The Somme Read online

  IV

  It is evident, therefore, that in the momentous events of July–August 1914 the civilian rulers of Britain made the crucial decisions. Likewise, in the following year they exercised appropriate control over the large aspects of strategy. The scheme for launching a naval operation in the Dardanelles was entirely the brainchild of civilians: principally Winston Churchill, but endorsed by the War Council of the cabinet. The only contribution of the chiefs of the navy was a reluctant and half-hearted assent. And when that naval operation came to grief on 18 March 1915, it was again the appropriate government figures, not any military person outside the government, who decided to redeem the setback by launching a military invasion of the Gallipoli peninsula. (For at least one prominent member of the military hierarchy, the whole Gallipoli venture was a ‘Brobdingnagian bumstunt’.)

  Parallel with its exercise of strategic initiative away from the Western Front, the cabinet and its war committee were agonising actively about the military situation which had developed in Belgium and France. By the end of 1914 it had already become evident that the sweeping movements of great armies on the Western Front, which had been such a feature of the opening weeks of the war, were now a thing of the past. In that region, modern weaponry was bestowing on defence a marked superiority over offence. This appeared to have generated a paradoxical situation. The reason why Britain had entered the war was to rescue Belgium, and ultimately Western Europe, from conquest by the German army. Correspondingly, expelling the German invader from Belgium and France was the fundamental strategic objective of Britain's endeavours. Yet the onset, by the end of 1914, of stalemate in the west, and the ominous power of defensive weaponry (such as machine-guns and shrapnel and barbed wire and trenches) against advancing human flesh, called this Western strategy into question – as Churchill indicated when he inquired whether there was no better use to be made of Britain's new armies than ‘chewing barbed wire in Flanders’.

  The British War Council (a subcommittee of the cabinet with special responsibility for military affairs) pondered these matters on 13 January 1915. Powerful voices had already been raised against further hammering away on the Western Front. Churchill, for one, wanted to strike against the German coast well to the north of the trench line in Belgium. And David Lloyd George, who railed against any notion that British strategy should be determined by the whims of the French commander-in-chief (he was not at that stage concerned about any whims of the British military commander), urged the institution of an inquiry into the possibility of action in the Balkans. Such action, he argued, might rally the Balkan states to the Allied side, and ultimately bring Germany down ‘by knocking the props under her’.1

  That the War Council as a whole shared this reluctance to launch further bloody actions in Flanders is apparent from some of its proceedings. For one thing, it agreed to Churchill's proposal for ‘a naval expedition in February to bombard and take the Gallipoli peninsula, with Constantinople as its objective’ – which would prove the first step towards a considerable (if ill-conceived) diversion in strategy away from the Western Front. And it also resolved that, if by the spring of 1915 it had become evident that a stalemate had indeed developed in the west, then British forces would go elsewhere. For this purpose, a subcommittee of the War Council should be appointed to identify ‘another theatre and objective’.

  All this, however, fell a good deal short of any decision by the civilian leaders to refrain hereafter from assisting the French in their endeavours on the Western Front. No doubt military advice played a part in maintaining a Western orientation. Sir John French argued that the German lines in France and Belgium were not impenetrable, that with the aid of a large supply of high-explosive shells they might be overwhelmed, and that: ‘Until the impossibility of breaking through on this side was proved, there could be no question of making an attempt elsewhere.’ (This remark, incidentally, was not as obtuse as it may seem. The German trench defences had not, at that time, reached such sophistication that they could ward off assault by a large accumulation of high-explosive shells. The problem, of course, was that such an accumulation of shells happened not to exist. But then, their absence would have been equally an obstacle to British military operations in any other region.)

  Whatever weight these arguments by the military may have carried with the War Council, there were other powerful reasons for postponing a precipitate departure from the Western strategy. One is indicated by the War Council's decision to appoint a subcommittee to fossick out ‘another theatre and objective’. Such ‘theatre and objective’ was not immediately obvious. There was simply no more attractive area where the British could make their major effort. Churchill's hankering to strike at the German coast north of the Western Front invited palpable objections. It would require locating irreplaceable units of the British fleet at considerable risk. And as the Germans with their advanced railway system could move promptly to whatever part of their coastline was threatened, the most probable outcome of such a diversion – apart from total failure – would be a further episode of trench deadlock.

  As for action against Germany's allies, such proposals ran up against an obvious objection. Notwithstanding Lloyd George's striking imagery, these countries were not ‘props’ holding up Germany. Germany's great ‘prop’ in wartime was its powerful army. So, for the Allied cause to prosper, Germany's army had to be engaged and fought to defeat somewhere. And in the dominating circumstances of geography, the only feasible area for mounting operations against the German army, and for keeping those operations supplied and reinforced, was the Western Front. The Balkans, despite Lloyd George's ill-developed inclinations to proceed there, held few promises and many problems: for example the uncertain loyalties and profound animosities towards each other present among the Balkan states, the crushing difficulties of transportation awaiting an army so far from its home base and operating in such poorly developed territory, and the comparative ease with which Germany could move its own forces south to meet any attack directed against Austria-Hungary.

  There was a yet larger matter rendering perilous for Britain any diversion to a non-Western strategy. Lloyd George might rail against the attempts of the French commander to influence British decision-making. But he was choosing to forget that, were it not for this French commander (and his army), Britain would no longer be in a position to do any deciding. If the Kaiser's army had managed to sweep across Western Europe, as promised by the Schlieffen Plan, the game would have been up for Britain. Its prospects of liberating a Europe lying under German conquest hardly merited contemplation. And Germany, following such a triumph in the West, would have been in a position to enlarge its economic base substantially by employing conquered industrial areas in Belgium and France. Thereby it might greatly expand its fleet and so challenge Britain's final frontier: the North Sea.

  Even with the Schlieffen Plan thwarted, the French army was in 1915 the only bastion standing in the way of a German victory in Western Europe. What, in military terms, Britain had to offer, whether in holding back the invader or driving him out, was (for the moment) decidedly limited. In such circumstances, to send a signal to the French authorities that Britain had decided to fight a different war against other enemies would – simply in terms of Britain's most vital interest – have been folly of a high order.

  V

  The War Council of 13 January 1915, if with the utmost misgivings, opted not to commit this folly. The proposed subcommittee which was intended to discover ‘another theatre and objective’ met once and came to no conclusion. And when Sir John French's force did attack at Aubers Ridge in May and failed conspicuously, the conclusion was not drawn in political circles that this proved a Western strategy to be invalid. The setback was attributed, not to faulty strategy, but to a lack of the necessary weaponry (what the newspapers trumpeted as the ‘shell scandal’). The solution, correspondingly, did not lie in seeking out fresh fields of endeavour, but in undertaking a huge mobilisation of industry for war purpose
s under a newly created Ministry of Munitions. This would generate the quantities of guns and ammunition needed to batter down German defences in the west and so terminate the deadlock there. It is notable that the political figure who agreed to take on the headship of this new ministry was David Lloyd George. His appointment served to show that even those who – periodically if not too persistently – presented themselves as advocates of an alternative strategy were not always steadfast in that assessment.

  Nothing that happened during the remainder of 1915 created the impression that the direction of British strategy was passing under military control. It was certainly no initiative on Sir John French's part which caused him to embark on another dismal operation on the Western Front, this time at Loos. (Neverthe-less, his failure there finally meant that he no longer had any credibility as a commander of the BEF.) Nor was it the military chiefs who took the decisions both to send British forces to Salonika in a doomed attempt to save Serbia, and to close down the Gallipoli campaign. Sometimes, certainly, Britain's decision-making was powerfully influenced by pressure from its allies. But it was still the appropriate constitutional bodies within Britain which responded to these pressures.

  This was true in other areas. For example, the conversion of operations in Mesopotamia, originally undertaken (quite sensibly) to safeguard Britain's oil supplies, into a hazardous and uncalled-for expedition to Baghdad was the handiwork of the British War Council and the government of India. Far more significantly, the mounting pressure to alter the basis of army recruitment within Britain from voluntary service to enforced conscription was not set in train by the military command (even though most army figures probably favoured it). The campaign to curtail civil liberties in this fundamental matter was generated by conservative forces in Parliament and the electorate, supported by some prominent figures in the Liberal Party.

  More generally, it is evident that what produced the context from which emerged the Battle of the Somme was not any seizure of decision-making by military elements. It was the whole course of the war in 1914 and 1915.

  The vital developments were these. First, any notion that Britain, as one member of an alliance, might confine its contribution to just the exercise of command of the sea and the employment of its financial power and productive capacity, with no more than a token military contribution, steadily lost all validity. In short, Britain's allies were going to lose the war on land unless Britain agreed to contribute mightily in that sphere also. This was not because the endeavours of France and Russia were anything but large, devoted, and sacrificial. It was because their endeavours were fearfully costly, and did not prosper.

  In the early weeks of the war, and twice in 1915, French forces had launched massive offensives against the German army. These had proved ill-rewarded and had sustained staggering losses. As for the Russians, their early offensives into East Prussia in 1914 had been shattered at Tannenburg and thrown back at the Masurian Lakes, and during 1915 their armies had been driven out of Russian Poland with huge casualties. If the war was ever to be won by the Entente powers, Britain by the start of 1916 had no choice but to engage in a large and mounting contribution to the war on land.

  Anyway, from the start of the war the British cabinet, the House of Commons, and a considerable section of the general public had made it clear that they expected Britain to embark on a major military commitment. Moreover, before many months had passed it had become evident that this commitment was incompatible with the economic practice of ‘business as usual’. There must be extensive mobilisation of the economy by the government for military purposes. As a consequence, Britain by the end of 1915 possessed a mass army undergoing extensive military training, and an industrial and financial base in the process of being converted to the generation of unprecedented (if not necessarily sufficient) volumes of weaponry and ammunition.

  Something else, to all appearances, was patently obvious by the close of 1915: the matter of where Britain must direct its great military effort. At the start of the war, this issue had not seemed in doubt. In so far as Britain had an army to send abroad, it must be directed against the German hordes pouring over the territory of Belgium and into France. A German conquest of Western Europe would be for Britain an irreversible calamity.

  In the aftermath of the onset of stalemate on the Western Front, certainly, noteworthy political figures did contemplate employing Britain's military resources in areas far from Flanders and France. But by the end of 1915 these inclinations had run into the ground. Campaigns against the Turks, supposedly attractive as directed against a soft target, were now discredited. For one thing, as they were not directed against the German army, they seemed quite beside the point. For another, they had proved anything but painless. The Gallipoli operation had failed conspicuously and was in the process of being abandoned. And the expedition to Baghdad, having been driven into retreat, was entering a quite ominous phase.

  As for speculations that Britain might strike at Germany's other principal ally, Austria-Hungary, through the Balkans and at the head of a Balkan coalition, these entirely vanished during 1915. They had never been based on anything of substance. No Balkan state was eager to invoke the wrath of the mighty German army, just then hammering to pieces the forces of the Tsar. And at least some Balkan states were confident that they had more to gain by striking a deal with the Kaiser than by ganging up against him. From the moment in September 1915 that the German commander, Falkenhayn, decided to call off his campaign against the Russians and set about disposing of Serbia, the matter of which major contestant could actually wage a successful campaign in the Balkans passed beyond doubt.

  So events in 1915 put paid to a widely held notion: that Britain, thanks to its command of the sea, might choose from a variety of strategic options. In a war against Germany, Britain's dominance at sea in fact provided no choices of strategy for the simple reasons that Britain needed to keep its fleet on its doorstep, to watch over the Kaiser's battleships; and no amount of journeying far afield would bring British forces into meaningful contact with the Kaiser's armies.

  It seemed to follow that Britain in 1916 had just one sensible destination for its great military endeavour – the same destination that it had chosen in August 1914. And as it happened, the need for such an endeavour had become imperative. Back in 1914, France would almost certainly have survived even had the BEF stayed at home. After a year and a half of slaughter, France was unlikely to survive much longer without substantial military aid from Britain. And, evidently, the only locale for that aid was – if only faute de mieux – the Western Front.

  This takes us back to our starting-point. The notion that the Somme campaign must have been the handiwork of bone-headed militarists, acting in disregard of the wisdom of responsible civilians, springs from the evident futility of the Anglo-French offensives which had already been delivered on the Western Front in 1914 and 1915. And the view that the attempted breakthrough on the Somme in 1916 was, therefore, a ridiculous undertaking for which the political leadership could not have been responsible has since been powerfully endorsed: by the widely read memoirs of Winston Churchill and Lloyd George.

  But this deduction begs a large question. We have observed the fundamental nature of civilian input into military decision-making in 1914 and 1915. So when did the supposed transference of power from politicians to the military, with the Somme campaign of 1916 as its consequence, take place? To elucidate this matter, it is appropriate to observe in detail the role of political decision-making in the run-up to the Somme campaign.

  2 ‘Absolutely Astonishing’: The War Committee and the Military

  A somewhat bizarre episode of May 1916, of no great moment in itself, will help to set the scene.

  On 18 May 1916, the War Committee1 turned its attention to a rather specific issue. This was the great numbers of horses being maintained on the Western Front by Haig's army. These, it was noted, particularly on account of the huge quantity of fodder they consumed, were tying up a
lot of shipping space.

  The spokesmen for the military sought to justify this outlay. The Quarter-master-General discoursed on the role of horses as beasts of burden: hauling supplies and weaponry to and from the battlefield. And Kitchener argued that ‘if they reduced the number of horses, they could not keep men efficient as cavalry officers’.2 That is, the horse retained a large role on the battlefield, both in providing transportation and in prosecuting conflict.

  The War Committee was not convinced. It conceded that horses were required for moving about artillery, although even here Lloyd George wondered whether so many were necessary ‘in view of the employment of so much traction’. But the pressure on shipping made it necessary to dispense ‘with everything not essential’, and cavalry had apparently ceased to possess a place in military engagements dominated by the products of industry. Lord Crewe bluntly inquired ‘why Cavalry should be kept up, when it was never used at all’. The War Committee decided that – following consultation with the CIGS and Haig – ‘an independent investigation should be made into this question’.

  This decision was profoundly unwelcome both to Haig and to the Army Council. In their view the War Committee might have responsibility for deciding about grand strategy: where campaigns were to be waged, with what overall resources, and for what duration. That did not give it a role in the actual conduct of battle or the employment of specific instruments of warmaking. Haig's response, as Lloyd George interpreted it, was in effect to tell the War Committee (the words are Lloyd George's) ‘to mind their own business’ and not interfere with his. And the Army Council came back with what Lord Curzon considered ‘a very stiff letter’.