XIX.1 Our Intentions and Prospects for 1918
In view of the serious situation which I have described in the last few pages I shall be asked the very natural question for what reason I considered we had prospects of bringing the war to a favorable conclusion by a last great offensive.
For my answer I will get away from political considerations, and speak solely from the standpoint of the soldier as I turn in the first place to the situation of our allies.
In view of the military helplessness of Russia and Rumania, as well as the heavy defeat of Italy, I considered that the burden on Austria-Hungary had been relieved to such an extent that it would not be difficult for the Danube Monarchy to carry on the war on her own fronts by herself. I believed that Bulgaria was in every sense capable of dealing with the armies of the Entente in Macedonia, all the more so as the Bulgarian forces which had been employed against Russia and Rumania could very shortly be entirely released for Macedonia. Turkey, too, had been immensely relieved in Asia Minor by the collapse of Russia. So far as I could see the result was that she had sufficient troops at her disposal materially to reinforce her armies in Mesopotamia and Syria.
In my view the further resistance of our allies depended, apart from their own resolution, mainly upon the effective employment of the resources available, which were in any case sufficient for their task. I asked nothing more than that they should hold out. We ourselves would secure a decision in the West. For the purposes of such a decision our armies in the East Were now available, or we could, at any rate, Hope to have them available by the time the best season began. With the help of these armies we ought to be able to secure a preponderance of numbers in the West. For the first time in the whole war the Germans would have the advantage of numbers on one of their fronts! Of course if could not be as great as that with which England and France had battered our Western Front in vain for more than three years. In particular, even the advent of our forces from the East did not suffice to cancel out the immense superiority of our enemies in artillery and aircraft. But in any case we were now in a position to concentrate an immense force to overwhelm the enemy's lines at some point of the Western Front without thereby taking too heavy a risk on other parts of that front.
Even with the advantage of numbers on our side, it was not a simple matter to decide on an offensive in the West. It was always doubtful whether we should win a great victory. The course and results of the previous attacks of our enemies seemed to offer little encouragement. What had our enemies achieved in the long run with all their numerical superiority and their millions of shells and trench-mortar bombs, not to mention the hecatombs of corpses? Local gains of ground a few miles in depth were the fruits of months of effort. Of course we too bad suffered heavy losses in the defense, but it was to be assumed that those of the attacker had been materially higher. A decision was not to be reached merely by these so-called "battles of material." We had neither the resources nor the time for battles of that kind, for the moment was coming nearer when America would begin to come on the scene fully equipped. If before that time our U-boats had not succeeded in making the transport of large masses of troops with their supplies highly questionable, our position would become serious.
The question that pressed for an answer was this: What was there that entitled us to hope for one or more real victories such as our enemies had always failed to secure hitherto? It is easy to give an answer but difficult to explain it. The answer is the word "confidence." Not confidence in our lucky star or vague hopes, still less confidence in numbers and the outward show of strength. It was that confidence with which the commander sends his troops forward into the enemy fire, convinced that they will face the worst and do the seemingly impossible. It was the same confidence which inspired me in 1916 and 1917 when we had subjected our Western Front to an almost superhuman test in order to be able to carry out great attacks elsewhere; the same confidence which had enabled us to keep superior enemy forces in check in all the theaters of war, and even to overthrow them.
Moreover, if the necessary numbers were in existence, it seemed to me that the necessary resolution was everywhere present likewise. I seemed to feel the longing of the troops to get away from the misery and oppression of pure defense. I knew that the German "rabbit" —which one of our bitterest enemies had held up to the derision of the English as "driven from the open into its holes" — would become the German soldier in his steel helmet who would rise from his trenches in great and overwhelming anger to put an end by attack to the years of torment he had suffered in defense.
Moreover, I thought that the summons to attack would have even greater and more far-reaching consequences. I hoped that with our first great victories the public at home would rise above their sullen brooding and pondering over the times, the apparent hopelessness of our struggle and impossibility of ending the war otherwise than by submission to the sentence of tyrannical powers. Let the sword flash on high and all hearts would rise with it. It had always been thus. Could it be otherwise now? My hopes soared even beyond the frontiers of our homeland. Under the mighty impression of great German military victories, I saw the revival of the fighting spirit in hard-pressed Austria-Hungary, the rekindling of all the political and national hopes of Bulgaria and the strengthening of the will to hold out even in far-away Turkey.
What a renunciation of my unshakable confidence in the success of our cause it would have meant if in the face of my Fatherland and my conscience I had suggested to my Emperor that we ought to lay down our arms. "Lay down our arms?" Yes, that is what it meant! We must not delude ourselves into the belief that our enemies would not put their claims as high as that. If we once started on the slippery path of surrender, if we once relaxed our efforts to put forth all our strength, no other alternative could be seen unless we first paralyzed both the enemy's arm and his will. These had been our prospects in 1917, and later events were to show that they were our prospects now. We never had any choice except between fighting for victory or a defeat involving extinction. Did our enemies ever say anything else? No other voice ever reached my ear. If any voice in favor of peace ever made itself heard, it did not get through the atmosphere which separated me from the enemy statesmen. I believed that we had both the strength and the military spirit required to seek a decision in one last great passage of arms.
We had now to make up our minds how and where we should seek it. The "how" might in general be summed up in the words, "we must avoid a deadlock in a so-called battle of material." We must aim at a great and if possible surprise blow. If we did not succeed in breaking the enemy resistance at one stroke, this first blow must be followed by others at different points of the enemy lines until our goal was reached.
Of course from the start the ideal objective for my purposes was a complete breakthrough the enemy lines, a breakthrough to unlock the gate to open warfare. This gate was to be found in the line Arras—Cambrai—St. Quentin—La Fère. The choice of this front for attack was not influenced by political considerations. We had no idea of attacking there merely because we had the English against us at this point. It is true that I still regarded England as the main pillar of the enemy resistance, but at the same time it was clear to me that in France the desire to injure us to the point of annihilation was no less strong than in England.
Moreover, from the military point of view it was of little importance whether we attacked the French or English first. The Englishman, was undoubtedly a less skillful opponent than his brother-in-arms. He did not understand how to control rapid changes in the situation. His methods were too rigid. He had displayed these defects in attack and I had no reason to think it would be otherwise in defense. Phenomena of that kind are regarded as inevitable by those who have much knowledge of military training. They are due to the lack of appropriate training in peacetime. Even a war that lasts years cannot wholly make good the effects of insufficient preparation. But what the Englishman lacked in skill he made up, at any rate partially, by his obstinacy in sticking to his task and his objective, and this was true both of attack and defense. The English troops were of varying value. The elite consisted of men from the Colonies — a fact which is undoubtedly to be attributed to the circumstance that the colonial population is mainly agrarian.
The average Frenchman was a more skillful fighter than his English comrade. On the other hand, he was not so obstinate in his defense. Both our leaders and their men regarded the French artillery as their most dangerous opponent, while the prestige of the French infantryman was not very high. But in this respect also the French units varied with the part of the country from which they were recruited. In spite of the apparent lack of close cooperation on the Anglo-French front, it was certainly to be anticipated that either of the allies would hasten to the help of the other in case of need. I considered it obvious that in this respect the French would act more promptly and ruthlessly than the English, in view of the political dependence of France on the goodwill of England and our previous experiences in the war.
At the time of our decision to attack, the English army was massed, and had been since the battles in Flanders, mainly on the northern wing of its front which extended from the sea to south of St. Quentin. Another and somewhat weaker group appeared to have remained in the neighborhood of Cambrai after the battle there. Apart from that, the English forces were apparently distributed pretty evenly. The least strongly held part of their line was that south of the Cambrai group. The English salient in our lines near this town had been somewhat flattened as the result of our counterattack on November 30, 1917, but it was marked enough to permit of the application of tactical pincers — to use a phrase in vogue — from north and east. By so doing we should be able to cut off the English troops there. Of course it was always doubtful whether the English would keep their forces distributed in the way to which I have referred until our attack began. This depended very largely on whether we should be able to conceal our intentions. A fateful question! All our experience negatived such a possibility, much more a probability. We ourselves had known of the enemy's preparations in all his attempts to break through our Western Front, and generally long before the battles themselves began. We had been able to prevent the extension of the enemy's attacks to the wings practically every time. His months of preparation had never escaped the eagle eye of our scouting planes. Moreover, our ground reconnaissance had developed an extreme sensitiveness to any changes on the enemy's side. The enemy had patently renounced the element of surprise in his great attacks, in view of the apparent impossibility of concealing his extensive preparations and the concentration of troops. We, on the other hand, believed that quite special importance must be attached to surprise. Our efforts in that direction naturally meant that to a certain extent thorough technical preparation had to be sacrificed. To what extent it must be sacrificed was left to the tactical instinct of our subordinate commanders and their troops.
Our great offensive involved tactical training as well as technical preparation. As for defense in the previous year, new principles were now laid down for attack and issued to the troops in comprehensive pamphlets. In our confidence in the offensive spirit of the troops, the center of gravity of the attack was to be found in thin lines of infantry, the effectiveness of which was intensified by the wholesale employment of machine guns and by the fact that they were directly accompanied by field artillery and battle planes. Of course, the offensive powers of these infantry waves were entirely dependent on the existence of a strong offensive spirit. We were completely renouncing the mass tactics in which the individual soldier finds the driving force in the protection given him by the bodies of the men around him, a form of tactics with which we had become extremely familiar from the practice of the enemy in the East and with which we had had to deal occasionally even in the West.
When the enemy press announced German mass attacks in 1918 they were using the expression primarily with a view to satisfying the craving for sensation, but also to make the battle pictures more vivid to the minds of their readers and simplify the explanation of events. Where on earth should we have found the men for such mass tactics and such holocausts? Besides, we had had quite enough of watching other armies sink down hopelessly before our lines because our reapers with that scythe of the modern battlefield, the machine-gun, were able to devote themselves to the bloody harvest with greater zeal, the thicker the human com stood.
What I have said, which is more concerned with the spirit of our battle preparations than their technicalities, must suffice for a general indication of our offensive principles. Of course the German infantryman would still bear the brunt of the battle. His sister arms had the not less glorious and costly task of facilitating his work. The decisive importance of the approaching passage of arms in the West was truly and fully realized by us. We regarded it as an obvious duty to concentrate for our bloody task all effective troops that could in any way be spared from the other theaters of war. Our existing situation and the further developments in the political and economic sphere introduced all kinds of difficulties into the execution of our plans and repeatedly made my personal intervention necessary. I will deal generally with this important question and begin with the East.
On December 15th an armistice had been concluded on the Russian front. In view of the progressive disruption of the Russian Army, we had previously made a beginning with the transport of a large number of our troops from that theater. Yet some divisions, effective and suitable for manoeuvre warfare, had had to remain in Russia and Rumania until we had finally settled with these two countries. Of course it would have entirely corresponded to our military desires if peace bells could have rung in the year 1918 in the East. The place of these bells was taken by the wild, inflammatory speeches of revolutionary doctrinaires with which the conference room in Brest-Litovsk resounded. The great masses of all countries were summoned by these political agitators to shake off the burden of slavery by establishing a reign of terror. Peace on earth was to be ensured by the wholesale massacre of the bourgeoisie. The Russian negotiators, especially Trotsky, degraded the conference table, at which the reconciliation of two mighty opponents was to be effected, to the level of a muddle-headed tub-thumper's street corner.
In these circumstances it was hardly surprising that the peace negotiations made no progress. It seemed to me that Lenin and Trotsky behaved more like the victors than the vanquished, while trying to sow the seeds of political dissolution in the rear as well as the ranks of our army. As events were shaping, peace seemed likely to be worse than an armistice. The representatives of our government indulged in a good deal of false optimism in their dealing with the peace question. Main Headquarters can at any rate claim that it recognised the danger and gave warning of it.
However great may have been the difficulties under which our German Commission at Brest-Litovsk labored, it was unquestionably my duty to insist that for the sake of our proposed operations in the West peace should be attained in the East at the earliest possible moment. However, affairs only came to a head when on February 10th Trotsky refused to sign the peace treaty, but for the rest declared the state of war at an end. In this attitude of Trotsky, which simply flouted all international principles, I could see nothing but an attempt to keep the situation in the East in a state of perpetual suspense. I cannot say whether this attempt revealed the influence of the Entente. In any case the situation which supervened was intolerable from a military point of view. The Imperial Chancellor, Count von Hertling, agreed with this view of the General Staff. On February 13th, His Majesty decided that hostilities should be resumed in the East on the 18th.
Our operations met with practically no resistance anywhere. The Russian Government realized the peril with which it was threatened. On March 3rd, the Treaty of Peace between the Quadruple Alliance and Great Russia was signed at Brest-Litovsk. The military power of Russia was thus out of the war in the legal sense also. Great tracts of country and many peoples were separated from the former united Russian organism, and even in the heart of Russia there was a deep cleavage between Great Russia and the Ukraine. The separation of the border states from the old Empire as a result of the peace conditions was in my view mainly a military advantage. It meant that — if I may use the term — a broad forward zone was created against Russia on the far side of our frontiers. From the political point of view, I welcomed the liberation of the Baltic Provinces, because it was to be assumed that from henceforth the German elements there would be able to develop in greater freedom, and the process of German colonization in that region would be extended.
I need hardly give any assurance that to negotiate with a Russian terrorist Government was extremely disagreeable to a man of my political views. However, we had been compelled to come to some final agreement with the authorities that now held sway in Great Russia. In any case Russia was in a state of the greatest ferment at this time, and personally I did not believe that the reign of terror would last for long.
In spite of the conclusion of peace it was even now impossible for us to transfer all our effective troops from the East. We could not simply abandon the occupied territories to fate. It was absolutely necessary for us to leave behind strong German forces in the East, if only to maintain a barrier between the Bolshevist armies and the lands we had liberated. Moreover, our operations in the Ukraine were not yet at an end. We had to penetrate into that country to restore order there. Only when that had been done had we any prospect of securing food from the Ukraine, mainly for Austria-Hungary, but also for our own homeland, as well as raw materials for our war industries and war materials for our armies. In these enterprises political considerations played no part so far as Main Headquarters were concerned.
Of very different import was the military assistance which in the spring of that year we sent to Finland in her war of liberation from Russian domination. The Bolshevik Government had not fulfilled the promise it had made us to evacuate this country. We also hoped that by assisting Finland we should get her on our side, and thus make it extremely difficult for the Entente to exercise military influence on the further development of events in Great Russia from the vantage points of Murmansk and Archangel. Further, we were thus gaining a foothold at a point which immediately menaced Petersburg, and this would have great importance if Bolshevik Russia attempted to attack our Eastern Front again. The part played by the small force that was required — it was only a matter of about a division — was a very profitable investment. My frank sympathies with the Finnish nation in its struggle for liberty were, in my opinion, easily reconciled with the demands of the military situation.
The troops which we had left in Rumania were practically wholly available when the government of that country saw itself compelled to come to terms with us as the result of the conclusion of peace with Russia. The rest of our fighting troops which still remained in the East formed the source from which our Western armies could to a certain extent be reinforced in the future.
The transport of the German divisions which we had employed in the campaign against Italy could be begun at once in the course of the winter. I considered that Austria-Hungary was unquestionably in a position to deal with the situation in Upper Italy by herself.
One important question was whether we could approach Austria-Hungary with the request to place part of her available forces in the East and Italy at our disposal for the approaching decisive battle. As the result of reports I received, however, I came to the conclusion that these forces would be better employed in Italy than in the mighty conflict in the West. If by an impressive threat to the whole country Austria-Hungary succeeded in tying down the whole Italian Army, and perhaps also the English and French troops in the line in the North, or if she kept these away from the decisive front by a successful attack, the corresponding relief which we in the West would enjoy would perhaps be greater than the advantage of direct assistance. We confined ourselves to securing the transfer of some Austro-Hungarian artillery. For the rest I had no doubt that General von Arz would uphold our requests for greater Austro-Hungarian assistance at any time and to the best of his ability.
About this time the Austro-Hungarian Foreign Minister had announced in a speech that the resources of the Danube Monarchy would be employed for the defense of Strasburg as readily as for that of Trieste. This loyal declaration had my full approval. It was only later that I came to know that these expressions of Count Czernin had aroused the most violent opposition among non-German circles in the Danube Monarchy. This political agitation had, therefore, no influence on my decisions as to the amount of Austro-Hungarian help we should require on our future battlefields in the West.
I regarded it as elementary that we should make an attempt to recover for our Western offensive all the effective troops which we had hitherto employed in Bulgaria and Asiatic Turkey. I have already shown how violent was the political opposition to such a step in Bulgaria. General Jekoff was too sensible a soldier not to realize the justice of our demands, but apparently he shared his sovereign's opinion that the German spiked helmet was indispensable in Macedonia. Thus the transfer of the German troops from the Macedonian front was a very slow process. It was with great reluctance, and after repeated representations on our part, that General Jekoff decided to relieve them by Bulgarian troops from the Dobrudja. The serious reports about the morale and attitude of the Bulgarian troops on the Macedonian front which we received from our German commanders on that front finally compelled us to leave behind the rest of the German infantry, three battalions and some of our numerous artillery units.
Efforts in the same direction had a similar result in Turkey. In the autumn of 1917 our Asiatic Corps had been transferred to Syria with the Turkish divisions which had originally been earmarked for the campaign against Bagdad. The uncertain position on that front compelled us at the beginning of 1918 to increase that corps to double its size. Most of the troops thus required were taken from our forces in Macedonia. Before these reinforcements reached their new destination we thought that a material improvement in the position on the Syrian front had taken place, and therefore negotiated with Enver Pasha for the return of all German troops in that theater. Enver approved. Urgent military and political representation on the part of the German commander in Syria, as well as the German Government which had been influenced by that commander, compelled us to cancel the recall.
To sum up, I am entitled to claim that on our side nothing was neglected to concentrate all the fighting forces of Germany for the decision in the West. If we did not manage to get hold of every man the reason must be sought in circumstances of the most varied character, but certainly not in any ignorance of the importance of this question to us. In the winter of 1917-18 we had at last attained the object of three years' strivings and longings. No longer threatened in the rear, we could turn to the great decision in the West and must now address ourselves to this passage of arms. We should perhaps have been spared the trouble if we had only overthrown the Russians once and for all in 1915.
I have already shown how much more difficult our task had become by 1918. France was still a mighty opponent, though she might have bled more than we ourselves. At her side was an English army of many millions, fully equipped, well trained and hardened to war. We had a new enemy, economically the most powerful in the world, an enemy possessing everything required for the hostile operations, reviving the hopes of all our foes and saving them from collapse while preparing mighty forces. It was the United States of America and her advent was perilously near. Would she appear in time to snatch the victor's laurels from our brows? That, and that only, was the decisive question! I believed I could answer it in the negative.
The result of our great offensive in the West has given rise to the question whether we should not have been better advised virtually to adopt the defensive on the Western Front in the year 1918, supporting the armies previously employed there with strong reserves, while we concentrated all our other military and political efforts on the business of restoring order and creating economic stability in the East and assisting our allies in the execution of their military tasks. It would be an error to assume that I had not fully considered such an idea before I adopted the plan of an offensive. I rejected it after mature reflection. Sentiment had no weight with me. How were we to bring the war to a conclusion on such lines? Even though, at the end of 1917, I considered that there was nothing to make me doubt the ability of us Germans to continue our resistance through the coming year, I could not conceal from myself the regrettable decay of the powers of resistance of our allies. We must devote all our resources to secure a victorious conclusion of the war. That was the more or less express demand of all our allies. It cannot be urged against us that even our opponents had come to the extreme limits of their material and moral efforts. If we did not attack they might prolong the war for years, and if any among them had been unwilling to go on he would simply have been compelled to do so by the others.
A slow death from exhaustion, unless our enemies succumbed to it first, would unquestionably have been our fate. Even when I consider the present misfortunes of my Fatherland, I feel an unshakable conviction that the proud consciousness that it devoted its last breath to the preservation of its honor and its existence will do more towards the work of reconstruction than if the war had taken the course of slow paralysis to end in exhaustion. Our country would not thus have escaped its present fate, and the uplifting memories of its incomparable heroism would have been lacking. When I seek for a parallel in history I find that the glory of Preussisch-Eylau shone like a star in the darkness of the years 1807-12, though it could not avert the fate of Old Prussia. Its luster helped so many on the path of reconstruction and enlightenment. Can the German heart have changed? My Prussian heart beats to that refrain.
XIX.2 Spa and Avesnes
Approving our suggestion, His Majesty gave orders that our headquarters were to be transferred to Spa, and the removal was carried out on March 8th. The change had been necessitated by the coming operations in the West. From our new headquarters we could reach the most important parts of our Western Front in far shorter time than we could have done from Kreuznach. As we wished to be in the closest possible touch with coming events we also selected Avesnes as a kind of advanced headquarters of Main Headquarters. We arrived there on March 19th with the greater part of the General Staff, and found ourselves in the very center of the headquarters of the Army Groups and armies which were to play the principal parts in the forthcoming battle for a decision.
As regards outward appearance the town was dominated by its mighty but cumbersome old church. The ruins of its old fortifications were a reminder that Avesnes had played a part in military history in days gone by. As far as I remember, units of the Prussian Army had occupied the fortress after the Battle of Waterloo in 1815 and from there had marched on Paris. The district was not touched by the war of 1870-71.
The town is a quiet place embedded in the heart of great woods. Even our presence added little to its activity. I found myself, after an interval of forty-one years, among the French population, and this time on a longer visit. Compared with 1870-71 the different types I saw in the streets seemed to me so unchanged that I could easily have forgotten that there ever had been such an interval. Now, as then, the inhabitants sat before their doors, the men usually lost in thought, the women bustling round and monopolizing the conversation, and the children playing and singing on the playground as if the world were quite at peace. Lucky children!
For the rest, our long sojourn at Avesnes confirmed the general experience that the French population submitted with dignity to the hard fate which the long war meant for them. We were never compelled to take any measures to maintain order or secure our own protection. We were able to confine ourselves to securing quiet for our work.
His Majesty did not take up residence in Avesnes, but lived in his special train during the period of the great events which followed. The train was moved about according to the military situation. This residence of several wreeks in the restricted quarters on the train may serve as an example of the simple ways of our War Lord. At such a time he lived entirely with his army. Regard for danger, even from enemy airmen, was quite beyond the range of our Emperor's thoughts.
Our stay at Avesnes during the next few months gave me more frequent opportunities than I had previously enjoyed to come into direct personal touch with the commanders of our army groups and armies as well as officers of other higher Staffs. I was particularly glad of the chance of seeing regimental officers. Their experiences and stories, which were usually told in touchingly simple language, were of extreme interest to me, not only from the military but from the purely human point of view.
It was a quite peculiar and special pleasure to be able to pay an occasional visit to the Masurian Regiment which bore my name, the Guards Regiment in which I had served as a young officer through two wars, and the Oldenburg Infantry which I had once commanded. Of course there was little left of the original regiment, but I found the old soldierly spirit in the new men. I was seeing most of the officers and men for the first time — and in many cases the last also. Honor to their memory!