Why was WWI considered “inevitable”?

Things were looking up for Germany…but then then they weren’t. The conference was totally a disaster and there is no way of twisting it any other way. Nobody supported Germany outright. Russia obviously supported France as did Spain but the real shockers was first Britain and secondly Italy. Wait what? Britain makes sense — they maintained the integrity of their agreement but Italy was the true shocker. Germany’s public defensive ally defied it in the congress and while Austria-Hungary tentatively supported Germany it was with an asterisk basically begging them to please stop being so aggressive and be more conciliatory. Germany, and more specifically the Kaiser, could have taken this as a note of the failure of Weltpolitik as a foreign policy but instead the Kaiser became more solidified in his belief in it. He would not again let himself back down and instead viewed more aggressive diplomacy necessary for it to work.

France and Britain had grown closer and at the very least Germany hoped this would drive at wedge between France and Russia. Well…it didn’t. All 3 powers supported the same decision in this conference and recognized the threat of Germany. Britain and Russia who just one year prior were actively fucking each other over began to make nice now and by 1907 would sign a series of agreements which would solidify the boundaries in Central Asia, the fate of Persia, and basically begin their friendship.

This was by all accounts the logical choice for both parties. Britain wanted to support France but to support France they would need to accommodate Russia. Also by extension of this agreement Britain would free up swathes of manpower stationed in India which were there for a significant purpose of keeping Russia in check and contesting said Central Asian territories. Although Russia herself could still go back into Germany’s arms any time she wished in this period and really did not need the French and British as much as they needed Russia, Russia felt alliance with the two powers was more beneficial than with Germany and A-H. The catastrophe in Manchuria against the Japanese and the failed revolution in 1905 as well showed the Tsar that the frontiers needed to be handled once and for all and the efforts concentrated and by dealing with Manchuria with Japan via losing and by dealing with Central Asia with Britain via diplomacy Russia could exert all of her efforts toward the West.

There can not be a greater indictment of Weltpolitik than when you consider the deep seated and long lasting (at times hundreds of years long) hostilities between France, Britain, and Russia being resolved so rapidly. In January 1904 Russia and Britain were irreconcilable, Britain and France were on uneasy terms, and France and Russia were friends but it was nothing really solid — it was really a one way agreement if you think about it. By December 31st 1907 though we can truly say the Triple Entente was formed in at least a proto state. But it was all tentative. It would be the 1911 Crisis that really set all of this into stone and really set the divisions in place that you talk about.

France, using riots as an excuse to send troops into Morocco would be quite slow to leave and were clearly making a power grab. A grab which was in clear violation of the treaty agreed upon by the congress just a few years prior. Now, this legitimately did drive a wedge between Britain and France for just a moment and Germany had an opportunity to shine if it acted diplomatically. It did not. Remember what I said about the Kaiser not backing down? Instead of operating in a peaceful, diplomatic fashion Germany would escalate the situation in true Weltpolitik fashion; she would send warships to intervene. Britain, who again held naval hegemony despite the race, was stunned. With the extension of actually not even knowing where the rest of the German fleet was the crisis immediately shifted from the French mucking up the treaty and more with maintaining the integrity of the Triple Entente in the face of German aggression. Germany would seize a sizable amount of French territory in sub-equatorial Africa to integrate into the colony of Kamerun and would in return recognize French control over Morocco. Weltpolitik would in the short sight work but in the grand scheme completely fail.

Charles Maurras, a contemporary, wrote “The solution of the Moroccan crisis is not to be found in Fez but among the pines of the Vosges. What is afoot in Morocco makes sense only if we are prepared to fight in the Vosges.”^[1] What the Second Crisis made explicit was what should have been made implicit in the first — that colonial disputes were now for the first time ever being directly projected back onto Europe and European rivalries and not treated in vacuums. This is only exacerbated by the fact that Morocco’s geographic position directly influences control of the Mediterranean which makes it harder to separate than some sub-equatorial African colony.

The Triple Entente was by all accounts solidified at this point in a mutual fear of Germany and even though by 1912 the naval arms race had almost entirely cooled down (Britain, for instance, reducing to a one-power standard in the Mediterranean) it was far too late. Britain was now in favor of continental intervention with regards to assisting France and would use her naval might to contest the German navy in the Baltics to protect the Russians. Russia who was just a few years prior in this strange land where it could still choose which power bloc to support was now fully behind France and Britain and France, despite having an abysmally low birth rate and a low population would now be able to stand up to Germany with two big friends. Italy had shown in these two crisis’ that her allegiance was only tentatively with Germany which explains their backing out of the war and even joining on the side of the Entente in 1915. Germany’s position was one of isolation with but one friend, Austria-Hungary; a nation which was imploding domestically (and that’s a whole big post for another time) and had a military which would perform embarrassingly in the war.

In the process of the past 25 years Weltpolitik had effectively isolated Germany from the rest of the world and driven former enemies into allegiance together for the sole purpose of containing Germany. It had created clear political boundaries in the formation of two major power blocs — the Triple Alliance and the Triple Entente. That is why, ultimately, people say the war was “inevitable”. When you create two power blocs like that where one is created for the sole purpose of aggressive expansion (Germany colonially and A-H with respect to Serbia and the rest of the Balkans) and the other with the sole purpose of containing the other, war is nearly inevitable. Some may point to the Warsaw Pact vs NATO and say that never evolved to war and I’d say that’s not a fair comparison because nukes completely changes the formula. This is the Cold War without M.A.D. and nuclear bombs. Even with nuclear deterrent that is an incredibly dicey situation but when we’re just talking about the risk of conventional warfare that becomes a ticking time bomb. It was by no means inevitable and I wouldn’t say that but the conditions were set in such a perfect way that most people in Europe by the end of 1911 viewed a general continental European war as a reality and began preparing for one in a very serious manner.

Notes:

[1] Scaremongers: Advocacy of War and Rearmament, 1896-1914, Anthony Morris.

The First World War: Volume I: To Arms, Hew Strachan

The Opening of World War I, Holger Herwig

February 25, 2015 | Categories: Uncategorized | Leave a comment

Evolution of Battle Tactics: How did battles change from the Napoleonic Wars to World War II?

The Napoleonic Wars greatest innovation, something which would paint warfare forever after, is the concept of a citizen army — to replace the highly trained, specialized mercenary armies employed by crowns around Europe. These mercenary armies would generally be foreign and highly paid, which makes them very efficient at quelling local revolutionary tendencies. With the French Revolution, the combination of the ideas of the Enlightenment and Democracy came the idea that if this is a nation of the people then the army must also be of the people. When basically all of Europe went to war with Revolutionary France to subdue them and restore the monarchy, hundreds of thousands of men would willingly sign up and fight the invaders as a united force. They were not nearly as trained and in fact had egregious casualty ratios but their sheer numbers and force would wreck the balance of power. These Prussian and Austrian and etc. Generals pleaded with their monarch’s for armies of equal size to compete lest they be conquered entirely.

How these battles would actually be fought is too diverse to cover and would be its own major post on its own, so I’ll focus on Napoleon. Napoleon’s strategy and tactics were that of complete annihilation whether on the attack or defense — his goal was to obliterate the enemy forces under any circumstance. Absolute victory or bust. So let’s talk about an average Napoleonic battle. Napoleon’s army would be in this marching formation which allowed for ridiculous flexibility. The cavalry screen allowed much early warning and the dual army allowed him to further spread his power rather than putting his ‘eggs in one basket.’ So he detects an enemy, his cavalry returns to the communications staff and the army would begin forming.

Light infantry would approach the enemy first and begin harassing the enemy lines. They would operate in teams of two covering each other and operate with 100 in a roughly 100-200 meter region. They tended to have more camouflaged uniform (but not much). They were also the highly intelligent and generally more trained members of the group, many times even hunters and rangers before their military tenure. The Voltigeur also were designated by something that many people would not immediately think, height. Height was actually critical in designation of Napoleon’s armies — you were likely pushed into skirmisher roles if you were 4’11 to 5’1. Small and maneuverable and exceedingly accurate makes a deadly combination.

Their job was, like I said, harassment — generally of the enemies weakest links to try and further weaken them. They also had to contest with enemy skirmishers which lead to warfare that could look pretty similar to a modern soldier — small ‘squads’ with rifles operating with cover against each other. They were especially useful in urban environments to climb into and through buildings and small places to become a nuisance to the enemy.

After that the light artillery near the front would open up as the light infantry began to withdrawal. They would also target weak points in the enemy line as the first wave of infantry began to form…not into lines as you may imagine, but columns! The Napoleonic Wars, especially in the early days, was as I said a citizen army and these men never held a gun in their life and had no dream of joining the military years prior. They were not military men and it would be too time consuming and even irresponsible to try and train them in complex military tactics and maneuvers. Why bother with finesse when you have brute force?

These infantry would be organized in tight columns with ridiculous depth that rivaled Greek phalanxes centuries prior — dozens of men deep was not uncommon. A center line would unleash an initial volley and then the two sides, in their column formation, would charge with all their force into the enemy line with bayonets. Many times the threat of hundreds of men charging you with that kind of depth would be enough to cause a break in the enemy lines and a total rout which your cavalry would promptly clean up. However if it wouldn’t, you would crash into their weak point and your men would pour out and that much shock and force and men pushed into one small area immediately following artillery and a barrage of muskets would cause a route. This would have so much ridiculous success and would contribute to France winning wars against, again, basically the entirety of Europe at once consistently.

As the different Coalition Wars (ie: Napoleonic Wars) drew on, Napoleon would get more experienced troops and would fight a more finesse based style. He would utilize Grenadiers — tall men with huge bearskin caps for intimidation and as elite shock troops. He would love using his inexperienced line infantry and light infantry to hold the enemy in place while his elite troops swung around and crashed into the enemy’s flank and “rolled them up”.

The Franco-Prussian War taught a story to Europe that many would not want to hear, but would harken in an age of new warfare. As opposed to the ACW just five years prior which used muzzle loaded percussion muskets, the French and German forces would both be using breech loaded bolt action rifles using cartridges. The French had the Chassepot and the Germans had their infamous “Needle Gun” — both with an effective range over a thousand meters. I’ll quote from Michael Howard:^[1]

The German infantry did not, indeed, acquit themselves particularly well. The company columns in which they advanced into action disintegrated under fire into a ragged skirmishing line which quickly went to [the] ground, and which officers and N.C.O.s urged forward in vain. In the woods and close country which lay before the French positions the temptation to ‘get lost’ was sometimes overwhelming. Only close order could give the infantry confidence, and close order in the face of breech-loading rifles was suicidal. The answer to the problem, as the Germans discovered during hte course of the campaign, was for the infantry, so long as its armament was inferior to that of the enemy, to hold back and leave matters to the guns; and the German field artillery proved quite capable of settling matter sitself. Its range and rate of fire gave it, at the beginning of both battles, such an ascendancy that the French gunners — including the dreaded *mitrailleuses–were silenced in a matter of minutes.*

The Franco-Prussian War was a “half and half” war even more than the American Civil War. The Germans would have rapid mobilization — over 250,000 men — and would have staggering casualty rates. They would simply not be capable of assaulting positions without unacceptable casualties because of the deadliness of French riflemen and them not having the tactical flexibility to deal with it.

The Generals had no idea what to do other than to just sit back and try and flatten the target area with their artillery and send in their infantry to mop up — something we’ll see tried again in a few years with much less success. However it worked then and, unfortunately, both sides didn’t get a real picture of the futility of their tactics because of how much of a fluke the war was. The French would be duped by the genius Von Moltke the Elder into being completely surrounded at Sedan and surrendering along with their monarch Napoleon III. Paris would declare herself the Third Republic but would still surrender just a few months later after a prolonged siege. There was a significant amount of casualties (the Prussians suffered 68% casualties at Mars-la-Tour for instance) as holes began to form in ‘Napoleonic Tactics’ but the war did not drag on long enough and there were not enough battles for any of serious influence to notice. Most of those who did notice were lying somewhere face down in a field somewhere, and they didn’t have much of an influence on military doctrine unfortunately.

February 15, 2015 | Categories: Uncategorized | 1 Comment