The Somme Read online

  Clearly, some contributors seemed opposed to any British offensive on the Western Front. McKenna – without suggesting an alternative – was alarmed at the probable effect on British resources of a Western offensive that was not totally successful. He was also concerned that conscription, to which he was implacably opposed, would inevitably follow from a large campaign in the west. Lloyd George spoke approvingly of offensive action against Turkey rather than Germany, or of offensive action against Germany conducted only by the Russians (employing weaponry supplied by the British and French). And Balfour urged the maintenance of the operation at Salonika – an operation which Lloyd George (puzzlingly) seemed to think was directed against the Turks, not the Bulgarians.

  But all of these were kites flown, not developed schemes. Lloyd George grounded his support for action against the Turks on the palpably insubstantial premise that the Germans would be forced to come to their aid (as, supposedly, the British had been obliged to do in the case of Serbia). He ignored the plain fact that the Germans had done precious little to aid the Turks during the British campaigns in Gallipoli and Mesopotamia. (For that matter the British, apart from their belated and wholly ineffective action at Salonika, had noticeably failed to come to the aid of Serbia.)

  As for Lloyd George's suggestion that one possible strategy would be to send large quantities of armaments to the Eastern Front and await a Russian break-through, that ran counter to discussions already made in the War Committee on 13 January. In a discussion about ‘Material for Russia’, great stress had been laid on the incompetence of the Russian authorities in arranging for the distribution of supplies from Britain. Balfour ‘thought it a scandal that such a state of affairs should exist’. No one offered a different opinion, Kitchener expressing doubts about whether, even if a British officer were sent to oversee distribution, ‘even then delivery will be assured’. (Subsequently, Lloyd George made it plain on a number of occasions that he would support sending to the Russians only such weaponry as was surplus to British requirements for offensive action on the Western Front.)

  What is evident is that, although some critics of the Chantilly proposals seemed to favour either an offensive elsewhere or no British offensive at all, this was not where their main emphasis lay. What Balfour and Lloyd George were principally arguing against was a premature offensive in the west. Kitchener might claim, and with some sense, that the protracted campaign being envisaged must commence in the spring so as to ensure sufficient campaigning weather. Balfour and Lloyd George were, on the contrary, convinced of the merits of delay beyond the spring. This, Balfour claimed, would oblige the Germans to attack first, and so wear out their reserves. (He was expressing the common belief that attack cost more than defence – a view to which he would continue to cling even as the progress of Germany's Verdun offensive called it into question.) And Lloyd George insisted that the Western offensive must wait upon the production of an overwhelming sufficiency of guns and ammunition – something that would not occur before the middle of the year. The dissenters did not argue in vain. The meeting of 13 January amended its earlier decision in order to show, as Balfour had stipulated, ‘that the War Council was not definitely committed to the plan of an offensive in the West’. The resolution still read that every effort should be made to prepare for a great offensive in the spring ‘in the main theatre of war’. But to it was added the rider: ‘although it must not be assumed that such offensive operations are finally decided on’.

  A further decision was taken, at Lloyd George's prompting. A conference of British and French military and munitions authorities was to be convened, in order to compute the numbers and calibres of guns and ammunition ‘necessary to assure the success of the next great offensive operation on the Western Front’. ‘This information was considered essential to any final decision regarding both the desirability of undertaking an offensive in the West and the best time for commencing such an operation.’

  Two things had emerged pretty clearly. First, in response to the Chantilly proposals, the nation's political leaders were not prepared to relinquish their constitutional right to make the big decisions about strategy. The military command might propose, but the civilian chiefs would still dispose.

  But, secondly, although the War Committee reviewed differing ways of proceeding, their discussion hardly revealed that they saw themselves as having an attractive range of alternative operations. Some members might speak of action in regions far from the Western Front, or of Britain's forces adopting a posture of immobility. But neither idea enjoyed sustained advocacy, even from the people who raised them. What seemed the matter for serious dispute was the timing of action on the Western Front: not whether, but when.

  V

  On 22 February, the matter of strategy for 1916 again came before the War Committee.9 The question was raised by Lloyd George, who ‘thought the time had arrived to discuss the projected summer campaign’. His choice of words was noteworthy; that is, his unqualified, and thereafter unchallenged, reference to a ‘summer campaign’. No further reference would be made to an offensive in the spring, despite Kitchener's earlier claim that only this would provide sufficient good weather for the campaign to be carried to fulfilment. Lloyd George, in the course of the discussion, quoted Haig as believing that the British army would not be ready to attack on a 25 kilometre front until May or June. And that was that.

  The matter which Lloyd George believed remained open for discussion was that ‘before the offensive could be contemplated the relative forces in men and material should be carefully weighed’. Sir William Robertson, the government's main adviser on military matters, looked to a conference of Allied commanders-in-chief on 1 March to clarify the situation regarding men, guns, and munitions. However, whether accurate figures concerning German resources could also be supplied was a matter of dispute.

  Lloyd George offered the tentative opinion that the Allies were slightly superior to the Central Powers in men but inferior in weaponry. Asked by Bonar Law whether ‘we should be ready, as concerned munitions, in May and June’, Lloyd George replied ‘Yes, we should’. But he then added that ‘the awkward point was that the Germans were now accumulating huge stores’ and that the British would ‘have to catch up. France was the only country of the Allies which had already reached a great output.’ And he threw in the observation that ‘If we had no facts to go upon, he did not understand how we could decide on offensive action.’ Given these negative observations, his affirmative reply to Bonar Law's question about whether the British would possess a sufficiency of munitions by May or June becomes decidedly puzzling. So is the issue of whether he did, or did not, regard the issue of the offensive as having been settled.

  One thing, nevertheless, was clear. As Minister of Munitions, Lloyd George was spearheading a great endeavour to accumulate munitions whose only proposed purpose was a (summer) offensive on the Western Front. The man most stubbornly resisting that campaign remained McKenna. He insisted that ‘it was essential to know the real strength of the combatants in guns’. And he plainly did not believe that it was enough to be assured that the Allies possessed a large superiority in numbers. The lesson of the war, he argued, was that such superiority might not be enough:

  He thought that at Ypres in October 1914, the German preponderance in troops and guns was overwhelming, and our troops had no trenches, and yet the Germans did not succeed in getting through.

  Again, in the huge French offensive in the Champagne in the autumn of 1915: ‘the French had fired away 7,000,000 rounds of gun ammunition and had been two or three times as strong in numbers, and yet they had not got through.’

  McKenna wanted ‘an analysis of all the attempts of the offensive’.

  It seemed to him in the contemplation of the offensive we were relying too much on hopes. We should have more definite knowledge, considering the number of times that the efforts at the offensive had already failed.

  These negative observations did not go unchallenged. Kitchener and
Robertson both spoke in defence of their actions. Yet McKenna's misgivings carried weight. The Prime Minister concluded that the matter must remain undecided ‘until the possession of the facts, or at least the conjectured facts’. Without these ‘facts’, evidently, the British government would continue to withhold authorisation of the offensive.

  Yet, equally evidently, the War Committee was failing to follow through on any alternative ways of proceeding. No voice was raised in favour of redirecting British attention towards the Balkans. Balfour offered the judgement ‘that from a Naval point of view such operations would be very bad’. And Lloyd George, asked by McKenna how long it would take to produce the 688 mountain guns required for an operation there, ‘said it could not be done’. It seemed to follow that when the weaponry and trained manpower for a major operation started coming to hand, the place of their employment was not really in doubt.

  4 Decision-making, March–June

  I

  In March 1916, the apparent confidence among members of the War Committee that they possessed control over British strategy, and so over the Allied prosecution of the war, began to falter. Doubts surfaced concerning the way events might be about to unfold, and under whose direction.

  It would be easy to attribute these misgivings to a major development on the German side. Late in February, the German high command seized the strategic initiative by unleashing a huge offensive against the French fortress system of Verdun. During March, the War Committee found itself uncertain both about the extent of German aspirations in this undertaking, and about how threatening the operation was actually proving.

  So on 10 March, the Prime Minister inquired of Robertson what was the German objective. ‘Was it Verdun?’ Robertson replied unhelpfully that he ‘supposed it was, although he did not know why’. And he then added: ‘The Germans were out for crippling the French, and then to turn on us or Russia.’ His puzzlement seems obtuse. Regarding the degree of menace presented by the German assault, Robertson offered Joffre's assessment that ‘the French losses were 30,000 and that the Germans had lost twice as many’, but then interposed his own opinion that ‘Probably the French had lost as many as the Germans.’1 The War Committee was entitled to be a bit bewildered.

  Yet the developing unease in the War Committee was not primarily a response to German action at Verdun. It was much more about the course of French strategy, and even more about what the Russians – without reference to their allies – might be planning. On 21 March Lloyd George expressed strong fears that the Entente powers were in danger of reverting to an earlier situation, where haphazard offensives had been launched without reference to the War Committee.

  The point bore on the constitution and function of the Committee, who ought to know all facts and proposals.2

  He ‘feared that the same thing would happen as last year – i.e. that one Ally would go off before it was ready [he was apparently referring to Russia], and that would entail other allies being brought in to relieve the pressure’. Balfour chimed in: ‘The Committee had not got to the bottom of the Russian plan’. And Asquith insisted that, ‘When they went to Paris...they ought to have some information both from France and Russia’. It was, he concluded, ‘all very slippery and sloppy’.3

  In the ensuing weeks, notwithstanding Germany's startling action at Verdun, what continued to trouble the War Committee was this matter of the exercise of strategic initiative among the Allies. For the Prime Minister, as for Balfour and Robertson, what mattered above all was that the Entente powers should deliver their offensives simultaneously and in combination. The War Committee even passed a resolution stressing the ‘utmost importance’ of this.4 What particularly worried them was that the Russian command might, without consultation, be about to launch a great operation which would in time oblige the British and French to come to their rescue.5

  Another matter, equally unconnected with events at Verdun, worried the War Committee. While the British were making plans to diminish their contingent at Salonika, leaving the French and Serbs to preside over what should remain a quiet sector, the French kept generating plans for a great endeavour there – plans that would involve an increased, not reduced, British contribution. What muddied the situation was the fact that, while overall the War Committee opted for inaction in this region, some members spasmodically threw out remarks apparently sympathetic to operations at Salonika. So Balfour opined, if only in passing, that the presence of a substantial British contingent in Salonika would compel Bulgaria to maintain a watching force there.6 Others expressed the belief that the same contingent might nudge Romania towards entering the war on the Allied side. And Lloyd George could not forget that once – at least theoretically – he had strongly preferred British action in the Balkans to operations on the Western Front. So he punctuated the War Committee's deliberations with inquiries about how the Russians would react to a British withdrawal from Salonika, and spoke of a plan for ‘smashing the Turks’. (‘That would be very unpleasant for Germany.’)7

  None of this – when action was actually called for – was going to affect the War Committee's prevailing view on strategy. It would proceed with its decision to withdraw at least one division from Salonika (in Robertson's view ‘It was useless there and wasted’).8 And it would resist firmly any offensive there, Lloyd George going so far as to assert that any such offensive, even if intended to aid the Russians, ‘would be fatuous’.9

  While moving, via these assorted ambiguities and speculations, to a firm stance against extraneous operations, the War Committee was girding itself to take the one decision that mattered. They might continue to contemplate providing weapons for their struggling Italian allies and even for the still neutral but ever-wavering Romanians. They might agonise about what action to take concerning the grandiose ambitions and palpable fragility of the Russians. But their firm conclusion would be that any aid in weaponry to the Italians or Romanians must be from what was surplus to the requirements of a great British offensive in the west. And their conclusion about the circumstances of their Eastern ally would be that the only effective way of advancing or redeeming Russia's situation was to launch a large Anglo-French operation on the Somme.

  Lloyd George made this clear late in March. He had been arguing that the British should, for reasons of morale, send a limited quantity of machine-guns to both Italians and Romanians. Robertson responded that Haig, at that moment, possessed only 1.5 machine-guns per battalion whereas, for a major offensive, he required eight. Lloyd George replied that by June Haig's requirements would be fully met. The War Committee resolved that only after full provision had been made for Haig's forces (along with home defence and the air force) would any surplus – assuming one existed – be directed to the Italians and Romanians.10

  In more respects than this, the nation's leaders were concerned to ensure that the coming offensive in the west would be well considered and soundly mounted. The military spokesmen were at pains to stress that this would not be a grandiose or reckless endeavour. Kitchener, disregarding warnings he had already received from the Fourth Army Commander, General Sir Henry Rawlinson, assured his colleagues that Haig was not going to do anything foolish.11 Above all, he would not be lured by the French into taking on all the fighting unaided. If the French tried to convert this into a purely British endeavour, Haig would close it down.12

  Lloyd George, significantly, spoke in the same vein. He had, he said, received firm assurance from the Minister of Munitions in Paris, Albert Thomas, that the French intended to engage in the offensive on a big scale, and they meant to fight. As long as the offensive did not begin until June, the French would have sufficient ammunition ‘to go on forever’ (unlike the Germans, who – in the French view – were at the end of their resources).

  Warming to his task, Lloyd George offered a forecast of the shape of events to come. He stressed that the offensive must not begin prematurely. First it was necessary to accumulate a superiority in men and materiel. Britain's output of ammunition had
recently been checked by blizzards and air raids, but as long as ‘the contemplated fighting did not take place until May, we should be able to keep it up right through the summer’. He went on to outline the stages of the operation. The attack should be carried out for a fortnight, then there should be a month of ‘joining up forces’, then another fortnight of attacking, then another month of reorganisation, and so on. ‘It would take from May to August.’13 When Balfour interposed that the particular manner of carrying out the offensive ‘must be left to the General on the spot’, Lloyd George concurred.14

  The War Committee meeting at which these views were expressed, on 7 April, was – for all its low key nature – an event of great significance. For it placed beyond doubt the essential nature of Britain's involvement in the land war of 1916. Lloyd George provided assurance that – in circumstances where weaponry rather than manpower was becoming recognised as the key to success – the British army would, by mid-year, be fully provided with the where-withal for a large, and lengthy, offensive on the Western Front. And he did not dissent from the view that the actual conduct of operations would rest in the hands of Haig as ‘General on the spot’.

  Most of all, at this meeting the qualification which the War Committee had hitherto placed on the launching of the campaign was withdrawn. Since February, while preparations for the Somme campaign were being allowed to proceed, the nation's leaders had withheld authorisation that it would actually be embarked on. That now ceased to be the case. As Asquith summed up the deliberations of that day, Haig was to be informed: ‘You have the authority for which you ask.’ 15

  II

  Plainly, this decision was not forced upon the controllers of British strategy by the circumstances of the French at Verdun. Lloyd George actually expressed uncertainty about whether the Germans would be making their major endeavour for the year on the Western or Eastern Front, as if unaware that they had been showing their hand for the last month and a half.