Herwig’s accounts of the major battles on the Western Front bring home the terrible futility of the war. From February to December 1916, Erich von Falkenhayn, the Chief of the German General Staff, tried to bleed the French Army to death through sustained infantry and artillery assaults on the French fortifications at Verdun, which guarded access to the plains northeast of Paris. Germany’s Meuse Group West gained two miles of territory in four months of fighting at a cost of 69,000 men. In the corridors of the forts, the stench of human excrement, putrefaction, and explosive gases from the German troops’ flamethrowers took combatants’ breath away. Herwig puts the total number of casualties at 350,000 on each side, or about 70,000 for each month of fighting. Due to the offensive’s failure, Kaiser Wilhelm II replaced Falkenhayn with Paul von Hindenburg and Erich Ludendorff. In December, French forces regained Fort Douaumant, whose capture by the Germans had been celebrated across Germany.
The duumvirate of Hindenburg and Ludendorff refined the German system of trench fortifications, which had consisted of three parallel trenches totaling a mile in depth. They replaced it with a system of trenches between six and eight miles in depth. Under the principle of defense in depth, front lines were lightly manned, and the mass of German machine guns were housed in steel-reinforced concrete bunkers located at half-mile intervals well behind the first lines. The first line troops were to resist assaults only as long was reasonable, allowing attacking forces to enter the killing zone behind the front created by German machine gun nests with their interlocking zones of fire.
Germany’s ally in the conflict, Austro-Hungary, was militarily useless. Germany repeatedly had to move troops from the west to rescue Austrian forces from defeat by Russia and Serbia. The head of the Austrian general staff, Conrad von Hotzendorf, drew up grandiose battle plans that didn’t account for weather, terrain, or his men's condition. By the end of 1916, Austria depended on German loans to finance the war, and the German general staff dictated most major decisions to their Austrian counterparts.
The German leadership overreached disastrously in its prosecution of the war. You can make a good case the Reich would have come out of the conflict with its frontiers intact and perhaps more territory than it entered the war with if it had avoided any one of three major blunders: resuming in February 1917 unrestricted submarine warfare, which drew the American republic into the conflict; imposing the onerous peace on Russia in December 1917; and making a final push for victory in 1918 instead of withdrawing to more defensible lines.
Germany’s ally in the conflict, Austro-Hungary, was militarily useless. Germany repeatedly had to move troops from the west to rescue Austrian forces from defeat by Russia and Serbia. The head of the Austrian general staff, Conrad von Hotzendorf, drew up grandiose battle plans that didn’t account for weather, terrain, or his men's condition. By the end of 1916, Austria depended on German loans to finance the war, and the German general staff dictated most major decisions to their Austrian counterparts.
The German leadership overreached disastrously in its prosecution of the war. You can make a good case the Reich would have come out of the conflict with its frontiers intact and perhaps more territory than it entered the war with if it had avoided any one of three major blunders: resuming in February 1917 unrestricted submarine warfare, which drew the American republic into the conflict; imposing the onerous peace on Russia in December 1917; and making a final push for victory in 1918 instead of withdrawing to more defensible lines.
Germany’s most egregious mistake was its decision to resume unrestricted submarine warfare against civilian ships bound for Great Britain. At the beginning of 1917, German planners concluded they could knock Britain out the war by destroying the vessels that brought the island nation food from the Western hemisphere. The Germans knew that submarine warfare targeting commercial ships would lead America to enter the war. In 1915, a German U-boat sunk the Lusitania, a civilian passenger ship. The dead included 128 Americans. President Wilson issued a note threatening Germany with war if it continued targeting civilian vessels. Germany apologized and suspended submarine war. But in early 1918, German leaders concluded that unrestricted sub warfare could force Britain out of the war before America could deploy enough troops on the Continent to affect the outcome. Germany greatly overestimated Britain's reliance on imported food, however. Seven months of submarine warfare failed to produce food shortages in Great Britain, contrary to the Germany’s predictions. In April 1917, after U-boats had destroyed several American merchant vessels, Congress passed a declaration of war against Germany. By March 1918, just as Germany was mounting its doomed final attempt to secure victory, 287,000 American soldiers had arrived in France. By July 1918, 250,000 Americans were arriving every month, and there were over 1,000,000 Americans on the Western Front by the autumn.
Although by the end of 1917 Germany had defeated and secured peace with Tsarist Russia, Serbia, and Romania, it failed to capitalize on its victories by moving enough troops from the east to the west. Serbian forces had repelled the Austro-Hungarian invasion, but the armies of Serbia and Romania were handily routed by the Germany Army, and the resources of those countries were being exploited to supply the Central Powers. The Germans transported Vladimir Lenin from Switzerland to Russia, where he led the Bolshevik revolution that ended the Tsar’s reign. Weeks later, Lenin signed a peace decree, proposing Russia’s immediate, unilateral withdrawal from the war. The Central Powers and Soviet Russia met at Brest-Litovsk to work out terms in December. When Soviet representatives initially refused to cede the territory demanded by the Germans, Quartermaster General Ludendorff re-mobilized the army and sent German ships into the icy Gulf of Finland to take Petrograd. The Russians returned to the negotiating table and ceded more territory than the Germans initially demanded.
Out of fear that Lenin would retake the lost territory, Ludendorff kept over a million German soldiers in the east. Months later, in March 1918, German troops on the Western Front carried out a last-ditch offensive to punch through the Allied lines and throw the British Expeditionary Force against the Channel. The German Army advanced to within 56 miles of Paris. The French and British leadership made contingency plans for the collapse of the French Army and the evacuation of the British off the Continent. The German Army, however, suffered over 600,000 casualties in three months of fighting. Due to insufficient manpower and resources, the Germans could not hold the territory they gained. By August, English, French and American forces pushed the Germans back to the lines that existed before the offensive. If Ludendorff had moved more troops to the Western Front, the Germany Army might have brought France to its knees before enough Americans arrived to change the war’s outcome.
After the initial operation failed to produce victory in the spring of 1918, Ludendorff persisted in offensives that wasted German lives without strengthening Germany’s position or materially weakening the Allied armies. Each month from March 1918 to June 1918, Germany suffered about 200,000 men taken prisoner, wounded, or killed. In July alone, Germany had 420,000 men killed and 340,000 captured or missing. Ludendorff could have withdrawn his forces to the Reich's antebellum frontiers or to more defensible positions behind the front. Instead, his isolated and ineffectual offensives nearly destroyed the army. In July, another officer described him as morally and physically broken, at wit’s end. In October, Ludendorff instructed the Kaiser to task the liberals and socialists--whom Ludendorff wrongly blamed for Germany’s defeat--with negotiating an armistice on the basis of President Wilson's 16 points.
If Germany had avoided defeat in the First World War, the Reich’s imperial government would not have been succeeded by the unstable Weimar Republic, which came to an end when Hitler took power in 1933. Had the imperial government survived the war, Hitler and the Nazis would not have brought on the Second World War or carried out an industrial-scale attempt to exterminate the European Jews. More than any other event, the Jewish holocaust led white Westerners to set anti-discrimination and racial equality as their highest moral values. Consequently, if the First World War had not planted the seeds for the Nazis’ rise to power, Western elites would not have opened up their countries to the mass immigration that has injected racial discord into the West and that will ultimately reduce whites to minority status. If Germany had avoided defeat in the First World War, Western civilization would not now be dying from the mass immigration that was brought on by racial egalitarianism.
Although by the end of 1917 Germany had defeated and secured peace with Tsarist Russia, Serbia, and Romania, it failed to capitalize on its victories by moving enough troops from the east to the west. Serbian forces had repelled the Austro-Hungarian invasion, but the armies of Serbia and Romania were handily routed by the Germany Army, and the resources of those countries were being exploited to supply the Central Powers. The Germans transported Vladimir Lenin from Switzerland to Russia, where he led the Bolshevik revolution that ended the Tsar’s reign. Weeks later, Lenin signed a peace decree, proposing Russia’s immediate, unilateral withdrawal from the war. The Central Powers and Soviet Russia met at Brest-Litovsk to work out terms in December. When Soviet representatives initially refused to cede the territory demanded by the Germans, Quartermaster General Ludendorff re-mobilized the army and sent German ships into the icy Gulf of Finland to take Petrograd. The Russians returned to the negotiating table and ceded more territory than the Germans initially demanded.
Out of fear that Lenin would retake the lost territory, Ludendorff kept over a million German soldiers in the east. Months later, in March 1918, German troops on the Western Front carried out a last-ditch offensive to punch through the Allied lines and throw the British Expeditionary Force against the Channel. The German Army advanced to within 56 miles of Paris. The French and British leadership made contingency plans for the collapse of the French Army and the evacuation of the British off the Continent. The German Army, however, suffered over 600,000 casualties in three months of fighting. Due to insufficient manpower and resources, the Germans could not hold the territory they gained. By August, English, French and American forces pushed the Germans back to the lines that existed before the offensive. If Ludendorff had moved more troops to the Western Front, the Germany Army might have brought France to its knees before enough Americans arrived to change the war’s outcome.
After the initial operation failed to produce victory in the spring of 1918, Ludendorff persisted in offensives that wasted German lives without strengthening Germany’s position or materially weakening the Allied armies. Each month from March 1918 to June 1918, Germany suffered about 200,000 men taken prisoner, wounded, or killed. In July alone, Germany had 420,000 men killed and 340,000 captured or missing. Ludendorff could have withdrawn his forces to the Reich's antebellum frontiers or to more defensible positions behind the front. Instead, his isolated and ineffectual offensives nearly destroyed the army. In July, another officer described him as morally and physically broken, at wit’s end. In October, Ludendorff instructed the Kaiser to task the liberals and socialists--whom Ludendorff wrongly blamed for Germany’s defeat--with negotiating an armistice on the basis of President Wilson's 16 points.
If Germany had avoided defeat in the First World War, the Reich’s imperial government would not have been succeeded by the unstable Weimar Republic, which came to an end when Hitler took power in 1933. Had the imperial government survived the war, Hitler and the Nazis would not have brought on the Second World War or carried out an industrial-scale attempt to exterminate the European Jews. More than any other event, the Jewish holocaust led white Westerners to set anti-discrimination and racial equality as their highest moral values. Consequently, if the First World War had not planted the seeds for the Nazis’ rise to power, Western elites would not have opened up their countries to the mass immigration that has injected racial discord into the West and that will ultimately reduce whites to minority status. If Germany had avoided defeat in the First World War, Western civilization would not now be dying from the mass immigration that was brought on by racial egalitarianism.
