Catastrophe 1914: Europe Goes to War (98 page)

There was never a credible shortcut. As George Orwell wisely observed a generation later, the only way swiftly to end a war is to lose it. The Western Front’s generals’ reputations would stand higher today had they exercised greater economy with lives and less conspicuous callousness about the loss of them, but it is hard to see how they could have broken
the stalemate. Until 1918, the fundamental options before the Western allies were those of acquiescing in German hegemony on the continent, or of continuing to bear the ghastly cost of resisting this. It was, and remains, a huge delusion to suppose that a third path existed.

France would pay dearly for becoming the foremost theatre of war. The nation eventually mobilised the largest number of soldiers of any belligerent – eight million – and suffered the most grievous proportionate losses of all the great powers – 1.3 million dead from metropolitan France, or 16.5 per cent of those conscripted. By comparison, Germany lost 15.4 per cent, Britain 12.5 per cent, Austria-Hungary 12.2 per cent, Russia 11.5 per cent and Italy 10.3 per cent. French deaths amounted to 3.4 per cent of its entire population, a proportion exceeded only by Serbia and Turkey – the latter’s toll was inflated by the self-inflicted horror of more than a million Armenians massacred by their Turkish compatriots. A further three million French soldiers were wounded: 40 per cent of all conscripts became casualties of one kind or another, including one in five officers. But in December 1914, while Frenchmen acknowledged the misery of their predicament as readily as their counterparts in every other nation, they retained deep reserves of will and commitment, which revealed exhaustion only with the mutinies of 1917.

In the Hapsburg Empire, many of Franz Joseph’s subjects recognised the war as a disaster; the Russians cherished hopes that Hungary might make a separate peace. By December the Austrians, having suffered a million casualties including 189,000 dead fighting the Russians, mustered only 303,000 combatants on the Galician front. Conrad urged Berlin that a great victory was still attainable if Germany contributed more troops, but also gave a dire warning that his nation’s war effort could collapse by spring if these were not forthcoming. The Russians, in their turn, believed that one more big heave in Galicia could complete Austria’s defeat, although there was rival support in the Stavka for a new offensive into East Prussia. While Russians were dismayed by their losses, and there was widespread despondency about the conflict throughout the Tsar’s empire, no articulate faction save that of the revolutionaries was yet pressing for peace at any price.

That winter, by far the most serious dissension at the summit of any national leadership took place in Germany. The Kaiser complained that he was excluded from strategic decision-making. ‘The General Staff tells me nothing and doesn’t ask me anything either,’ he asserted petulantly on 6
November. ‘If they are under the impression in Germany that I am leading the army, then they are very much mistaken.’ But Wilhelm retained one important power: that of appointing and dismissing the chief of staff who issued orders in his name, as commander-in-chief. This critically influenced strife between the Kaiser’s generals which persisted for the rest of the war.

Germany’s officer corps would spend the next quarter of a century seeking scapegoats for the army’s historic failure to deliver victory in 1914. Moltke was obviously the foremost candidate, but Falkenhayn’s prestige was severely damaged by the losses incurred during his unsuccessful October offensive on the Belgian front. In the last four months of the year Germany suffered 800,000 casualties, including 18,000 officers; 116,000 of these men were killed. The chief of staff wrote of the Kaiser: ‘His Majesty is in a very depressed mood. Is of the opinion that the attack on Ypres has failed and come to grief, and with it the campaign … It is a moral defeat of the first class.’ Moreover, Falkenhayn’s own confidence in the Central Powers’ ability to prevail over the Entente was severely shaken.

His drastic solution was to seek a separate peace with the Russians, imposing cash reparations but no territorial forfeits. He believed that if German forces in the East could be shifted to the Western Front, the French would soon crack. He saw Britain as Germany’s ‘arch-enemy’, sharing the view expressed by the
Vossische Zeitung
: ‘The driving force of the world war is England. That is today plainly proved and everywhere recognised. Millions of innocent people [suffer in the cause of] mercantilism –
Krämergeist
– the enrichment of London’s merchants and their disdainful lust for mammon. War is simply business for England, a commercial competition designed to destroy its rival, in this case Germany, by means of warfare.’

On 18 November, Falkenhayn presented to Bethmann Hollweg his proposal for closing down the Eastern Front. The chancellor was appalled. In contradiction of the chief of staff, he himself had always regarded Russia as the irreconcilable menace to German interests. Rejecting any outcome of the struggle that left Russian power unbroken, he drew Falkenhayn’s attention to the allies’ September pact, whereby each renounced a separate peace. He was also alarmed by Conrad’s warnings that without fresh German aid, Austria-Hungary might collapse. Early in December, Bethmann paid a visit to Hindenburg’s headquarters, where he discussed all these matters with Ludendorff. The bleak, driven, highly-strung general was obsessed with the belief that with more forces he could
defeat Russia, thus making possible victory in the West. He despised Falkenhayn, and did not even consult or inform him when lending several German divisions to Conrad in January 1915. Ludendorff was hereafter committed to securing the chief of staff’s dismissal.

Bethmann returned to Berlin bursting with confidence in the ‘Easterners’. Major Hans von Haeften, Ludendorff’s liaison officer at the Chancellery, lobbied energetically for Falkenhayn’s sacking and replacement by the victor of Tannenberg. Bethmann concurred, but such a step was vetoed by the Kaiser, who asserted passionately that he would never appoint such ‘a dubious character’ as Ludendorff, ‘devoured by personal ambition’. To circumvent Wilhelm, former chancellor Prince Bülow and Grand-Admiral Tirpitz discussed the possibility that he might be declared insane and replaced by his son as regent, with Hindenburg as
Reichsverweser
– imperial administrator. Hindenburg and Ludendorff even for a time favoured recalling Moltke as chief of staff, and their puppet.

Though such conversations came to nothing, they reflected the desperate mood prevailing in Berlin’s corridors of power, five months after the German government had enthusiastically embraced European war. If there was stalemate at the front, thereafter there was also stalemate among Germany’s leaders. Bethmann became a bitter critic of Falkenhayn – ‘a gambler … an execrable person’ – and an enthusiastic supporter of the Easterners’ demands for more troops, their insistence that in Poland they could win the war for Germany. More than that, the chancellor was personally responsible for quashing the proposal that the Central Powers should accept the unattainability of victory, and seek peace at least in the East. It was ironic that, while the allies supposed Germany in the grip of Prussian militarism, it was Bethmann the politician who rejected any negotiated compromise in the winter of 1914.

Meanwhile Falkenhayn’s personal authority, unbuttressed by any major victory such as Hindenburg and Ludendorff had won, was sufficiently weakened that he had the worst of all worlds. Clever enough to recognise that he bore responsibility for achieving the impossible, he nonetheless kept his post through 1915–16. The chief of staff was obliged to accede to Ludendorff’s demands for troop reinforcements at the expense of the Western Front, while enjoying the barren satisfaction of seeing his own judgement vindicated, that these forces would achieve nothing decisive. The Germans defeated the Russians again and again, securing huge swathes of territory and eventually a victory recognised at the February 1918 Treaty of Brest-Litovsk, signed by the Bolsheviks.

Russia suffered a total of 6.5 million casualties in the war – probably the highest total loss of any belligerent, though the statistics are unreliable. But Ludendorff proved mistaken in his belief that defeating the armies of the Tsar could determine the outcome of the entire global conflict. Falkenhayn was right, that Eastern victories were of illusory significance amidst the vastness of Russia. He himself was sacked late in 1916, after his failure to take Verdun. Hindenburg became chief of staff, with Ludendorff wielding real power as First Quartermaster-General. But the Bolshevik revolutionaries, rather than the Hohenzollern Empire, proved the beneficiaries of the disaster that befell Romanov arms.

As Christmas approached, Pope Benedict XV issued a public appeal for a suspension of hostilities over the sacred Christian holiday. Such an idea was quickly rejected by governments and commanders, but their soldiers proved more amenable. The spontaneous truces of 1914 – for there were many on all fronts save the Serb one – have seized the imagination of posterity, as symbolising the futility of a conflict in which there was no real animosity or purpose. Such a conclusion is quite unjustified, because they represented nothing unusual. Interludes of fraternisation have occurred in many wars over many centuries, without doing anything to deter soldiers from killing each other afterwards. The spasms of sentimentality and self-pity displayed in December 1914, almost all initiated by Germans, reflected only the fact that at Christmas almost every adherent of a Christian culture yearned to be at home with loved ones, while now instead millions found themselves huddled shivering in the snow and filth of alien killing fields. The emotionalism generated by such circumstances caused some men to make brief gestures of humanity before resuming the routines of barbarism willed by their national leaderships.

On 24 December a Bavarian soldier named Carl Mühlegg walked nine miles to Comines, where he purchased a small pine tree before returning to his unit in the line. He then played Father Christmas, inviting his company commander to light the tree candles and wish peace to comrades, to the German people and the world. After midnight in Mühlegg’s sector, German and French soldiers met in no man’s land. Belgians likewise clambered out of their positions near Dixmude and spoke across the Yser canal to Germans whom they persuaded to post cards to their families in occupied territory. Some German officers appeared, and asked to see a Belgian field chaplain. The invaders then offered him a communion vessel found by their men during the battle for Dixmude, which was placed in a burlap
bag attached to a rope tossed across the waterway. The Belgians pulled it to their own bank with suitable expressions of gratitude.

On Christmas Day in Galicia, Austrian troops were ordered not to fire unless provoked, and the Russians displayed the same restraint. Some of the besiegers of Przemyśl deposited three Christmas trees in no man’s land with a polite accompanying note addressed to the enemy: ‘We wish you, the heroes of Przemyśl, a Merry Christmas and hope that we can come to a peaceful agreement as soon as possible.’ In no man’s land, soldiers met and exchanged Austrian tobacco and schnapps for Russian bread and meat. When the Tsar’s soldiers held their own seasonal festivities a few days later, Hapsburg troops reciprocated.

Along several sectors of the Western Front, a singing competition developed between rival trenches. The German 2nd Guards Division, for instance, sang ‘
Stille Nacht
’ and ‘
O du Fröhliche
’, and hoisted a Christmas tree on their parapet. When the French had made their own choral contribution, the Germans answered with ‘
Vom Himmel hoch
’. Then the contest became more nationalistic: the French bellowed the
Marseillaise
, the Germans ‘
Wacht am Rhein
’ and ‘
Deutschland über alles
’ before giving three cheers for the Kaiser.

Alexander Johnston wrote laconically: ‘my first and I hope my last Xmas on active service’. Near Ypres, Wilbert Spencer ‘saw about 9 or 10 lights along the German lines. These I said were Xmas trees and I happened to be right … On Xmas day we heard the words “Happy Xmas” being called out, whereupon we wrote up on a board “
Glückliches Weihnachten
” and stuck it up. There was no firing, so by degrees each side began gradually showing more of themselves and then two of them came half-way over and called out for an officer. I went and found out that they were willing to have an armistice for 4 hours and carry our dead men half-way for us to bury – a few days previous we had had an attack with many losses. This I arranged and then – well you could never imagine such a thing. Both sides came out and met in the middle, shook hands, wished each other the compliments of the season and had a chat.’

Men of the French 99th Infantry Regiment, which had similar experiences, were affronted to find the truce shattered by heavy German fire on New Year’s Day. The following morning a Bavarian lieutenant came over to explain apologetically that his superiors had taken fright about the malign impact of fraternisation on the serious business of winning the war. A German regimental report described another such incident near Biaches, in the Somme sector. Some French infantry waved to the
opposing Bavarians, and a French colonel suggested that a German officer should advance to meet him. ‘Reserve Lieutenant Vogel, a company commander in the 15th Infantry, walked over. The officers met between the lines. The lieutenant-colonel proposed a truce because of the holiday. Lt. Vogel refused. The lieutenant-colonel then asked at least to bury the body of a fallen Frenchman who had been lying for a long time between the lines. Vogel agreed to this suggestion. The corpse was buried by two French and two German soldiers.’ The report regretted the failure of attempts to prevent fraternisation, but assured formation headquarters that several officers and men had been punished for this breach of discipline.

Twenty-year-old Gervais Morillon wrote to his parents: ‘The Boches waved a white flag and shouted “
Kamarades, Kamarades, rendez-vous
.” When we didn’t move they came towards us unarmed, led by an officer. Although we are not clean they are disgustingly filthy. I am telling you this but don’t speak of it to anyone. We must not mention it even to other soldiers.’ Morillon was killed in 1915. Elsewhere twenty-five-year-old Gustave Berthier wrote: ‘On Christmas day the Boches made a sign showing they wished to speak to us. They said they didn’t want to shoot … They were tired of making war, they were married like me, they didn’t have any differences with the French but with the English.’ Berthier perished in June 1917.