French Bayonet Charge on the Western Front

One of the enduring images of the First World War is that of soldiers crouched in a trench or crossing a virtual moonscape of no mans land in the attack.  The war was seemingly locked in stalemate and both sides were doomed to attempting costly frontal attacks in futile attempts to break through the opposing trench lines.  Many historians have claimed that the stalemate on the Western Front in World War I was due to a misreading of Clausewitz during the period between the Franco-Prussian War and the start of hostilities.  The true cause of the stalemate was a faulty appreciation for the advances in military technology and how they would shape operations on the battlefield.  All the combatants drew inappropriate lessons from the Franco-Prussian and subsequent wars.

The traditional view of the war is that in the opening months of the war all the combatants were fixated on the frontal attack and the quest for decisive battle.  The most prevalent interpretation of Clausewitz at the turn of the century held that battle seeking strategy and the destruction of the enemy army are the only means of success in war.  This battle seeking strategy was taken to mean that the offensive was the strongest form in warfare despite the fact that Clausewitz makes clear in “On War” that the defensive is inherently stronger than the offense.  The point that Clausewitz makes is not that the offense is stronger but that the only way to achieve decision is through offensive action.  Clausewitz explains that the defense while stronger than the offense, is passive and thus the defender cannot compel his enemy to terms.[1]

Clausewitz was supposedly interpreted in the most simplistic manner possible; he seemingly advocated the frontal attack with his insistence that destruction of the enemy army was the correct goal of war.  The examples of the combats of the German Wars of Unification have been used to prove this point.  However, like many prewar theorists, the planners of World War I missed the lessons of these wars.  If the theorists and generals of Europe had made a more detailed study of not just the Wars of Unification but also the more recent Russo-Japanese and Boer Wars they might have deduced the true causes of German and British success and Russian failure in the decades prior to the First World War.

During the German Wars of Unification in the mid-nineteenth century, the Prussian army proved itself unstoppable against the Austrian and then French armies these victories were widely attributed to the Prussian technology, particularly the use of magazine rifles.  In the Prussian battle of Königgrätz in 1866, the Austrians were defeated through superior maneuver and not technology despite the Austrian army’s lack of a breech-loading rifle.

The Russian defeat by Japan in 1905 should have highlighted the high casualties that could be inflicted by artillery on unprotected infantry in the attack.  Even more telling should have been the British difficulty in putting down the Boer rebellion in South Africa in 1898-1899.  The high casualties inflicted by the Boer rifleman should have raised eyebrows all over Europe as a demonstration of the defensive power and lethal range of modern rifles in concert with machine guns.

If only a quick examination of these examples is used along with a reading of “On War” then this it is apparently true that the offensive is the only way to combat modern infantry weapons.  However, Clausewitz and his work are not this simple, as an in depth reading of this classic will show, and furthermore the interpretation of Clausewitz by the German general staff had more in common with the modern view than many historians are willing to admit.  An in-depth study of the German Schlieffen Plan shows that the aim of the German army was to entrap and annihilate the French army in the open field.  The plan was designed to avoid a costly and lengthy siege such as had happened at Paris in the winter of 1870-71.  What the plan failed to consider was the logistics of maintaining such a massive force in the open field considering the state of technology at the time.

While the focus of the Schlieffen Plan was indeed the French army, it was doomed to failure not because of the strategy employed but because it was too bold, and ignored the battlefield changes of modern warfare.  The Schlieffen plan ignored the reality that once troops left the railhead and its immediate environs they were dependent on horse drawn wagons for logistical support and armies could move no faster than marching infantry, the same speed as the Romans 2,000 years ago.  Lastly, the tactical doctrines of all western armies in large part ignored the tactical changes wrought on the battlefield by the potential firepower of machine guns, repeating rifles, and artillery.

The strategy and tactics used during the opening months of World War I were planned according to strict Clausewitzean principles as interpreted at the time.  The German Schlieffen plan of 1906 and the French Plan XVII both called for offensives at the opening of hostilities as soon as their respective armies were mobilized.  The German army’s plan, unlike that of the French, was at least was aimed at the destruction of the enemy army.

The plan executed in 1914 was a gross modification of the plan developed by General Alfred von Schlieffen (1833-1912) Chief of the German General Staff from 1891 to 1906; the final version was presented in a memorandum in 1905.  Schlieffen’s plan called for ten percent of the German Army’s strength to hold East Prussia while ninety percent defeated France in a six-week campaign whereupon troops would be transferred east to defeat Russia.  In the west, Schlieffen envisioned a massive flanking attack through neutral Holland and Belgium culminating in the destruction of the French army by the forty-second day of mobilization.[2]

The modifications made prior to the war by Schlieffen’s successor Helmuth von Moltke the Younger (1852-1916) strengthened the forces in the east at the expense of the offensive in the west.  Moltke felt that the forces in East Prussia would not be strong enough to ensure the territorial integrity of the province.  East Prussia was the historical homeland of the Prussian officer corps and Moltke felt it was imperative to ensure that the province could be properly defended.  Moltke also changed the plan such that it required only the violation of Belgian neutrality, rather than both Belgium and Holland as the original plan called for.  This change in the plan forced two armies onto roads that at most could only support one; a fact acknowledged by Schlieffen in 1905.  Except for changes in strength and the elimination of the violation of Dutch neutrality Moltke largely left Schlieffen’s plan for the war against France unchanged, he would still attempt the great encirclement of the French army with a greatly weakened right wing.

The French war plan in effect at the outbreak of hostilities was known as Plan XVII and called for an offensive into Alsace-Lorraine as soon as the army completed mobilization.[3] The French placed great reliance on the offense, thinking that the moral effect of a resolute attack would more than overmatch the strength of modern defensive firepower.  They had drawn these conclusions based on their experiences in the Franco-Prussian War of 1870, when the French army had consistently been beaten by the attacking Germans.

What the French theorists had failed to realize was the German Army had to a large extent relied on the tactical defense in 1870.  Casualty statistics alone show the utility of the tactical defense, German casualties for the duration of the war were 44,000 dead of all causes while the French armies were three times as high at 150,000 dead of all causes.[4]

Tactically the French and German armies had developed little in the previous forty years.  The French were convinced of the power of the offensive thinking that the spirit and dash of their infantry would carry the battle for them.  They attributed their loss in 1870 to the lack of offensive spirit in the army of Napoleon III.  This impetus for offensive action came from the top, General Joseph Joffre, the French commander in 1914 had explicitly stated in plan XVII that “whatever the circumstances, the intention of the commander in chief is to advance with all forces united to the attack on the German armies.”[5] The French infantry tactics were simple; they would advance to within one hundred yards of the enemy and then charge screaming with the bayonet.[6]

French military theorists thought their defeat in 1870 sprang from a lack of zeal in the attack and that in the future attacks pressed home regardless of cost would guarantee success.  They therefore concentrated on imbuing what they called the “offensive spirit” into their army.  The French developed this “cult of the offensive” to such a degree that they disdained the defensive as being unmanly and concentrated almost all their attention on developing the offensive spirit.  The primacy of the offensive and lack of training in defensive would cost the French army upwards of half a million casualties by November of 1914 as the French infantry threw themselves on German machine guns in futile attacks seeking to stem the German tide and eject the invaders from French soil.[7]

As has been mentioned previously the German army relied on the tactical defense, which allowed them to make better use of their rifles.  Generally, the German infantry would advance in the attack until they came under fire, whereupon they would take up a defensive posture before rushing forward by sections or squads.  This technique, which was developed during the Wars of Unification, allowed them to maintain continuous fire on the enemy even while advancing.  These tactics should not be confused with modern infantry tactics, the German Army still advanced on line along a broad front, therefore if one part of the line was held up by enemy fire, so was the entire firing line.  This rudimentary method of fire and movement had been doctrine as early as the 1869 Instructions for Large-Unit Commanders of the Prussian Army.[8] In his writings, Moltke mentions the effects that modern weapons would have on future battlefields and that doctrine would have to adapt to these changes, but he specifically mentions only strategic assets such as railroads and the telegraph.

When the armies of Western Europe took the field in August 1914, armed with modern weapons they still expected to be able to fight largely as they had fought since the time of the Napoleonic wars.  What the military planners of the late nineteenth and early twentieth century had not fully thought out were the battlefield implications of the emerging technologies.  These technologies were not simply the obvious ones of machine guns and rifles, but also railroads, telegraph, and the apparatus of the modern state.  All these would have effects that would be felt at the point of contact between armies.

A particular British failure was in the use of artillery was their slowness to adopt the techniques of indirect fire.  Until the Battle of the Somme in 1916, the British continued to employ their artillery primarily in a direct fire role.  As Niall Ferguson has pointed out, this seriously hampered the effectiveness of artillery in counter battery fire.[9] All armies, not just the British, failed to appreciate that artillery was best used in combination with infantry rather than as a decisive arm in itself.

The Germans, British, and French all failed to account for the changes in military technology in the intervening four decades since the last major European war when devising the doctrine to be used in future wars.  They went to war with tactics unsuited to the weaponry and other technology used to conduct the war itself.  Several inventions and improvements in weapons had made the battlefield a much more dangerous place, namely the introduction of the machine gun coupled with improvements in artillery employment.

Technology off of the battlefield indirectly affected the opening months of war as well.  These most important of these non-battlefield technologies were railroads and telegraph; neither was a new invention having been perfected since the mid eighteenth century.  The railroad and telegraph were both used extensively in the American Civil War and the German Wars of Unification, so that one would think the limitations they imposed on the fighting forces would be well understood.

The French had employed a primitive machine gun called the mitrailleuse in 1870, but the true machine gun was not invented until 1889, when Hiram Maxim demonstrated it to the British Army.[10] The Maxim gun could fire more than 500 rounds per minute and greatly increased the defensive firepower of the infantry.  One machine gun could put out almost as much fire as an entire platoon of infantry, making it a formidable force multiplier.  Machine guns were most effective in the defense because of their weight; the Belgian army even used carts pulled by dogs to move them around the battlefield.[11]

Artillery also greatly improved in capabilities and effectiveness between 1870 and 1914.  In 1870, field artillery was a direct fire weapon; some advances had been made such as rifling and breech loading cannon, but the real advance came with the science of ballistics.  In the period between the Franco-Prussian war and the outbreak of World War I, the invention of pneumatic recoil devices greatly diminished the travel distance of artillery pieces after they fired.  This also made it possible for guns to fire at higher angles increasing their range and true howitzers appeared.  Improved metallurgy made the guns more reliable at the same time.

With developments in the science of ballistics, it became possible for artillery to fire over the horizon accurately.  Detailed tables were devised to allow artillery to fire indirectly with great accuracy and to correct the fall of shot with adjustments from observers at the front.  This provided more safety for the gun crews themselves who were no longer exposed to the direct fire of the enemy.  The weak link in this system was communication with the observers who depended on wire networks to communicate with the firing batteries.  Wireless had been invented but the available sets were too large and bulky for first line use in battle.

Rifle fire played a role in inflicting casualties as well.  All the combatants began the war with magazine fed rifles.  A typical rifles employed during the war was a bolt-action rifle that was accurate to a range of between 500 to 600 yards.  They usually had a five to ten round magazine that was reloaded from a clip rather than one round at a time.  No longer were large caliber bullets used i9n infantry weapons, instead a lighter cartridge between 6.5mm to 8mm was employed, which allowed soldiers to carry more ammunition.[12]

When the BEF and the Germans met for the first time at the Battle of Mons, the Germans were convinced the Brits were extremely well equipped with machine guns the firing was so fast.  In fact, the Germans had met the only long service regular army in Europe, and one that prided itself on marksmanship.  The pre-war British standard was fifteen aimed shots per minute and most British infantrymen met or exceeded this standard, as there were rewards given to expert marksman in the British army.[13]

The German Army was the most prepared for modern combat, this was due more than anything else to the Elder Moltke, who had cautioned in his writings about the advance of technology and its possible applications in war.[14] The German Army began the war with 4,500 machine guns, 6,000 light cannon, and 3,500 medium and heavy howitzers.  The French army by contrast began the war with only 2,500 machine guns, 3,500 light cannon, and 300 medium and heavy howitzers.[15] The British Expeditionary Force (BEF) was even more woefully equipped than the French or Germans; its six divisions were equipped with only twenty-four heavy howitzers and less than 200 machine guns for the entire force.[16]

The German army better recognized the worth of machineguns than did the French or British as seen by the numbers they deployed at the onset of hostilities.  This recognition of the machine guns utility can best be attributed to their reliance on the tactical defensive.  The biggest failure of the German army as has been previously stated was their misunderstanding of logistics.  They were too fixated on engaging and destroying the enemy force.  In an age when the horse was still the main means of transport away from the railhead, not enough attention was paid to the difficulties of resupplying an invading force or the strain continuous advancing would place on the infantry.

The reasons the opening campaign of World War I would end in the inconclusive stalemate of trench warfare lie in the opposing armies’ failure to fully grasp the nature of the technologies they employed.  A common theme among all armies was a lack of realistic planning once the troops left the railheads.  The German plan is most notable for its flight of fancy in thinking that soldiers could march twenty to thirty miles per day and still fight, it is amazing that they managed to go so far before exhaustion set in.

Many historians overlook or gloss over the marching feats of the armies in August and September 1914 Keegan makes brief mention of this, but few people can really appreciate the difficulty of marching thirty miles and fighting a pitched battle only to do it again the next day and to do this almost daily for six weeks.  It is far more convenient to study the sweep of armies on a map, a trap the planners of the war fell into and the soldiers paid the cost in blood.  Both French and German war plans were unrealistic and the British further had no more concrete plan than help the French.

All the combatants embraced the new technologies of war, the Germans more than anyone else, what they did not fully understand was their battlefield effects.  No one accurately foresaw the damage that massed artillery or machine guns would inflict on infantry attacking in the open.  The signs of these effects were to be seen in British and Russian experiences in the Boer and Russo-Japanese wars, but they would go unlearnt.

The combatants all applied the lessons of Clausewitz as they perceived them and it is possible, even probable that if one or more of the modern technological developments had been absent that the German army would indeed have prevailed in 1914 as in 1870 or the French offensive in Alsace-Lorraine may have succeeded.  The fact is that one was not missing and the methods of defeating or nullifying these tools had not bee thought through, therefore the horrendous casualties of the opening months of the war as the armies sought in vain to reconcile excellent defensive weapons with a war of movement.  These problems brought about stalemate and a stalemate that it would take four years and national exhaustion to break.

Many historians have claimed that the stalemate on the Western Front in World War I was due to a misreading of Clausewitz during the period between the Franco-Prussian War and the start of hostilities.  The true cause of the stalemate was a faulty appreciation for the advances in military technology and how they would shape operations on the battlefield.  All the combatants drew inappropriate lessons from the Franco-Prussian and subsequent wars.