We Are Betrayed, Sold, Lost | The Great War (15 of 26)
We Are Betrayed, Sold, Lost
The French Army is rallied for a great spring offensive - but mutiny looms when the plans fall foul of the Germans.
Meanwhile, Ludendorff had foreseen a renewal of the Allied offensive on the Somme, and he used his time to frustrate Nivelle’s plans and to strengthen the German front in two different ways. First, the hitherto rather shallow defenses in Champagne were by mid-February reinforced with a third line, out of range of the French artillery. Second, Ludendorff decided to anticipate the attack by falling back to a new and immensely strong line of defense. This new line, called the Siegfriedstellung, or “Hindenburg Line,” was rapidly constructed across the base of the great salient formed by the German lines between Arras and Reims. From the German position east of Arras, the line ran southeastward and southward, passing west of Cambrai and Saint-Quentin to rejoin the old German line at Anizy (between Soissons and Laon). After a preliminary step backward on February 23, a massive withdrawal of all German troops from the westernmost bulges of the great salient to the new and shorter line was smoothly and quickly made on March 16. The major towns within the areas evacuated by the Germans (i.e., Bapaume, Péronne, Roye, Noyon, Chauny, and Coucy) were abandoned to the Allies, but the area was left as a desert, with roads mined, trees cut down, wells fouled, and houses demolished, the ruins being strewn with explosive booby traps.
This baffling and unexpected German withdrawal dislocated Nivelle’s plan, but, unperturbed by warnings from all quarters about the changed situation, Nivelle insisted on carrying it out. The Battle of Arras, with which the British started the offensive on April 9, 1917, began well enough for the attackers, thanks to much-improved artillery methods and to a new poison gas shell that paralyzed the hostile artillery. Vimy Ridge, at the northern end of the 15-mile battlefront, fell to the Canadian Corps, but the exploitation of this success was frustrated by the congestion of traffic in the British rear, and though the attack was continued until May 5, stiffer German resistance prevented exploitation of the advances made in the first five days.
Nivelle’s own offensive in Champagne, launched on April 16 on the Aisne front from Vailly eastward toward Craonne and Reims, proved to be a fiasco. The attacking troops were trapped in a web of machine-gun fire, and by nightfall the French had advanced about 600 yards instead of the six miles anticipated in Nivelle’s program. Only on the wings was any appreciable progress achieved. The results compared favourably with Joffre’s offensives, as some 28,000 German prisoners were taken at a cost to the French of just under 120,000 casualties. But the effect on French morale was worse, because Nivelle’s fantastic predictions of the offensive’s success were more widely known than Joffre’s had ever been. With the collapse of Nivelle’s plan, his fortunes were buried in the ruins, and after some face-saving delay he was superseded as commander in chief by Pétain on May 15, 1917.
This change was made too late to avert a more harmful sequel, for in late April a mutiny broke out among the French infantry and spread until 16 French army corps were affected. The authorities chose to ascribe it to seditious propaganda, but the mutinous outbreaks always occurred when exhausted troops were ordered back into the line, and they signaled their grievances by such significant cries as: “We’ll defend the trenches, but we won’t attack.” Pétain restored tranquillity by meeting the just grievances of the troops; his reputation for sober judgment restored the troops’ confidence in their leaders, and he made it clear that he would avoid future reckless attacks on the German lines. But the military strength of France could never be fully restored during the war.
Pétain insisted that the only rational strategy was to keep to the defensive until new factors had changed the conditions sufficiently to justify taking the offensive with a reasonable hope of success. His constant advice was: “We must wait for the Americans and the tanks.” Tanks were now being belatedly built in large numbers, and this emphasis on them showed a dawning recognition that machine warfare had superseded mass infantry warfare.
The Macedonian Standoff - The Five Nation Army Is Repelled I THE GREAT WAR Week 146
Italy, France, Serbia, Britain and Russia joined forces at the Macedonian Front and the five nation army wants to break through the lines held by Bulgaria with some German support. But the Bulgarian defences can withstand the attack and so Maurice Sarrail is forced to abandon all hopes for a breakthrough. Meanwhile another offensive is about to proceed at the Italian front which had been quiet all winter.
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Videos: British Pathé
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Literature (excerpt):
Gilbert, Martin. The First World War. A Complete History, Holt Paperbacks, 2004.
Hart, Peter. The Great War. A Combat History of the First World War, Oxford University Press, 2013.
Hart, Peter. The Great War. 1914-1918, Profile Books, 2013.
Stone, Norman. World War One. A Short History, Penguin, 2008.
Keegan, John. The First World War, Vintage, 2000.
Hastings, Max. Catastrophe 1914. Europe Goes To War, Knopf, 2013.
Hirschfeld, Gerhard. Enzyklopädie Erster Weltkrieg, Schöningh Paderborn, 2004
Michalka, Wolfgang. Der Erste Weltkrieg. Wirkung, Wahrnehmung, Analyse, Seehamer Verlag GmbH, 2000
Leonhard, Jörn. Die Büchse der Pandora: Geschichte des Ersten Weltkrieges, C.H. Beck, 2014
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Ligue auverdose - Manche #2 ( Vidéo Officiel )
Ligue auverdose - Manche #2 ( Vidéo Officiel )
Hindenburg Line
The Hindenburg Line (Siegfriedstellung or Siegfried Position) was a German defensive position of World War I, built during the winter of 1916-1917 on the Western Front, from Arras to Laffaux, near Soissons on the Aisne
Second Battle of the Aisne | Wikipedia audio article
This is an audio version of the Wikipedia Article:
00:04:06 1 Background
00:04:15 1.1 Strategic developments
00:07:06 1.2 Tactical developments
00:10:13 2 Prelude
00:10:21 2.1 German defensive preparations
00:10:32 2.1.1 iUnternehmen Alberich/i
00:11:32 2.1.2 Defensive battle
00:13:12 2.1.3 Field fortification
00:16:15 3 Battle
00:16:24 3.1 Third Army
00:22:39 3.2 Fifth and Sixth armies
00:28:43 3.3 Fourth Army
00:30:32 3.4 Tenth Army
00:32:12 3.5 German 7th Army counter-attacks
00:35:05 3.6 Battle of the Observatories
00:37:27 4 Aftermath
00:37:36 4.1 Analysis
00:42:48 4.2 Casualties
00:45:01 4.3 Subsequent operations
00:47:11 5 Notes
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SUMMARY
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The Second Battle of the Aisne (French: Bataille du Chemin des Dames or Seconde bataille de l'Aisne, 16 April – mid-May 1917) was the main part of the Nivelle Offensive, a Franco-British attempt to inflict a decisive defeat on the German armies in France. The Entente strategy was to conduct offensives offensives from north to south, beginning with an attack by the British Expeditionary Force (BEF) then the main attack by two French army groups on the Aisne. General Robert Nivelle planned the offensive in December 1916, after he replaced Joseph Joffre as Commander-in-Chief of the French Army.
The objective of the attack on the Aisne was to capture the prominent 80-kilometre-long (50 mi), east–west ridge of the Chemin des Dames, 110 km (68 mi) north-east of Paris and then advance northwards to capture the city of Laon. When the French armies met the British advancing from the Arras front, the Germans would be pursued towards Belgium and the German frontier. The offensive began on 9 April, when the British began the Battle of Arras. On 16 April, the Groupe d'armées de Reserve (GAR, Reserve Army Group) attacked the Chemin des Dames and the next day, the Fourth Army, part of Groupe d'armées de Centre (GAC, Central Army Group), near Reims to the south-east, began the Battle of the Hills.
The Chemin des Dames ridge had been quarried for stone for centuries, leaving a warren of caves and tunnels which were used as shelters by German troops to escape the French bombardment. The offensive met massed German machine-gun and artillery fire, which inflicted many casualties and repulsed the French infantry at many points. The French achieved a substantial tactical success and took c. 29,000 prisoners but failed to defeat decisively the German armies. The failure had a traumatic effect on the morale of the French army and many divisions mutinied. Nivelle was superseded by General Philippe Pétain, who adopted a strategy of healing and defence, to resume the wearing-out of the German Army while conserving French infantry. Pétain began a substantial programme re-equipment of the French Army, had 40–62 mutineers shot as scapegoats and provided better food, more pay and more leave, which led to a considerable improvement in morale.
The new French strategy was not one of passive defence; in June and July the Fourth, Sixth and Tenth Armies conducted several limited attacks and the First Army was sent to Flanders to participate in the Third Battle of Ypres. The British prolonged the Arras offensive into mid-May, despite uncertainty about French intentions, high losses and diminishing returns, as divisions were transferred northwards to Flanders. The British captured Messines Ridge on 7 June and spent the rest of the year on the offensive in the Third Battle of Ypres (31 July – 10 November) and the Battle of Cambrai (20 November – 8 December). The mutinies in the French armies became known in general to the Germans but the cost of the defensive success on the Aisne made it impossible to reinforce Flanders and conduct more than local operations on the Aisne and in Champagne. A French at ...