, it seems inappropriate in this context. Hurricane bombardment is defined as a bombardment of short duration. Falkenhayn’s bombardment, intended to take the French by surprise, lasted about 8 hours.