For Davidson, the Germans would bring forward reserves to contain their advance, so it was better to accept battle when they were organized and well-supported, rather than being tired and stretched far from their communications. Like Plumer and Rawlinson, he saw ‘bite and hold’ as the only way to fight on the Western Front.⁷

Gough was unmoved by Davidson’s intervention. ‘Is not this written by a somewhat pedantic, if you like methodical, mind?’ he asked Sir James Edmonds after the war.⁸ In his reply (which he wrote two days later) Gough was more diplomatic. ‘In its broad principles’, he noted, ‘I am in agreement with this paper, in so far as it advocates a continuous succession of organized attacks.’ The point for discussion, Gough felt, was whether they should try to go as far as they could on the first day–perhaps up to the Red Line–and take advantage of the weeks of preparation they had already made. It would be wasteful not to ‘reap all the advantages’ of battle on the first day, and push their men and guns as far forward as possible, rather than making a series of time-consuming lurches forward, which would be just as tiresome as one deeper advance. Nevertheless, Gough saw his battle as being ‘a succession of organized attacks’ at short intervals–say one major push forward every ten days.⁹

What Davidson’s memorandum highlighted was a fundamental difference of opinion within British High Command about how operations should be conducted. According to Gough, the main matter of difference was whether there should be a limited and defined objective or an undefined one. ‘GHQ favoured the former, I the latter.’ The principal reason for his view, argued Gough, was the ‘examples of many operations which had achieved much less than they might have done, owing to excessive caution’. He cited the actions at Loos in September 1915, the night attack on the Somme in July 1916, and the capture of Vimy and Messines Ridges earlier that year as evidence that halting victorious troops on prearranged lines ‘at the moment when the enemy was completely disorganised’ often resulted in the failure to capture ground ‘which lay completely open to us and could have been seized without almost any opposition’.¹⁰ With all the preparation and planning that had gone on, Gough reasoned–no doubt with some justification–that it was best to go as far as they could on the first day, rather than hold the men back on some arbitrary line.

For John Davidson, his intervention was aimed at forcing a debate within GHQ about what exactly the attack should look like and whether the attack was too ambitious. A conference of army commanders was arranged for 28 June to try and settle the matter. After some discussion, it was agreed that Fifth Army’s scheme would remain unaltered, although Haig did mention to Gough how important his right flank, on the Gheluvelt Plateau, would be. He stressed making sure this was secured before taking the Broodseinde and Passchendaele Ridges; otherwise his corps would be pushing further into another salient, exposed to artillery fire on three sides.¹¹ Yet, in what would be one of the fatal moments prior to the attack–one of those ‘terrible ifs’–Gough took little or no notice of Haig’s suggestions and kept his plans unaltered, with his four corps in line, next to one another, all going for that big leap on the first day.

Historians have generally regarded Gough’s plan as mistaken: overambitious and faulty, and riven with contradiction. Indeed, it satisfied no one. The infantry were deployed across a wide stretch of front and were being ordered to advance much further than they had gone at Messines (where the maximum push had been no more than 2,000 yards). There was also no specific concentration of troops on the right, as Haig seemed to want, where the Gheluvelt Plateau formed a formidable obstacle. Gough believed that he had to take the opportunity of going as far as he could on the first day, hopefully sweeping everything before him, so went for a wide and deep push and hoped for the best. Indeed, Fifth Army’s plans were always going to have something reckless about them, particularly when compared to Plumer’s more modest proposals. The problem with all this was that Gough’s attack required British guns to subdue or destroy the enemy’s fortifications across a wide belt of front, something that was highly unlikely, but Gough–as was his nature–seemed not too concerned. He was confident his troops would deliver him victory.¹²

The employment of tanks also brought up the question of whether Gough’s scheme had really been thought through. Fifth Army’s battle plan was based upon the coordination of artillery and infantry, but it would also be able to call upon three brigades of tanks (216 machines in total), which had been brought up to assist in clearing the German second line and supporting the advance to the third.¹³ Whether tanks could make a meaningful contribution to the breakout in Flanders was a point of some conjecture. Brigadier-General Hugh Elles (GOC Tank Corps) warned GHQ before the battle that tanks could only function if the ground was not heavily shelled and that any extensive bombardment would reduce their chances considerably. His Chief Intelligence Officer, Captain Frederick Hotblack, even distributed regular ‘swamp maps’, which detailed the effects of the preliminary bombardment and showed how the destruction of drainage ditches had turned the Steenbeek (a stream that ran parallel to the front line) into ‘a wide moat of liquid mud’. Yet these concerns seem to have been dismissed–GHQ abruptly instructing the Tank Corps to stop sending them.¹⁴

Whether tanks should have ever been deployed to Flanders remains a moot point, but there was an argument that, however difficult the conditions became, every possible effort, and every possible weapon, should be used for such an important offensive and Gough evidently shared this view.¹⁵ Yet one could feel sympathy for the tank commanders who watched helplessly as the lengthy preliminary bombardment, and extensive counter-battery struggle, began to pulverize the battlefield and progressively turn it into a porridge-like sludge. Over heavily shelled ground, it was unlikely that tanks could cover more than 10–20 yards a minute at best; on very wet ground this rate would be much slower; and in areas covered with tree stumps and woodland debris tanks would be unable to manoeuvre at all–leaving them sitting ducks for German field guns.¹⁶ As one tank commander, W. H. L. Watson, later wrote, ‘The thought of tanks in the Salient made those of us shiver a little who knew the country.’¹⁷

Much now devolved on Gough’s corps commanders; the men who would make the assault on the German line. They were all tough soldiers; men who had seen enough of the Western Front to know what was at stake and how much relied on their decisions. Fifth Army deployed four corps in line from Boesinghe (where it joined the French) to Zillebeke (south of Ypres): Lord Cavan’s XIV Corps; Sir Ivor Maxse’s XVIII Corps; Herbert Watts’s XIX Corps; and Sir Claud Jacob’s II Corps. None of the attacks would be easy, but it was generally agreed that Jacob had the least favourable part of the line, with his men facing the rise of the Gheluvelt Plateau and the dark shadows of a series of shattered woodlands–Shrewsbury Forest, Sanctuary Wood, Chateau Wood and Inverness Copse. This was the area that Haig had flagged up to Gough on 28 June, stating–correctly as it turned out–that unless this right flank was secure, it would be impossible to push further eastwards without being exposed to heavy enfilade fire. As the countdown to the attack got underway, it quickly became apparent that much of the success or failure of the offensive would depend on Jacob. Whatever else happened, the Gheluvelt Plateau had to be cleared of German guns.

As Gough’s commanders worked out their plans, much needed to be done. Thousands of tons of supplies had to be moved up; communication and support trenches dug; and batteries assembled into position. Yet there were never enough men for these purposes and soon the French commander, Anthoine, was complaining about not being able to dig sufficient gun pits and ammunition stores for his artillery. He visited Haig on 2 July and warned him that it was essential for the French Army that the Flanders offensive was an ‘absolute success’ with infantry only being sent ‘over the top’ after ‘methodical and comprehensive preparation’ had been completed.¹⁸ Haig sent him over 7,000 men to help, but on 7 July Gough was forced to come back to GHQ, cap in hand, and beg for a postponement of the offensive. The date of attack was originally scheduled for 25 July (the date when Gough’s corps commanders felt they would be ready), but after a further conference with Haig it was finally agreed to mount the offensive three days later, on 28 July.¹⁹

Below the corps commanders lay the hundreds of subordinate officers that made up Fifth Army: divisional and brigade commanders; lieutenant-colonels or majors in charge of battalions or batteries; captains with their companies; and second lieutenants with their platoons. They had to familiarize themselves with their sectors and work out how they were going to achieve their objectives. Across the front, in dugouts and trenches, shell-pitted villages and tented fields, often by candlelight, the details of the coming battle came together. Movement orders were issued; stores were stockpiled; tactics were honed. In XIV Corps, divisional instructions dealt with intelligence briefings; trench models; the use of the rifle; flanking parties; liaison with the French; lessons from Canadian operations at Vimy Ridge; contact aeroplanes (which would follow the progress of the attack); the consolidation of captured trenches; and the importance of officers being ‘cheerful’ in front of their men.²⁰ By now the BEF was a functioning machine that knew its business. The eager, if somewhat amateurish, Army that had made its debut on the Somme the previous summer was no more. Now there could be no denying the seriousness of the situation or the professionalism it demanded. War had been a hard taskmaster, but now, in 1917, there was a sense that, at long last, the British were getting the hang of it. While victory might not have been a foregone conclusion, they would at least make a formidable effort this time.

By late June, following the lull in the fighting on the Western Front, the German Supreme Command could survey the situation calmly. In a report written on 25 June, General Ludendorff found things to be not too unfavourable. A recent attack by the Italians had been contained by the Austro-Hungarian Army without the need for German reinforcements (the Tenth Battle of the Isonzo); the situation in the Balkans and on the Turkish front was no cause for immediate concern; and hopes were still high for a separate peace with Russia. On the Western Front it seemed clear that the French Army’s power of attack was waning and it had been exhausted, at least temporarily, on the Aisne. The British attack at Arras had been contained, although the success at Messines had created the conditions for future offensives in Flanders. While this was all well and good, Ludendorff overestimated wildly the effect that unrestricted submarine warfare was having on the Allied war effort. ‘England needs quick results’, he wrote, ‘because of the effects of the U-boat war on her maritime economy.’ Furthermore:

Wood shortages prevail in England, coal shortages in Italy and France. Quite obviously our opponents do not have the same quantities of munitions as on the Somme. A fall in the production of ammunition and in the supply of munitions to the Western Front can be perceived. France is determined to make new blood sacrifices as well, despite the bad mood which prevails, due to the spring failures with their tremendous losses, and which finds expression in the change of High Command. We have clear evidence, which has not yet been published, that indiscipline in the French Army is growing ever more out of control. In Russia, the decomposition proceeds.

For Ludendorff the longer Germany kept up her maritime pressure, the better. He even predicted that the arrival of the Americans would not fundamentally alter this (which would be another major miscalculation). He was absolutely certain that ‘the prerequisite for victory is merely that we remain united and keep our nerve’.²¹

Nevertheless, the Supreme Command were not entirely happy. In particular, they were concerned about the state of morale at home and here they sensed trouble–what Ludendorff called ‘manifestations of weakness’.²² For some time they had felt little confidence that the Imperial Chancellor, Bethmann Hollweg, had the necessary stomach for the fight. For the generals, any expression of weakness within Germany, any official acceptance of anything less than total, unconstrained victory, would hearten their enemies and prolong the war; hence their suspicion of a man who had long been in favour of a negotiated peace. The tipping point came on 19 June when Hindenburg wrote to the Chancellor informing him that he must prepare the nation to face a fourth year of war. The Chief of the General Staff admitted that the submarine campaign had not achieved as much as they had hoped, but there was no doubt that it needed to be continued ‘with ruthless energy and for a sufficient length of time’ to compel their enemies to make peace. In the meantime, it would be necessary to strengthen public morale at home and make it clear that Germany would never consent to ‘a premature surrender’.²³

Bethmann Hollweg’s response was one of disbelief followed by gathering gloom. ‘This would be a tremendous disappointment since it was rumoured in Berlin that it would be over by the autumn’, he told a colleague, who described him as being ‘very pessimistic’ and ‘very angry with the High Command’.²⁴ The Chancellor eventually replied on 25 June, offering a ‘word of caution’ on the possibility that the U-boat campaign would eventually succeed. ‘The assumptions based on statistics have proved themselves too unreliable to be repeated with the force of conviction.’ Furthermore, the idea of a peace dictated only by Germany was illusory. He urged Hindenburg not to cast aside the prospect of a ‘peace of understanding’. Austria–Hungary would find it difficult to continue the war through the winter–by which time there was little chance that England would have capitulated. What they had to do, he urged the High Command, was to weaken their enemies, particularly England, as much as possible, but without imperilling the chance of them coming to terms.²⁵

Bethmann Hollweg had hardly made any radical, defeatist statements–he was, after all, only proposing that a compromise peace should not be dismissed out of hand–but even this was too much for the Supreme Command, who expected nothing less than supine loyalty from their politicians. Ludendorff offered his resignation on 12 July, stating that he had no confidence in the Chancellor and sparking off a full-blown political crisis.²⁶ While the conservative and nationalistic wing of German political life–the Army, OHL, industrialists and advocates of pan-German expansion–had long been anxious to remove the Chancellor, the more moderate elements within the Reichstag were also tiring of him. On 27 June the Majority Social Democrats, the largest party in parliament, visited Bethmann Hollweg and demanded that not only did they require a clear statement that Germany was in favour of a negotiated peace without annexations, but also that there needed to be more internal reform, primarily the introduction of an equal franchise in Prussia. Should this be rejected, they threatened to veto the next round of war credits, which had to be voted through within days. This was followed by Matthias Erzberger’s speech to the Reichstag on 6 July in which he announced the need for an immediate peace.²⁷

The two poles of German political life were now squaring up to one another. It would be a fight between those who wanted a ruthless prosecution of the war until Germany could dictate terms to her enemies, and those, primarily the leftist deputies in parliament, who wanted less formidable war aims. For Bethmann Hollweg, Erzberger’s declaration on 6 July meant that his position was becoming untenable. He eventually resigned on 13 July, to be replaced by Dr Georg Michaelis, Under-Secretary in the Prussian Ministry of Finance, a relative unknown who immediately made it clear that he would act ‘in constant agreement’ with the High Command. He was what officials described as a ‘good administrative man’; someone the generals could rely on to hold the line at home.²⁸ The Kaiser–moping about the Bellevue Palace in Berlin–was aware of how weak he was being made to look. On 16 July he told Admiral von Müller (Chief of the Naval Cabinet) how Ludendorff had blackmailed him over the issue. Yet the Kaiser still tried to maintain the illusion that he was somehow still master of the situation. ‘He had played a little trick on Hindenburg and Ludendorff because he had accepted the Chancellor’s resignation before they arrived at Berlin and received them with the words: “What do you want then? The Chancellor has gone a long time ago.”’²⁹ So had the primacy of politics in German life. Backed up by Hindenburg, Ludendorff’s word was now ‘an immutable law of nature’. Whether she knew it or not, Germany had taken another step towards military dictatorship.³⁰

In Flanders, preparations for what seemed like an inevitable Allied offensive continued apace. ‘Never before had we seen such masses of aircraft and air combat as at the front above Ypres’, wrote the German soldier Johann Schärdel, who gazed at the aerial duels that took place every day; ending–as they always did–with pilots falling from burning aircraft with no parachutes to save them. He was tasked with helping to maintain the telephone lines that ran between brigade and regimental headquarters, which was not easy given the intensity of the shelling. It was a dangerous game: dodging between the glare of white and red alarm flares; trying to find the ends of severed wires amid the wreckage of shell craters, often under violent shelling. He was not alone in noticing that the military cemeteries behind the line were getting bigger. His men watched militia troops laying out corpses in mass graves, wearing gas masks to protect themselves from the ‘obnoxious odour of decay’. Every day the tension seemed to increase. ‘A feverish restlessness lay on everything…’³¹

At his headquarters in Courtrai, Crown Prince Rupprecht, the commander of Germany’s northern Army Group, was convinced an enemy attack was coming–the tell-tale signs were all there–and awaited events with a sense of resignation born of long experience. The son of Ludwig III, the last King of Bavaria, Rupprecht was a calm and competent soldier, seeming to have inherited little, if any, of his family’s legendary eccentricity.³² As a member of the Bavarian Royal Family, Rupprecht would inevitably be given a key role in the war and he did not disappoint. He had been involved in some of the heaviest fighting of 1914 as commander of Sixth Army and had been on the Western Front ever since. Apart from the great invasion of France, most of Rupprecht’s time had been spent on the defensive, shuffling his divisions around to hold off the increasing Allied attacks. He may have wanted to go on to the offensive, but the larger strategic situation ruled this out. His task was simple: to hold on, whatever the cost.

Rupprecht was promoted to Field Marshal in August 1916 (when he assumed command of his Army Group). He was now responsible for the Western Front between the North Sea and the Oise River–perhaps the most critical part of the line. His Army Group consisted of sixty-five infantry divisions and a cavalry division, which were divided into three armies. While on paper this seemed equal in strength to the Allied forces opposite him–the Belgian and French forces in the coastal zone near Nieuport and a considerable chunk of the BEF–he knew his forces were numerically weaker. British divisions had twelve battalions of (roughly) a thousand men, while German divisions had only nine battalions of around 750 men each. British artillery was also considerably more powerful than that of its opponents, with over 3,000 barrels against just 1,100 German guns.³³ Rupprecht dealt with the pressure remarkably well. Usually to be found wearing the drab grey uniform of a Bavarian general (complete with silver collar patches), Rupprecht avoided the opulent displays of royal power favoured by the Kaiser. He was wise enough to leave much of the operational control of his forces to his impressive Chief of Staff, General Hermann von Kuhl, who had served him loyally since 1915.³⁴

Working diligently and efficiently, Kuhl gradually readied Rupprecht’s divisions for battle. He recorded that from the beginning of July, ‘there were increasing signs that an attack was imminent’:

Railways were extended, battery positions increased, the trenches were manned with greater numbers. But still no attack followed. The situation in Crown Prince Rupprecht’s Army Group was serious and caused its commander considerable worry. With anxiety he had to look at other sectors of the front, to the areas of Lens, Arras and St Quentin, where an enemy attack could be expected at any time, even if it took the form of a secondary attack.

All spare men and guns had been sent north to Flanders, but the Crown Prince watched his whole sector carefully. Ominously Sixth Army (which held the front opposite Arras) was reporting the arrival of railway guns and a detachment of tanks, leading them to conclude that they too would face an attack. Nevertheless, Rupprecht felt that Flanders would remain the principal focus of British efforts for the time being. A reliable agent in Amsterdam had reported that a ‘general attack’ would begin soon. He watched and waited.³⁵

On 21 June, Ludendorff arrived at Courtrai for a meeting with Kuhl and the other senior officers. Using the large map that was pinned to the walls, Lossberg briefed them on the general situation. There were fifteen German divisions in the line as opposed to twenty enemy ones. They had twelve divisions behind the front–including those used to mount counter-attacks–while they estimated that another fifteen or so enemy divisions were in reserve. On the sectors that were most under threat (particularly the canal zone at Boesinghe), they had only left small detachments to hold the front line. In terms of artillery, they possessed 389 batteries against over 700 enemy ones–a clear disadvantage, but one which Ludendorff believed did not count for too much. ‘The munitions situation was not splendid’, he admitted, ‘but if it came to battle, the Army would be supplied with everything it needed; nothing then needed to be kept back.’ He also knew that they had far fewer aircraft than their opponents, but once the battle began further reserves could be sent to the front as required.³⁶

Lossberg issued his defensive orders on 27 June. The key problem was trying to avoid the deluge of enemy shellfire that would herald any attack. ‘The strength of the defence lies in concealment from enemy observation’, he stressed. ‘It is not possible to hold trenches, shelters, fixed machine-gun nests, and battery positions during a preliminary bombardment prior to a big offensive. To attempt it exhausts the troops, causes heavy losses, and is only work in vain.’ Therefore, Lossberg wanted the defenders to understand that dugouts were merely ‘man-traps’, and as soon as a bombardment began, German units were to evacuate them and, if possible, move forward and be ready to fight in the open. Given the depth of German positions, counter-attacking at the right time was essential. ‘The quicker the counter-attack is delivered, the greater the advantage given.’ Once the enemy had established a workable defence and was supported by artillery, counter-attacks would usually fail. Therefore, it was imperative to deliver them independently and without waiting for orders from above. This was the essence of what Lossberg called ‘the offensive defence’.³⁷

More discussions continued over the coming days. At a meeting on 30 June, Rupprecht considered the possibility (that his staff officers had raised) of withdrawing in order to ‘avoid the first blows’ of any British offensive. However, when this was examined–with the Field Marshal and his staff poring over maps of their front–it was realized that to do this successfully, Fourth Army would have to give up its entire position, in all its depth, including much of the precious high ground, which Rupprecht was not minded to do. Their rearmost line (Flanders III) was, in any case, still incomplete. ‘The local commanders’, recorded Kuhl, ‘agreed that the present trench system was suited to defence by artillery and infantry and that the collaboration of both arms and the plan for engaging the reserves had been well prepared. The advantages to be expected from a planned withdrawal were not found to be so many as to outweigh the disadvantages to our defence organisation which might have resulted.’³⁸ Therefore, the matter was settled: they would stand their ground.

The decision to hold fast did not mean, however, that the Germans would await their fate impassively. As the warning signs of an offensive in Flanders became more urgent, Lossberg realized that if Allied forces could seize a bridgehead over the Yser and drive along the coast–as Haig was indeed planning–then there was a danger that the whole German front could be, as he put it, ‘unrolled’. It was decided to mount a spoiling attack to throw the enemy back east of Nieuport, and thus secure the coastal zone. At 5.30 on the morning of 10 July, under a heavy artillery and smoke bombardment, assault detachments of German marines surged forward.³⁹ Within three hours, they had broken into the British line, killed or captured most of the defenders, and wiped out the bridgehead over the Yser River, which would have been the jumping-off point for an offensive along the coast. Orders were rapidly issued for a British counter-attack, but once the blood had cooled, it was mercifully cancelled–the local commander protesting vigorously that such a rushed reaction would usually result in heavy losses for no result. While Haig brushed off concerns that this had damaged his offensive plans–telling Robertson that his artillery would soon blow the enemy ‘out of his position as effectively as he blew us out of ours’–it was a stark reminder of how dangerous the Germans remained in this sector. The Battle for Flanders had well and truly begun.⁴⁰