A Storm in Flanders: The Ypres Salient, 1914-1918: Tragedy and Triumph on the Western Front
288
A Storm in Flanders: The Ypres Salient, 1914-1918: Tragedy and Triumph on the Western Front
288eBook
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Overview
The Ypres Salient in Belgian Flanders was the most notorious and dreaded territory in all of World War I—possibly of any war in history. After Germany’s failed attempt to capture Britain’s critical ports along the English Channel, a bloody stalemate ensued in this pastoral area no larger than the island of Manhattan. Ypres became a place of horror, heroism, and terrifying new tactics and technologies: poison gas, tanks, mines, air strikes, and the unspeakable misery of trench warfare.
Drawing on the journals of the men and women who were there, Winston Groom has penned a drama of politics, strategy, the human heart, and the struggle for victory against all odds.
This ebook features 16 pages of black-and-white historical photographs.
“Everything nonfiction should be.” —Fort Worth Star-Telegram
“Groom reconstructs a forgotten military passage that serves as a cautionary tale about war’s consequences.” —Pittsburgh Tribune-Review
“Groom’s account, full of detail and the smell of gunsmoke, is expertly paced and free of dull stretches.” —Kirkus Reviews
“Moving . . . Inspiring . . . An important and brilliantly written book.” —Booklist
Product Details
| ISBN-13: | 9781555847807 |
|---|---|
| Publisher: | Grove/Atlantic, Inc. |
| Publication date: | 04/01/2018 |
| Sold by: | Barnes & Noble |
| Format: | eBook |
| Pages: | 288 |
| Sales rank: | 376,377 |
| File size: | 6 MB |
About the Author
Read an Excerpt
CHAPTER 1
Forests have been sawed down for the paper to explain the origins of the First World War; historians argue and debate it still. A precise truth can never be divined because of the fallibility of the human factor — in the tortuous process who, on which side, in their darkest thoughts, understood or believed what, and at which moment? It is almost as if mischievous gods dropped a gigantic jigsaw puzzle from the sky in which some of the pieces will always be missing and others do not exactly fit the places for which they were designed. One thing generally agreed on is that the long and terrible path began in 1870, when Germany united itself into a nation.
Prior to then, Germany had been a collection of twenty-five kingdoms and principalities loosely governed by the state of Prussia, which was presided over by Kaiser William (Wilhelm) I. In the 1860s, at the advice of Germany's revered statesman, Prince Otto von Bismarck, the Prussians set about to gather up all these entities into a Greater Germany, thus becoming the largest and most powerful state in Europe. She then quickly assailed and subdued her neighbors Denmark (1864), Austria (1866), and France (1871). It was the French conquest that caused the trouble. After encircling Paris and reducing the inhabitants to a diet of cat meat, the Germans demanded and received the two longtime French provinces that constituted Germany's border with France: mineral-rich Alsace and Lorraine. This humiliation galled the French down to the last peasant, creating a bitter animosity that lasted generations and helped lead to the outbreak of the First World War.
Led by William I, who now became the kaiser (emperor), Germany suddenly became the most threatening state in Europe. With the exception of republican France, at that time Europe was ruled by monarchies. To the east of Germany lay the vastness of czarist Russia, which also controlled part of Poland as well as the Baltic states; to the south was the Hapsburg empire of Austria-Hungary, governed by Emperor Franz Joseph and including what is now Czechoslovakia, Croatia, Bosnia-Herzegovina, Galicia, and Transylvania. South of this were the turbulent, angry, and emerging states of Serbia, Romania, Bulgaria, Albania, and Montenegro. To the north were the Scandinavian countries Norway, Sweden, Finland, Denmark. To the west along the Atlantic and North Sea coasts were France, Spain, Portugal, Belgium, Holland. And out in the ocean lay the island kingdom of Great Britain.
At the time of the German unification Great Britain was the most formidable industrial power in the world. Soon Germany began to challenge her, aided by an influx of iron and coal from the conquered French provinces. For the remainder of the nineteenth century, the industrious Germans made giant leaps in modern technologies and economics: steel production, mining, chemicals, education, finance, transportation, electronics, and, of course, the most up-to-date military armaments, while much of continental Europe, especially France, seemed content to languish as agricultural nations.
On a visit in 1878, the venerable Mark Twain described Germany this way: "What a paradise this land is! What clean clothes, what good faces, what tranquil contentment, what prosperity, what genuine freedom, what a superb government!" In a way it was true; the Germans were a proud people and within the space of a few years had created much to take pride in. By the end of the nineteenth century the German public school system had eliminated illiteracy, the German economy was booming, and, in terms of equipment and overall effectiveness, she had the mightiest army in the world.
On balance, the last quarter of the century was a time of world peace; the prosperous Gilded Age saw the development of the telephone, electric lights, automobiles, motion pictures, manufacturing advances, vast railway systems, and luxury transatlantic shipping — all products of the so-called Second Industrial Revolution. It was also a time that saw enormous improvements in weapons and weapons systems — the invention of high-explosive gunpowder, rapid-fire rifles, and, of course, the machine gun. Perhaps the most important — and certainly the most important during World War I — was the development of long-range artillery. In warfare until almost the close of the nineteenth century, the guns had to be fired basically by "line-of-sight," which meant that the gunners had to actually "see" the target. But with the invention of high-tensile steel and the manufacture of larger and larger guns and howitzers, as well as the application of precise trigonometric calculations, artillery could be hidden away far from a battle area, protected by ridges or other terrain features, and preregister fire over almost every square yard of the field. The effect of this would prove to be devastating in the coming conflict.
Winston Churchill summed up thusly the great advances in technology during the latter part of the nineteenth century: "Every morning when the world woke up, some new machinery had started running. Every night while the world had supper, it was running still. It ran on while all men slept."
Yet amid this new abundance roiled an undercurrent of unrest. There was a dramatic rise of nationalism among many European nations then dominated by the empires of others — particularly in that eternal volcano, the Balkan states. Serbia, Bosnia, Herzegovina, Romania, Bulgaria, and Montenegro all chafed under the harsh rule of Turkey's crumbling Ottoman empire. Added to this were all the old religious fears and hatreds: Muslim versus Christian, Catholic versus Protestant — and everybody against the Jews. Disputes festered over trade and tariffs and envy over colonial possessions engendered an uncommon outbreak of pride, vanity, greed, mistrust, and shortsightedness among both rulers and ruled. Throw in the rising creed of socialism and one can see how the kettle had begun to heat. This was especially true in Russia, ruled by the iron-fisted czar Nicholas, who, quite naturally, had outlawed the preaching of socialism in all its various facets. Still the philosophy flourished among large numbers of workers in Russian cities. There they kept alive their utopian dream of a classless society where everyone got his fair share — a world without poverty or suffering or political oppression. Time was running out for the empire of the czars.
This was no less true in Germany. There, despite the rosy picture painted by Mark Twain and others, dissatisfaction among the laboring classes had produced the largest socialist party in the world, constantly plotting to overthrow the government and the capitalist system. The German right to vote was basically a sham, because the German constitution was so constructed as to leave the principal power in the hands of the kaiser and his cronies in the military. There was a federal parliament of sorts — a Reichstag. Its duties were limited to presiding over minor internal matters involving the various German states. Still, in all things of consequence, including the right to declare war, the kaiser had the last word.
Religious intolerance was pervasive. Most of the aristocracy and upper classes had joined the sixteenth-century Protestant Reformation, and even as the new century dawned Germany's large Catholic population suffered widespread discrimination. Jews even more so. Despite the patina of happiness and prosperity, a good portion of German society seethed.
The continuing enmity of France toward Germany over her lost provinces of Alsace and Lorraine led the Germans to become apprehensive. Fearing that France meditated a war of revenge, Helmuth von Moltke, chief of the German General Staff who had guided the victory over France in 1870–71, remarked, "What we have gained by arms in half a year, we must protect by arms for half a century." Yet Bismarck, Germany's "Iron Chancellor," desired no war and set about making alliances with other powerful empires to ensure Germany's security against France, Russia, and to a lesser extent England. It must be understood that, unlike the United States, Germany did not have two huge seacoasts to protect her, nor friendly or weaker nations at her borders. She had been in conflict with her neighbors almost since time immemorial. The treaty with Russia was crucial because of her vast border on the eastern frontiers of Germany. England — which had been fighting with the French from the time of the Norman Conquest up through the Napoleonic Wars at the beginning of the century — was sought after as a hedge against French aggression. In 1879 Bismarck also forged an alliance with Austria-Hungary. In 1883 Italy was brought into the pact, which later included Romania under a secret agreement.
What chilled Bismarck's bones was the notion that France would make her own alliance with behemoth Russia, hemming Germany in between the two of them. His apprehension was heightened in 1887 when Russia and Austria-Hungary (hereafter referred to as Austria) collided in a dispute over control in the Balkans, during which it seemed as if Russia and France might unite in a pact of their own. But in a brilliant piece of German diplomacy, Bismarck, playing off fears of external and internal threats, managed to cobble together the League of the Three Emperors: Germany, Austria-Hungary, and Russia. This was not only an insurance treaty but a "Reinsurance Treaty," under which Germany and Austria promised not to undermine Russia in the Balkans and Russia, for her part, agreed not to form an alliance against Germany-Austria with France. That stratagem more or less kept the European peace until old Kaiser William I died in 1888. His son Frederick succeeded him as kaiser but he died, of cancer, after only three months. Then his son took the throne as William II. The first thing this brash young autocrat did was to get rid of the venerable Bismarck and repudiate the latter's carefully laid diplomacy.
The new kaiser had long had his own ideas about how Germany's future in world affairs should progress. Kaiser William II was a strange figure; born with a withered arm, he grew up chafing while his grandfather and Bismarck dallied in the odd assortment of mutual defense treaties to ensure Germany's security. Even before his ascension to the throne William was writing letters advocating a preventive war against France and Russia on the time-worn theory that they were conspiring against Germany. This was not altogether paranoia; France was, as ever, still furious over her humiliation in the Franco-Prussian War and the loss of Alsace and Lorraine, and Russian diplomats had made it clear that they were anxious about Germany's intentions and military might. Neither wanted war with Germany, however, and in fact feared her.
One of the remarkable things about European diplomacy prior to World War I was the intimate family relationships between rulers who would ultimately become the belligerents. It all began with Great Britain's Queen Victoria, granddaughter of King George III (ruler of England during the American Revolution). In 1837, at the age of eighteen, she became Queen of England.
Victoria and her husband, Prince Albert, a German, had nine children, who married into practically all the royal houses of Europe. Her eldest son, Prince Albert Edward, married a princess of Denmark and became England's King Edward VII when Victoria died in 1901. His son — Victoria's grandson — George V, succeeded his father as king of England just in time for World War I.
One of Victoria's daughters married a German prince and their daughter — Victoria's granddaughter — became the wife of Czar Nicholas II of Russia. Not only that, but another of Victoria's sons had married the czar's aunt. Also, Queen Victoria's firstborn daughter married the German kaiser Frederick and their eldest son became Kaiser William II, who ascended to the German throne in 1888.
Thus, England's George V, Russia's Nicholas II, and Germany's William II were all cousins, either directly or through marriage, descendants of England's Queen Victoria.
The new German kaiser was something of a military nut, especially with regard to the navy, at that point a relatively small part of the German armed forces establishment. He appointed himself a field marshal, as well as an admiral (a title that had also been bestowed on him by his cousins in England), and decreed that henceforth the regular dress at his court would be the military uniform. The kaiser, though he could be cranky, was not stupid. He was particularly impressed with a gift some years earlier by his cousin George, the future king of England, of a Gatling gun, and insisted that the German Army embrace with vigor this new automatic weapon. By the time World War I broke out, the German Army had not only mastered use of the Gatling's successor, the machine gun, but incorporated nearly 12,000 of them into their fighting battalions — nearly triple the numbers the Allies possessed. (The British Army, on the other hand, was still talking about the advantages of the cavalry charge and the French, the "Spirit of the Bayonet").
In 1890 the League of the Three Emperors alliance lapsed. The kaiser made no move to renew it; instead, he virtually slammed the door in Russia's face, refusing to continue financial loans to them and otherwise giving them the cold shoulder. As the historian Donald Kagan points out in On the Origins of War: "There was considerable pressure, especially among the younger elite surrounding the young Kaiser, for change, almost any change. From the Kaiser's point of view, how could he rid himself of the dead hand of the past and establish his own place as leader of his people if he merely walked the paths paved by his predecessors. What was the point of dismissing Bismarck only to be ruled by his system and his policies?"
This "change for change's sake," or "I did it because I'm the kaiser and I could," would prove to be a very big mistake.
Not surprisingly, the French instantly saw their opportunity and began courting the Russians, holding out, among other emoluments, the prospect of loans to them from the great House of Rothschild. In 1892, as Churchill put it, "The event against which the whole policy of Bismarck had been directed came to pass," and, though they did not ratify it for two more years, France and Russia agreed to a dual alliance, under which each would come to the other's aid if attacked by Germany or her allies. Thus, if hostilities broke out, Germany now faced the unhappy prospect of fighting a two-front war. Meanwhile, the kaiser had embarked on a foreign policy that some believe was deliberately meant to vex his perceived enemies — which now included Great Britain, even though England had devoted herself to remaining neutral within the increasingly sour disposition of continental affairs. The kaiser's behavior toward England was rooted in one of the world's worst motives for troublemaking: jealousy. William coveted Great Britain's exalted position among the nations of the world. He coveted the great empire upon which "the sun never set." He especially coveted England's magnificent naval fleet's complete dominance of the high seas. "Germany," as the historian Martin Gilbert explains, "united only in 1870, had come too late, it seemed, into the race for power and influence, for empire and respect." The kaiser, however, was determined to rectify this: with the most powerful military machine in the world, he did not intend to play second fiddle to a small island nation such as Great Britain. What he wanted, he said, was for Germany to have "a place in the sun."
Some years earlier, in the mid-1880s, Bismarck — who had always believed that acquiring African colonies for Germany would become a liability — changed his mind, and so Germany began to move into Africa, colonizing Cameroon, Togoland, Tanganyika (East Africa), and German Southwest Africa. The main reason for Bismarck's reversal was that it had become all too apparent that the German population was outgrowing Germany's ability to assimilate them. Consequently, large numbers of young men were leaving the Fatherland to work in other nations and their colonies — in England this resulted in an unusually large number of German table waiters. Unfortunately for Germany, their colonial acquisitions were not particularly profitable. They were located mostly in equatorial Africa — a wild, fetid, unhealthy, and not very prosperous region, either for raw materials or for trade; they were also prone to native uprisings, as the Germans would soon find out. However, these were all that were left since Britain, France, and other countries had long since secured the more desirable northern and southern parts of the continent. Nevertheless the new kaiser persisted in keeping them, apparently on the premise that he could not rule over a German empire without possessing colonies, no matter how much of a liability they might be. This also led to trouble.
(Continues…)
Excerpted from "A Storm in Flanders"
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Copyright © 2002 Winston Groom.
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