Blood, Tears and Folly: An Objective Look at World War II. Len Deighton

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СКАЧАТЬ of conscription had ensured that German officers, like German other-ranks, were thoroughly trained. Fit 20-year-old men served two years with the army (one year for students). Training was methodical and rigorous; some said it was sadistic. Emphasis was given to specialized skills, such as operating and maintaining engines, artillery and machine-guns. Each man also learned the job of his immediate superior so that every senior NCO was trained to fill an officer’s role, should his officer become a casualty.

      Until they reached the age of 40, Germans returned to the army for refresher courses that amounted to about eight weeks’ training every five years. In this way reservists were taught about new weapons and tactics, and the system provided Germany with a well trained army of over 4 million men in 1914.

       The battle of the Somme

      Engineers, like scientists of all kinds, were respected in Germany. With the German army reduced to static fighting on the Western Front, engineers built a well designed defence system behind their front line. They dug trenches along contours, taking advantage of every hill and ridge, and where possible the line was linked to shell-racked villages, where machine-gun positions and observation posts were concealed in the rubble.

      On the Somme sector, chalk provided a chance to dig deep; 40 feet was not exceptional. Dug-outs were reinforced with cement and steel and had multiple exits. Many underground quarters had electric light and were ventilated by fans. The soldiers had bunk-beds and in some places there was even piped water. No wonder that on 8 August 1916 a British serving soldier’s letter in The Times said: ‘But the German dug-outs! My word, they were things of beauty, art and safety.’

      When these defences were ready, the Germans pulled back to them. The British generals moved their men forward to lap against the German line. It was what the Germans wanted them to do, for here the British were constantly observed and under fire. It was this German line that Douglas Haig was to assault on 1 July 1916 in the battle of the Somme, throwing in thirteen British and five French divisions.

      Whether Haig’s plan was based upon his low opinion of the professional army, or his low opinion of the civilians which now largely manned it, is not clear. The battle plan was detailed and robotic. No opportunity for initiative or independent action was granted to any of the combatants.

      The Somme battle opened on a hot July day when 143 battalions attacked and about 50 per cent of the men, and some 75 per cent of the officers, became casualties. Karl Blenk, a German machine-gunner, recalled:

      I could see them everywhere; there were hundreds. The officers were in front. I noticed one of them walked calmly, carrying a walking stick. When we started firing we just had to load and reload. They went down, in their hundreds. You didn’t have to aim, we just fired into them.²⁰

      The German machine-gunners had been ordered to set up their positions at the rear of their trenchline, where they would command a better view and ‘In addition, owing to the feeling of safety which this position inspires, the men will work their guns with more coolness and judgement.’

      With a thoroughness and dedication that the world usually ascribed to the Prussians, the British infantry had spent many hours preparing for the attack. They practised walking forward in close and exactly prescribed intervals carrying almost 70 lb of equipment.

      The Germans were at this time practising carrying their machine-guns from their deep and comfortable dug-outs to position them for firing. They did this as soon as the preliminary artillery barrage lifted for the attack. It took them three minutes.²¹

      By the end of the first day, the British attackers had suffered 60,000 casualties, about one-third of them fatal. It was the worst day suffered by any army during the war and the worst in the British army’s history.

      Haig was not deterred. His futile battle continued for six months, until the Allied casualties numbered 420,000 men.²² Few of the soldiers engaged in the Somme fighting had been given proper infantry training. Even the British artillery-men were not adequately trained. Afterwards the high command tried to make the artillery’s performance an excuse for the disaster.

      Between 1914 and 1918 a distinct difference was to be seen in the German and the Anglo-French methods of fighting the war. When France’s General Pétain analysed the fighting in Champagne in 1915 he concluded that surprise attacks were useless because of the great depth of defences on both sides. He said artillery bombardment was the only way of preparing for a breakthrough. Britain’s General Haig was convinced. Apart from the Neuve Chapelle fighting, in the early summer of 1915, and the Cambrai raid of 1917, Haig studiously avoided surprising the Germans. He said his guiding principle was wearing down the enemy: it was to be a war of attrition. Unfortunately for everyone concerned, Haig’s methods wore his own men down more thoroughly than they wore down the enemy.

       7

       PASSCHENDAELE AND AFTER

       The past is a foreign country:

      they do things differently there.

      L. P. Hartley, The Go-Between

      Douglas Haig was not a man to be deterred by failure, or even to learn from it. One year later the Somme battle was staged all over again in the sloppy clay of the north. Men drowned in a quagmire made worse by bombardment. Even artillery pieces were swallowed up into the morass. It was the ultimate nightmare of the war, and many soldiers who were there – such as my father – would not speak of it. Like the Somme fighting of the previous year, it lasted from July until November and secured only a tiny strip of land.

      Of this gloomy drama the military historian Liddell Hart said: ‘So fruitless in its results, so depressing in its direction was this 1917 offensive, that “Passchendaele” has come to be … a synonym for military failure – a name black-bordered in the records of the British Army.’¹

      In the last year of the war the Germans, having knocked Russia out of the war, could turn to the Western Front and stage a ‘Somme battle’ of their own design. It was a massive attack, and some of the ideas employed in it were still in evidence in the blitzkrieg of the Second World War.

      General Ludendorff – probably the most expert general on either side in the war – in Notes on Offensive Battles, published in 1918, drew attention to broad differences in the German approach. The British had based their attacks upon artillery schedules, he said. The ‘creeping barrage’ – which fell behind the advancing infantry as well as ahead of it – drove the British infantry forward. Men who lingered, and men immobilized by injuries, came under intense shellfire from their own guns. In such a scheme, said Ludendorff, commanders ceased to have proper control of their men. He condemned such tactics as wasteful and ineffective. Infantry should be used more flexibly, always seeking to get round behind the enemy on the flanks, and thus roll up the enemy and widen the attack.

      The Germans did not disdain surprise. It was essential to these new methods. Specially selected men – storm-troops – would lead the assault. They’d use flamethrowers, have large canvas bags crammed full of hand-grenades, and be equipped with a revolutionary development of the machine-gun – the MP 18 machine-pistol. This was a small lightweight automatic, fitted with the barrel and 32-round magazine of the Luger pistol. It sprayed fire at about 400 rounds per minute and by the end of the war the Germans СКАЧАТЬ