The Battle of the Rivers. Edmund Dane
These were the armies of General von Emmich; General von Kluck; General von Bülow; General von Hausen; Albert, Duke of Wurtemberg; the Crown Prince of Germany; the Crown Prince of Bavaria; and General von Heeringen. Embodying first reserves, they comprised twenty-eight army corps out of the forty-six which Germany, on a war footing, could put immediately into the field.[7]
Having reached the French frontier from near the Belgian coast to Belfort, the eight armies were to have advanced across France in echelon. If you take a row of squares running across a chessboard from corner to corner you have such squares for what is known in military phraseology as echelon formation.
Almost invariably in a military scheme of that character the first body, or "formation" as it is called, of the echelon is reinforced and made stronger than the others, because, while such a line of formations is both supple and strong, it becomes liable to be badly disorganised if the leading body be broken. On the leading body is thrown the main work of initiating the thrust. That leading body, too, must be powerful enough to resist an attack in flank as well as in front.[8]
Advancing on this plan, these armies would present a line exposing, save as regarded the first of them, no flank open to attack. Indeed, the first object of the echelon is to render both a frontal and a flank attack upon it difficult.
Had the plan succeeded as designed, we should have had this position of affairs: the eight armies would have extended across France from Paris to Verdun by the valley of the Marne, the great natural highway running across France due east to the German frontier, and one having both first-rate road and railway facilities. It was hoped that by the time the first and strongest formation of this chain of armies had reached Paris and had fastened round it, the sixth, seventh, and eighth armies would, partly by attacking the fortified French frontier on the east, but chiefly by enveloping it on the west, have gained possession of the frontier defence works.
The main French army must then have been driven westward from the valley of the Marne, across the Aube, brought to a decisive battle in the valley of the Seine, defeated, and, enclosed in a great arc by the German armies extending round from the north and by the east to the south of Paris, have been forced into surrender.
There is a common assumption that the German plan was designed to repeat the manœuvres which in the preceding war led to Sedan, and almost with the same detail. That is rating the intelligence of the German General Staff far too low. They could not but know that the details of one campaign cannot be repeated in another against an opponent, who, aware of the repetition, would be ready in advance against every move.
Naturally, they fostered the notion of an intended repetition. That promoted their real design. The design itself, however, was based not merely on the war of 1870–1, but on the invasion of 1814, which led to the abdication of Napoleon, and the primary idea of it was to have only one main line of advance.
The reason was that if an assailant takes two main lines of advance simultaneously and has to advance along the valleys of rivers converging to a point, as the Oise, the Marne, and the Seine converge towards Paris, his advance may be effectively disputed by a much smaller defending force than if he adopts only one line of advance, provided always, of course, that he can safeguard his flanks and his communications.
Bear in mind the calculation that the main French army would never in any event be strong enough successfully to resist an invasion so planned. Bear in mind, too, that an echelon formation is not only supple and difficult to attack along its length on either side, but that it can be stretched out or closed up like a concertina. To maintain a formation of that kind with smaller bodies of troops is fairly easy. To maintain it with the enormous masses forming the German armies would be difficult. But the Germans were so confident of being able to compel the French to conform to all the German movements, to stand, that is to say, as the weaker side, always on the defensive, leaving the invaders a practically unchallenged initiative, that they believed they could co-ordinate all their movements with exactitude. This was taking a risk, but they took it.
It is a mistake to suppose that they entered on the campaign with every movement mapped out from start to finish. No plan of any campaign was ever laid down on such lines, and none ever will be. The plan of a campaign has to be built on broad ideas. Those ideas, by taking all the essentials into consideration, the strategist seeks to convert into realised events. In this instance, there can be very little doubt that certain assumptions were treated as so probable as almost to be certainties. The first was that such forces as France could mobilise in the time would be mainly drafted to defend the fortified frontier. The next was that such forces as could be massed in time along the boundary of Belgium would be too weak seriously to impede the invasion. The third was that in any subsequent attempt to transfer forces from the fortified frontier to the Belgian boundary the French would be met and defeated by the advancing echelon of German masses. The fourth was that such an attempted transfer, followed by its defeat, would leave the fortified frontier so readily seizable, that German armies advancing swiftly into the valley of the Marne would fall upon these defeated French forces on the flank and rear. Besides, that attempted transfer would be the very thing that would promote the German design of envelopment.
If Paris could be reached by the strongest of the chain of armies in eight days, then the mobilisation of the French reserves would still be incomplete. Under the most favourable conditions, and even without the disturbance of invasion, that mobilisation takes a fortnight. Given a sudden and successful invasion with the resultant upset of communications and the mobilisation could never be completed. All, therefore, that the 1,680,000 men forming the invading hosts[9] would have to encounter would be the effectives of the French regular forces, less than half the number of the invaders.
When we speak of twenty-eight army corps moving in echelon, approximately like so many squares placed diagonally corner to corner, it is as well not to forget that such a chain of masses may assume quite sinuous and snake-like variations and yet remain perfectly intact and strong. For example, the head of the chain might be wound round and pivot upon Paris, and the rest of the chain extended across France in curves. This gigantic military boa-constrictor might therefore crush the heart out of France, while the defenders of the country remained helpless in its toils.
Such in brief was the daring and ambitious scheme conceived and worked out by the German General Headquarters Staff, and worked out in the most minute detail.
It will be seen from this summary that so far as its broad military features are concerned, the plan promised an almost certainly successful enterprise. There were concealed in its calculations, nevertheless, fatal flaws. What they were will appear in the course of the present narrative. Meanwhile it is necessary to add that possible opposition from Belgium had not been overlooked; nor the possibility, consequent upon that opposition, of intervention by Great Britain. From the military standpoint, however, it was never calculated that any British military force would be able to land either in France or in Belgium promptly enough to save the French army from disaster. In any event, such a force would be, from its limited numbers, comparatively unimportant.
FOOTNOTES:
[1] Despatch from Sir John French to Earl Kitchener of September 17th, 1914. For the text of this see Appendix.
[2] The contemplated fine has been alleged to be 4,000 millions sterling, coupled with the formal cession of all North Eastern France. This statement was circulated by Reuter's correspondent at Paris on what was asserted to be high diplomatic authority. Such a sum sounds incredible, though as a pretext it might possibly have been put forward.