Terence Zuber - Ardennes 1914: The Battle of the Frontiers (Battles & Campaigns)

THE BATTLE OF THE FRONTIERS

Battles & Campaigns

A series of illustrated battlefield accounts covering the classical period through to the end of the twentieth century, drawing on the latest research and integrating the experience of combat with intelligence, logistics and strategy.

Series Editor

Hew Strachan, Chichele Professor of the History of War at the University of Oxford

Published

Ross Anderson, The Battle of Tanga 1914

An excellent book Peter Hart, author of Jutland 1916

Ross Anderson, The Forgotten Front: The East African Campaign 1914-1918

Excellent... fills a yawning gap in the historical record Gary Sheffield, Times Literary Supplement

William Buckingham, Arnhem 1944

Startling... reveals the real reason why the daring attack failed The Daily Express

Brian Farrell, The Defence and Fall of Singapore 1940-1942

An original and provocative new history of the battle that marked the end of the British Empire Professor Hew Strachan

David M. Glantz, Before Stalingrad

Another fine addition to Hew Strachans excellent Battles and Campaigns series

BBC History Magazine

Michael K. Jones, Bosworth 1485

Insightful and rich study of the battle no longer need Richard play the villain

Times Literary Supplement

Martin Kitchen, The German Offensives of 1918

Comprehensive and authoritative... first class Professor Holger H. Herwig, War in History

M.K. Lawson, The Battle of Hastings 1066

A BBC History Magazine Book of the Year 2003

Marc Milner, Battle of the Atlantic

The most comprehensive short survey of the U-boat battles Sir John Keegan

A.J. Smithers, The Tangier Campaign

The fullest account of the British Armys first major expedition abroad

Professor Hew Strachan

Tim Travers, Gallipoli 1915

A book of the highest importance... masterly John Lee, The Journal of Military History

Matthew C. Ward, The Battle for Quebec 1759: Britains Conquest of Canada

Terence Zuber, The Battle of the Frontiers: Ardennes 1914

The first history of the opening engagement of the First World War

Professor Hew Strachan

THE BATTLE OF THE FRONTIERS

ARDENNES
1914

TERENCE ZUBER

To old friends, who defended Western Europe during the Cold War.

VII (US) Corps Headquarters

3rd (US) Infantry Division

12th (GE) Panzer Division

1st (US) Infantry Division (Forward)

72nd (US) Field Artillery Brigade

9th (US) Engineer Battalion

Cover illustrations: (front) there are no photographs of combat during the Battle of the Frontiers this picture is from a later period in the war (note the steel helmets); (back, upper) infantry advancing by bounds; (back, lower) infantry advancing in successive waves.

First published 2007

This edition published 2009

The History Press

The Mill, Brimscombe Port

Stroud, Gloucestershire, GL 5 2 QG

www.thehistorypress.co.uk

This ebook edition first published in 2013

All rights reserved

Terence Zuber, 2007, 2009, 2013

The right of Terence Zuber to be identified as the Author of this work has been asserted in accordance with the Copyrights, Designs and Patents Act 1988.

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EPUB ISBN 978 0 7524 9672 6

Original typesetting by The History Press

Contents

Introduction

Between 1871 and 1914 the armies of France and Germany prepared with unprecedented intensity and determination for the next war, which was sure to be a bloody affair of national survival. For forty-three years both armies trained, developed new weapons and doctrine, and then trained some more. Spurred by crises in the Balkans and Morocco, from 1905 on Europe was swept by an unprecedented arms race, which reached its apogee in 1913. France and Germany were armed and prepared for war as no other countries had ever been before.

Both Germany and France raised mass armies by means of conscription. Upon completion of national service the conscripts returned to civilian life, but also became reservists, liable for the next 20 years to be recalled to the colours in case of war. When these reservists were mobilised and reintegrated into the army, they would multiply the size of the active army by a factor of three or four, producing field forces of some two million men.

Finally, the long-anticipated day of reckoning arrived. Both countries mobilised on 2 August 1914 and then transported their massive armies to the frontiers. From 20 to 24 August 1914 the French and German armies, each some seventy divisions strong, met head-on in Belgium and Lorraine in the Battle of the Frontiers, one of the most hard-fought, most important and most interesting battles in military history.

One would anticipate that the tactical course of these battles would have been of immense and widespread interest to both military professionals and the general public. In addition, one would also assume that military professionals would have been eager to determine how well peacetime doctrine and training stood up to the test of combat.

In fact, quite the opposite is true. Practically everything has been studied concerning the First World War except the pre-war tactical doctrine and training of the German and French armies. Instead, interest in pre-war armies has centred on non-military topics. The relationship between the military and society before the war is a favourite theme for scholarship, in particular the supposed role of the German army in supporting the political and social status quo. A major military history of France concerns itself with social history to the practical exclusion of ground combat itself.

Tactical combat in the first battles from 20 to 24 August has also been of little interest. There has never been a detailed account of the Battle of the Frontiers in English; the accounts of some of the division-sized engagements written in French and German in the 1920s and 1930s are seldom used today.

On the other hand, books on the German and French war plans and the strategic aspects of the Battle of the Marne are legion, fuelled by military, academic and popular fascination with armchair generalship. The armchair general thinks that the campaign can easily be understood in terms of large black arrows, representing the German armies, slashing across a map of France a half page in size.

The focus on strategy is reinforced by the common perception that tactical combat for both the French and German armies in August 1914 consisted of charging with solid masses of infantry, only to have them mown down by machine gun fire. French critics blamed French defeats in the Battle of the Frontiers on such tactics. British accounts of the initial battles describe combat against German infantry in the same terms as those used for fighting Dervishes or Fuzzi-Wuzzis, with precise and rapid British rifle fire cutting down rows of German troops. In a study of German military thinkers before the First World War, a professor of strategy at the US Army War College concluded that while the high-level military theorists understood the lethality of modern warfare, the troop leaders just didnt get it. He also said that pre-war German training was poor. In the last paragraph, he concludes that young officers, motivated by a reckless spirit of the offensive launched unprepared attacks. This is a completely orthodox conclusion. The War College professor saw no need to describe how the German regulations prescribed that the infantry attack was to be conducted at company and battalion level or how the troops actually trained. Nor did he give any representative examples of how these unprepared, reckless attacks were conducted. He merely restated what was common knowledge.