How the Germans Became the Huns

By Martin Kristoffer Hambre

Just as the Huns a thousand years ago under the leadership of Etzel gained a reputation in virtue of which they still live in historical tradition, so may the name of Germany become known in such a manner in China that no Chinaman will ever dare to look askance at a German .    

Kaiser Wilhelm II,  27 July 1900

During the First World War, the British war propaganda machine massively promoted the stereotype of the German enemy as brutal, ruthless,  and murderous Hun. The stereotype of the Huns as a barbaric people can be traced back to the historical Huns of the 5th century, but ironically, the first to draw the analogy between the Huns and the Germans was the German emperor Wilhelm II, himself, who used the comparison in a speech he delivered in Bremerhaven in 1900. 

The notion of the "Scourge of God" has dominated the image and memory of the Huns in Europe for a very long time. Attila and his mounted warriors had left a deep mark on Europe’s history, and they were remembered as strong, cruel, and merciless. The negative depiction of the Huns by Roman writers has shaped the stereotype of the Huns as a barbaric nation, and the same was true for the rest of the non-Roman barbarian Europe even though there were huge historic differences between the Huns and other European tribes.

Ironically, it was none other than the German Kaiser Wilhelm II himself who drew the analogy between this old Hun stereotype and the German nation. He was provoked by the so-called Boxer Rebellion in China during the summer of 1900, which lead to "a condition of unexampled bloodthirsty aggressiveness" by the Kaiser. 

The speech made its way to the press through the local newspaper Weser-Zeitung, and subsequently reached the English press where it  was translated and published in the Times on 30 July 1900. The Paris  correspondent of the Times was one of the first Englishman to comment on the speech, calling it "one of the most amazing expressions  of intemperate language in which even the German Emperor has ever  indulged."

Both in the short-term and the long-term perspective, the speech had fatal consequences for the reputation of Kaiser Wilhelm and the German Reich. In the short term, as the German soldiers, who were sent to China on the campaign of vengeance, operated brutally and without  mercy, committing atrocities and slaughtering women and children. As  an excuse, German soldiers referred to Kaiser Wilhelm’s speech. These  atrocities were disclosed to the public by means of the so-called Hun letters (Hunnenbriefe) that German soldiers sent home to Germany.

In 1900, the British press did not yet focus on the Hun reference but more on Germany’s actual China policy. But in the aftermath of the brutal German China expedition, the British press and especially the Daily Mail referred to the imperial speech to defame the German imperialistic policy and, thus, gave rise to the new Hun stereotype that the British propaganda machine would use during the First World War. 

In 1902, Rudyard Kipling wrote the poem "The Rowers,"  in which he warned the British Empire about working together "with the Goth and the Shameless Hun"  in a naval mission against Venezuela. The British press occasionally used the Hun reference from 1900 to 1914, but the events of the Great War marked the real breakthrough [in its usage.] The German atrocities committed in Belgium led to the narrative of the "Rape of Belgium," and thee embrace of "The Hun" as the perpetrator of the atrocities by Britain's press and propaganda ministry, played significant roles with regard to the emergence of the new Hun stereotype. 

Source: Excerpted from "How the Germans became the Huns. Continuity and Discontinuity of the Hun Stereotype between the 19th Century and the British War Propaganda during the First World War," in From Reflection to Deconstruction? Categories, Types and Stereotypes, 2017; Imperial War Museum

 

A Tale of Two Fronts: A German Soldier's Journey through World War I

 

Off to War
Hans Schiller (x) and His Artillery Unit

By Hans Schiller, 

University Press of Kansas, 2024

Reviewed by David F. Beer

How often nowadays do we discover an original handwritten memoir from the First World War? And if we did, would it be worthy of publication? Such an unlikely event occurred in 2013, when a manuscript written in 1925 was found in a family’s attic describing a young soldier’s experience on both the eastern and western fronts. Recently published in English, A Tale of Two Fronts deserves a place next to the well-known novels and memoirs of WWI since it undoubtedly “offers a new and accessible window into the life of the German soldier of the First World War” (vii).

Hans Schiller was a seventeen-year-old student when he heard war had broken out. He was elated:

Everything was about patriotism, and it felt good voicing one’s nationalist feelings. At every public function one would hear the patriotic songs of ‘Wacht am Rhein’ or ‘Deutschland Uber Alles.’ Everyone was playing these songs, including the local organ grinder. Now all were united, poised for war and excited at the prospect, as I had always imagined it might be (pp. 18-19).

Like many young men his age, his biggest fear was that the war would be brief, and he wouldn’t get to fight. He did, of course, and from his home in Prussia he was to see service in what is now Poland as well as in Latvia and Lithuania. He was one of over two million German soldiers to serve on the Eastern Front—an area considered by many Germans to be uncivilized and inhabited by primitive people. Hope was high as German forces made their moves:

All of Germany was watching the East, and here the decisive battles would take place. We realized that we had the prospect of participating in these expected victories. Soon we would march into Moscow, and then the war would end. The misfortunes of Napoleon would not befall us. That’s how we thought, and that’s how we spoke, and all the time we never knew how ridiculous we actually were (p. 28).

After what seems like countless train rides and miles of marching for the Germans, they finally begin to clash with the Russian army and reality sets in. Schiller describes these battles without hesitation—his youthful idealism has rapidly evaporated. The reader may be unfamiliar with the frequent placenames where battles take place (some have since changed borders) but the fighting near Duenaburg and Grangtal seems to be typical:

For ten days, without any pause, the enemy attacked us and then they stopped because their fallen comrades formed into a wall in front of us that was much too high to walk over. In six-deep stacked rows, the dead lay in front of us and in the dark looked like a giant wall (p. 67).

 

Hans Schiller After 3 Years of War

Time passes with more bloody battles and much marching. This was a war of movement, unlike that of the Western trenches. But eventually, with the revolution in Russia, fighting comes to an end and Schiller is allowed to return home to spend Christmas with his family. But he knows that soon he and his comrades will be transferred to the Western Front to take part in the spring offensive. In the brief interlude they “drank a lot of watered-down war beer and thought about our futures, which seemed dark, foreboding, and as yet unknown. Then we received our orders” (p. 90).

The transit across Germany by train is interesting and ends with their arrival at a training camp near the Western Front. Schiller is amazed to find so many very young German soldiers there. He asks them if they had been drafted or had volunteered and their answers, along with their appearance, depress him:

“We were called to duty and were inducted as soldiers even though some of us have disabilities. Now they are taking everything, sir, because these days there isn’t a person in Germany who would volunteer.” They made an undernourished and childish impression. Their uniforms were far too big for their small bodies and hung loosely on their thin frames. The heavy and wide army boots fit their feet like washtubs (pp. 121-122).

The final battles on the Western Front are as brutal as those of the Eastern Front, and Schiller continues with a style that movingly combines matter-of-fact description and emotion. We might expect the end of the war to be the end of Schiller’s story, but after the Armistice he re-enlists in the Freikorps and fights in murderous battles against the Bolsheviks. “What else was I supposed to do, anyway? I hadn’t learned anything, and the art of war was really the only thing that I had a lot of experience in. Therefore, I was very happy with my decision!” (p.157).

Order This Work HERE

On May 31, 1920, his regiment is demobilized and Schiller finally goes home, mentioning that he now travels with “resentment against the dictates of Versailles” in his heart. He will write these memoirs down in 1928, based on wartime diaries he or his family had lost. He will go on to take part in WWII, but it is up to the family and the book’s introduction to reveal how he spent those years and tragically ended them.

Adding to the value of this book are both an informative foreword and a substantial introduction, giving us considerable insight into the nature and background of the memoir and its author. Helpful footnotes are provided in the text and a collection of black and white photographs donated by the author’s family (pp. 91-119) illuminate Hans Schiller’s military life. Karin Wagner’s very readable translation of the memoir from the original German augments the high quality of this publication. A Tale of Two Fronts is definitely a book that deserves an honorable place within the canon of World War One literature and history.

David F. Beer

Remembering a Veteran: Driver Walter Elias Disney, American Red Cross Ambulance Service

All Images Here Can Be Enlarged by Clicking on Them

Walt Disney with His Ambulance (Note Cartoon on Canopy)

By  Thomas Price, The Walt Disney Family Museum

Walt Disney was born on 5 December 1901, at 1249 Tripp Avenue, in Chicago's Hermosa neighborhood. He was the fourth son of Elias Disney‍—‌born in the Province of Canada, to Irish parents‍—‌and Flora (née Call), an American of German and English descent. In 1917, Elias bought stock in a Chicago jelly producer, the O-Zell Company, and moved back to the city from Kansas City with his family. Son Walt enrolled at McKinley High School and became the cartoonist of the school newspaper, drawing patriotic pictures about World War I.

In 1918, when the George M. Cohan song “Over There” entreated young men to “grab your gun, on the run...do your bit, show your grit...make your Daddy glad ...make your Mother proud,” thousands heeded this call. Four years into World War I, a young Walt Disney was one of them. Filled with patriotic enthusiasm and captivated by recruitment ads like “The Red Cross versus the Iron Cross,” young men barely past boyhood signed up to travel overseas and fight in The Great War. As Walt reflected much later, “The things I did during those ten months I was overseas added up to a lifetime of experience...I know being on my own at an early age... made me more self reliant.” Exactly how he got there, however, is a story unto itself. 

Cartoon from Walt's Notebook

Although World War I began for Europeans in 1914, America initially took little notice of it. In fact, the prewar U.S. Army was composed of a scattered handful of small regiments and the state-controlled National Guard militia. When the U.S. finally declared war on Germany in 1917, General John J. Pershing was given command of the American Expeditionary Force to fight overseas. 

By the summer of 1918, the Germans were on every American’s mind, including Walt Disney’s. Living in Chicago where his father was involved with the O-Zell Jelly Company, Walt did not want to return to McKinley High School. He even had written to the principal, Mr. Cottingham, that he had been “disgusted” by his previous year there. Starting to dabble in the entertainment industry, Walt and his friend Russell Maas put a down payment on a movie camera and intended to begin making children’s films. 

The war bug, however, had also taken hold of Walt. Two of his older brothers were already in the armed forces; Ray had been drafted into the army, and Roy was an enlistee in the navy. During one of Roy’s visits to Chicago from his Great Lakes posting, Walt met him at the train station and remarked later that his brother "looked swell in that sailor’s uniform.” This was very appealing to young Walt, who loved costumes his entire life and had already been in uniform himself as a high school cadet, postman, gateman, and train “butcher.” Furthermore, Roy’s letters were full of “blowing bugles and...patriotism,” Walt remembered. “I just had to get in there.” But Walt was only 16, and 17 was the minimum age for enlistment.

Portrait of a Nurse from Walt's Notebook
(Did he have a crush?)

 

First, he tried to sign up for the navy, but was turned down due to his age. Next, he and his friend Russell Maas attempted the Canadian armed forces, except Russell was rejected for his poor eyesight. Not wanting to go without each other, Walt and Russell concocted yet another plan: they would join the Red Cross Ambulance Corps, as they weren’t quite as particular on the subject of age. Applying as the falsified “St. John” brothers, these 16-year-olds were told they still needed their parents’ signatures for their forms as well as passports. In the meantime, Russell’s mother had found a suitcase in the early packing stages and, suspecting something was afoot, alerted Walt’s mother, Flora Disney. Walt confessed the plan, but Elias, his father, refused to sign the enlistment documents, exclaiming “I might be signing your death warrant!” Surprisingly, Flora took Walt’s side in the matter, saying “Three of my sons have left this family in the middle of the night. Walter’s determined to go, Elias, even if he has to sneak out like his brothers. I’d rather sign this paper and know where he is.” Angry, Elias concluded, “Forge my name if you want, but I won’t sign,” storming out. Flora did. Yet, Walt’s actual birth certificate reflected 1901 and would still keep him from the Ambulance Corps, so Walt himself, determined to go, changed it to 1900. On 16 September 1918, he enlisted and was accepted. 

Walt thought of the whole business not as war but as adventure. Assigned to Camp Scott, the Red Cross Ambulance Training Facility on Chicago’s South Side, he wrote to friend Virginia Baker that he was “having a good time” and had “met lots of old friend[s] and made new ones already.” In the midst of learning how to drive and repair ambulances and trucks, Walt contracted influenza in the horrific global epidemic. Moved home to recuperate, his mother, although ill herself, nursed Walt and his sister Ruth through the fever and delirium. When he was well, Walt learned his ambulance unit—and his friend Russell—had already shipped out to France. Assigned to a new training base in South Beach, Connecticut, Walt became acquainted with a corpsman even younger than he, 15-year-old Ray Kroc, later the founder of the McDonald’s fast-food empire. Interestingly, Kroc regarded “Diz”, as Walt was nicknamed, a “strange duck...whenever we went into town to chase girls, he stayed in camp drawing pictures.” 

Walt Gathering a Souvenir in the Champagne

 

Then, on 11 November 1918, at 11 a.m., the Armistice was signed at Compiègne, France, ending the war and Walt’s dreams of glory. “I’ve never seen a sicker looking bunch than we were. Everybody else was celebrating the end of the war, but all we knew was that we’d missed out on something big,” he recalled.  Yet, the Red Cross still needed drivers, and on 18 November  he was awakened at 3 a.m. and told he was one of 50 selected to go. He shipped out on the SS Vaubin, a converted cattle ship, bound for Le Havre, France, as part of Company A of the Automotive and Mechanical Section. Passing through mine-infested waters, he finally arrived “over there” on 4 December,  the day before his 17th birthday. 

The realities of this adventure quickly became apparent, however, as they were herded onto a train bound for St. Cyr, near Versailles, outside Paris, where they found the food was inedible, the nights freezing, and the chateau unheated. Walt wrapped himself in newspapers and blankets for warmth. Yet, his comrades managed to celebrate Walt’s birthday with a round of cognac for the older ones and grenadine for the younger fellows.  Moved to the Hotel Regina near the Louvre in Paris and then to Evacuation Hospital No. 5 on the Longchamps racecourse at Auteil, young Walt, who had never been farther west than Colorado nor very far east of the Mississippi, absorbed everything. He shimmied up a tree to catch a glimpse of President Woodrow Wilson in Paris, and played poker and chauffeured army bigwigs around town. Later moved to Neuilly, just outside Paris, then to the charming village of Neufchateau in the rolling countryside, he encountered quaint shops and cobblestone streets, filing these images away in his mind.

Another Cartoon from the Notebook

 

Walt actually had little contact with the ill and injured, instead becoming, as he was for the rest of his life, an accomplished tour guide much in demand by visiting officials. He also befriended the proprietress of the canteen at Neufchateau, Alice Howell, who became a surrogate mother to him and a lifelong friend. Alice was well acquainted with General Pershing, and arranged for Pershing’s 10-year-old son to ride with Walt to visit the birthplace of Joan of Arc and enjoy a fried chicken picnic. Walt never forgot her special kindness to him. 

When Walt was not driving, he did what he had always done—draw—including sketches for the canteen menu, designs on the canvas ambulance flaps, and caricatures for his friends to send to girlfriends and families (for a small fee!).  “I found out that the inside and outside of an ambulance is as good a place to draw as any,” Walt later remarked. He also sent funny and poignant letters with sketches to the McKinley Voice, his high school newspaper. In one, Walt’s growing homesickness is revealed, where he wrote, on 18 April 1919, “OH! I want to go home to my Mama!” He sent cartoons to the magazines Life and Judge, too,  which were summarily rejected. By this time, Ray and Roy had returned to Kansas City, and by August 1919, loneliness trumped adventure, and Walt put in for a discharge.

While awaiting transport home, Walt ran into his old friend Russell Maas in Paris. The two teenagers decided that upon return to the states, they would build a raft and float down the Mississippi like Huckleberry Finn. Each fellow bought a puppy, and Walt carried his, “Carey,” named for a Chicago Tribune cartoonist,  everywhere in his musette bag. Russell shipped out for home, but a dock strike in Marseille kept Walt behind for 23 days. Ever the resourceful lad, he killed time by taking the streetcar from Nice to Monte Carlo each day, finally sailing out on the SS Canada. Even this voyage was fraught with difficulties, including insufficient fuel, and a savage ocean storm. Finally, after arriving in New York Harbor on 9 October, Walt was discharged the 10th and back in Chicago the next day.

A Letter Home to His Old Classmates in Chicago

Finding Russell had abandoned the river raft trip in favor of a girl, and that his dog, sent home with Russell, had died, Walt decided to set his own course, and pursue work as an artist, in particular as a newspaper cartoonist.  His father was aghast at the impracticality of this plan, saying “Walter, you’re going to make a career of that, are you?”, intending for Walt to work at the Jelly Company. But Walt was determined—he had returned from France transformed from boy to man. He had left Chicago a spindly and baby-faced youth, five feet eight inches tall only to return at 165 pounds, broad shouldered and strong from the manual work. Though on occasion he was still a prankste—particularly to his mother—Walt had matured emotionally into a man of self-reliance and independence. “I was able to. . . line right up on an objective. . . and I went for it.” Seventeen-year-old Walt Disney had his dream and was ready to make it come true. 

The former Red Cross driver would achieve all his his youthful dreams and more. Walt Disney would depart the scene in 1966 after becoming one of the greatest creative forces and bringer of happiness of the 20th century. I'll never forget that December night when someone walked into our barracks at Sheppard Air Force Base and announced that Walt Disney was dead. For the rest of the evening everyone shared Disney memories and more than one tear was shed.

Still Driving, Walt As Remembered

Sources: Wikipedia; The Daily Mail, November 2015; The Walt Disney Family Museum, the Presidio of San Francisco; Biography (Website).

15 Little Known Facts (Outside Australia) About General Sir John Monash

General Sir John Monash, 1865–1931

[Editor's Note:  If you are not familiar with General Monash's military achievements, see our article about him HERE.]

1.  His parents were immigrant German Jews from Krotoshin in Prussia, an area that is in modern-day Poland.

2.  As an engineer, he revolutionized construction in Australia by the introduction of reinforced concrete technology and later led the electrification effort for much of the nation.

3.  He once met the notorious Ned Kelly, held his horse, and received a shilling from Ned for the service .

4.  A prodigy pianist, Monash gave public recitals throughout his life.

5. Despite being a polymath and gifted linguist, he failed his first year at university.

6. Yet, by the time he "formally" graduated, Monash was already working as an experienced engineer.

7. While supervising the construction of a suburban rail in Melbourne, he had a torrid affair with an employee's wife and was knocked silly by said employee when he tried to escape with the lady and her son. (The son would serve under  Monash’s command in WWI)

8. Prewar, Monash onetime excelled  in  a military exercise witnessed by future Gallipoli commander Ian Hamilton and Lord Kitchener.

9. At Gallipoli he played a major role in the May 1915 ill-fated attack on Baby 700, whichs temporarily damaged his reputation.

10.  During the Gallipoli campaign, and later as the AIF was redeploying to Europe, he was subject to whispering campaigns that he had been relieved of his command and was suspected of passing messages in German to the Turks and, subsequently, that—being of German ancestry—he was unsuitable to command troops facing German forces.

11.  In Europe, he became a proponent of  "bite and hold" tactics, carefully planned  and based on comprehensive mapping and intelligence.

12.  His plan for the 7 June 1917 assault of his forces during the Battle of Messines was six inches thick.  His force achieved all objectives in 45 minutes.

13.  Australian war correspondents C.E.W. Bean and Keith Murdoch both actively lobbied against Monash's appointment as commander of the Australian Corps.

14. Monash’s return to Australia was not kind to him. Although he had been carrying on an affair with a London woman, the death of his wife in 1920 devastated him. On a political level, he was ostracized.

15.  Nevertheless, his postwar days—up to his death in 1941—were filled with achievements too numerous to list. Today Monash's image appears on the back of the Australian 100-dollar note.

Source: Lessons in Leadership: The Life of Sir John Monash GCMG, KCB, VD, Presentation by Rolfe Hartley, March 2013 

Wartime Cartoons with an American Point of View

Click on Images to Enlarge

Selected From:

The Attack of the Dead Men – (Video)

Everyone's Plan for 1915: Let's Get the Hell Out of These Trenches, Part II—New Ideas That Backfired

Part II: Some New Ideas and Their Results

Docking of a French Troop Ship in Salonika (Greece) 1915

Take the War to the Balkans?

In both Paris and London, the same reflections were underway. There was total stalemate in the west and it was unlikely that the Germans could be beaten. So why not look for another theatre of operations in the Balkans, resume a mobile war and defeat the weaker force, namely Austria-Hungary so as to isolate Germany and then attack it on its southern flank? To do this, considerable forces would be needed, at least 500,000 troops in Greece, in Salonica, to go back up through Macedonia and join Serbia which was still holding out against Austria. Finally, together with the Russians, launch a major operation that would crush the Austro-Hungarian forces. On paper, the plan was perfect. Especially since it was as much political as military. Indeed, when the neutral Balkan states saw the likely defeat of the Austro-Hungarian Empire, they would no doubt want to join in the war to get their share of the spoils: Italy, which was eyeing up Trentino and Istria, Romania, who dreamed of seizing Transylvania, would no doubt join in and Bulgaria and Greece would almost certainly do the same. This idea was supported by Generals de Castelnau and Franchet d'Esperey in October 1914, but also by such politicians as Aristide Briand in France and David Lloyd George in Britain.

But here too there was opposition. . . and no small opposition either: Lord Kitchener, his Majesty's War Minister, after showing an interest in this project for an army of the Orient that could change the course of the war, changed his mind. There were already not enough men and equipment to supply the Western Front so he was not about to get involved in a distant and expensive Balkan adventure.

But it was Joseph Joffre, the French Generalissimo, who was the most hostile to the project. He, with his annoying habit of promising victory every three months, was sure he could beat the Germans in the spring and so he needed all the men and guns he could get.  And then, beating lowly Austria was a bad idea in his view: "It isn't Austria we have to beat, it's Germany", he cried on 8 January 1915.

The disastrous Dardanelles adventure [more below] had dire consequences: not only did it parasitise the army of the Orient project, which was to land in Greece and join the Serbian front, but it gave second thoughts to the neutral Balkan states. With the exception of Italy who decided to intervene—it signed the Alliance Treaty on 26 April, at a time when it was thought that there could be a victory in the Dardanelles—Greece and Romania who had been in favour were now suddenly cooling off and returning to a more prudent wait and see attitude. Bulgaria, which had been pro-German since the Balkan war of 1913 which gave Serbia an advantage at its expense, came out of its reserve when it saw that the French and English were unable to defeat the Ottomans. It then secretly joined the Central Powers during the summer, and on 5 October, entered the conflict by catching Serbia in a pincer move at a time when Serbia was struggling against a major Austro-German offensive. The Serbian army was beaten and forced to retreat through Albania and the country was fully handed over to the invaders.

At the same time, the governments forced high commands to create an army of the Orient to rescue the Serbs. When it landed in Salonica, in October, it was too late: Serbia was already collapsing. What a beautiful idea it was at the beginning of 1915, this idea of the army of the Orient but the delay in setting it up made it completely inoperative. At the end of the year, not only was Serbia wiped off the map but Romania and Greece shrunk back into neutrality while Bulgaria had fallen into the enemy camp: the procrastination by the Allies and their dramatic Dardanelles detour had handed over the Balkans to the Central Powers.

Deal with Russia First?

Austrian Infantry Marching Through a Polish Village

While Falkenhayn accepted the idea of a major 1915 offensive against Russia, he did not have any illusions about the outcome: he did not think Germany could floor the Russians but it could [possibly] inflict such losses on them that they would agree to sign a separate peace. In any case, there was no question of him strengthening the popularity of the Hindenburg-Ludendorff tandem so he entrusted the offensive to general Mackensen who also commanded the Austrian troops placed alongside the Germans.

During the entire month of April, troops were concentrated in the greatest secrecy along a line about 50 kilometres long and over 2,000 guns were put in place with no less than one million shells. Never had such a formidable battle been prepared. On 1 May, the bombardment pounded Russian positions all day long. It was an awesome deluge of fire. The next day, when the assault was ordered, the Russian lines collapsed and Russian soldiers surrendered in droves or ran away as fast as they could. With barely one rifle for every three soldiers, they had good reason to avoid combat! In one month, the Germans took 300,000 prisoners. And nothing seemed to be able to stop Mackensen's advance: the Russian steamroller was no more than a joke. On 4 August, Warsaw was invaded and all of Russian Poland fell into the hands of the Germans. But as they progressed, the Germans were stretching their supply lines while the Russians were tightening theirs.

The offensive ended in September: a lot more men and guns would be needed to march on Petrograd through the Baltic countries. Hindenburg and Ludendorff were crying out for these but Falkenhayn could not grant them their wishes given that the French were preparing a major attack in Champagne and he had to prepare "for a pretty bad time ahead." This was Germany's dilemma in 1915, forced to fight on two fronts and therefore never able to deal a decisive blow.

The Dardanelles? A False Good Idea

Ottoman Troops During the Gallipoli Campaign

On the French and English sides, given Joffre's and Kitchener's opposition, the [initial] idea of an army of the Orient that would fight in the Balkans stalled and got bogged down. Since the high commands were reluctant, the affair became essentially political. In February, both Governments agreed on the idea of creating a Franco-British expeditionary force intended to join the Serbian front but opposition again was too strong. With France invaded and the Germans barely more than 100 km from the capital, was this the right time to strip the trenches of men and try a wild shot on a front that was as remote as it was secondary? Would public opinion understand while the army remained on the defensive in the west and did nothing to repel the invader?

In addition, the Generalissimo was preparing a small offensive "from behind the faggots" that the Germans would remember. So he found the army of the Orient project completely useless if not totally ludicrous. "Why look elsewhere and so far away for what I will get in March 1915? I'm sure to break through and sent the Germans packing." 

It was in this stalemate situation that Winston Churchill, First Lord of the Admiralty, i.e. the Minister of the Navy, presented his own project, a project that competed directly with that of the army of the Orient: force the Turkish Dardanelles Straits and the Bosphorus and seize Constantinople. Since only the Royal Navy was to be involved in this spectacular move and since Churchill was not asking for any additional guns or army regiments, his proposal gained unanimous favour. But the French did not believe it would work. Despite their doubts, they joined in on the operation because were it to be a success, the English must not be allowed to be sole masters of the situation in the Eastern Mediterranean and redraw the map of the Middle East for their own benefit.

On 18 March, a Franco-British armada thus arrived before the Dardanelles for an expedition they believed to be a foregone conclusion. Nothing went as planned. Overseen and equipped by the Germans, the Turks multiplied the batteries and threw drifting mines into the straits. The Allied fleet was unable to penetrate the Dardanelles. Humiliated, the English and French then had the idea of an amphibious operation and organised a landing on Gallipoli Peninsula on 25 April, with a force of colonial troops (one third of French forces were Senegalese and Australian and New Zealand troops formed the bulk of the British battalions). Since the Turks held the high ground, the operation turned into a bloody fiasco with the same trenches and same stalemate here as on the western front and thirst and mosquitoes thrown in for good measure. In the end, the operation turned out to be very costly in men and material (more than 500,000 troops had been committed to it) and all this with nothing to show for it. The only success of the Dardanelles campaign was the evacuation without losses in December 1915 and January 1916.

A Year of Needless Massacres

Eastern Front 1915:
A German Officer Examines Dead Russian Soldiers

If the Army of the Orient project was torpedoed, it was, as we have seen, because Joffre wanted absolutely nothing to do with it. For 1915, he sincerely believed in a breakthrough on the western front, like long needle spikes all along the front, operations with minor objectives or large ramming operations, in Artois and Champagne in the spring, in Champagne and Artois in autumn. As this was not actually happening and that men were dying by the tens of thousands, he justified his strategy by inventing the nibbling theory. In reality, this was the strategy of someone who did not have one and who did not know what to do. Nibbling the enemy's positions in fact meant perpetually attacking them in order to gain a moral ascendancy over the enemy and keep the troops sharp through these regular massacres that had no fundamental objective other than ensuring the men did not lapse into the comfort of staying on the defensive. In fact, the only effect of the nibbling strategy was to wear down the French army and not the Germans.

At the end of 1915, 320,000 soldiers had died for a gain of 3 km in Artois and 5 km in Champagne. Not exactly what you could call an overwhelming success... General Castelnau was right when he sadly observed that "our army has spent all of 1915 wearing its teeth down to the root against a wall." Lloyd George, an early supporter of the Army of the Orient plan was furious at the lack of ingenuity of military command which was always one step behind the enemy: "Too late in moving here. Too late in arriving there. Too late in coming to this decision, too late in starting with enterprises, too late in preparing." 

1916—Back to the West

Fortunately [?], Joffre had a plan for 1916. He now swore by coordinating the fronts and did not want to attempt anything until the Russian army has recovered and was in a position to resume the offensive, but he was giving much thought to a huge offensive for the following summer.

In the inter-allied conference at Chantilly, from 6 to 8 December, it was agreed that the French, British, Italians and Russians would attack together around the month of June 1916. A simultaneous operation that would prevent Germany from moving its reserves from one front to another and would result in its defeat. But June 1916 was a long way away and it was very unlikely that the Germans would be polite enough to sit around and wait six months for the Allies to get ready. On the contrary, having nothing to fear from Russia which was licking its wounds, Falkenhayn could safely prepare a deep punch into the western front. His sights were now firmly set on the Verdun salient.

Source: Chemins de Memorie

Everyone's Plan for 1915: Let's Get the Hell Out of These Trenches, Part I—Re-evaluation

Early French Trench

By Jean-Yves Le Naour, Author of 1915. L'enlisement

Editor's Introduction:  This article from the French Ministère des Armées describes—from France's point of view—how the major powers' high commands responded to the imperative of breaking free of the trenches, and how a worse blood letting than the 1914 campaigns resulted. MH

Part I: Searching for Solutions

The hecatombs of 1914 surprised and took aback [all] senior army command[s]. Once the front got bogged down, trench warfare turned out to be just as deadly as mobile warfare and did not enable any of the belligerents to gain a decisive upper hand. So how could you do away with the trenches and win this war as quickly as possible? 

At the end of 1914, it was no exaggeration to say army command was in disarray. Six months earlier, in August 1914, they went into war full of confidence fully believing in the illusion of a short war and with their heads full of Napoleonic dreams. War was first and foremost a matter of courage, guts, momentum, it was an affair of horse flesh, cavalry charges with sabres out and furious onslaughts by infantry with their bayonets mounted. They were to become disillusioned very quickly and discover that this 19th century model belonged to the past.

Early German Trench

Right from the first clashes, the French understood that they had entered the industrial war era, an era of fire-power that made the canon the King of the war and forced the infantry to dig in if they were to withstand the shock without being wiped out. So between October and November, a trench line was formed over 700 km from the North Sea to Switzerland transforming the mobile war into a siege war.

The situation was virtually the same on the eastern front. Even though they were beaten in East Prussia by the Germans, the Russians caused great problems for the Austrian and Hungarian forces and pushed their troops right back to the Carpathians, but here again, the offensive stalled: the lack of ammunition, logistic shortages and the truce called by general winter blocked the situation until spring. So the question that was tormenting army command at the end of 1914 was: how to put an end to this trench warfare? How to overcome this stalemate? How to do away with the barbed wire, artillery barrages and the firing of machine guns that promise defeat to anyone crazy enough to attack? Both camps reflected on how to go beyond this new form of warfare that was still poorly understood, in the search for a new method or a new front that would unblock everything.

Early British Trench

With the experience of small or large scale offensives, that of the Germans on Calais for example, it soon transpired that defence was superior to offence. Even if you put in every resource you have, sacrificing thousands of men to take the enemy trench, they will just fall back to another second line trench a few hundred metres away and you have to repeat the whole operation again. Also, at the end of 1914, some generals and politicians came to understand that if massive and fruitless deaths were to be avoided in 1915, it was necessary to stand back and take a good look at the map of the war. Two considerations were driving these far-sighted individuals who observed the stalemate on the western front: resume the mobile war and since you cannot defeat the strongest, attack the weak.

This debate was the same in France, Great Britain and Germany. In Berlin, in fact, there was always a fear of fighting on two fronts—Russia and France—and so as not to split up its forces, the German army had designed the Schlieffen plan which was to quickly overrun France before turning back to fight against Russia, a war that would be longer since it was such a huge country. But The battle of the Marne scuppered this plan. Yes France had been invaded but it had held steady and the German army found itself in the situation it dreaded.

Source: Chemins de Memorie

Tomorrow in Part II Jean-Yves Le Naour examines the new strategies of the various combatants and their results

The Final Battle: Soldiers of the Western Front and the German Revolution of 1918

German Veterans Participating in Berlin Demonstration,
Late 1918

The Final Battle: Soldiers of the Western Front and the German Revolution of 1918

By Scott Stephenson

Cambridge 2010

In many ways the German soldiers who marched back from the Western Front at the end of World War I held the key to the future of the newly created republic that replaced the Kaiser's collapsed monarchy. To the radical Left, the orderly columns of front line troops appeared to be the forces of the counterrevolution while to the conservative elements of society they seemed to be the Fatherland's salvation. However in their efforts to get home as soon as possible, most soldiers were indifferent to the political struggles within the Reich, while the remnant that remained under arms proved powerless to defend the republic from its enemies. 

Author Scott Stephenson is associate professor of military history at the U.S. Army Command & General Staff College. This work won the 2010 Western Front Association Tomlinson Book for the best work of history in English on World War One. This well-crafted and thoroughly researched monograph is the first in many years to explore the return home of the defeated Imperial Army. It concerns chiefly the  choices made by frontline veterans impacting the German revolution from October to December 1918. While the upheavals of October and November 1918 had little effect—thanks to superior leadership from experienced  junior officers—on the discipline of approximately 1.5 million German frontline  troops in the West, support troops behind the lines, garrisons at home, and  battleship sailors were in full revolt providing the revolution with most of its energy. 

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As they marched home under command and fully armed, arriving frontline soldiers  played an important but now forgotten role in determining the course of the revolution and in the survival of the badly splintered Ebert government. In the  early stages of revolution beginning in November 1918, frontline veterans ensured the fall of the Kaiser, preserved the political influence of the officer caste, and created the basis for the "stab in the back" myth. By demobilizing themselves soon after arrival across the Rhine, they deprived the Ebert government of any support from the old army and paved the way for creation of the Freikorps made up of both veterans and underage youth, which fought in the ensuing civil upheaval and ultimately helped undermine the fledgling Weimar Republic.

Source: Adapted from a review by Leonard Shurtleff in Relevance, Fall 2011

The Philippines: Training Ground for the American Officer Corps

A roster of the high command in the American Army during World War I is a roster of the lieutenants who served in the Philippines at the turn of the century.

William T. Sexton, Soldiers in the Sun

General Pershing with Moro Tribesmen and Staff Officers
in the Philippines

The decade following the Spanish-American War gave the generation of American officers destined to serve in command positions during the Great War a remarkable number and variety of missions to perform. Of course, none of these challenges were comparable in scope to the fighting that would come on the Western Front, but they did allow these men to develop their capacity to grasp large, complicated, and  unusual military operations. Serving in deployments remote from the American heartland and with duties far beyond what individuals of their age and rank would normally face, they gained an awareness of the greater world and learned to bear the weight of great responsibility. Several of these missions stand out as particularly valuable seasoning experiences and by far the most important of these were the long-lasting actions known as the Philippine War and Insurrection, 1902–1913.

At the time of that armistice, veterans of the Philippines deployment were in command of almost all elements of the American Expeditionary Force. General Pershing, every field army and corps commander, the chiefs of the Intelligence, Supply, and Air Services, and both the AEF Headquarters and First Army chiefs of operations, were veterans of the Philippine war. 

Casualties from the First Battle of Bud Dajo, March 1906

There were two phases to the American military effort in the Philippines, the second much longer than the first. After defeating the Spanish fleet in Manila Bay, Commodore Dewey encouraged and supported rebel leader Emilio Aguinaldo and his force of 15,000 supporters to rise up against the Spanish colonial forces. Their efforts against the shaky Spaniards, who except in Manila were mostly widely dispersed and easy to pick off, succeeded, with the victors quickly declaring independence and establishing a constitution. The U.S., however, had meanwhile negotiated a purchase of the archipelago as part of the Treaty of Paris that ended the war. After prayerful reflection, President McKinley decided the Philippines were not to be granted independence. Aguinaldo and his supporters understandably rejected this decision and fighting ensued.

Soon American forces, some Army regulars and a larger contingent of volunteers, were fighting a brutal war for possession of the islands. The ensuing combat was vicious for the combatants and also took a cruel toll on Filipino civilians. After gaining victories in several conventional battles and securing Manila, the U.S. troops found they were now facing a guerilla war. It would eventually take a 74,000-man contingent and an intense campaign to gain control of the scattered battlefields. The war ended with the surrender of guerilla commander General Vincente Lukban in April 1902. In the three-year insurrection, 4,000 American and 20,000 Filipino soldiers and many thousands of Filipino civilians had perished. 

American Soldiers with Native Prisoners, Date Unknown

The need for a large deployment ended and most of the volunteers were sent home. The regular army then assumed almost full responsibility for security of the islands, with an occupying force that would average about 15,000 men for the next decade. The new American governors, though, had a lingering problem to deal with. In the southern islands, the Muslim Moro population was not interested in surrendering and continued to resist American rule in the Sulu region and on the Island of Mindanao until the eve of the Great War. It was in this second phase in the Philippines that almost all the future leadership of the AEF gained their most important command experience, and not unimportant, had the opportunity to prove themselves to the most influential American officer in the Philippines, the future commander of the American forces in the Great War—John J. Pershing. Pershing was the last military governor of the islands and established his credentials for high command by disarming the Moros and ending the guerilla campaign. 

But, of what possible relevance for fighting on the battlefields of Europe was this experience in the Philippines? One clue comes from Philippine veteran General George Marshall, writing about his experience in France in World War I: "[The Frenchman] feels the French method is the only method. We are adaptable, and it was this trait alone that made it possible for us to survive the difficulties of this period." An officer in the Philippines either adapted or failed. The need to adapt to local conditions, of course, was not unique to the Philippines. Since the Civil War, the regular U.S. Army had been involved primarily in unconventional warfare on the American prairie and in the Pacific and Caribbean deployments discussed above. But the Philippines offered such extremes of climate, geography, culture, religion, and local traditions that American soldiers must have thought they had left not their country but their planet. It was so shockingly different, the fighting so intense, and the adjustments required so demanding, that the Philippines served as a finishing school in adaptability for Army officers. To borrow the cliché, if you could succeed there you could succeed anywhere.

Moving a Gatling Gun Across a Destroyed Bridge

The regular army was in full charge during this second phase, which lasted 12 years. Since its professional cadre was still small, a very higher percentage of officers in the age group likely to be in command positions by 1917 and 1918—the mid- and junior-level officers—were rotated through the Philippine pressure cooker. Service in the Philippines gave these officers challenges and responsibilities beyond their years, providing outstanding preparation for command of larger formations. As U.S. Army counterinsurgency expert Frank Andrews recently wrote: 

American success [in the Philippines] ultimately depended on the men who implemented the counterinsurgency policies developed by the generals — the junior officers, or in some cases sergeants, who served as some of the 600 garrison commanders. These men were responsible not only for leading their soldiers in forays against the insurgents, but they were also charged with the establishment and supervision of the town government, schools, and local police force. In addition to preventing the townspeople from giving supplies or information to the guerrillas, the garrison commanders were responsible for protecting the town and his command against insurgent attacks. They also acted as the provost judge and performed all military staff duties, as well as the multitude of administrative tasks required by the army. 

Subtly, by the eve of America's entry into the Great War, the Army's officer corps had been divided. Those who had been found wanting in the Philippines saw their advancement in grade slowed. The successful were marked for higher posts if the Army ever needed to expand. These would form the command cadre of the AEF and in 1917 and 1918 would find themselves thrown into a modern and conventional land war with which they had absolutely no experience. On the Western Front they would apply the main lesson they had learned in the Philippines—the practice of learning and adjusting as the fighting went on. The differences in operational planning and combat efficiency between the AEF that fought at Cantigny, Château-Thierry, and Soissons in the summer and spring of 1918  and the AEF that launched the dramatic and decisive breakthrough, only five months later, on 1 November 1918 are staggering.

Source: Over the Top: Magazine of the World War I Centennial, May 2014