|
CHAPTER ONE - NEW PERIOD
I THE TWO CONTESTS
The third period of the World War, that which is included within
the twelve months of 1916, presents a clearer and less complicated pic-
ture than the two preceding periods. In it the expectations of a sudden
decision, following a tremendous success continue to weaken have
in fact well nigh vanished by the end of the campaign. Even the
Germans, who in their attack upon Verdun at least dreamed of a new
Sedan, have laid it aside by the coming of winter and are seeking to re-
inforce military weapons by a peace offensive, while the experience of the
Allies on the defensive at Verdun, on the offensive at the Somme has
dissipated the notions common in all the earlier months of the struggle.
In this period which we are now to examine, the real interest and im-
portance of two contests dwarf all else. Verdun and the Somme are
conflicts which in turn held the stage of the world as no two military
dramas had fixed the concentrated attention of a world audience since
the last phases of the Napoleonic cycle. Unlike the great campaigns
of the previous year in the east, they were fought on ground that had, in
a measure, been familiar at all times to millions in Allied and neutral
nations alike, and in the months of the World War had been studied
and re-studied until Arras and Rheims, Amiens and Verdun, were
definite circumstances in the minds of the people of all classes in all
countries.
The result was unmistakable. While the German armies advanced
through Poland and Serbia, while Mitteleuropa was constructed by
campaigns along the Vistula, the Dniester and the Danube, the world
audience still fixed its attention upon the trenches of Flanders and
Champagne. The meaning of the eastern movements escaped it, but
when Germany renewed her assault upon France, when she sought a
decision at Verdun, and still later when the Allies in their turn took the
offensive along the Somme, the world understood at once the issues of
the contests and hung breathlessly on the details of the operations.
And these circumstances gave to the struggles which centred about
Verdun and the Somme a hold upon popular imagination which, if not
in excess of their real value, was at least disproportionate to their com-
parative importance, measured beside the later events on the eastern
front. The defeat of the Germans at Verdun was one of the great
achievements of the war, it was the preservation of that decision of the
Marne, which for four years saved western civilization from the imme-
diate threat of German domination. The Somme was the first expression
of the true military power of an organized Britain, but the Somme and
Verdun blinded the Allied nations to what was happening in the east
and this blindness led to still another bitter awakening, when Russia
collapsed and Rumania fell.
The campaign of 1916 is interesting as one more attempt of the two
contending forces to break the western deadlock and abolish the war of
positions preparatory to crushing the enemy in a new campaign of
movement. When it opened, Germany, victorious in the east, her
Mitteleuropa all but completed, sought a decision in the west, which
should guarantee her position in the east. By midsummer, with
the German success at Verdun still postponed, the Allies took the
offensive and by concentric attacks at the Somme, before Gorizia, in
Galicia, and finally in Transylvania and in Macedonia, endeavoured to
overwhelm the Central Powers by equal pressure on all fronts.
But if subsequently German failure at Verdun was complete, inci-
dental Allied successes at Gorizia, in Galicia, in Macedonia were ren-
dered of no value, when Russia betrayed Rumania and German, Bulgarian, and Turkish troops occupied Bucharest and Constanza, and
completed the clearing of the roadway from Berlin to Constantinople.
Hopes of a decision in the campaign of 1917 were thus plainly destroyed,
as the defection of Russia became assured, while the German, despite
his successes in the east, weighed against these brilliant achievements the
terrible death lists of Verdun and the Somme and contemplated an in-
evitable retreat in the west, made necessary by the British advance over
the Albert ridge.
Thus, after a campaign in which first German and then Allied hopes
reached a high level, both coalitions were compelled to confess failure in
the pursuit of an immediate decision and concede the growing likelihood
that complete military decision would be attained, if at all, in years,
rather than in months. The logical consequence of this was the German
peace offensive of the closing weeks of 1916, which, in a measure, trans-
formed the character of the struggle and introduced a new element,
never again to be totally absent, and destined in the following year to
increase in importance with each additional month of warfare.
II. THE CAMPAIGN OF 1916
The campaign of 1916 is thus a turning point in the history of the
war. In it both coalitions by arms alone, seek a decisive triumph. There-
after each contending party, while carrying on the military campaign
with varying energy, throws more and more attention to diplomacy,
to intrigue, and propaganda, and to the effort to capitalize the war
weariness in the opposing nations and to break the morale of the
enemy by peace proposals, necessarily vague, since on neither side
is there yet any real willingness to compromise on the vital questions,
but designed to fasten upon the enemy the responsibility for the pro-
longation of a war, become almost intolerable to both sides.
In the period now under examination, Russia makes her last fight.
The victories of Brusiloff in Volhynia and along the Dniester are, in fact,
the expiring flicker of that Romanoff regime which, from Peter the
Great to the latest Alexander, had carried Russian armies and Slav
frontiers onward into Central Europe and Turkish Asia. While the
world still marvelled at Russian recovery and the victories before Lem-
berg seemed again to threaten the very existence of the Hapsburg
throne, the court and the Czar were passing under the fatal spell of Ger-
man influence and the Russian people were moving imperceptibly but
rapidly toward the Revolution which was to change all.
To the close of the campaign of 1916 the war is fought along lines
which had been laid down in the Nineteenth Century. Whatever
variations were introduced, the general scheme was that which had been
foreseen by the statesmen, if not by the soldiers, of previous decades.
The war, despite the moral issues involved in German actions and
German methods, despite the ever-growing evidence that democracy
and autocracy were struggling in opposite camps, was a war such as had
in some fashion been sketched in all the military writings of the years
which followed the creation of the Triple Entente and the Triple Alliance.
When one passes from 1916 to 1917 there is almost a sense of cross-
ing a frontier as clearly defined as that which separates the period of
the French Revolution from that of the decades before 1789. For the
war that was fought between August, 1914, and December, 1916, Europe
had been prepared, and despite the defection of Russia in the second
half of the latter year, the struggle was, on the whole, just such a conflict
as Europe had feared and foretold for nearly a generation before it came.
But with the end of the campaign of 1916 both contestants have to
confess a measure of defeat. Neither's strategy has brought a decision,
neither group of powers, looking to the immediate future, can convinc-
ingly lay claim to a prospective decision.
The consequence of this failure in both camps is the beginning of
domestic protest and disorder on either side of the firing lines. Implicit
confidence, unquestioning patriotism, ungrudging sacrifice, these begin
to disappear. Each government finds itself daily on trial before a
public which is both suspicious and unfriendly, and each leader is
compelled to defend himself, not merely against charges of incompe-
tence in conducting military operations and diplomatic enterprises, but
against the more dangerous allegation that he is actually prolonging the
war by a refusal to recognize facts as they are and to accept conditions
which he cannot modify.
In a certain measure it is correct to say that the campaign of 1916
marks the end of the period in which unity at home expresses the will
to win of each of the peoples at war. The symptoms out of which the
Revolution developed in the Slav Empire are discoverable to a degree in
all nations, and war weariness grows apace in Britain as in France, in
Germany as in Austria, until all governments find themselves upon the
defensive before their own peoples and all statesmen are condemned
to make pacific gestures across the firing lines and utter proposals of
peace which, however impracticable, give a semblance of readiness to
end a struggle becoming intolerable for the millions.
And it was the failure of the campaign of 1916, the failure of the
Allied campaign, quite as much as the failure of the German, which led
to the profound modifications of spirit and purpose in the nations at
war in the following year. By January i, 1917, the rulers and leaders
of both coalitions could expect only cynical distrust when they forecast
a complete decision in the new year on grounds far less impressive than the foundations out of which they had based sweeping prophecies in
the preceding periods.
III. OLD AND THE NEW
In the campaign of 1916 those German rulers who promised their sub-
jects to destroy France briefly and completely, not only failed, but paid
a price for the failure beyond all previous military calculation. Not only
did the attack upon Verdun fail, but the Allied offensive at the Somme
slowly but surely wore its way through the strongest German defences,
and Allied artillery exacted a toll which brought mourning to all Ger-
many. But, conversely, the Allies, whose offensive was rashly heralded
with promises of a break-through and a liberation of France and Belgium,
gained little more than six miles of shell-torn soil, on a restricted front,
while the collapse of Rumania was a final curtain to all the hopes, dreams,
and calculations of the Allies in the Balkans.
The Mitteleuropa which Germany had created in 1915 endured the
tests of 1916 and on the Rumanian side was expanded to insure not one
but three roads from the Central Powers to their Turkish ally. The
delusion that France could be forced to make a separate peace by one
more campaign in the west cost the Germans more men than Napoleon
sacrificed to reach Moscow. But the Allied belief that the German
lines in the west could be broken, was shaken in the long struggle from
Albert to the outskirts of Bapaume, and though the subsequent Ger-
man retreat from the Noyon salient, in March, 1917, established the
right of the Allies to claim the Somme as a victory, faith in the Allied
ability to break the German lines was once more demolished by the
failures of France on the Aisne and Britain in Flanders in the following
year. In a sense, one may say that the Old Europe the Europe of the
period between the Franco-Prussian War and the Second Balkan War,
the Europe of Bismarck, of Beaconsfield, the Europe of the Congress of
Berlin and all the other convocations down to the Conference of London
of 1912, the Europe founded upon the experience and history of the
latter half of the Nineteenth Century fought itself to the point of temporary
public opinion and popular emotion follow well-beaten pathways, but a
few months later the Russian Revolution is the signal for a change which fills the world with confusion and bewilders the contemporary
observer as it may puzzle the later historian.
In 1916, as in the two preceding years, the military events claim
almost exclusive attention. Verdun, the Somme, the Russian offensive
in Galicia, the Italian success at Gorizia, the swift and infinitely sad
tragedy of Rumania, these succeed each other with amazing rapidity
and give to the military history of these twelve months a variety and a
volume of operations and of battles which can hardly be paralleled
even in the first brilliant years of the Wars of the French Revolution,
while the Battle of Jutland, incomplete as it was, establishes a new
standard of measurement in the conflict of modern navies.
IV. CONSEQUENCES OF THE CAMPAIGN
Viewed in retrospect, the campaigns and battles of this year were
barren of affirmative result. They were destructive of the foundations
of all governmental systems at home, rather than of the armies or will-
power of the enemy nations. Verdun may easily survive as the most
brilliant single episode in human history, regard being had for the
magnitude of the struggle and the miracle of French resistance, yet
the Verdun epic ended almost where it began, leaving both contestants
almost equally exhausted and the victorious French, again, as at the
Marne, unable to turn an undisputed triumph into an offensive which
should liberate France much less win the war.
In 1914 the statesmen failed to prevent war. Diplomacy and states-
manship were both bankrupt as machinery to preserve international
peace. In 1916 the failure of the soldier to win the war, the incapacity
of the generals in their department, was as clearly indicated as had been
the earlier ineptitude of the rulers and leaders in their own field, and the
consequences were unmistakable before another twelve months had
passed. While the masses still preserved a confidence in the ability of
their rulers and representatives, or a faith in the skill and efficiency of
their generals, the war followed familiar highways, but in 1916 popular
distrust in both grew to the point where the failure of the regular instru-
ments of national and international action could be employed as an exhaustion in the first three campaigns of the war, its bankruptcy
was a fact, already dimly perceived, when 1916 ended, and bound to be
unmistakable before the new year had progressed far.
Issues, conditions, prospects, all submit to violent modifications
before 1917 is far advanced. But for the survival of that horror and
hatred of the German methods, disclosed in Belgium and France; but
for the reassertion of these methods in the new submarine war, declared
in January, 1917; above all, but for the intervention of the United States,
no man can be sure that the war would not have worn itself out by
midsummer and Europe have made another peace like that of West-
phalia conceding to Germany profits such as France derived from the
earlier settlements.
Always, therefore, in viewing the events of 1916, one must keep in
mind the fact that an old world of ideas and of ambitions, of diplomacy
and of statesmanship, is crumbling under an ordeal by fire, and giving
way for the unknown, which is coming. Had the Allies won at the
Somme, or the Germans at Verdun; had 1916 seen a decision of the war,
or even, had it seen an old-fashioned settlement, after the German peace
proposal, the ancient landmarks would probably have survived; the
Europe which emerged from the storm would have been recognizable,
in all respects, as the Europe of 1914, and of all times since the unifica-
tion of Germany and Italy in the previous century.
Unmistakably 1916, owing to the events of this momentous year,
represents a final effort of the old order and the old system to save itself,
first, by successful military operations; second, by settlement around the
green table in advance of the destruction of the existing European
hierarchy, incident alike to popular discontent due to its continued
failure to save mankind from the greatest of all known afflictions and
to the outburst of that Bolshevik storm which was temporarily at least
to transform conceptions and conditions in all the Allied countries.
Straight through this year the reins of government remain fairly securely
in the hands of statesmen well known when the World War opened,
public opinion and popular emotion follow well-beaten pathways, but a
few months later the Russian Revolution is the signal for a change which fills the world with confusion and bewilders the contemporary
observer as it may puzzle the later historian.
In 1916, as in the two preceding years, the military events claim
almost exclusive attention. Verdun, the Somme, the Russian offensive
in Galicia, the Italian success at Gorizia, the swift and infinitely sad
tragedy of Rumania, these succeed each other with amazing rapidity
and give to the military history of these twelve months a variety and a
volume of operations and of battles which can hardly be paralleled
even in the first brilliant years of the Wars of the French Revolution,
while the Battle of Jutland, incomplete as it was, establishes a new
standard of measurement in the conflict of modern navies.
Viewed in retrospect, the campaigns and battles of this year were
barren of affirmative result. They were destructive of the foundations
of all governmental systems at home, rather than of the armies or will-
power of the enemy nations. Verdun may easily survive as the most
brilliant single episode in human history, regard being had for the
magnitude of the struggle and the miracle of French resistance, yet
the Verdun epic ended almost where it began, leaving both contestants
almost equally exhausted and the victorious French, again, as at the
Marne, unable to turn an undisputed triumph into an offensive which
should liberate France much less win the war.
In 1914 the statesmen failed to prevent war. Diplomacy and states-
manship were both bankrupt as machinery to preserve international
peace. In 1916 the failure of the soldier to win the war, the incapacity
of the generals in their department, was as clearly indicated as had been
the earlier ineptitude of the rulers and leaders in their own field, and the
consequences were unmistakable before another twelve months had
passed. While the masses still preserved a confidence in the ability of
their rulers and representatives, or a faith in the skill and efficiency of
their generals, the war followed familiar highways, but in 1916 popular
distrust in both grew to the point where the failure of the regular instru-
ments of national and international action could be employed as an argument for the substitution of the orator of the soap-box for the
chief minister of the Czar, or the commander of a platoon for the ever-
victorious Brusiloff.
All this was hidden from the world of 1916. We lived from day to day
upon the reports of the fighting on the Heights of the Meuse or of
the thrust upward toward the crest of the Albert ridge. Allied depres-
sion in the opening days of Verdun, heightened by the British disaster
at Kut-el-Amara, intensified by the earlier narratives of the Battle of
Jutland, changed to a full cry of optimism in July and August, when,
with Verdun saved, German defeat in France and Austrian disaster in
Galicia and on the Isonzo seemed assured.
No one who lived through 1916 in an allied nation can forget the
rapidly changing emotions, now of confidence, now of despair, until the
final disaster the destruction of betrayed Rumania abolished all
hopes of swift success and ushered in the German peace proposal, which
first bewildered and then angered the Allied world, but even though
rejected, profoundly altered all subsequent discussion and opinion.
Henceforth, until the return of the German offensive in the west in
March, 1918, brought the Allied nations again to the edge of ruin,
despite the rejection of the German proposal, the world talked of peace,
even when the necessity for more war and greater sacrifice was still
perceived on all sides.
And with the close of the campaign of 1916, at least for a time, we
cross the frontier between the clarity of Nineteenth Century ideas and
conceptions and the confused and, to the contemporary world, incom-
prehensible doctrines and formulae which the Russian Revolution
evolved but the radical elements in many other nations in some degree
echoed. Even that statement of democratic war aims and peace terms
which satisfied the convictions and conscience of the Allied nations of
1916 was destined in a few months to assume a colour of reaction
which would move the Russian Bolsheviki to couple the Kaiser and
the President of the United States in the same indictment and American
and German governmental systems in one contemptuous death sentence.
Finally, with the campaign of 1916, we come to the end of the period
in which the military events claim first attention or attract most interest.
Henceforth, for many months, the soldiers fight and the statesmen talk
with equal interest for the world audience, and the audience itself, with
ever-growing frequency, takes up the word itself. Up to the very end
of the year the battle lines of the Allies survive apparently unshaken,
the nations united against Germany seem still bound to each other by
enduring bonds and agreed on a common programme but hardly
had the new year come when the whole Allied situation was profoundly
modified, first by the external consequences of the Russian Revolution
and then by the repercussion of Russian revolutionary doctrines in all
other Allied countries. Between August i, 1914, and January I, 1917,
events move logically and with little departure from the anticipated
course, but between January i, 1917, and New Year, 1918, there is a
gulf hardly to be measured.
In every sense, therefore, the Third Phase of the World War is
one of commanding interest and, viewed in the contemporary light, one
likely to have enduring meaning as marking the frontier between an old
world and a new, between the Europe of the Marne and Verdun and the
world of the Russian Revolution and of America's entrance into, the
conflict.
CHAPTER TWO
VERDUNTHE GERMAN ATTACK
I - THE GRAND STRATEGY
The opening of the new year saw the Germans in a military position
not greatly different from that which they had occupied in the first days
of the war and in certain respects, more satisfactory. In August, 1914,
they had misjudged the Russians, both with respect to the rapidity of
Russian mobilization and to Russian ability to destroy the Austrian
armies. But now, thanks to the victories of the preceding campaign,
there could be no immediate prospect of a Russian offensive, if, indeed,
Russia were able again to make any attack. In 1914 Germany had,
somewhat rashly, counted upon six weeks of immunity from eastern
complications and she had calculated that in this time she could dispose
of France. Now, for at least six months, she could hope for a free hand
in the west.
As for the British, while the slender numbers which Field-Marshal
French was able to concentrate in France for the first struggle had ex-
panded to an army of at least half a million and was rapidly becoming
a menace to the German western flank, in Flanders and Artois it was
still lacking in guns and training to bring off a successful offensive, and
the British failure at Loos was a reassuring circumstance for German
High Command. Any British attack before midsummer would be
bound to end badly, given the contemporary state of the British army,
which was still in the early stages of reconstruction as a volunteer force,
in large part officered by, and composed of, men newly withdrawn from
civil life and necessarily lacking military training.
Once more, as in the days of the Marne campaign, the Germans had
to deal with France, the one enemy inferior in numbers but equal in
all else that made a nation strong in war. As in 1914, the German
problem was to dispose of France before Russia could become danger-
ous, but now the problem was to a degree complicated by the fact that
Great Britain, as well as Russia, was bound, in a time which could be
calculated, to become a real menace and that, once the first British
armies were ready, a well-nigh inexhaustible reservoir of men and mu-
nitions would supply them for future campaigns.
Instead of six weeks, the Germans could reckon on well nigh six
months in which to dispose of France, but failure to accomplish this
would have even more serious consequences than the Marne defeat, for
henceforth France was bound to be supported by British numbers,
guns, and munitions, and any considerable German superiority in any
field of military resources was unlikely ever to return save in the event
of a Russian surrender not yet to be counted upon. But if France could
be put out, then the British would be unable to be a menace to the Ger-
mans on the Continent for the duration of the war.
Germany had created her Mitteleuropa; she had undermined the
military power of Russia; she had, in fact although this was not yet
plainly visible dealt a death blow to the Russian Empire and insured
the Revolution and collapse which were to follow. She had opened the
road to the East and any peace, following that French defeat which was
now to be sought, would confirm her mastery, not alone in the Balkans,
not merely in Constantinople, but in Mesopotamia and in Palestine, on
the road to India and at the gates of Egypt.
Under one more colossal blow the Germans might expect that France
would collapse, or, even if she did not collapse, lose heart and abandon
a struggle in which she had to stand alone, for neither of her greater
allies could help her, and the cost to invaded France was bound to be
tremendous. A great success, even though it were not a complete
triumph a success which should win more territory and at least one of
the great fortresses of France might lead the French to consent to a
separate peace, provided that the terms were not made too onerous and
that the German military achievement had been sufficiently shining.
All German comment, before it went to the discussion of the strategy
of the next campaign, rested upon the declaration that this campaign
VERDUN-THE GERMAN ATTACK
was to be a colossal and ultimate attempt to crush France, to break the
spirit of the French people, a blow "aimed at the heart of France."
To spend half a million casualties in such an undertaking, were it suc-
cessful, would be a sound investment. That it could fail to succeed
never entered the heads of German leaders or the German people, once
more intoxicated by the wine of victory in the east and in the Balkans.
Having the initiative, as Germany unmistakably possessed it; hav-
ing the advantage of men and of guns, since Russia was temporarily out
and Britain still unready; it was obviously necessary to strike, to strike
hard and successfully before either could enter. And this, to a degree,
was the old problem of the Marne campaign of 1914, which had failed
but by only a narrow margin.
II. WHY VERDUN?
The selection of Verdun as the objective of this great German attack
which was aimed primarily at the heart of France, not at any single
military target was made as a result of many conditions, which were
little understood at the time and were long in gaining popular attention.
In the first place, despite the strength of the old entrenched camp of
Verdun; despite the great defences which had been constructed after
1871 and had made Verdun, alike in the military and in the popular
mind, one of the greatest fortresses in the whole world; the actual
achievement of German and Austrian artillery in August and September,
1914, had demonstrated that, for the moment, the gun had mastered the
fort and the great strongholds, yesterday reckoned impregnable, had
become well nigh indefensible.
The French had realized this before the Marne, and Sarrail had
moved the mobile defenders of the fortress of Verdun well out beyond
the fixed forts and into trenches. But the Marne campaign and the
later German operations had combined to make the Verdun position
not merely a salient, but a salient with many peculiar defects, viewed
from the defender's angle. The successful thrust of the Metz garrison
up the valley of the little Rupt de Mad, from Metz in September, 1914,
had enabled the Germans to seize St. Mihiel and thus to cut the
Commercy- Verdun railway, one of the two lines serving the fortress.
In their retreat from the Marne the Germans had halted about
Montfaucon in positions from which their heavy artillery could
interrupt the use of the Paris- Chalons-Verdun railroad, the other
and more important line of com- munication.
Actually, Verdun was isolated from the rest of France, so far as
railway communication was concerned. The little narrow-gauge line,
which wanders up from the valley of the Ornain, near Bar-le-Duc, was
quite inadequate for the task of munitioning a great army, if Verdun
should be made the objective of a major German attack, and the French
Parliament had turned a deaf ear to all the appeals of the army for the
construction of a strategic railway to meet the necessities of the situation.
Verdun was thus dependent almost entirely upon road communication
for its supplies, as it remained dependent until the decisive phase of the
attack was over.
In addition, the position itself had obvious defects which held out to
the enemy the hope of achieving a great victory. While the trenches
held by the French east of the Meuse were along hills admirably adapted
to defence, the force holding them stood with its back to the stream,
which in late winter and early spring invariably overflows its banks,
and the position of an army with its rearward communications menaced
by a river in flood, once its lines were threatened, would be extremely
hazardous.
To reinforce an army in this position, with the bridges over the river
under artillery fire, to munition it sufficiently, would be a difficult task,
and were the troops on the east bank ever defeated, their retreat might
degenerate into a rout and into a real disaster. It was to avoid
such a possibility that the French had withdrawn from the north
bank of the Aisne near Soissons the previous winter, and it was the
accidental destruction of a bridge at Leipzig, during Napoleon's retreat,
after the battle, which made that defeat so costly to the great
Emperor.
Verdun, itself, was without value. Vauban's old citadel was inde-
fensible, although providing a good shellproof cover for certain depart-
ments of the defence. To capture Verdun, except as a detail in the
defeat and rout of the French armies beyond the Meuse, would be of
little permanent meaning, however great the moral effect of the success
upon the publics, both German and Allied. But if, following a gigantic
thrust, the Germans were able to insert a wedge between the French
armies of the right, in Lorraine, and those of the centre, in Champagne,
the war of movement might be resumed, the trench deadlock abolished,
and the Germans might again take the road for Paris.
A successful wedge thus driven in at Verdun would conceivably
compel the French to quit all their positions from Toul to Rheims,
enable the Germans to cut the Paris-Nancy railway, and might com-
pel the abandonment of all of northern and eastern Lorraine and the
line of fortresses and bases from Chalons right down to Belfort. Actual
possession of Verdun meant nothing, all depended upon the circum-
stances attending its capture, all was conditioned upon the success or
failure of the Germans in crushing the French troops beyond the Meuse,
for if these troops were able to make an orderly retreat behind the
Meuse, they would still maintain the whole French front intact; there
would be no break through, only a local gain.
III. VERDUN TOPOGRAPHY
Verdun, then, was a weak point in the French line, the weakest
probably in the whole stretch from the Somme to Switzerland, and this
inevitable weakness had been increased by the neglect of the French to
prepare and maintain their defences beyond the Meuse. This circum-
stance, known to the Germans in advance, almost led to disaster and
made the task of defending Verdun infinitely difficult, and perhaps in
the long run impossible, for Verdun was actually saved at the Somme,
although not until the French defence had been maintained to a point
where the fall of the city would have had only moral value.
Having decided to attack the Verdun sector for reasons which are
beyond criticism, the German General Staff had to consider the point
at which the attack could best be made. It had also to decide the
character of the attack; that is, whether it should be, like the French
effort in Champagne the previous autumn, a thrust on a wide front,
which would have meant an attack upon both sides of the river, or a
drive on a narrow front, which involved an assault upon the eastern
bank. It might have elected to attack upon_ both banks at once, but
this would have called for a concentration of men and guns now beyond
German resource.
To understand the German plans, it is necessary to grasp the salient
details of the Verdun country. The town itself lies in a wide valley
through which flows the Meuse. Seen from any of the surrounding
hills, it rather suggests a lump of sugar in a saucer, and the lump stands
for the mass of the town, rising about the slopes of the citadel and
crowned by the twin spires of the cathedral, the single conspicuous
landmark in the town, while the rim of the saucer represents the sur-
rounding hills occupied by the now useless forts. On the west bank of
the river these hills, which draw back from the river, are divided by a
deep, open furrow, through which comes the Paris-Verdun railway.
In the old days, Verdun, with its rocky citadel guarding the bridge
across the Meuse, was the key to the main road from Metz to the capital,
that is from Germany to France. Taking Verdun, which surrendered
without resistance, the Prussians had penetrated through the Argonne
into the outskirts of the Plain of Chalons only to be defeated in the
Cannonade of Valmy, in the wars of the French Revolution. In 1870,
Verdun had held out manfully and German invasion had been deflected
southward although the town ultimately fell to German artillery.
But since the Germans had forced the northern gates to France and
come south through Belgium, Verdun was no longer an outwork of the
capital. About Noyon the Germans were, in fact, little more than fifty
miles from Paris, while Verdun was one hundred and forty. It is
necessary, therefore, to dismiss all idea that Verdun was a gateway to
anything. It was a position back of the French front, a useful base;
its dismantled forts served to furnish cover for reinforcements and
depots for munitions, but the town itself was no more important than a
score of others similarly placed behind the firing line. The Germans
did not attack the fortress of Verdun, which had become a figure of
speech; they attempted to break the French line before Verdun, the
trench line, as the French had endeavoured to break the German line
in Champagne in the previous September. And like the French, they
came near succeeding.
The real military value of the Verdun position was derived from the
range of hills rising sharply from the east bank of the Meuse and marked
on all maps as the Heights of the Meuse (cotes de Meuse). This range
of hills, some six hundred feet above the river, separated the Meuse from
the peculiar Plain of the Woevre. They were, in fact, a sort of hog's
back between two depressions. Both on the Meuse and on the Woevre
side these hills which, in reality, constitute a plateau upward of six
miles wide on the average break down sharply. Looking out upon
the Woevre, from the crest about Fort de Vaux, in the early morning
light, one could imagine oneself standing upon a cliff overlooking the sea,
so sharp is the fall to the marshy plain, at that hour, hidden in mist.
While this plateau appears fairly regular upon the map, it is cut and
seamed by an endless number of ravines, which descend rapidly, either
to the Meuse or the Woevre Plain, ravines worn in the clayey soil
by little brooks. There is thus an infinite number of hills, not much
above the general level, but separated from each other. Each of these
hills was the prize of a combat and upon the more important stood the
old forts of Verdun. Most of the slopes, too, were covered by little
woodlands, all of which were marked with names upon the military maps
and all of which, before they disappeared under the avalanche of shells,
were the scenes of desperate fighting.
When the German blow fell, the French were holding the crest of
the Heights of the Meuse straight across from the Meuse to the Woevre
Plain, some eight or nine miles north of Verdun and about four miles
north of the outer circle of old forts. To advance upon Verdun the
Germans could only move along the top of this range, that is along the
crest of the plateau, because the Woevre Plain is absolutely impassable
for all transport and even for foot soldiers during the winter and spring
owing to its marshy character. Thus the German advance was in
reality a push south on a front of from six to seven miles, varying in
width as the Heights of the Meuse varied, between the Meuse and the
Woevre. The fighting was for the separate hills, which rose a little
above the general elevation, and the woods and ravines were obstacles
which gave a local character to the entire campaign.
Had the Germans been able to push south as quickly as they had
expected to do, they would have cleared the French off all the plateau
as far south as the city, driven them into the Meuse valley east of that
river and below the hills, and the enforced French retreat across the
river, under direct observation and fire, would have been extremely
difficult. Here was the one possibility of disaster, which disappeared
after the first week. But the main German operation was in this
period always southward along the plateau, never westward up out of
the Woevre, and the chief operative front was never much over seven
miles wide.
West of the Meuse and north of Verdun there is a considerable ridge
running east and west, that is at right angles to the river and the Heights
of the Meuse; this ridge marked the line of the old forts on the left
bank, but north of it are several detached hills, of commanding eleva-
tion, notably Hill 304 and Le Mort Homme. These hills were held
by the French when the battle opened, and after the French line on the
east bank had temporarily collapsed the Germans were still held up
on the east bank by the flank fire directed across the river at the Ger-
mans on the Heights of the Meuse. In the second phase of the battle
the Germans were obliged to halt their operations on the east bank,
while they pushed the French off these elevations, but having done this,
they resumed their advance on the Heights of the Meuse and the fight-
ing on the west bank did not again rise to any magnitude.
| 
