Passchendaele
Page 17
Two conditions attached to that achievement: sufficient forces and speed of action, he told Robertson. At that moment, Haig reckoned his forces were adequate, numbering 42 divisions, but he would soon need many more men. And they ‘must act promptly’ to attack before Germany could transfer its eastern divisions to the western theatre. The Germans were demoralised, he claimed, with scant evidence. They would be unable to shift more than twenty divisions from east to west (two a week), he wrote. Forty per cent of their infantry – 105 German divisions – had been wiped out in recent battles, he claimed. All things considered, Haig argued that Germany would ‘be forced to conclude peace on our terms before the end of the year’.5
Haig’s wishful thinking was divorced from the facts, Robertson concluded. The CIGS ‘could not possibly agree’ with Haig’s views on German morale, he wrote in a cable the next day: the Germans had, after all, won all their battles, with the exceptions of Vimy and Messines, in the sense that they had successfully defended their lines. Robertson added:
What I do wish to press upon you is this:- Don’t argue that you can finish the war this year, or that the German is already beaten. Argue that your plan is the best plan – as it is – that no other would be safe, let alone decisive, and then leave them to reject your advice and mine. They dare not do that … 6
Robertson warned Haig not to circulate his views before the big meeting with Lloyd George’s committee. For now, Haig took that advice: instead of winning the war that year (as he told an army commanders’ conference on 14 June), the Allies would continue to ‘wear down and exhaust the enemy’, while capturing Passchendaele Ridge and securing the Belgian coast.7 At the very least, he would seize Passchendaele, after which, if circumstances ran afoul, ‘it may be necessary to call a halt [to the offensive]’.8 Haig thus covered himself in the event of failure. That seemed unlikely, he believed, after the great example of Messines. Success, he said, would depend on speed and secrecy, and a series of diversionary attacks. ‘[T]he best plan,’ Haig reminded himself in his diary, ‘seems to be to prepare simultaneously several points of attack: thus the situation becomes similar to the case of the pea under one of three thimbles.’9
Haig submitted his written case for the Flanders Offensive to the government two days before the 19 June meeting (see Appendix 6 for the full text). In defiance of Robertson’s advice, he claimed that a ‘limited advance’ would protect Dunkirk from long-range hostile gunfire, bring the Roulers railway station within range of British artillery, and render Ostend useless to the German Navy. A ‘short further advance’ would place Bruges within range of his heavy guns and ‘most probably induce the evacuation of Zeebrugge and the whole coastline’.10 Germany would then have to choose between accepting defeat, undertaking a disastrous retreat, or violating Dutch territory. The Flanders Offensive, in sum, opened up ‘sufficient prospects of success this year’,11 so long as the bulk of Allied forces were concentrated on the Western Front, he stressed, in a broadside at Lloyd George’s Italian distraction. ‘Amid the uncertainties of war one thing is certain,’ he concluded, ‘viz, that it is only by whole-hearted concentration at the right time and place that victory ever has been and ever will be won.’12 That time would be 31 July, less than six weeks away; that place, the plain rising gently towards Passchendaele, north-east of Ypres.
In buoyant spirits, the field marshal set off for London on Sunday 17 June to sell his plan to the War Policy Committee. He enjoyed a fillip at Calais, over lunch with Admiral Sir Reginald Bacon, commander of the Dover Patrol, who was ‘wholeheartedly with us’, Haig wrote. Bacon had written to the Admiralty of ‘the absolute necessity for clearing the Belgian coast before winter’.13 Haig left by destroyer for Dover and reached Charing Cross by special train at 5.20 pm.
Haig, Robertson, the four members of the War Policy Committee and Bonar Law met at 10.45 am on 19 June around a plush wooden table in Curzon’s rooms. The prime minister struck a courteous, slightly deferential note, in recognition of the ascendancy of his commander and softened by thoughts of his daughter’s wedding, which was to take place later that day.14
Haig got off to a bad start, mumbling about a successful Russia offensive that would hearten the Russian people. Lloyd George dismissed this as incorrect: Russia was on the brink of abandoning the war altogether. Haig ploughed on: the Germans were demoralised, the German submarine offensive failing. If so, wondered Lloyd George, what was the case for launching the Flanders Offensive? Haig seemed to want to have it both ways: if the U-boats were failing, we should strike while the enemy is vulnerable; if the U-boats were succeeding, then we should strike to destroy their submarine bases. ‘Since Haig scored a point either way,’ the historian Leon Wolff observed, ‘something must be wrong with his premise.’15 Up to a point: Wolff overlooks the fact that the whole purpose of the battle, in Haig’s mind, involved much more than destroying U-boat bases.
Unruffled, Haig laid out a map to explain the offensive, stage by stage. Years later, Lloyd George would famously lampoon his commander’s presentational style:
[Sir Douglas] spread on a table or desk a large map and made a dramatic use of both his hands to demonstrate how he proposed to sweep up the enemy – first the right hand brushing along the surface irresistibly, and then came the left, his outer finger ultimately touching the German frontier with the nail across.16
No doubt, the prime minister’s lurid imagination embellished this scene, to enliven his memoirs years later; on the other hand, Haig had a way of coming alive over his colourful maps.
Haig deflected a barrage of questions with his sunny optimism: yes, the French would participate in the offensive, despite their demoralised condition; yes, German morale had collapsed (Haig cited the blow at Messines and an American committee’s report, claiming the Germans ‘realize they are beaten’); no, the Germans did not enjoy artillery superiority and, in any case, their guns were inaccurate. At which Robertson harrumphed to life and argued on Haig’s side that German artillery supremacy was ‘a myth’: the Germans were not even able to supply enough ammunition.17
The meeting turned to the likely casualties, a subject over which the prime minister glowered with proprietorial menace. Deeply concerned about the nation’s ability to replace the dead and wounded, Lloyd George asked Haig for an estimate of the losses (dead, wounded, missing and captured), reminding him ‘that on the Somme our losses had amounted to an average of 100,000 a month’.18
To this, Haig unwisely replied that he had anticipated a loss of 100,000 men a month on the Somme. The idea that such losses were somehow planned deeply rankled Lloyd George. Haig reassured him that there were no grounds to fear such casualties in the Passchendaele offensive, citing the ‘small rate of loss’ at Messines. To which Lloyd George sharply reminded him that since 7 April – a period encompassing the battles of Arras, Bullecourt and Messines – total British losses were ‘not much less than 200,000 [182,000, to be more precise], which was not very far short of 100,000 a month’.19 In reply, Haig calmly reminded the prime minister that the heavy casualties at Arras followed the decision at Calais to compel the British Army to support the Nivelle Offensive (and everyone in the room knew who had been the most vocal backer of Nivelle).
Slightly taken aback by Haig’s quiet confidence, the War Committee continued probing manpower needs, German strength, and other matters. At the same time, Lloyd George hankered to press on the meeting the case for shifting guns and men to the Italian front. Anticipating this, Haig and Robertson rammed home the importance of striking now, in Flanders, on the Western Front, with everything they had. Only then, Haig claimed, could he capture the Belgian coast and liberate Belgium.
To most of those in the room, Haig’s ambition for the Flanders Offensive seemed fantastic, and it elicited silence. Robertson ruminated that Haig had gone out on the limb he had warned him not to. The room fidgeted and shuffled their papers, heavy with the realisation that their commander was deadly serious. Years later, Lloyd George would recall th
e moment in his memoir, in prose dripping with incredulous sarcasm: ‘If this attack were … successful, that would enable us to reach a portion of Passchendaele Ridge … in the course of a single day without any serious casualties.’20 In fairness to Haig, Lloyd George then had the benefit of knowing the outcome.
Bonar Law wondered whether the price justified the cost in likely casualties, to which Lord Milner offered the depressing calculation that ridding the Belgian coast of the Germans ‘was worth half a million men’.21 Milner did not explain how he reached this astronomic number. ‘Curious indeed,’ Lloyd George later observed, ‘must be the military conscience which could justify an attack under such conditions.’22 No Australian, Canadian or New Zealand politician or military chief was present to influence their forces’ involvement in the coming attack; Australia’s then representatives in Britain had ‘no authority to contribute to [Cabinet] decisions’.23 The sacrifice of young men from the Dominions was simply assumed and factored into ‘normal wastage’.
Misinformation, exaggeration and wilful ignorance rattled the room like a squadron of disruptive poltergeists. A lot of what Haig told the Committee was sheer wishful thinking and plain wrong. Not that he dissembled or lied; he simply chose to believe in the best possible outcome. Haig’s plan, for example, had not persuaded the French commanders Marshals Philippe Pétain and Ferdinand Foch, who had forcefully criticised it; German morale had not collapsed; and enemy reinforcements were starting to pour into Flanders from the east. And yet, Haig insisted that his offensive must go ahead, or the Germans would attack and ‘we should then probably lose the same number of men and guns without any advantage’. That denied the fact that the defenders of attrition almost always suffered fewer casualties, as the German experience had shown. Lloyd George echoed this, suggesting ‘we could hold the enemy even if he did attack’ – his preferred course of action on the Western Front being Pétain’s defensive strategy: dig in and wait until the Americans arrived.24
For his part, Lloyd George was just as fast and loose with the truth. He would later claim, falsely, that this was the first time the government had heard of or studied the Flanders Offensive. A variation of the plan had been in the works since January 1916, and had been tabled in November that year.
They reached a stalemate. Lloyd George, Bonar Law and Milner emerged from the meeting strongly opposed to Third Ypres, with Curzon undecided and Smuts warmly in favour. The prime minister wanted the offensive postponed until 1918, when France had recovered and the Americans had put boots on the ground. (Washington had recently informed the British Government that the United States hoped to have 120,000–150,000 men in France by January 1918 and 500,000 by the end of that year.)25
The meeting would resume the next day. As he prepared to leave for his daughter’s wedding, the prime minister pitched a few verbal grenades into the room: manpower wasn’t a limitless resource, he warned; the government had been ‘scraping up men’ from war factories, farms and lists of medical rejects; the people were resentful and turning against the war. ‘Every time we scraped any in there was trouble in the House of Commons or a strike,’ he added. Britain and the Dominions were bearing ‘the whole burden of the War’, and the government ‘had to consider whether it would not be better to hold our hand until the French Army had been resuscitated by the intervention of America’.26
Later that day, Lloyd George continued drilling the point. The government could not gamble with so many lives, he wrote to Haig and Robertson, ‘merely because those who are directing the War can think of nothing better to do with the men under their command’. In saying so, the prime minister seemed to have forgotten who was ultimately holding the reins: he was, and he had the power to overrule his commanders.
Would the Flanders Offensive bring anything better than Messines or Vimy Ridge, he wondered, whose ‘brilliant preliminary successes [were] followed by weeks of desperate and sanguinary struggles, leading to nothing except perhaps the driving of the enemy back a few barren miles – beyond that nothing to show except a ghastly casualty list’.27 The Flanders Plan would not, he concluded: it had little to commend it, would be very costly and therefore ought to be discouraged. ‘I earnestly entreat our military advisers as well as the Cabinet to think again before they finally commit the British Army to an attack …’28
The meeting reconvened on the morning of 20 June (and would meet several times in the next few weeks to discuss every aspect of the campaign – no offensive was more thoroughly analysed, at political and military levels; no battle more anticipated and feared). The prime minister now presented his formal alternative to Third Ypres, worked up the night before. It was a variation on his Italian plan, with the aim of knocking Austria out of the war.29 His case boiled down to this: why pitch our strongest against their strongest and our weakest against their weakest? We should strike the Central Powers at their feeblest point, on the Italian front, using Italian reserves and 75 batteries of British heavy artillery. Trieste would swiftly fall, followed by the collapse of Austria, which would be compelled to sign a separate peace, and then Bulgaria and Turkey, leaving Germany naked to the storm.
A single sentence betrayed the prime minister’s strategic incoherence: ‘What does it matter whether we fight Germans in the north of France or in Italy?’ It mattered because fighting the enemy in Italy would have severely weakened the British forces where the Germans were strongest, with the very liberty of France at stake. In any case, the prime minister’s reply to his own rhetorical question gave away his chief motive. Attacking on the Italian front, he said, will mean ‘we can use the enormous reserves of the Italians’.30
Haig and Robertson had a well-prepared response.31 The chief of staff argued that Austria would not sign a separate peace without Germany. In any case, Robertson icily explained, defeating Austria would be extremely unlikely: the Germans had five railway lines into Italy; the Allies had two. Thus Germany would easily win the race to reinforce the Italian front, as it would take French trains six weeks to move 75 batteries to Italy: ‘The enemy can therefore always hope to beat us if he wishes to, in concentrating superior forces on the Italian front.’32
Moreover, Robertson argued, to denude the Western Front of so many guns would force the British forces to adopt a defensive strategy (which, ironically, was exactly what Lloyd George wanted). A ‘sinister sentence’ then struck the prime minister’s ears. ‘We should follow the principle of the gambler who has the heaviest purse,’ Robertson said, ‘and force our adversary’s hand and make him go on spending until he is a pauper.’33
Robertson concluded:
our chances of obtaining good results are certainly no greater in Italy than they are in the North [i.e. Flanders], while the risks involved are much greater in the former … [W]e must continue to be aggressive somewhere on our front, and we ought of course to do this in the most promising direction [i.e. towards the Belgian coast] … 34
Britain’s top soldiers then made a concession: they would undertake to halt the Flanders Offensive should progress falter or should they fail to achieve their goals. Lloyd George’s ever-active mind latched on to this proposal, as Haig took the baton from Robertson. Haig similarly dismissed the Italian adventure, as likely to lead to disastrous reversals in the west. He then went on the attack. He would defeat the Germans in Flanders because he possessed twice their troop numbers, he claimed. Not even Robertson, aware of German reinforcements arriving from the east, believed this. Haig then dazzled his listeners further, by suggesting that maximum pressure on the Western Front might well win the war by the end of the year. He reprised his claim that the Germans were exhausted, and that defeating the enemy in Belgium in 1917 ran a ‘reasonable chance of success’. What had seemed fanciful yesterday was starting to sound like an arguable, if not realisable, goal.
The seven men sat and pondered: should they fight in Flanders, as Haig insisted; or Italy, the prime minister’s choice? Or should they sit still, using the defensive tactics of Pétain, of ‘a
punch here and a punch there’35 – while ‘pulling faces at the Boches’, as Sir Henry Wilson had unhelpfully suggested – until the French recovered and the Americans arrived?36 The meeting reached another stalemate. Neither side was willing to back down. Lloyd George, Bonar Law and Milner remained resolutely opposed to Third Ypres; the two most senior soldiers were just as strongly opposed to the Italian option. Was a compromise possible? Upon their decision lay the hopes and lives of millions.
Into this frigid moment sailed Admiral Sir John Jellicoe, summoned the next day to offer an opinion. Premonitions of defeat beleaguered the First Sea Lord: the Ancient Mariner of Jutland had come to reprise the threat of the German U-boats, the horror of which seemed to rise in his mind as it receded in everyone else’s. He spoke with great urgency of ‘the grave need’ to destroy the German submarine bases in Belgium before the winter, or ‘we could not go on with the War next year through lack of shipping’. The war would be lost unless Zeebrugge were taken, Jellicoe insisted. ‘There is no good discussing plans for next Spring – We cannot go on.’37
Nobody agreed with Jellicoe. Lloyd George ‘indignantly challenged’ this ‘startling and reckless declaration’.38 The prime minister, who had virtually taken control of the Admiralty,39 placed great confidence in the convoy system’s defeat of Germany’s underwater war: the first experimental convoys had survived, and 300 submarine-chasing destroyers were soon to enter service. British food stocks were, in any case, healthy: ‘we could continue the war until the harvest of 1918’, Lloyd George would soon say in a speech in Scotland.40 The First Sea Lord’s claim was ‘wholly fallacious’, Churchill later argued: a dozen small U-boats were ‘not a worthy objective for a grand land offensive’.41 Haig himself privately rubbished Jellicoe’s ‘bombshell’, as he called it in his diary on 20 June: ‘No one present shared Jellicoe’s view, and all seemed satisfied that the food reserves in Great Britain are adequate.’42