Chapter 15
1917: The Year of Big Changes
In This Chapter
Staging revolution in Russia – twice
Battling on across the Western Front
Smashing through on the Italian front
1916 had been a year of very hard lessons for both sides. The huge offensives of that year – the German attack at Verdun and the Allied attack on the Somme (which I describe in Chapter 6) – had led to disaster with unimaginable losses, and military leaders on both sides knew they had to seriously rethink their tactics. They planned to apply the lessons they’d learned in new offensives to be launched in 1917. However, these plans were to go just as badly wrong as those of the previous year: 1917 was the year of the Battle of Passchendaele, for example, when British and Empire troops slogged it out with the Germans in Flanders in possibly the worst conditions of any battlefield of the war.
1917 also turned out to be the year in which the war expanded in some unexpected directions. A major revolt against the Turks broke out in Arabia (you can read about it in Chapter 9); the Austro-Hungarian army broke through on the Italian front (see ‘Italy’s Darkest Day – Caporetto’, later in this chapter); and, most importantly, this was the year when the United States finally broke its tradition of isolationism (Chapter 11 has the details) and entered the war on the Allied side.
Above all, however, in 1917 events in Russia took centre-stage. This was the year of the Russian Revolution. The Russians overturned the Tsar’s government and installed a new Provisional Government. This new government decided to stay in the war but it proved no better at waging war than the Tsar had been, and in October 1917 it was overthrown in a second revolution, this time led by the Bolsheviks, Russia’s most important communist group. The changes that took place within Russia had a dramatic impact not just on the way the war was heading but on the whole shape of the 20th century.
1917 was an epic year that changed the war – and the world. This is its story.
Revolution in Russia
The Russian Revolution was the event that would define 1917 in world history, and it also completely changed the balance of power and the shape of events in the war. So what exactly happened?
The Russia of the Romanovs
Compared with the rest of Europe, Russia in the early 20th century was bewilderingly backward. Apart from two major industrial centres in Moscow and Petrograd (that’s how St Petersburg was renamed during the war), Russia was still overwhelmingly a country of small peasant villages. Russian industrial workers lived and worked in appalling conditions of poverty, overcrowding, dirt and disease. On top of that, Russia had serious internal weaknesses which the war only made worse.
Problems, problems …
Although Russia is rich in raw materials it had very few mines, so its industry was almost entirely dependent on foreign imports of essential materials, especially coal. However, the Germans and Turks were able to blockade Russia’s western ports, and the country’s geography dictated that imports now had to come via the distant port of Vladivostok in the Russian far east. Unfortunately, the Russian railway system wasn’t robust enough to cope with carrying so many imports of raw materials such a long distance, and the whole supply system broke down. Without enough coal to feed it, the Russian electricity supply also began to collapse, and before long the railway system was collapsing, too: it didn’t have anything like enough rolling stock and, with no imports of metal reaching Russia’s factories, no replacements could be built.
To make Russia’s misery even worse, the war ruined the country’s agriculture, too. So many men were called up to serve in the army that villagers didn’t have enough hands to get the harvest in: often whatever food they could produce was requisitioned for the army anyway. By 1915, food was running short, and by the end of 1916 hardly any food was available in the shops; what little food you could find was very expensive. Workers in the cities went on strike and staged protest marches, but the government didn’t listen: instead, it banned trade unions and sent anyone whom it considered to be a troublemaker into exile. When any politicians and journalists tried to ask questions about the way the war was being run the government just accused them of being dangerous revolutionaries who wanted to pull down the whole tsarist system.
Unfortunately for the Tsar’s government, it didn’t even appear to most Russians that the country’s war effort was gaining anything from the immense suffering that the people were having to go through. Although Russian commanders did well against the Austro-Hungarians in the south, the Russians had been crushed by the Germans in Poland and the Baltic, taking thousands of prisoners and areas of rich farmland (see Chapter 4). Every German advance made Russia’s food crisis worse. The railway system and the army administration were in such chaos that thousands of Russian soldiers were expected to fight at the front line with no food, ammunition, boots or proper uniforms. No wonder they started to desert in their thousands.
Just popped out to war. Rasputin’s in charge till I get back
Tsar Nicholas II of the Romanov dynasty was Russia’s autocrat, meaning that – in theory – he was in charge of everything. However, the Russian Commander-in-Chief, Prince Nikolai Nikolayevich (who also happened to be Nicholas’ uncle), was a popular figure with the army, despite Russia’s huge military problems, and Nicholas feared that his uncle might be tempted to stage a military coup and take control of Russia himself. To stop him having such dangerous thoughts, Nicholas had decided in 1915 to take personal command of Russia’s armies at the front. This was a strange decision, given that Nicholas had no military experience, but he thought it was essential.
However, if Nicholas thought that taking charge would solve Russia’s problems at a stroke (and it’s possible that he did) he was in for a shock. Holding so much power in how own hands meant that the responsibility for Russia’s backwardness and its social problems, and for Russia’s performance in the war, all fell squarely on his shoulders. A strong individual would’ve been up to the task, but Nicholas was too weak a character to impose his will and he was far too open to the influence of other people, notably:
- His wife, Tsarina Alexandra, who wanted him to be tougher on his critics. Alexandra, however, was German, and Russians were asking questions about just where her loyalties lay.
- Rasputin, a (not very) holy man with immense personal magnetism. He attracted a devoted following of aristocratic groupies, and he had the power – no one really knows how – to stop the internal bleeding that plagued the young Tsarevich (Prince) Alexis, the heir to the throne. Because of this, the Tsar and Tsarina grew ever closer to Rasputin and referred to him simply as ‘our friend’. When Nicholas, at Rasputin’s suggestion, left Petrograd for the front to take personal charge of the ailing Russian army, he left the government of the country in the hands of the Tsarina. Which meant, in effect, that he was leaving it to Rasputin. In turn, Rasputin appointed his drinking and séance friends to top ministerial posts, where they proved every bit as incompetent as you’d expect.
By 1916 it seemed as if Russia was rapidly imploding: the shops were empty, soldiers at the front were deserting, workers were on strike and the government didn’t have a clue what to do about it all. A group of young noblemen were concerned enough about the way things were going to murder Rasputin, but doing that didn’t solve anything. By February 1917 Petrograd was in the hands of rioters and strikers. The Tsar gave orders to his troops to restore order. But then the unthinkable happened: they said no.
Revolution!
When troops join in with a riot, it’s no longer a riot: it’s a revolution. With rebel and loyal troops firing at each other on the streets, Nicholas’s ministers and generals persuaded him that he had no choice: he’d have to abdicate. With a heavy heart, Nicholas agreed. The long reign of Russia’s Romanov dynasty was over.
Although I speak of ‘the Russian Revolution’ of 1917, in fact the country experienced two revolutions that year. The first one, which overthrew the Tsar and set up a Provisional Government, is known as the February Revolution after the month of the Russian calendar when it took place. In the October Revolution, later the same year, Lenin and the Bolsheviks overthrew the Provisional Government and took power themselves.
Give peace a chance. Or maybe not
Leading Russia now that the Tsar had abdicated was a Provisional Government led by Prince Lvov, a well-known reformer. The Provisional Government intended to turn Russia into a modern democratic republic with a proper constitution. Drawing up the constitution would be the job of a special assembly that the Russian people would elect in the autumn. In the meantime, the Provisional Government would work to get Russia back on its feet again.
The first decision that the Provisional Government had to take – the big one – was whether or not to stay in the war. This decision wasn’t straightforward:
- Reasons to pull out: Russia desperately needed a complete overhaul of its economy and for that it needed peace. People needed reasonably priced food in the shops, workers needed decent housing and wages, and the country needed to get its head round a democratic voting system. Oh, and the soldiers at front were deserting in droves and were desperate to go home.
- Reasons to stay in: Russia was committed to its allies, and new governments aren’t generally keen to get a reputation for breaking promises. If the Russians tried to make peace, the Germans would almost certainly demand huge areas of Russian territory and they’d possibly impose some sort of fine as well. But with its new revolutionary enthusiasm the new Russia could thrash the Germans and start Russia’s new era with a famous victory.
It didn’t take Lvov and the Provisional Government long to decide: Russia would stay in the war.
What time is the next sealed train? Lenin arrives
Many Russian revolutionaries had either been sent into exile or had escaped abroad from the Russian secret police. One group living in exile in Zurich, in neutral Switzerland, was known as the Bolsheviks and they were led by Vladimir Ilyich Lenin.
The Bolsheviks followed the teachings of the German political philosopher Karl Marx, who’d taught that industrial societies would all experience a workers’ revolution which would establish a society without classes where industry and land and everything else would belong to the people.
Marx had suggested that countries needed to go through a fairly long period of middle-class rule before they were ready for revolution, which in Russia’s case meant that the country wouldn’t be ready for revolution for another 100 years or so. However, Lenin and the Bolsheviks wanted to stage a revolution in Russia rather earlier than that – immediately, in fact. They were desperate to get back to Russia and get to work, but their problem was how to get there. If they travelled through France or Italy, they’d be arrested as dangerous revolutionaries; if they went through Germany or Austria, they’d be interned as enemy aliens. Their problem was solved when a most interesting and unexpected offer of help arrived from, of all sources, the German government.
The Germans thought that Lenin and the Bolsheviks going to Russia and causing trouble could only work to their advantage. But they didn’t want any revolutionary ideas causing trouble in Germany, and so they offered Lenin a deal. They’d provide him with a train to take him through Germany to the Baltic coast, where he could cross to Sweden and arrive in Petrograd via Finland, but it was to be a sealed train: it would have just one carriage, and no one would be allowed on or off it until it reached its destination. Lenin agreed. And so he arrived back in Russia in April 1917 and immediately called for a new revolution to overthrow the Provisional Government. The members of the German government rubbed their hands and sat down to watch the fun.
At first it looked as if the Germans were going to be disappointed. Lenin made a big splash when he first arrived back, but most Russians ignored his call to overthrow the Provisional Government. They were prepared to give Prince Lvov and his ministers a chance to govern the country. When the Bolsheviks tried to seize power in July 1917, the Provisional Government was able to deal with them swiftly and Lenin and the others had to flee to Finland in disguise. They’d be back.
The Russians get steamrollered
The dominant figure in Lvov’s Provisional Government was a radical lawyer, Alexander Kerensky. Kerensky was confident that he could organise the army and lead it to victory over the Germans. Never mind that he was a lawyer with absolutely no military experience: gifted amateurs do exist and Kerensky believed that he was one. (He wasn’t.)
Kerensky appointed Russia’s best commander, General Brusilov, and told him to prepare a large-scale offensive to drive the Germans and Austrians out of Russian territory. Brusilov was a good general and the attack did work well against the Austrians (who were almost as fed up with the war as the Russians were). But it was much less successful against the Germans, who launched a major counter-attack and drove the Russians back.
The failure of the Kerensky offensive finally broke the will of the Russian army. One thing Kerensky was good at was giving rousing speeches, and he’d managed to reverse the mood among Russia’s front-line troops and persuade them that they could win and, even more importantly, that thanks to the Revolution they now had something worth fighting for. So when the offensive petered out for all the usual reasons – the Russians’ inability to keep their armies supplied with essentials such as food, clothing and ammunition – morale collapsed completely. Whole regiments mutinied and headed for home. Often they just murdered any officers who tried to stop them.
The final nail in the coffin of Russia’s war effort came at Riga in the Baltic, where the Germans launched a new-style ‘lightning’ attack. It began with a short but intensive bombardment with lots of smoke and gas to confuse and disorientate the Russian defenders. Then the Germans sent in hundreds of lightly armed, elite stormtroopers, who were specially trained in trench fighting. They captured the Russian front line and sent the Russians back, reeling. Kerensky’s Russia was no more able to defeat the Germans than tsarist Russia had been.
And Kerensky’s Russia was about to collapse too. In response to riots against the war that broke out in Petrograd, Kerensky sent in troops to restore order, losing credibility with Russians almost by the day as a result. By the autumn of 1917 he’d squandered all the support he’d enjoyed earlier in the year, and it was easy for Lenin and the Bolsheviks to decide to overthrow him. In October, they made their move.
Oh, well done, General Kornilov, you’ve let the Reds in
The October Revolution was an example of the Law of Unintended Consequences. Kerensky had sacked the commander of the Russian army, General Kornilov, who in September decided to get his own back. He marched on Petrograd at the head of his army, intending to overthrow the Provisional Government and take power himself. For a while, it looked as if he might succeed: very few soldiers were prepared to risk their lives defending the Provisional Government, so General Kornilov thought he’d be able to march unopposed into Petrograd.
His dreams of staging a coup, though, were shattered by the Bolsheviks, who didn’t want a military take-over ruining their own plans for revolution. The Bolsheviks sent their own soldiers, known as the Red Guards, to stop Kornilov. The Red Guards didn’t just block his way: they also convinced his men to desert and come over to join the Bolsheviks. General Kornilov’s army melted away before his eyes and he himself had to escape. The citizens of Petrograd could breathe a sigh of relief: the Red Guards had saved the Provisional Government. Now the Bolsheviks prepared to overthrow it themselves. This wasn’t at all what General Kornilov had had in mind when he planned his coup.
Lenin, working with a new recruit to the Bolsheviks, Leon Trotsky, planned an uprising to seize the Winter Palace in Petrograd, which was the Provisional Government’s headquarters. By October 1917 the Bolsheviks had nearly all the army and navy on their side; the Provisional Government had only a small force, including the Women’s Battalion of Death (see Chapter 13 for more on this remarkable unit). On the night of 24 October the Russian cruiser Aurora fired a blank round towards the Winter Palace and the attack began. The defenders put up a fierce fight, but they were too few. The Bolsheviks overran the palace and arrested the ministers, except for Kerensky, who managed to escape. Lenin and the Bolsheviks were now in charge.
Just sign here – the Treaty of Brest-Litovsk
Lenin had no intention of repeating the Provisional Government’s mistake of staying in the war. He’d promised the Russian people peace and he intended to deliver.
In December 1917 Lenin suspended fighting along the Eastern Front and sent a delegation led by Trotsky to the German headquarters to discuss peace. The Germans, though, were in no mood to make concessions. They demanded that Russia give up a vast area, including the whole of Ukraine, or the war was on again. Even the Bolsheviks, who weren’t too bothered about national borders, were taken aback by the extent of the German demands.
Trotsky deliberately dragged the negotiations out: the Bolsheviks reckoned that if they kept talking long enough, revolution would break out in Germany too. However, the Germans got impatient with the Russians’ delaying tactics and ordered their troops to resume the war. That shook the Russians. Lenin sent orders to Trotsky to sign whatever terms the Germans were offering. Trotsky did, and Russia was out of the war.
The Treaty of Brest-Litovsk was a triumph for the Germans and its terms showed just how land-hungry German nationalists were (see Figure 15-1):
- Russia was to lose a huge area, including Ukraine, the Crimea, Lithuania, Estonia and Finland.
- Germany and its allies were to decide what happened to the areas Russia gave up, and Russia was to have no say in that decision. For example, Ukraine was to be independent and Russia had to recognise it as an independent state.
- Russia was to evacuate all the land it had taken off Austria-Hungary.
- Russia was to demobilise its army and keep its fleet in port.
- Russia wasn’t to engage in anti-German propaganda.
- Each side was to return their prisoners of war.
Figure 15-1: The Treaty of Brest-Litovsk.
The treaty had come just in time for Germany because the Western Front would soon be changing radically. Russia might have pulled out of the war in the east, but the United States was in the process of joining in the west. With all its prisoners returned from Russia, Germany would be able to transfer thousands of troops to the Western Front, ready to take anything the Allies might be planning to throw at them.
All Busy on the Western Front
Both sides began 1917 with plans that, they hoped, would bring the war to a speedy conclusion. The Allied plan was that the Russians and Italians would both attack on their fronts, and the British and French would launch a major offensive on the Somme. However, events soon forced the Allies to change their plans: first, the February Revolution in Russia delayed the Russian offensive from the spring to the summer; second, the French appointed a new commander, General Nivelle, who didn’t like the idea of launching a second Battle of the Somme. Instead, he wanted two Allied offensives, a French one to the south of the Somme and a British one to the north. Before he could put his new plan into effect, however, the Germans caught the Allies out with some manoeuvres of their own.
Germany’s list of priorities in 1917 looked like this:
- Deal with Russia in the east – bring the country to its knees.
- Hold on in the west – don’t let the Allies break through.
- Launch a massive attack in the west – crush the French and British in good time before the Americans start arriving in large numbers.
The Germans achieved the first part of their plan with the Treaty of Brest-Litovsk (see the earlier section ‘Just sign here – the Treaty of Brest-Litovsk’). The attack in the west to crush the French and British was planned for early 1918 – the latest point by which Germany had to try to win the war, because the Americans were on their way. America had declared war in April 1917 (see Chapter 11) but took time to then recruit, train and equip the additional troops it needed. (American troops wouldn’t arrive in Europe in force until the spring of 1918, massively boosting the number of Allied troops facing the Germans.) Though the Germans underestimated American strength, they still planned to attack before American troops began to arrive in significant numbers.
In preparation for their big attack planned for 1918, the Germans had to hold on in the west and implement a plan they’d come up with to make life very difficult for the French.
Germany’s deadly withdrawal
In February 1917 the Allies were very puzzled: the Germans in the opposite trenches appeared to be withdrawing. Indeed they were, but they weren’t giving up. Far from it. Operation Alberich was underway.
The Germans knew the Allies were preparing a major offensive in the west. They also knew that their own line had weak spots where the Allies might break through. Instead of spending ages trying to strengthen these points, the Germans built a new, much stronger defensive line farther back, codenamed the Hindenburg Line. Operation Alberich (Alberich was a tricky customer from German mythology) was the codename for the German withdrawal to this new, impregnable defence line.
As the Germans withdrew to the Hindenburg Line, they systematically laid waste to the countryside: they burned all food, crops, bridges, houses – anything that might help the Allies when they advanced through the area. To add to their enemies’ difficulties, they also set plenty of booby traps. The French who lived in the area watched in dismay. Many of them had got on well with individual German soldiers, who’d often been billeted in their homes, but now those same soldiers were deliberately destroying their homes and their livelihoods.
The (not so) talented General Nivelle has a plan
In December 1916 the French government finally got rid of General Joffre (Chapter 14 has the details), who was a genial enough cove but not the man to deliver the killer blow to the Germans that was required on the Western Front. The new French commander was the dashing, confident and clever General Robert Nivelle. Nivelle reckoned that he, and he alone, could win the war and save France. He had political ambitions too, but first Nivelle had to break through the German line on the Western Front.
Nivelle’s plan looked sound on paper. The German line bulged just at the point where the British and French forces joined, so he planned to attack there: they’d squeeze the Germans between a French attack from the south, a British-led attack from the north and then a French attack in the middle that would break through the German line – and the war would be as good as won. What could possibly go wrong? Well, the plan had two major flaws right from the start:
- The Germans had pulled back to the Hindenburg Line, so the bulge Nivelle wanted to attack had disappeared and the whole plan had to be reconfigured.
- The Germans knew about Nivelle’s plan in detail because he’d distributed so many copies of it and the plan was virtually public knowledge (in any case, it was difficult to miss a million French troops gathering opposite the Germans’ front line).
When it became clear that the Germans knew about the planned attack, Haig – the British commander on the Western Front – argued that the plan needed a complete rethink. However, the Prime Minister, David Lloyd George, overruled Haig and even placed him under Nivelle’s command. Haig fumed about this, but Nivelle was adamant: the attack would go ahead.
Nivelle’s offensive has various names. Some people call it the Second Battle of the Aisne (the Aisne was the river where the Germans first dug in after the First Battle of the Aisne back in 1914); others call it the Battle of the Chemin des Dames, after the area where the main French attack came. The British, ANZAC (that is, the Australian and New Zealand Army Corps) and Canadian parts of the offensive are named after the particular places where they attacked: Arras, Vimy Ridge and, farther north in Belgium, Messines.
Phase 1: The Battle of Arras
The first phase of Nivelle’s offensive was a British, Canadian and ANZAC attack against the German lines near Arras. Although the huge preliminary bombardment rather gave the game away that an attack was coming, the Arras phase of the offensive actually worked very well. The British had dug tunnels under the battlefield and were able to emerge much closer to the German lines than the defenders were expecting. They used gas and took advantage of a very helpful snowstorm, both of which made it much harder for the Germans to see them coming. The British had also learned how to make much better use of their artillery than before, especially how to fire a creeping barrage – a line of shell bursts just ahead of the advancing infantry, which moved forward at the same pace as the men.
The creeping barrage was a very effective way of protecting attacking infantry from enemy gunfire, but it did require nerves of steel in the advancing soldiers. Not only did they have to keep as close as they dared to the exploding shells, but they had to walk towards the enemy at a steady pace: if they ran (which would be most people’s instinct in a battle), they’d lose the protection of the barrage and may very well be blown up by it.
The most important victory of the Battle of Arras came when the Canadians, under Sir Julian Byng, attacked the German position high up on Vimy Ridge and took it. Vimy Ridge was a difficult position to attack. It was up a steep slope that the French and British had attacked before and been beaten off each time. One hundred thousand Canadians launched themselves against the German position at Vimy, and both sides suffered very heavy casualties before the Canadians finally took it. Vimy Ridge was a major Canadian victory: they took the ridge, 4,000 prisoners and plenty of guns and mortars. The news from Vimy Ridge was a major morale-booster in Canada and Britain, at a time when the war seemed to be going Germany’s way.
The Battle of Arras didn’t all go the Allies’ way, however. When the British and their allies reached the Hindenburg Line, they found it impossible to break through. The Australians in particular suffered very heavy casualties while attacking the impregnable German position.
Phase 2: The Battle of the Chemin des Dames
Following the British, Canadian and ANZAC attack at Arras, the French were due to attack farther south, north of Reims along the Chemin des Dames (Chemin des Dames means ‘the Ladies’ Way’ – it was where ladies at Louis XIV’s court liked to take their walks back in the 17th century). The Germans knew the attack was coming, though, and they were ready for it.
The Battle of the Chemin des Dames was a disaster for the French. The Germans had left behind plenty of carefully positioned machine gun posts when they withdrew, and these were able to decimate the French before they could get anywhere near the German lines. The French were in despair. One unit even went into battle baa-ing like lambs going to the slaughterhouse. The great Nivelle offensive took a bit of land off the Germans, but it didn’t achieve anything like the great breakthrough Nivelle had been promising.
The Chemin des Dames offensive for the French was similar to the 1916 Somme offensive for the British: they’d built up huge expectations and everyone thought it would be a walkover, so it was all the more devastating when the attack failed so disastrously.
Hang on, this wasn’t part of the plan: Mutiny!
The French people were stunned by the failure of Nivelle’s offensive, which had promised so much, and the French soldiers were angry. In May 1917 they mutinied. They’d defend their own trenches against German attacks, but they refused to take part in any more pointless offensives. In one place the mutineers even set up a sort of rival French government, committed to ending the war. The real French government acted quickly. It had the ringleaders of the mutinies arrested and shot, and it sacked General Nivelle and replaced him with General Pétain, the man who’d saved the day at Verdun the year before (see Chapter 6). Pétain calmed the situation down, listened to the men and promised not to waste their lives in any more badly planned attacks. But even he couldn’t get the men to commit to undertake any more offensives.
Remarkably, the French managed to hide the news of the mutinies from the Germans. If they’d known about the low morale in the French army, they might have been able to defeat the French as they were in the process of doing to the equally war-weary Russians. Even though the French had managed to limit their damage, the mutinies had one big result: the main burden of carrying on the offensive against the Germans now fell to the British.
Field Marshal Haig has a better plan!
If the British were to take over the main task of attacking the Germans (see previous section) then Haig wanted to shift the attack much farther north, towards their lines in Flanders and the British army’s very vulnerable position at Ypres. Haig wanted to beat the Germans right back and fight through to the Belgian ports of Zeebrugge and Ostend, from where U-boats were still sailing out and devastating Allied shipping (see Chapter 8).
Haig planned the British-led attack to take place in two phases:
- An attack on the German position on the Messines Ridge, just south of Ypres
- An attack out of the salient (a bulge in the Allied line) at Ypres
Phase 1: The mines of Messines
The man with the job of taking Messines from the Germans was General Sir Herbert Plumer. Plumer might have looked like a caricature of a stuffy, old-fashioned officer – he was a bit tubby and he had a big, bushy white moustache – but don’t be fooled: he was a very able tactician, one of the best commanders of the war.
Plumer prepared the attack very carefully. The Germans were in a salient and the British and ANZACs would be attacking all the different parts of the bulge simultaneously. They’d be using the usual preliminary bombardment, which would pound the German positions but also give them a good idea that an attack was coming. However, Plumer had a secret weapon: mines.
British engineers had been tunnelling under the Messines battlefield and had planted 20 huge mines, containing almost 600 tons of explosive, under the German trenches. The Germans knew something of what was happening and they dug their own tunnels to try to intercept the British, but they found only one mine: the British were able to plant explosives in all the others.
On 7 June 1917 the British exploded their mines on the Messines Ridge. The combined explosion was enormous: it could be clearly heard as far away as London. The Germans didn’t stand a chance. Ten thousand of them were killed in an instant and the rest were either too badly wounded or too shocked to put up much resistance. Plumer’s men took Messines and advanced farther. They took all their objectives, and although the Germans counter-attacked continuously, they weren’t able to drive Plumer’s men out.
Messines was a major British victory. It was also a sign that the advantage on the battlefield was beginning to swing back from the defender to the attacker.
Phase 2: The pain of Passchendaele
The second part of Haig’s plan was a breakout from the salient around the town of Ypres. The plan was actually quite good: a huge Allied attack, using British, Belgian, French, Canadian and ANZAC troops, would drive the Germans back from Ypres and head for Bruges, which was the headquarters for the German U-boats based at Zeebrugge and Ostend. Officially, this was to be the Third Battle of Ypres; however, the world soon came to know it by a different name: Passchendaele, a little village that Haig made one of his objectives.
Haig’s tactics at Passchendaele sound very like the ones he employed at the Battle of the Somme in 1916 (see Chapter 6): a huge artillery bombardment followed by a massive infantry assault. But Haig thought that the attack planned for 1917 would have some significant advantages over the Somme attack the year before:
- The British and Canadians had just had two major victories, at Vimy and at Messines, so their morale was higher than the Germans’.
- The German defeat at Messines had shown (Haig reckoned) that the Germans were exhausted and in no fit state to withstand a British attack.
- The attack was on a much more limited front than the Somme attack had been.
- The advancing infantry would be protected by a creeping barrage.
In many ways Haig’s analysis was right. The British and Canadians were more experienced and professional than the volunteers who’d been slaughtered on the Somme and they’d learned to use more effective tactics for their attacks. It was probably wishful thinking for Haig to expect the Germans to be too exhausted to put up a fight after the Battle of Messines, but it’s true that they were in a much worse shape than they’d been in 1916. What Haig couldn’t have anticipated were two pieces of bad luck:
- The British government decided to transfer men and equipment from France and Belgium to the Italian front (see ‘Italy’s Darkest Day – Caporetto’ later in this chapter for the details).
- It rained. Heavily.
Of the two, the most serious blow was the rain. Water is never far below the surface in this part of Belgium anyway, and the British preliminary bombardment had completely destroyed the local drainage system. The result was that the battlefield was churned up into thick, liquid mud (see Figure 22 in the insert section). I don’t mean the sort of mud you may encounter out on a country walk. This was like fighting in thick, liquid and very deadly caramel. Men couldn’t advance through it – they couldn’t even walk in it: they had to use wooden ‘duckboards’ to walk on, and if they fell off the duckboards into the mud, they drowned (see Figure 15-2). The conditions were impossible to fight in: horses were useless and so were tanks.
© Imperial War Museums (E(AUS) 1220)
Figure 15-2: Australian troops walk on duckboards through the remains of Chateau Wood, Ypres, in 1917.
Even so, Haig chose to fight on. He’s been fiercely criticised for this decision since. His thinking was that if the Allies could follow up their successes at Vimy and Messines with an even greater victory in Belgium, German morale in the army and at home would simply collapse. But if the Allies were to pull out, it would give the Germans new heart and might even jeopardise the safety of the British base at Ypres. So Haig pressed on with the attack long after it was clear that it was permanently stuck in the mud.
The battle became known as the Battle of Passchendaele because this village was where the attack finally petered out. The village itself fell to Canadian troops in the autumn (the Canadians were really proving their worth in 1917). However, it was clear that the mud wouldn’t allow the Allies to press forward any farther. Passchendaele was as far as the advance reached and it gave its name to the whole battle.
It was here, at Passchendaele, that the Germans used possibly the most deadly weapon of the war: mustard gas. Mustard gas was by far the most lethal of the various gases used in the First World War. It could burn its way through clothing and was much more likely than other gases to kill its victims. Mustard gas inflicted a horrible lingering death: victims could die four or five days after being gassed. It also remained in the ground for days, which wasn’t ideal if the army that had used the gas later wanted to advance across the same piece of land.
Cambrai – the day of the tank
Haig was deeply frustrated that his plans for breaking out from Ypres had been ruined by the Battle of Passchendaele and he wanted to counterbalance that failure with a success somewhere else. So in November he launched one more offensive, at Cambrai, near the Arras battlefield where the British had done so well in the spring.
This time they attacked with large numbers of tanks – the metal-plated armed and armoured vehicles (see Figure 15-3) that had so shocked the Germans when they first saw them on the Somme in 1916. On that occasion, the Germans had decided that tanks weren’t actually as scary as they looked: they always seemed to break down and they were very vulnerable to artillery. But then the British had only had a handful of tanks and they were indeed prone to breaking down. For the attack at Cambrai, however, the British had amassed 381 tanks that finally showed what this new technology could do. They rolled right over the German front line and enabled the British to take a substantial area of the Germans’ territory.
© Imperial War Museums (Q 11651)
Figure 15-3: British tanks awaiting action in September 1917.
Unfortunately for the British, the Germans had been using their defence in depth tactic. In practice, defence in depth meant keeping your front line relatively lightly defended but having some very strong lines of defence farther back. That way, when the enemy attacked your front line, you didn’t lose too many troops. The enemy might well be able to take your front line, but you could then launch your reserves to take it back again. So the Germans were able to launch a major counter-attack, which not only pushed the British back again but also took a few extra bits of Allied-held territory. So the Germans still weren’t that impressed with tanks.
Although the Battle of Cambrai was a failure for the Allies, it did show what tanks were capable of if they were used en masse. The Germans, however, had seen too many tanks running out of fuel or breaking down to take them too seriously and they didn’t bother making too many for themselves. So the tank remained an almost exclusively Allied vehicle for fighting.
Italy’s Darkest Day – Caporetto
The fighting on the Italian front was every bit as difficult and deadly as the fighting on the Western Front. The big difference was that it took place up in the mountains instead of in trenches (see Figure 15-4). The Italian General Cadorna had been launching ever more costly offensives against the Austro-Hungarians there and getting nowhere (see Chapter 14). The whole front just seemed like a great drain that was sucking the Italian army into it for no gain whatsoever.
© Imperial War Museums (Q 65158)
Figure 15-4: Italian troops manning an anti-aircraft gun above Caporetto.
The Austro-Hungarians had been fighting on two fronts, in the Alps against the Italians and in the east against the Russians. After the Russian Revolution and the defeat of Kerensky’s summer offensive (see ‘The Russians get steamrollered’, earlier in the chapter), the Austro-Hungarians were able to transfer many more men to the Italian front. They’d also appointed a new commander, Ars von Straussenberg. He proposed a joint Austrian–German attack on the Italians, and the Germans, who reckoned the only way the Austrians would break through the Italians lines was with German help, agreed. In October the Germans and Austro-Hungarians fell on the Italians at Caporetto.
The Italians hardly knew what had hit them: they hadn’t faced a full-scale German offensive before. They might have done better if they’d been able to fall back and regroup. Unfortunately, General Cadorna wouldn’t allow his commanders to order retreats: they had to stand and fight, which meant that thousands of Italians were taken prisoner. The Germans and Austro-Hungarians broke through the Italian lines and headed towards Venice. It began to look as if the Battle of Caporetto might knock Italy out of the war completely.
The Italians, however, just about survived Caporetto. They fell back to the river Piave, north of Venice, and managed to hold the line. To support the Italians, the British and French rushed troops from the Western Front to the Italian front, and they managed to hold the Germans and Austro-Hungarians back from Venice. By the end of the year, both sides were exhausted and the Italians had lost 300,000 men, mostly taken prisoner. Italians desperately wanted a victory to wipe out the memory of Caporetto, but for that they’d have to wait until 1918.