Marne (river)

Transcription

The first five weeks of the war have seen great offensives by Germany, Russia, and Austria-Hungary, larger than any military operations in history. Hundred s of thousands of men have died, but today all of those offensives come to an end. I’m Indy Neidell; welcome to the Great War. At the beginning of the week, the French and the British were re-grouping around Paris as the Germans advanced. The Germans were also advancing in the east, hoping to push the Russians back to Russia,while further south the it was the Russians advancing to push the Austrians back toward their empire. Two weeks ago, a Russian army had been absolutely destroyed at the Battle of Tannenberg, and though the Germans had been trying to press their advantage, there hadn’t been a major battle since then. That changed this week. On the morning of September 9th, the German army, bolstered by troop arrivals from the front in France, attacked the Russians and once again simply crushed them at the Masurian Lakes, and the Russian army only escaped complete and total destruction by the remarkable speed of its retreat from the lakes, moving 40 kilometers a day to leave the Germans far behind. These two battles, especially Tannenberg, were truly historical victories, and they pushed all Russian troops off of German soil. They also destroyed Russian numerical superiority over the Germans for the time being. Russia would still have a strong presence just across the border, but the Germans were no longer worried about being steamrolled by the endless Russians army. Here’s a little anecdote from the retreat- some Russian soldiers were trying to take a statue of Bismarck from a town in East Prussia to bring home, but their commander told them not to take it because he didn’t want there to be an international incident. Now, the Russian people as a whole might have been totally demoralized by the catastrophic defeats they had suffered against Germany, had they not beaten Austria-Hungary nearly as badly in the Battle of Galicia, which also ended September 11th. This was the group name for a series of battles over several weeks during Austria’s offensive into Russian territory. These battles ended with Russia taking 130,000 prisoners and inflicting 324,000 Austrian casualties. Yes, you heard that right. See, the Austrian army under Chief of Staff Conrad von Hotzendorf had attacked with a much smaller force than the Russians had, and the failure was actually due more to Austrian incompetence than Russian brilliance. The Austrian army was forced to retreat 160 kilometers toward the Carpathian Mountains. Conrad’s failure and humiliation were now total, and remember, there were perhaps only one or two people on earth who bear more responsibility for the beginning of World War One and all the carnage that was to follow than Conrad von Hotzendorf. Another side note here: At one point a bit down the road, Conrad confessed to his staff that if Archduke Franz Ferdinand was still alive he would take the man responsible for such military disaster- Conrad himself- out and have him shot. It was also this week that also saw the pact of London, when France, Britain, and Russia agreed that none of them would make a separate peace with Germany or Austria-Hungary. They would fight to the end. In the Western Front it seemed like it might well be the end. The Germans had advanced toward Paris for two weeks, and the final battle of that offensive was approaching. As the Germans neared Paris, though, the French were finally gaining a bit of an advantage. In spite of their massive losses the past three weeks, they had a newly recruited and formed army, while the exhausted Germans had been advancing for 33 straight days. Also, the Germans had followed the retreating British not to Paris, but just to the northeast, and south of the river Marne, over-extending their supply lines and losing the chance to take Paris, which was the major goal of their battle plan, The Schlieffen Plan. So it was south of the Marne that the British and French prepared to do battle. The Battle of the Marne began on September 5th, 1914; a battle that the French and the British could absolutely not afford to lose. Over two million troops were engaged in the battle. The French used the railways to constantly take up new positions and outmaneuver the Germans. This might not have been such a big problem if the Germans had better communications, but von Moltke, the German army Chief of Staff, was at Koblenz, over 500 km away, and he practiced a system of de-centralization where his generals often just did what they saw best. Moltke was also very high-strung, and by this point he was talking to himself and writing letters to his wife where he would freak out about the amount of blood spilled in the war and the feeling he must personally answer for it. It’s pretty amazing when you realize that the Germans got this far when their generals often had no idea what the others were doing. During the entire battle of the Marne, Moltke and the German High Command issued no orders at all, and the last two days didn’t even receive any. The Germans had two armies here, and the western one under General von Bulow had been forced to make a new north-south line facing Paris to defend against French advances, right? Von Bulow moved troops from his left to his right to counter attack, but this counter attack opened up a gap between von Bulow and the eastern army under von Kluck, and standing before that gap was the British Expeditionary Force, who cautiously advanced. Von Bulow’s army was now cut off from von Kluck’s with communications almost non-existent. This is where the taxi legends come in. As the French surged and the Germans reinforced, the French General Joseph Gallieni, did something that he quoted as “at least out of the ordinary”, and indeed it was something nobody had ever done before. Gallieni requisitioned all the Paris taxicabs to shuttle reserves 50 kilometers from the city to the front. The automobile was still in its infancy, but this was over 400 cars, a huge amount for the time, and most of the soldiers had never had the luxury of riding in an automobile.Two things though- the actual impact of this on the battle was quite modest, and the taxi drivers were paid; their meters were running the whole time. On September 8th, the battle, and you could argue, the whole war, and even the whole 20th century hung in balance. Attack and counterattack, all across the line, and it was simply a question of who would crack first. It was a night attack on the 8th, when the French captured Marchai-en-Brie that really turned the tide. When von Bulow fought back, the gap between his army and von Kluck’s grew to nearly 30 km, he was outnumbered, the British were now well into the gap, and in the wee hours, von Bulow gave the order to retreat. At 9:02 AM on September 9th, 1914, the German forces began to withdraw. On September 9th, the Germans were driven back across the Marne and on the 13th across the Aisne, a total retreat of 100 kilometers. It was there on a ridge that the German troops dug in, and we see now one of the unsung military advances of the war, the spade, in action. The Germans used it; the French did not, so the Germans could dig in: not so the French. There’s no telling how many thousands of Frenchmen were lost to the German advance because of such a simple tool. A man in a hole is impossible for artillery to spot, and can’t be shot by a rifle, and hand grenades would require close contact. For many Frenchmen, though, using such a defense was a dishonorable means of conducting a battle. They would soon learn that honor had no a place in modern warfare. That modern warfare had now cost close to one million lives in only five weeks, and during the first few months of the war, an average of over 15,000 lives were lost every day. On September 14th, a shattered Moltke was removed from the German command. He had in the end found the casualties unbearable, and looking at the few orders he issued the last two weeks of his command, you can see him slowly falling to pieces, but it’s hard to have sympathy for him; no man on earth, not even Conrad, had done more to bring about the war than Moltke, but he proved incapable of commanding his nation’s armies. Three great offensives were over this week, and much of the pattern was set for the rest of the war. I’m going to end today’s episode with a quote from the historian Martin Gilbert to tell you how “Denied their triumphal entry into Paris, the German army would go on fighting on the Western Front for another four years, as hopeful of victory in August 1918 as they had been in August 1914. But the hopes of a month earlier of being able to defeat France in a knockout blow and then turn all their military strength against Russia had been dashed. The war of rapid victories had become a strategy of the past, and a dream for the future. Germany was going to have to fight simultaneously, and with constant danger, in both east and west. France was going to have to fight on French soil. Russia was going to have to regain land in the west and Austria to regain land in the east. Christmas was still three and a half months away, but every warring state was going to have to search for new strategies, and even new allies.” If you have any questions about this week in the Great War or if you want to submit some of your ideas, just leave them in the comments and we will get back to you. An important update for our mobile viewers: You can find all our useful links right below this video.