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

Since the early nineteenth century, Prussia had given great emphasis to the technical training of the workforce. It had invented such educational refinements as graduate schools, Ph.D. degrees, seminars, research laboratories and institutes, and scholarly and scientific journals. All of these innovations were quickly adopted by American universities. France recognized the importance of education and technology and pioneered colleges for the advanced study of engineering and science. The achievements of such men as J. J. Thomson at the Cavendish laboratory did not allay the fears of the British educational establishment, which, fortified by State and Church, saw science as a dangerous first step towards Godless social reform and resolutely opposed it. Britain’s ‘public schools’ (actually private, fee-paying and exclusive) prepared upper middle-class boys to study in the choice universities where science and engineering were virtually ignored. Association between university and industry was fiercely resisted. As the First World War began, most of Britain’s population could expect no education beyond their fourteenth birthdays. Teachers were ill paid and difficult to recruit. Decisions about the nation, its industries and commercial life were made by men who had studied the Classics, Law or Philosophy. Few spoke any modern foreign language fluently.

Britain’s contribution to its wars is celebrated by memorable prose and poetry rather than by military successes. The country’s subsequent industrial and economic history has been blighted by the way its middle classes have continued to hold any sort of technical accomplishment in low esteem, and prefer their children to study liberal arts in outmoded buildings lacking modern facilities.

Outbreak of the First World War

The assassination that led to the outbreak of war in 1914 took place in the Balkans. The foreign minister of Austria-Hungary was determined to provoke the Serbians into a war. The Serbians, with strong ties to the Slavic nations, were confident and ready to fight. Obligations, both real and imagined, divided Europe into the Central Powers (Germany and Austria-Hungary plus Turkey) on one side and the Allies (France, Russia and Britain) on the other. Britain’s commitment to join in the 1914 war was flimsy.

So was that of Germany. The war was fought for trade and territory, but men on both sides were moved by romantic ideas rather than practical considerations. The British saw it as a war to resist the German invasion of ‘poor little’ Belgium. Germans saw it as a war for German Kultur against barbaric enemies. In Berlin a Socialist deputy saw the Reichstag vote on war credits and wrote in his diary:

The memory of the incredible enthusiasm of the other parties, of the government, and of the spectators, as we stood to be counted, will never leave me.

When war was declared there was satisfaction everywhere. In London, Paris and Berlin the crowds cheered the announcement. German artists and intellectuals were foremost among those succumbing to war fever and thousands of students joined the army immediately. At Kiel University, Schleswig-Holstein – following an appeal by the rector – virtually the whole student body enlisted.

What did the cheering men – so many of them doomed to death by the announcements – envisage? Certainly they thought the war would be quick and decisive; in every country there was the stated belief that ‘it would be all over by Christmas’.

The thinking of most of the top soldiers was no less carefree. General Ferdinand Foch, who ended the war as commander of the combined French, British and United States armies on the Western Front, thought: ‘A battle won is a battle in which one will not confess oneself beaten.’

Such folly might have proved less tragic had it not been coupled with Foch’s obsession with attacking, and his rationalization that any improvement in armaments could add strength only to the offensive. Such generalship resulted in French poilus charging into machine-gun fire dressed in bright red pantaloons. It was only in 1915 that the French army went over to less conspicuous attire, and even that was ‘horizon blue’. In an amazing demonstration of the military mind at its most tenacious, Foch ended the war with his views more or less intact.

Because so many of the ideas, events and even the equipment of 1914 clearly foreshadows that of 1939 it is worth while taking a closer look at this ‘war to end wars’. It was called ‘The Great War’ until 1939 brought another and even greater war. Like that second war, the first began with a ‘blitzkrieg’. Germany’s ‘Schlieffen Plan’ called for a lightning thrust through (neutral) Belgium, then a massive left wheel across northern France to capture Paris. After that all German resources would be turned upon Russia, which would need more time to mobilize its army and prepare for war.

The man called upon to implement Schlieffen’s ambitious plan was Helmuth von Moltke, who said: ‘I live entirely in the arts.’ He proved it by painting and playing the cello and working on a German translation of Maeterlinck’s Pelléas et Mélisande. Moltke did not capture Paris; but he got close.

According to plan and aided by a national railway service that was built to a military design, Moltke’s armies rolled through Belgium, suffering only a brief delay before flattening its massive fortresses with Krupp’s incomparable howitzers. But the Germans failed to capture Paris.

At first it was a war of movement but then weary regiments, slowed by mud and cold and suffering the losses of their best and most experienced soldiers, came to a standstill. Here and there the order to stand fast was best met by digging a trench in which to shelter. Soon, from the North Sea to the Alps the armies were standing in a vast line of muddy trenches garlanded with barbed-wire and traversed by machine-guns. Behind them the cavalry regiments were held in reserve. There they remained, waiting for a gap through which to gallop, until the war ended. Meanwhile the infantry gradually abandoned their fine uniforms as part of the process of adapting to living in wet ditches where artfully positioned machine-guns ensured that any man who climbed out and stood up, almost certainly died. High-ranking officers – who unfortunately never went to the trenches, climbed out and stood up – resolutely refused to recognize the fact that the machine-gun had changed warfare as much as had gunpowder itself.

Lord Kitchener, who had been responsible for the organization and transport of the British Expeditionary Force sent to France, said: ‘I don’t know what is to be done – this isn’t war.’ What he really meant was that this was not the short sharp action that so many volunteers had envisaged.

On the Eastern Front, the Germans (and to their south the soldiers of Austria-Hungary) faced the mammoth armies of Russia. Their men were stretched more thinly than in the West, and now and again attacks broke through the front-line defences. But for most of the time the Eastern Front was as static as the Western Front. There the weather was even more cruel.

The British and German armies

Unlike other continental nations, the British had never revered army officers, nor indeed given the army much attention at all. Until 1870 the British army remained a hundred years behind the times. Officers purchased their commissions, men were enlisted for life and flogging was a regular punishment. Reforms were slow and heartily resisted. By the time war came in 1914 the small professional army was made up of poor human material. A prewar study found that British soldiers had a mental age between 10 and 13. Many were illiterate. Troops going on leave were marched to the railway station and put on the trains, because of the problems they had if doing this unaided.

Supporting the regular army there was a part-time defence force called the Territorial Army. In 1914 it had about 250,000 men instead of its establishment of 320,000. Youngsters were not given a medical: ‘The men were enlisted only for Home Defence and an inquiry in time of peace as to those willing to serve abroad in event of war disclosed 20,000 ready to take this obligation. The training of the men was limited to an hour’s drill at odd times, and an annual training of eight to fifteen days.’

The ‘Terriers’ carried long Lee-Enfield rifles and were armed with converted 15-pounder guns, both weapons which the regular army had discarded.

FIGURE 13 (#ulink_192ae1d5-64bb-5fcc-8ad3-31168937863f)

British Lee-Enfield rifle Mk 111 (#ulink_192ae1d5-64bb-5fcc-8ad3-31168937863f)

The army may have been unfit for battle but the civilians were in high spirits. When war started in the summer of 1914 great numbers of men volunteered. The nation’s health was still poor but medical examinations were cursory. According to the chief recruiting officer for the London District at that time, some doctors examined over 300 men per day while between 20 and 30 per cent of the recruits were given no medical examination at all.

By the middle of 1915 over 3 million British men had volunteered to fight but casualties meant ‘the outflow was greater than the intake’.

To maintain the field army envisaged for 1916, men would have to be drafted. A Conscription Bill passed through Parliament with overwhelming majorities, and Britain’s traditional opposition to citizen armies was overcome with scarcely a ripple of protest.

The drafted men were subjected to no greater scrutiny than had been given to the volunteers. It was only after three years of war that the medical boards were re-organized and improved. Then the doctors were examining about 60 men a day. A very high percentage of these were found unfit for front-line service,

but by this time many men unsuited to the physical and mental strains of trench warfare were fighting in France.

All through the war there were shortages of uniforms and equipment and also of instructors. The exceptionally high casualty rate suffered by junior officers might have been met by commissioning experienced NCOs, but this was not considered. The British army believed that officers must be recruited from the middle classes. The normal way to officer rank was through the Officers’ Training Corps which were formed in Britain’s ‘public’ schools. The OTC did not provide serious military training. It organized summer camps and training drills, and gave the schoolboys Certificate A, which guaranteed them officer rank.

Young patriotic clerks and manual workers responded well to being commanded by 18-year-old subalterns fresh from school. For the first time ‘nicely raised young men from West Country vicarages or South Coast watering places came face to face with forty Durham miners, Yorkshire furnacemen, Clydeside riveters, and the two sides found that they could scarcely understand each other’s speech’.

All ranks were motivated by patriotism. Their officers were fired also with the public school ethic of service, but they had never been properly trained to fight or to command. Committed to the leadership ideas of the sports field, youthful officers were unyielding in their courage, which is why they suffered disproportionate casualties. A junior officer reporting to his infantry battalion had a 50 per cent chance of being killed or seriously wounded within six months.

War poets have provided an interesting record of the good relationship between British officers and men in the front line. But whatever its virtue and valour, an army based upon improvisation was no match for German professionalism. Neither were the British high commanders.

The commander-in-chief of the British Expeditionary Force in France from December 1915 onwards was Lieutenant-General Sir Douglas Haig. ‘A dour hard-working ambitious Scot with little money and few friends, who was not too particular about the methods he used to get to the top of his profession,’ said the historian Michael Howard. ‘But he was a dedicated professional none the less.’

This 53-year-old autocrat distrusted all foreigners, including his French allies, thought that Roman Catholics were likely to be pacifists and detested all politicians, especially Socialists, into which category he was inclined to put anyone with new ideas. These shortcomings were grave, all the more so because Haig proved totally unequipped for the unprecedented military task he had taken upon himself.

In the higher ranks of the British army Haig made sure that important promotions came only to the prewar regulars. Even worse, promotion was decided by the traditional system of age, service and seniority. This ensured that only the grossest incompetents were ever removed, and they almost invariably got a job where they could do even more damage.

The German army was equally reluctant to allow the working class across the great divide into the exalted realm of the commissioned ranks. Officers had always enjoyed a privileged place in German society, and German schools of all kinds prepared youngsters for the military service that followed their schooling. A century 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.

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.

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.

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.