Catastrophe 1914: Europe Goes to War

by Max Hastings

  Some of the shortcomings of newspapers were no fault of their own, but instead the consequence of governments’ refusal to provide facts or allow correspondents to visit the front. In Britain Col. Repington complained that censorship was being abused ‘as a cloak to cover all political, naval and military mistakes’. It was undoubtedly true that the system was exploited to sustain public morale much more than to conceal operational secrets from the enemy. In France, after the Marne the General Staff began to provide a thin dripfeed of information to the press, but the damage was already done: a credibility gap had opened which was never entirely closed. French journalists – and, before long, their readers – became chronically sceptical about all official pronouncements.

  French soldiers in the field referred contemptuously to the ‘bourrage de crâne’, literally ‘skull-stuffing’, but properly ‘bullshit’, which made up the content of the newspapers that reached them. Maurice Barrès of l’Echo de Paris became notorious for his enthusiasm for the war, which prompted the impassioned pacifist Romain Rolland to dub him ‘the nightingale of carnage’. Poilus, rejecting the conventional press, turned instead to trench newspapers which soldiers wrote and copied for each other, or to Swiss titles when obtainable. Philosopher Alain Emile-Auguste Chartier, now a soldier, wrote on 25 November: ‘The Journal de Genève is eagerly seized upon here and officers make cuttings from it; the military reports are admirable and everyone agrees that our papers seem ridiculous by comparison.’

  Soldier-historian Louis Debidour agreed: ‘All of us find intolerable the kind of literature produced by journalists about the trenches, the ingenuity of our men, the general air of enthusiasm, the forced gaiety displayed by the troops, the picturesque layout of the trenches etc. All that is pure invention. The troops are no more than calm and collected; they are resigned to putting the best possible face on dreadful misery caused by the cold and the awful weather.’ German newspapers did the same. Frankfurt’s Oder-Zeitung included a feature entitled ‘Our Brandenburgers on the Aisne’. Its author, a war correspondent, applauded soldiers’ ability to establish cosiness – ‘Gemütlichkeit’ – in the trenches, and their capacity for seeing the funny side of things. Dugouts were described as ‘comfortably furnished’, while camps in the forward areas were said to resemble those on the old American frontier depicted in James Fenimore Cooper’s Leatherstocking Tales. The war was presented as a stimulating challenge for young men.

  All the peoples of Europe showed themselves susceptible to the most implausible fantasies. On 29 September a writer named Arthur Machen penned a short story for the London Evening News in which he described how the men of the BEF at Mons had seen visions of St George at the head of Bowmen of old England, who delivered a shower of arrows which caused 10,000 Germans to fall dead without a mark on them. Though Machen’s piece was explicitly billed as fiction, huge numbers of people decided that it described a real happening. Meanwhile on the other side, Austrians warmed to the legend of a twelve-year-old child named Rosa Zenoch, who allegedly carried water to the wounded on the battlefield of Lemberg, at the cost of herself being maimed by shrapnel. The girl indeed lost a leg, and wound up in a Vienna hospital where Franz Joseph himself presented her with a locket and agreed to buy her a prosthetic limb. The story of ‘the little angel of Lemberg’ became a staple of Austrian children’s literature. Not to be outdone, The Lady recommended a new English book entitled Belgian Playmates by Nellie Pollock: ‘an extremely nice and timely little story for children, a tale of the present war, with the scene set partly in England and partly in Belgium’.

  It is unsurprising that the soldiers of the rival armies felt a far stronger sense of community with each other than with their peoples at home, whom all the belligerent governments sought to quarantine from any real knowledge of what was being done in their name on the battlefield.

  The Germans learned more about Britain’s war effort from social gossip transmitted through neutrals than they did from either allied newspapers or their own spies. Their first agent dispatched from Berlin was a reserve officer named Carl Lody, who made himself somewhat conspicuous by speaking English with an American accent. He was arrested on 2 October following the interception of incriminating letters he had dispatched to neutral Stockholm. A public court-martial at Westminster Guildhall sentenced him to death, and Lody was duly shot in the moat of the Tower of London. ‘I suppose you will not shake hands with a spy?’ the condemned man said to the assistant provost-marshal. ‘No,’ responded that officer, ‘but I will shake hands with a brave man.’ Vernon Kell, director of MI5, respected Lody, and deplored the decision to shoot him. Other German agents were rounded up after a Belgian refugee in neutral Holland wrote to the War Office revealing the name – Frans Leibacher – and Rotterdam address to which they were addressing correspondence.

  Fortunately for Berlin, however, other sources of information about British military activity were readily accessible. To the despair of commanders in the field, the ‘Upper Ten’ – the higher echelons of British society – were chronically indiscreet. The most sensitive operational intelligence was served at the tables of grand hostesses, from whence it often found its way into newspapers in neutral countries, and thus to the enemy. ‘To know anything one had to go out to lunch, and I am bound to say that at such houses as … Lady Paget’s and Mrs J.J. Astor’s the information was generally up to date and accurate,’ wrote the journalist Filson Young. ‘The well-fed oracle from the War Office, carefully waiting until the servants had left the room, with a peach and a glass of port before him and his “Well, I can soon tell the little I know,” remains a type of those days.’ Censorship or no censorship, British military security remained poor throughout the war, as did the quality of information provided to the public by their shackled press. It was a notable feature of the 1914–18 war that by its ending the credibility of governments had been grievously damaged by clumsy and indeed oppressive news-management policies. The deceits peddled to every belligerent society by its rulers contributed vastly to the disillusionment that followed.

  14

  Open Country, Open Sky

  1 CHURCHILL’S ADVENTURE

  On 2 September, between Switzerland and Verdun the rival belligerents confronted each other in almost continuous lines. A week later, the front had stabilised along a further sixty miles, between Verdun and Mailly. But there remained 170 miles of open country between the Aisne and the Channel, untraversed and unravaged by the warring armies. The French and British were struggling to find sufficient men to defend their positions. To the north and west, Falkenhayn saw opportunities to achieve before winter the envelopment which had eluded the Kaiser’s armies in August. He doubted that an absolute German victory was still attainable, but even if he failed to turn the allied flank, seizure of the Channel ports as far west as Calais would create an overwhelmingly powerful strategic position from which to negotiate a peace.

  As the French and British armies redeployed to meet this threat – a remarkable feat of staffwork and logistics – their commanders enjoyed a similar surge of optimism. They supposed that a fast-moving campaign, unlike the profitless pounding on the Chemin des Dames, was still possible in northern France and the unoccupied region of Belgium. September and October witnessed the last awful convulsions of the 1914 campaign on the Western Front. In deteriorating autumn weather, the rival armies engaged in a struggle commonly described as ‘the Race to the Sea’, though both sides were less interested in the Channel coast than in seeking to get around behind each other. Sir John French elected to move the BEF to the allied left flank, partly to simplify his communications with England, but also under the delusion that his little army and its strong cavalry contingent might there exploit exhilarating possibilities. Instead, the British, French and Belgians found themselves locked first in a series of encounter battles, then in a headlong battering process that persisted through some of the most terrible weeks of the war, as the allies clung precariously to their line in the face of massive G
erman assaults.

  On assuming command, Falkenhayn’s first move, against his own better judgement, was to allow Bülow’s army to make a further attempt to break through on the Soissons–Reims front. After that assault failed on 16 September, he threw everything into reinforcing his right wing. On the French side, and with the same hopes of getting around Kluck, Manoury advanced cautiously up the Oise, where on the 17th his troops clashed with the Germans, and were checked. Joffre began rushing men further north to form a new army commanded by Castelnau, the seventy-three-year-old stalwart who had shown himself ‘the rock’ on the Couronné de Nancy. But his men were reservists, neither energetic nor well-trained, and Falkenhayn was able to shift forces to meet them, forming his own new army led by Crown Prince Rupprecht of Bavaria. The Germans’ problem was that the east–west railway systems of occupied Belgium, Luxembourg and occupied France were ill-adapted for moving large numbers of men northwards from the southern end of the front. The Belgian tracks had been heavily sabotaged by King Albert’s retreating countrymen, who also removed most rolling stock to France. In October the rail network was still operating imperfectly, even after the Germans had committed 26,000 labourers to clear blocked tunnels and repair broken track.

  Between September and November, the Germans repeatedly pushed reinforcements towards the coast – but never quite sufficient or fast enough to achieve decisive results. The French used their trains better, and the difference proved critical. On the evening of 23 September, Rupprecht’s Sixth Army advanced up the Oise. Joffre at GQG was slow to grasp the significance of this movement, but Castelnau’s men were able to check it. French troops also stopped another thrust further south on the 26th, inflicting heavy losses. Here, yet again, Falkenhayn’s generals sent forward masses of men to suffer the same fate as had Joffre’s back in August, when it was their turn to attack. But the north was the real focus of attention: in the bosoms of many men of four nations, there still glowed competing hopes for a historic triumph. France’s roads were crowded with cavalry and vehicles moving up towards Amiens, Arras, Lens, Lille, while trains shuttled infantry formations to local detraining points.

  In the German lines likewise, on 6 October gunner Herbert Sulzbach watched in awe as column after column of cavalry clattered past his battery on their way towards the front: ‘Dragoons from Darmstadt, mounted chasseurs from Trier, regiments from Metz, Karlsruhe, Bruchsal, Mulhouse and Cassel: they look terrific with their lances, and you feel that something very big is going to happen … and you are suffused with hope and excitement. I saw quite a number of people I knew among the men moving past. How strange that people should meet on this gigantic front, pretty well on the field of battle.’ Sulzbach was almost equally excited to find his own chin starting to boast stubble, to hear himself swearing and grumbling like an old soldier: ‘it is something wonderful to be one of the millions who are able to join in the fighting’.

  The Kaiser visited the front at Chauny, and sought to assuage scepticism among soldiers whom he met. ‘You’ll be home at Christmas,’ he said repeatedly. ‘I shall be letting you go home soon.’ There were matching hopes in Paris, where the euphoria of the Marne persisted. At the British embassy Sir Francis Bertie wrote on 1 October: ‘If Joffre be victorious and succeeds in obtaining Alsace-Lorraine for France, he may do anything he may please.’ Yet even before such civilian hopes were uttered, the French commander-in-chief had been obliged to abandon his ambitions of outflanking the Germans. Though he continued to rush formations forward, Joffre saw that these could do no more than hold a line, frustrate the enemy’s grand design. Prince Rupprecht’s men were advancing on Lille and threatening Arras, which by the evening of 4 October faced encirclement. In response to this threat, Joffre appointed Gen. Ferdinand Foch as his deputy, with responsibility for the entire northern area of operations. In this role, through the weeks that followed Foch’s contribution was to sustain an iron determination. He told his subordinates there could be no retreat: their men must die where they stood. Maud’huy, now commanding Tenth Army under Foch’s leadership, repulsed a major German push against Arras. By nightfall on 6 October, the line was stable. Falkenhayn shifted his attention.

  The French were acutely aware that the fate of the north of their country and the rump of Belgium was not in their hands alone: British and Belgian troops would play critical roles. Since the last week of September, even as Prince Rupprecht’s army attacked the French east of Arras, his formations had also been sweeping across Belgium, where the local population and the Belgian army fell back in its path. From Ghent, the unhappy Madame Jeanne van Bleyenberghe wrote to a friend: ‘We heard the guns many times and you cannot imagine how dreadful it feels to hear the noise – to think that every time so many men are killed … You must have heard in your papers of the sufferings of our people, how old men, women and children were killed, whole villages and towns set on fire.’

  On the 30th British volunteer nurse Gladys Winterbottom found herself skirting broken bodies as she drove into Waelham to pick up a casualty. ‘By the bridge was one of the nice little sentries – dead. We started to cross under terrific fire … but just then 12 terrified soldiers ran drunkenly across, clutching hold of the bridge railings to pull themselves along. Their commandant had been killed and they fled for their lives. We found no wounded, so I took all the 12 men up with me in the Fiat … The men were quite hysterical and almost embraced me in their relief. I was too racked to go under heavy fire again.’

  Falkenhayn decreed that the nuisance of Antwerp should be snuffed out. The Germans had been bothered by two Belgian sorties from the fortress – the first at the time of Le Cateau, the second during the Aisne fighting; they were determined now to remove the lingering threat to their communications. OHL dispatched a reserve corps, reinforced with massive artillery support, to batter the city, where most of the Belgian army was concentrated. Moltke travelled there in person, cherishing threadbare hopes of recovering some fragment of his shattered prestige. Joffre rejected Belgian pleas for aid, for Antwerp had no place in his grand strategic plan – in its isolation, he judged the perimeter indefensible. He sent only a few Zouaves, territorials and marines to cover the retreat of the city’s garrison down the coast into France, an outcome the C-in-C considered inevitable.

  The British, however, had more ambitious ideas. They had much emotional capital invested in King Albert’s country. John Galsworthy demanded in the Daily Mail: ‘What are we going to do for Belgium – for this most gallant of little countries, ground, because of sheer loyalty, under an iron heel? For this most innocent of sufferers from God’s own Armageddon?’ The novelist’s emotional outburst reflected public opinion. Though Belgium had been invaded, much of the country was still unoccupied. Surely British arms could avert its absolute enslavement? Many people, some of them ministers and generals, were instinctively attracted by the notion of fighting a battle close to home, within reach of the Royal Navy. Here was a chance to conduct independent operations without being bothered by Joffre and his fellow countrymen.

  Sir John French, with unerring lack of judgement, dallied with the possibility of taking the entire BEF to Antwerp, where he had wanted to be ever since August. Had this plan been implemented, his army would almost certainly have suffered German encirclement, and perhaps destruction, before it could be evacuated. In the end, it was merely agreed with the French that the BEF should redeploy from the Aisne to the left flank. On the night of 1 October, their divisions began the extended process of withdrawal from the Chemin des Dames. And even as this began, they launched a local adventure at Antwerp. Though the notion of taking the whole army there had been abandoned, some bold British spirits still saw scope for buccaneering.

  In the Admiralty files in those days, civil servant Norman Macleod chanced upon a pre-war strategic memorandum written by the First Lord, which he described as ‘wonderful’. In 1911 Churchill had described a clash between the Entente and the Central Powers in which ‘he foresaw that [the] French wd have to
remain on defensive on NE frontiers and possibly have to give ground before German advance through Belgium and possibly even Paris would be in danger – questioned whether French people cd play the waiting game necessary – Britain wd send 290,000 men to help … after 40th day tide would turn’. Macleod qualified his admiration, however: ‘this paper is almost the only evidence of real talent I have seen on Churchill’s part – the Naval Division scheme has shown his weaknesses – his mind works quickly, he is fertile in suggestions and he is a tremendous worker, but he lacks balance and consistency, does not work well in harness. I cannot imagine him conceiving a great scheme and carrying it through steadily. He begins no end of things, threatens heads of depts with dire penalties if his plans are not carried out – then falters & delays giving a decision and drops the scheme.’

  These criticisms appear prescient, in the light of the bizarre enterprise which the First Lord now sponsored. The ‘Naval Division scheme’ to which Macleod referred was a characteristically piratical stroke by Churchill. He assembled a hotchpotch of Royal Marines and surplus naval personnel from which he aspired to create his own private army, having persuaded himself that Antwerp offered a chance to fulfil his dream of a British amphibious operation. On every possible count this was imprudent, indeed reckless. Antwerp was untenable as the continental beachhead he envisaged; it could have been supplied up the Scheldt only by breaching Dutch neutrality. The First Lord nonetheless had himself appointed Britain’s plenipotentiary to the beleaguered fortress, and set forth with the only British force available – his Naval Division.

  The Belgian army deployed around Antwerp was hard-pressed. A month earlier, the French newspaper Le Matin had asserted that the city was ‘virtually impregnable’. In truth, however, nothing had been done since 1900 to modernise its protective forts, as vulnerable to modern artillery as those of Liège. Among the garrison were grenadiers Edouard and Charles Beer, two of four sons of a prosperous Brussels family. They had hastened to the Belgian colours seven weeks earlier in expectation of glory, and were crestfallen to be sent to Antwerp, where they merely wielded spades day after day. Now, the German assault engulfed them. Their fort on the outskirts of the city came under heavy fire until one shell struck a magazine, precipitating a huge explosion. Edouard Beer wrote in his diary: