The last four months; how the war was won

Preface

Who won the war? is a question that has been often asked. In the countries of all the great Allied Powers there have been found those who answered it to their own satisfaction as patriots, because it is easy to demonstrate that the war would not have been won, as and when it was won, had any of those countries failed to do what it actually achieved. Most of us, however, are agreed that victory was the result of combination, and I am convinced that that opinion will grow stronger the better the story is known. During the struggle the news we received of the doings of the armies of our Allies was naturally even more limited than was that of the doings of our own men, and it was not easy to allot to each its place in the general scheme.

In this book I have sought to give a picture of Foch's great campaign and to sketch in due proportion the parts which went to make up the whole. I have reduced my descriptions of the battles to the simplest terms, because my object is to explain the broad causes of success and of failure, and there is danger, in entering into details of operations on so vast a scale, of losing sight of the wood for the trees. As no story of a campaign can be complete unless

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Preface

it describes the intentions, aims and feelings of the enemy, at least at the most critical periods, I have collected the best information available on these points from captured documents or from publications in Germany. Fortunately, there has in that country been considerable public discussion between Hindenburg, Ludendorff and their critics as to the conduct of the former during the period with which I am here chiefly concerned, and material has not been lacking.

F. Maurice.

London, July 10, 1919.

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Contents

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CHAPTER I Unity of Command — The British Reverses in the Spring

In Europe 1917 was a year of disappointment for the arms of the Allies; only in Asia, where our earlier ventures had failed, did fortune smile on us. At the beginning of that year Ludendorff and Hindenburg brought off their first coup on the Western Front, when they withdrew the German forces from the awkward position in which they were placed as the result of the first battle of the Somme, and retired behind the Hindenburg line, which then first became famous. By this manoeuvre they checked the plans of the Allies and brought about the failure of General Nivelle's great offensive upon which such high hopes had been set. The result of this failure had been to throw a great strain upon the British Army, which had to obtain for the French the time to recover. In the battle of Arras AUenby had won the greatest success yet gained by

British arms in France, but Haig had been forced to continue that battle to the stage when, the enemy having recovered from his first shock, progress was slow and losses were heavy. In June, Plumer had brilliantly cleared the Messines Ridge and obliterated the Ypres salient, which for nearly three years had been a sore spot on our front; but the French still needed relief, and at the end of July the long, slow struggle which ended on the Passchendaele Ridge had begun. Then, just at the time when the German forces had been so weakened by that battle that there was good prospect of reaping at Cambrai the fruits of the year's campaign, there had come the surprise of Caporetto, the collapse of the Italian Army on the Isonzo, its retreat with very heavy losses to the Piave, and the despatch of large forces from France to the help of our Ally. In this year the Germans committed one of their cardinal blunders in proclaiming unlimited U-boat warfare, which added decisively to the number of their foes ; but the consequences to themselves of that blunder were not immediate, while we at once saw our sea communications endangered and our people threatened with very serious privation if not starvation. In Mesopotamia Maude overcame the Turkish army at Kut and drove their beaten troops through Baghdad, while AUenby ended the year's campaigns with a triumph at Gaza and Beersheba and with the capture of Jerusalem. But history will certainly count the entry of the United States of America into the war and the Russian Revolution as the two outstanding events of 1917, the two events which exercised the most far-reaching influence upon the course of the war.

Early in the year it had become apparent to the military authorities of the Allies that the results of the Russian Revolution would be felt before the military power of the United States could become effective on the Western Front, In short, it was clear that the Germans were going to get a start in the race, just as they got a start in 1914, and that consequently the Allies would be faced with a period of danger in which they would have to stand on the defensive.

At a meeting of the Allied Commanders-in-chief and chiefs of staffs held in Paris in June, 1917, to consider the military policy of the Allies in these circumstances, it was recommended that some machinery should be established to ensure "unity of command." This was by no means the first time that this question had been mooted. In quite early days in the war various tentative proposals had been put forward with the object of ensuring better control and greater unity of action amongst the forces of the Allies, but the political difficulties had always proved insuperable.

Soon after Mr. Lloyd George became Prime Minister of Great Britain, a serious attempt was made to reach a practical solution at a conference between the French and British Governments held at

Calais in February, 1917, and for the great offensive campaign planned for the spring of that year on the Western Front the French Commander-in-chief, General Nivelle, was given supreme direction of the Allied strategy on the Western Front. Unfortunately, the failure of General Nivelle's campaign gave a set-back to "unity of command", and encouraged those who were opposed to it in the belief that it was not desirable to place the army of one nation directly under the command of the general of another. It was not then recognised that there was a very important difference between entrusting the supreme command to the Commander-in-chief of one army, whose mind and thoughts must necessarily be chiefly concerned with his own men and his own front, and placing it in the hands of one man who could stand back and look upon the front as a whole, free from the burden of the special charge of any one part of it. Also there was the question of finding the one man. Nivelle had failed, Joffre was on the shelf, and Foch was still under the shadow of his failure to take the Vimy Ridge in 1915. Thus, in spite of the recommendations of the Allied generals, nothing was done until the disaster to the Italian Army at Caporetto produced a crisis.

Mr. Lloyd George, with his usual energy in an emergency, then proposed that a conference should be held between the British, French, and Italian Governments for the purpose of establishing an Allied organisation for the better control of the war.

That conference was held in November, 1917, at Rapallo, on the Italian frontier, and it was then that the Supreme War Council, commonly known as the Versailles Council, was established. One of the objects of that step was to put the conferences of the Allied statesmen on a surer and more businesslike basis than had up till then existed. Before the Versailles Council was instituted the Allied Governments used to confer at irregular intervals when they had important questions to discuss, but there was no organisation available to prepare beforehand the business for such meetings or to supervise the execution of the decisions which were reached. For these reasons the Versailles Council supplied an obvious need and was a step in the right direction ; but it did not and could not provide the means of exercising effective military command. In the first place the Council had no executive authority; it could only advise. In the second place the military representatives who formed the main part of the permanent organisation of the Council were each of them responsible to their own Governments, and had to refer back all important questions for the instructions of those Governments. Therefore decisions could only be reached slowly and after discussion, whereas in war it is essential that military decisions should be taken quickly and in accordance with one clear policy. The military side of the Versailles organisation was of value in collecting and bringing together information from each of the Allied armies. This enabled it to tender general advice as to the policy to be followed several months ahead, but it was quite incapable of dealing with day-to-day emergencies or of issuing orders to the Allied Commanders-in-chief.

After the Versailles Council was established at Rapallo Mr. Lloyd George came home through Paris, where he made the famous speech in which he commented scathingly on the conduct of the war by the Allies. He asserted that each of the weaker members of the Alliance had been sacrificed in turn, while France and Great Britain were knocking their heads against what he termed the impenetrable barrier in the West. This speech aroused a great deal of criticism. That criticism was mainly of two kinds. There were those who realised that the Versailles Council did not provide for the danger which was facing us, that it did not, in fact, produce effective "unity of command." These critics were not opposed to "unity of command", but were opposed to what they regarded as an inadequate measure. The second group of critics was opposed to the Versailles Council because they were suspicious of any weakening of the control of Parliament over the Army, and they regarded an attempt to place the military forces of the Allies under an international organisation as a blow at the sovereign rights of the people. This group may be regarded as composed of out and out opponents of "unity of command" in any form. A good deal of confusion was caused by lumping these two bodies of critics together and by classing the many soldiers who desired "unity of command", but refused to recognise the Versailles Council as a practical military organisation, with those who were opposed to "unity of command" mainly for political reasons.

While these discussions were going on the Germans were acting, and from the beginning of November onward they were moving troops from the Russian to the French front as fast as their trains could carry them. It was calculated that the Germans would be able to increase their strength on the Western Front between the beginning of November and the end of April by not less than a million and a half of men, and that they would be able to bring over a very large number of aeroplanes and heavy guns which they would no longer require on the Eastern Front. In these circumstances the military authorities of the Allies began pressing their Governments for more effective measures to meet the coming blow, and amongst those measures there was a demand for something better calculated to ensure "unity of command" than the Versailles Council. Keen observers in the United States of America, standing at a greater distance from the war and able to take a calmer and more general view of the whole vast conflict, had long been insisting on the need for really effective unified control, and at the time of the Rapallo conference the United States Government had proposed that the Versailles Council should be vested with executive authority. The French Government was frankly in favour of the appointment of a generalissimo, but, as this office would naturally fall to a French General, there was some reluctance to appear to force it upon an ally and Mr. Lloyd George was not ready to go so far.

This, then, was the direction in which matters were moving at the beginning of 1918, when a conference was held at Versailles to consider the Allied plan of campaign for that year. At that conference it was decided to form an Executive Military Council, composed of a French, a British, an American and an Italian general, with General Foch as chairman, and that this body should be given authority to coordinate the strategy of the Allied Commanders-in-chief, to create a general reserve to be under its control, and to employ that reserve in accordance with the needs of the situation.

The institution of this body produced another crisis, for the British Chief of the Imperial General Staff, Sir William Robertson, objected that no committee could exercise effective command, and he asked to be permitted to resign rather than to work with it. The British Government offered him the alternative of becoming the British representative on the Executive Council or of remaining as Chief of the Staff and working with the Executive Council. Sir William Robertson replied that, as he did not believe there could be an efficient military organisation, he could not work with it in either capacity, and his resignation was accordingly accepted.

These various events all produced the impression that British soldiers were in general opposed to "unity of command." In fact, however, many of them had long been working hard to find some solution of the difficulties which stood in the way of the realisation of what they regarded as a necessary measure. The majority of them were, however, certainly opposed to what they considered to be an ineffective compromise. The history of war teaches that committees have never been able to command, that they lead invariably to delay and compromise, and these things are fatal in war. The Austrian Aulic Council and the Dutch Field Deputies of the War of the Spanish Succession have been deservedly held up to ridicule by all history, and most soldiers were whole-heartedly opposed to proposals which appeared to savour of the repetition of such ill-advised measures. However, the length of the war, its enormous cost in life and treasure, the many failures of the Allied generals, and the fact that the hopes which they had expressed had been very rarely fulfilled, all tended to confirm the statesmen in their view that what was needed was more effective political control. A single Commander-in-chief would naturally possess a position of far greater authority even in his own country than would a committee, while the influence of a foreign Government upon the Commander-in-chief who commanded their troops would be very limited indeed. When to those who held these views was added the influence of those who looked with suspicion upon "unity of command" as constitutionally an unsound measure there were very strong forces arrayed on behalf of the compromise. So as the crisis approached, the supreme direction of the military forces of the Allied and Associated Powers in the Western theatres of war was in the hands of a polyglot committee, each member of which was responsible to a separate Government, and immediately this committee set to work its clumsy machinery began to creak.

Then suddenly the blow came. On March 21 forty German divisions were flung against the fourteen divisions of the British Fifth Army, which was driven back. By March 25 there appeared to be great danger that the Germans would succeed in capturing Amiens and in separating the British from the French army. By that time almost the whole of the British reserves had been drawn into the fight, and Sir Douglas Haig did not feel that he was strong enough to ensure the safety of both Amiens and of the Channel ports, while General Petain, was doubtful whether he could send Sir Douglas Haig sufficient troops to make Amiens safe and at the same time secure his own front and cover Paris.

It was a grim crisis, probably the most serious of all the many crises with which the Allies had been faced in the course of the war. It happened that at this time Lord Milner, then Secretary of State for war, and General Sir Henry Wilson, the new Chief of the Imperial General Staff, were in France, having gone there to report to the British Government and to concert with the French Government in such measures as seemed best in the emergency. Sir Douglas Haig and his generals were naturally fully occupied with the military situation, and it was arranged for their convenience that a conference should be held at the little town of DouUens upon March 26. That conference was attended by M. Poincare, the President of the French Republic, M. Clemenceau, the Prime Minister of France, M. Loucheur, the French Minister of Munitions, who represented the French Government, Lord Milner, who represented the British Government, Sir Douglas Haig and the four Army Commanders of the British army. Sir Henry Wilson, General Petain, and General Foch.

When he was presenting the b^ton of Marshal of France to General Foch, M. Poincare told us that a conversation held in the garden of the house at DouUens in which the conference was held had convinced him that the baton was coming to Foch. The Executive Council of generals had, as had been anticipated, proved to be too slow and cumbrous to deal with a real emergency, and already at this early stage it was in a state of suspended animation and had to be replaced promptly by something more adequate. In fact, the situation was so serious that immediate action had to be taken. There was no time to refer back to the Allied Governments for authority and approval, and in that day of stress common sense prevailed. Political difficulties vanished, and General Foch was placed in supreme control of the Allied armies on the Western Front.

Even then our Government was a little frightened of calling a spade a spade, and was at pains to explain that Foch had not been appointed Generalissimo ; but both the soldiers and the public hailed the DouUens decision with such enthusiasm and with such complete disregard of the niceties of official terminology, that after some further discussion and some skilful and tactful handling of the position by M. Clemenceau, Foch, on April 14, was nominated Commander-in-chief of the Allied armies in France and Belgium.

It has often been asked who was mainly responsible for the appointment of General Foch. There is no question but that Mr. Lloyd George worked for "unity of command." The difficulty with him was that he did not understand fully the essential conditions of military command, and that for the sake of political considerations he was prepared to be content with something which fell short of military necessity. It is also certainly the case that the Government of the United States desired to achieve "unity of command", and that their influence was a most potent factor in bringing about the result which was eventually achieved. The conference at DouUens had been assembled in such haste that there was no time to obtain the presence of General Pershing, who was down in the south at Chaumont. Immediately General Pershing heard of the decision of the conference he wrote to General Foch his well-known letter of March 28 offering the new Generalissimo every man he had available. There never was any doubt but that the decision would be cordially welcomed and approved both by the statesmen and the generals of the United States, though in point of fact neither were represented when the decision was reached. This decision was probably mainly due to the influence at the conference of March 26 of M. Clemenceau, who had been quietly preparing the way for the appointment of a generalissimo. Lord Milner and Sir Douglas Haig.

There were many rumours at the time that Sir Douglas Haig and the British generals looked askance at the appointment of General Foch, but they were absolutely devoid of any foundation in fact. General Foch's appointment was welcomed immediately by both Sir Douglas Haig and by his Army Commanders, and there has been no better example of cooperation in war than that between Sir Douglas Haig and Marshal Foch.

But, when all is said and done, the man who brought about "unity of command" was Ludendorff. It was the emergency created by his great drive upon either side of the Somme which produced clear thinking and prompt decisions. Bos well tells of

Doctor Johnson that when some unusually sagacious remark made by a criminal under sentence of death was reported to the Doctor he said : "Depend upon it, sir, that a man concentrates his mind marvellously when he is condemned to death." And so it was at DouUens on March 26. Ludendorff had dealt a deadly blow to the Allies, and under the menace of that blow the gentlemen assembled in the little town of Doullens concentrated their minds marvellously and took what was probably the most momentous decision made during the course of the great war, while those who had been hesitating on the bank found, when the plunge was taken, that the waters were not so cold as they had looked.

I have spoken of Ludendorff as the controlling mind at German Headquarters. In the middle of the campaign of 1916 Falkenhayn, whose plans for the capture of Verdun had failed ignominiously, was removed from his position as Chief of the Great General Staff, and Hindenburg, with Ludendorff as his first assistant, was brought over from the Russian front to succeed him at Great Headquarters. The pair had not been there very long before it became clear that Hindenburg was little more than a figurehead and Ludendorff was de facto chief of the German war organisation. Hindenburg had gained the deep gratitude of the Berliners by his great victory of Tannenberg, won at a time when they were trembling in their shoes at the Russian invasion of East Prussia. We built high hopes upon the

Russian "steam roller", and during the first months of the war the German public regarded it as being as formidable as we did. They were never easy in their minds until the Russians were driven back, and when this result was achieved they contrasted Hindenburg's performances — with armies composed at first largely of second-rate troops, and the manner in which he restored the military efficiency of their feeble Austrian ally — with the failure of their generals in the West, who, though they had the pick of the German army at their disposal, had not achieved victory.

Hindenburg's square head, his burly figure, his strong character, his contempt of the arts of peace, of which many stories were in circulation, made him an admirable embodiment of Prussian militarism, a living exponent of the gospel of might is right which the German people had adopted with enthusiasm. He provided the Kaiser with just the personality needed at Great Headquarters to keep the war fever in the Fatherland at boiling point. Ludendorff, who did his work at the office desk and was first and foremost a military thinker, could never make the same appeal to the popular imagination as did his chief. The pair, therefore, made an excellent combination. The Germans have always been good at such combinations, at providing the strong personality or the royal personage with just the right brain. The classic example is that of Bliicher and Gneisenau in the closing years of the Napo-

Iconic wars. Bliicher was then the personality, Gneiscnau the brain. Both of them came to England for the fetes which followed the peace of 1815, and it is told of Bliicher that he then made a bet in a London drawing-room that he was the only man in the room who could kiss his own head. He won his wager by walking up to Gneisenau and giving him a smacking kiss on both cheeks. I doubt if Hindenburg were ever so frank as Bliicher, but the relations between him and Ludendorff were very much those of their predecessors of one hundred years before.

By placing the supreme control of the Allied armies in the West in the hands of Foch, one of the essential preparations to meet the German menace was completed just in time to prevent disaster, but it was already too late to take those others which might have saved us from such shocks as caused us to tremble for our safety. At the end of 1917 the man power of France, in the fourth year of the fierce struggle in which she had, until the summer of 1916, borne the brunt of the fighting, was approaching exhaustion, and the French Government was no longer able to keep up its forces on the Western Front at full strength. The British army was wearied by the campaign in Flanders, and was grievously disappointed that the brilliant promise of the tank attack at Cambrai in November had ended in one more check. Both we and our French Allies had had to weaken materially our forces on the Western

Front in order to bring help to our friends in the Southern theatre of war. The collapse of Russia was definite and complete, and German divisions were streaming from the Eastern to the Western Front. It had become a certainty that early in 1918 we should be confronted in France and Flanders by almost the full military power of Germany. The one bright spot in the picture was the arrival of the first American divisions in France, but there was little prospect that America would be able to solve the vast problem of creating armies and transporting them three thousand miles across the Atlantic in time to make her strength felt in France before the late summer. Prudence therefore demanded that we British should do everything that was possible to increase our forces there.

AUenby's victory at Gaza and Beersheba and his brilliant pursuit ending in the capture of Jerusalem had disorganised the Turkish army, preparing near Aleppo under German leadership for the recapture of Baghdad, and had made our position in Asia secure. Two British divisions had been moved from Salonika and a third, composed largely of Territorial battalions brought from India, had been created in Egypt to reinforce Allenby for the campaign in which he broke through the Turkish lines on the southern frontier of Palestine. His artillery and aircraft had also been increased, and later a veteran Indian division had been moved from Mesopotamia to Egypt, while the Indian cavalry regiments which had been serving in France were also sent there. Allenby's force was, therefore, very considerably stronger than that which had for a long time protected Egypt by covering the routes across the Sinai desert. North of Jerusalem, in the hills of Judaea, it was much better placed than it had been opposite Gaza. On one flank lay the Mediterranean, on the other the Dead Sea, while east of the Dead Sea spread the desert, of which our Arab friends were daily gaining more effective control. In March, 1918, Allenby had under his command an army of three moiuited divisions, one mounted brigade, and eight infantry divisions of an approximate strength of 170,000 men, of whom about 150,000 were white troops and 20,000 native troops. In India Sir Charles Monro's expansion of the Indian army was well developed and a steady stream of Indian troops for service in Palestine was assured. We should, therefore, have incurred no risk whatever in the East by sending Haig at the beginning of 1918 a considerable reinforcement of white troops from Palestine. Not a man, however, was moved from the East to reinforce Haig until after the German blow had fallen and our armies had suffered the most serious reverse which befell us during the whole course of the war.

In January, 1918, the fighting strength of our army in France had been much diminished as a result of the prolonged fighting which had begun at the end of July, 1917, in the attack on the Flanders ridges, and had not ended till the German counter-attack at Cambrai had been checked, well on in November. Hardly a battalion, a battery, or a squadron had its full complement of men. This had been expected, and indeed it was a normal experience of the war on the Western Front, for while great battles were in progress the losses exceeded the flow of drafts from home. The period during which hard fighting took place on the British front normally lasted from March to November and consequently at the end of the year the fighting strength of the army was usually at its lowest. During the winter and early spring the conditions of weather and of ground put a stop to operations on a grand scale, with the result that the losses were comparatively small ; this then was the time to bring the army up to strength in preparation for the campaign which might be expected in the spring. It was necessary that the preparations for filling the gaps in the ranks should be made a long time ahead, for it took from four to five months to train a recruit to take his place in the ranks in France, and the process of calling him up often took as long as from two to three months from the time he received his first notice. Therefore, arrangements for filling up the ranks during the early months of the year should have been well in hand by the previous summer.

In December, 1916, the ranks of the fighting troops had been heavily depleted by the long and bitter struggles of the Somme and the Ancre, but by

April, 1917, on the eve of the battle of Arras, the ranks were again full, and Haig had been provided with considerable additional reinforcements ; in fact at that time the fighting strength of our army was almost at the highest point it ever reached. We then still had divisions at home which could be sent out to reinforce the army in France, and were able to bring back troops from Egypt because by advancing into the Sinai desert and gaining control of the wells, which provided the only water available for a force advancing to attack Egypt, we could defend that country much more economically than if we held the long line of the Suez Canal. In 1918 we had in England no divisions which could be sent to Haig, and it was therefore the more necessary, in view of the danger which threatened us and of the fact that five divisions had been sent from our army in France to Italy, to bring back to France every man who could be spared from the more distant theatres of war, and to make our ranks up to their full strength. Yet none of these measures was taken. In March, 1918, Sir Douglas Haig's fighting strength was weaker by over 42,000 men than it had been on January 1, 1917 ; there had been some increase in artillery, a considerable increase in aircraft, tanks and machine-guns, and a very large increase in labour formations both British and coloured, but unarmed labourers and Chinese coolies were not the kind of reinforcements Sir Douglas Haig needed to fight Germans, though they were invaluable to him for other purposes. His infantry — -the essential arm, whether for offense or defense — was weaker by more than 100,000 men than it had been at the beginning of 1917. A comparison of the strengths on the eve of the battle of March, 1918, with those in January, 1917, is, however, misleading, for it is a comparison of a period when the ranks ought to have been full with a period when they were naturally empty; the only fair comparison is between the position in March, 1918, and in March, 1917. On the latter date the rifle and sabre strength of the army in France, that is, the number of men available for duty in the trenches, was greater by 180,000 men than it was at the former.