Joffre and the Origins of the Somme: A Study in Allied Military Planning

Roy A. Prete

The Journal of Military History, Volume 73, Number 2, April 2009, pp. 417-448 (Article)

Published by Society for Military History DOI: 10.1353/jmh.0.0266

For additional information about this article http://muse.jhu.edu/journals/jmh/summary/v073/73.2.prete.html

Access Provided by Southern Mississippi, Univ of at 09/25/12 1:53AM GMT Joffre and the Origins of the Somme: A Study in Allied Military Planning

I

Roy A. Prete

Abstract This paper examines the origins of the within the context of French Commander-in-Chief ’s effort to coordi- nate Allied military operations in 1916 and to mount a combined Anglo- French offensive on the Western Front. The French chose a joint opera- tion on the Somme, in which they would play the major role, as a means of leading the British into battle. But a major British attritional operation preceding the offensive was dropped, and ironically, the bore the brunt of Allied wastage in the German attack at Verdun until the Somme offensive began on 1 July 1916.

he literature on continues to flourish as scholars comb the Tarchives and rethink the issues in quest of new and more satisfying interpre- tations.1 For the British, the Battle of the Somme, the first great battle of the war

1. Volumes of note include Hew Strachan, The First World War (New York: Viking, 2004); David Stevenson, Cataclysm: The First World War as Political Tragedy (New York: Basic Books, 2004); George H. Cassar, Kitchener’s War: British Strategy from 1914 to 1916 (Washington: Brassey’s Inc., 2004); Gary Sheffield and John Bourne, eds., Douglas Haig; War Diaries and Let- ters 1914–1918 (London: Weidenfeld and Nicolson, 2005); Robert T. Foley, German Strategy and the Path to Verdun: Eric von Falkenhayn and the Development of Attrition, 1870–1916 (Cam- bridge: Cambridge University Press, 2005); Robert A. Doughty, Pyrrhic Victory: French Strategy and Operations in the Great War (Cambridge, Mass.: Belknap Press of Harvard University, 2005); Elizabeth Greenhalgh, Victory through Coalition: Britain and France during the First World War (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2005). Roy A. Prete is a professor of history at the Royal Military College of Canada in Kingston, Ontario. The author of several articles on Anglo-French military relations in World War I, he is completing a trilogy of books, Strategy and Command: The Anglo-French Coalition on the Western Front, 1914-16, of which the first volume on 1914 will be published by McGill- Queen’s University Press in 2009.

The Journal of Military History 73 (April 2009): 417-448. Copyright © 2009 by The Society for Military History, all rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored, or trans- mitted in any form or by any means without the prior permission in writing from the Editor, Journal of Military History, George C. Marshall Library, Virginia Military Institute, P.O. Drawer 1600, Lexington, VA 24450. Authorization to photocopy items for internal and personal use is granted by the copyright holder for libraries and other users registered with the Copyright Clearance Center (CCC), 121 Rosewood Drive, Danvers, MA 01923 USA (www.copyright.com), provided the appropriate fee is paid to the CCC.

★ 417 ROY A. PRETE dominated by British forces—a bloodbath of unprecedented proportions—holds a particular fascination.2 The commemorative events of 2006 marking its ninetieth anniversary, including academic conferences and on-site remembrances, have long since come and gone.3 Several scholars have made recent contributions to the subject. Robert A. Doughty has helped us understand the developing concept of attrition in French staff thinking and the ongoing opposition of General Ferdi- nand Foch, the Northern Army Group Commander, to an operation he deemed unlikely to produce decisive results. Elizabeth Greenhalgh has underscored the tendency of the French staff to consider the French and British forces as one army in their strategic planning, and has noted the divergences between British and French perceptions and plans as the battle approached. And Robin Prior and Trevor Wilson have underlined the important role of the British War Committee in the formulation and control of British strategy prior to authorization of the joint offensive, without, however, having delved into the French role in the planning of the offensive.4 Several questions on the origin of the Somme offensive, nonetheless, remain unresolved, particularly as to the role of the French staff and Anglo-French inter- action in the planning process, despite a spirited controversy between two scholars on the reasons for British participation in the offensive.5 Such unanswered ques- tions and controversy are enticing invitations to further research and appraisal. The purpose of this paper is to trace from archival sources the origins of the Anglo- French Battle of the Somme in relationship to French Commander-in-Chief Joseph J.-C. Joffre’s wider attempt to coordinate the Entente coalition, consisting of France, Britain, Russia, Italy, , and Belgium. This task, which he undertook in the latter part of 1915, must be considered in addition to the role of de facto

2. See, for example, Robin Prior and Trevor Wilson, The Somme (New Haven, Conn.: Yale University Press, 2005); Peter Hart, The Somme(London: Weidenfeld and Nicolson, 2005); Mar- tin Gilbert, The Somme: Heroism and Horror in the First World War (New York: Henry Holt and Co., 2006); Christopher Duffy, Through German Eyes: The British and the Somme 1916 (London: Weidenfeld and Nicolson, 2006). 3. Of particular note: The 90th Anniversary of the Battle of the Somme, International Conference, University of Kent, 17–19 July 2006; Western Front Association, Great War Con- ference, 4–5 November 2006, National Army Museum, Chelsea, United Kingdom; and several Battle of the Somme Commemorations in 2006: Western Front Association, U.S. Branch, “90th Anniversaries of Verdun and the Somme Commemorative Events [including several on loca- tion].” 4. Doughty, Pyrrhic Victory: French Strategy and Operations, 250–90; Greenhalgh, Victory through Coalition, 43–63; Prior and Wilson, The Somme, 15–69. Prior and Wilson have not con- sulted any French sources (Ibid.). 5. Elizabeth Greenhalgh, “Why the British Were on the Somme in 1916,” War in History 6 (1999): 147–73; William Philpott, “Why the British Were Really on the Somme: A Reply to Elizabeth Greenhalgh,” War in History 9 (2002): 446–71; Elizabeth Greenhalgh, “Flames Over the Somme: A Retort to William Philpott,” War in History (2003): 335–42; William Philpott, “The Anglo-French Victory on the Somme,” Diplomacy and Statecraft 17 (2006): 731–51.

418 ★ THE JOURNAL OF Joffre and Allied Military Planning for the Somme

coordinator of Anglo-French forces, which he assumed in August 1914 and continued to exercise. The essay will also consider the relative impact of French and British government policy and political oversight of joint military planning with regard to the 1916 offensive. For almost a generation, British his- toriography has shifted its focus from emphasis on the strategic debate between “easterners” and “westerners” to the broader issue of how to best manage the Allied coalition.6 The latter half of 1915 is partic- ularly crucial in this discussion relative to the Entente powers since, for the first time, Joffre, the French Commander-in-Chief, with the assent of France’s Allied partners, undertook to coordinate the strategic plan- ning of the Allied armies, to produce first a General Joseph Joffre, French Commander- coordinated effort for the fall of 1915, and in-Chief, August 1914–December 1916 then a unified Allied offensive in 1916 to [Courtesy of the Service historique de deliver the knockout blow that would force la Défense, Vincennes, France.] the —Germany, Austria- Hungary, Turkey, and Bulgaria—to their knees. Joffre faced the additional task of coordinating the efforts of Allied forces on the Western Front. The concept of obtaining the maximum return from French allies inherent in these endeavors was not new in French planning, the entire pre- war strategy for victory over the Central Powers having been based on the effective operation of French alliances. A closer look at the initial planning of the Battle of the Somme, with evidence gleaned from in-depth archival research in French and British archives, reveals that the Battle of the Somme was the culmination of a long series of measures, ploys, and discussions, by which the French had attempted to draw the British more fully into the war effort in France. Entering the war in August 1914 with a lim- ited commitment to continental defense, the British government had reluctantly increased its commitment of troops and resources by degrees, as crisis succeeded crisis in the field. During the summer of 1915, the British government decided, largely in the face of French and Russian weakness, to send their “New Armies” of recently trained volunteers to France, and ultimately, for many of the same reasons,

6. See, for example, Keith Neilson, Strategy and Supply: The Anglo-Russian Alliance, 1914– 1917 (London: George Allen and Unwin, 1984); David French, British Strategy and War Aims 1914–1916 (London: Allen and Unwin, 1986); Kathleen Burk, Britain, America and the Sinews of War, 1914–1918 (London: Allen and Unwin, 1985).

MILITARY HISTORY ★ 419 ROY A. PRETE to engage them fully in battle in the fall Loos-Champagne offensive. By 1916, with “westerner” Sir William Robertson as Chief of the Imperial General Staff exercis- ing the dominant influence on British strategy, the British government was willing, though with some hesitation, to pursue a Western Front strategy and to engage British forces in the great battles of the war in 1916. The British Cabinet was thus prepared to follow Joffre’s lead in preparing a major Anglo-French offensive on the Somme, in concert with a combined Allied offensive against the Central Powers. Sir Douglas Haig, the Commander-in-Chief of the Brit- ish Expeditionary Force (BEF), was thus obliged to defer and ultimately sacrifice his preferred coastal offensive in Flanders on the altar of Allied solidarity. The experience of , with its heavy losses and little tangible territorial gain, had led the French and their allies to the conclusion that attrition and wastage of German forces were required as a precondition to breakthrough and ultimate victory. The British government, however, proved unwilling to have the manpower-rich British engage in major preliminary “wearing operations” without the French, as Joffre wished, in advance of the major joint offensive. This dispute formed the background to a revised strategy for the joint attack, focused on decisive action and breakthrough, to be preceded only by a series of short diversionary wearing operations. Political-Military Framework The belligerent powers during World War I were dealing with a new kind of war experience, the industrialized war of the twentieth century, which, after a period of movement ending in November 1914, resulted in trench warfare and stalemate on the Western Front. This was a different kind of war, for which the nineteenth-century experience and training of the generals had ill-equipped them,7 and for which the perception and practices of the politicians provided insufficient guidance. There was thus a tangible “groping at the wall” at every level of leadership, in a war largely experimental in nature. As the war dragged on, the Allied lack of success began to undermine the public’s confidence in its leaders, both political and military. Both French and British governments by mid-1915 were coalitions with inherent elements of instability. In the French case, the Union Sacrée government of René Viviani rested on shifting political groupings and interests whose strategic demands had to be considered. In the British case, the coalition government of H. H. Asquith, formed in May 1915, rested on the support of an unhappy amalgam of Liberals and Unionists, without strong central leadership. Moreover, the high com- mands and their staffs, who made the military plans, had varying degrees of latitude and enjoyed differing degrees of support from their governments.8 By the end of

7. See Timothy Travers, The Killing Ground: The British Army, the Western Front and the Emergence of Modern Warfare, 1900–1918 (London: Allen and Unwin, 1987). 8. On the British side, see Llewellyn Woodward, Great Britain and the War of 1914–1918 (London: Methuen and Co., 1967); on the French side, Jere Clemens King, Generals and Politi-

420 ★ THE JOURNAL OF Joffre and Allied Military Planning for the Somme

1915, significant changes had already taken place in both countries in political- military leadership, the institutional framework, and overall perceptions of the war. The Entente political-military context thus set the stage, defining the leadership role of the French staff and the corresponding British role in the decision-making process, as the third campaign season of the war approached. French Government and Command By the fall of 1915, the French government and command were having seri- ous trouble justifying to the public their performance in the conduct of the war. The basic problem was the continuing failure to win the war, and the heavy costs involved in pursuing a war of attrition, with no visible end in sight. Despite his titanic reputation as “Victor of the ,” Joffre, the French Commander-in- Chief, was under severe criticism. His initial policy of nibbling on the enemy with partial offensives following the onset of trench warfare in November 1914 had been unduly costly without visible results, and his major offensives in the spring and fall of 1915, despite the mobilization of material resources to produce more guns and shells, produced no tangible results.9 By the end of 1915, France, which had carried the major burden of the war on the Western Front, had already suffered losses of nearly 2 million, of whom 1 million were dead.10 The Union Sacrée of René Viviani’s government thus gave way in late October. Those who felt France needed a change of military leadership, such asGeorges Clemenceau, Paul Doumer, and Charles Humbert, members of the Army Com- mission of the Senate, focused their support on General as a replacement for Joffre. “Easterners” in the Cabinet, and several others, felt that France needed a new strategy to focus on external theaters. The Salonika expedition had been launched a few months earlier by the government to respond to these demands. This hastily contrived adventure superseded an earlier plan for an expanded Dardanelles deployment—which itself had been orchestrated to provide a suitable command for General , the darling of the Left and a potential rival of Joffre. When the René Viviani government came down at the end of October, ostensibly because of the failure of its Balkan policy, Aristide Briand managed to plaster together a new Union Sacrée. Criticism of Joffre’s com- mand was blunted by installing General Gallieni as the , to exercise a closer supervision of Joffre. In addition, major strategic initiatives would now have to be approved by a revitalized Conseil Supérieur de la Défense Nationale, an inner Cabinet consisting of key ministers—the Prime Minister, the War Minister, the Navy Minister, and others as required—presided over by the President of the

cians: Conflict between France’s High Command, Parliament and Government, 1914–1918 (Berke- ley and Los Angeles: University of California Press, 1951). 9. See Pierre Varillon, Joffre (Paris: Librairie Arthème Fayard, 1956), 357–420. 10. Woodward, Great Britain and the War, 143.

MILITARY HISTORY ★ 421 ROY A. PRETE

Republic, whose role in the wartime setting continued to expand.11 Joffre’s powers were thus severely curtailed. But Gallieni, Joffre’s former chief in , soon found himself in conflict with Joffre, who resisted tighter control of his command, and at the same time requested, for the sake of unity of action, that he be placed in charge of all operations—not only in France, but also in the Middle East where the Salonika expedition had assumed greater proportions.12 In Gallieni’s clash with Joffre, the government finally sided with Joffre. The government agreed on the need for unity of action, but rejected a plan to install Gallieni as Commander-in-Chief on all fronts, for fear of involving the parliament in strategy.13 Thus, on 2 December, to the consternation of some Socialists, who were still stinging under Joffre’s heavy- handed dismissal of Sarrail, Joffre was made Commander-in-Chief of all French Armies in France and in the Middle East. And eight days later, General Edouard de Curières de Castelnau, a recognized staff officer (then in command of the Group), was installed as Joffre’s Chief of Staff to anchor him with high-level professional advice.14 The extension of Joffre’s jurisdiction in effect was a clever ploy by Briand to bind Joffre to his “eastern” policy and oblige him to divert resources to Sarrail, while at the same time raising Joffre’s stature so that he could better deal with the Allies in interallied planning.15 But, all of Joffre’s plans for interallied planning had to be approved by the French government in the Conseil Supérieur de la Défense Nationale. Ironically, while Joffre’s overall jurisdiction in the direction of the war had been considerably broadened, his liberty of action had been seriously undermined, and the government’s role enhanced.16 The long process of the reassertion of civilian

11. See King, Generals and Politicians, 36–88, for an account of the activities of the parlia- mentary commissions and the Sarrail affair; also Jan K. Tanenbaum, General Maurice Sarrail, 1856–1929 (Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 1974), 51–74. For illuminating in- sight on Joffre’s relationship with the politicians, see Varillon,Joffre , 357–420. Varillon alone has had access to Joffre’s private papers. On the wide jurisdiction exercised by President Raymond Poincaré in diplomatic and military affairs during the war, see J. F. V. Keiger, Raymond Poincaré (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1997), 193–239. See also Roy A. Prete, “Joffre and the Question of Allied Supreme Command, 1914–1916, ” in Proceedings of the Annual Meeting of the Western Society for French History 16 (1989): 333. 12. Raymond Poincaré, Au service de la France, vol. 7, Guerre de siège (Paris: Plon, 1931), 25 November 1915, 277–80. 13. Raymond Poincaré, “Notes Journalières,” XLI, 1, 2 décembre 1915, 189, 193, Fonds Poincaré, NAF 16038, Bibliothèque Nationale, Paris [hereafter BN], 14. See Poincaré, Guerre de siège, 9 and 10 , 168–70. 15. Prete, “Joffre and the Question of Allied Supreme Command,” 333. 16. There is at least a grain of truth in A. J. P. Taylor’s pithy statement that “the French, who had little faith in Joffre, kept him as Commander-in-Chief because they thought that this would please the Allies, and the Allies, who also had no faith in Joffre, conformed to his wishes, because they thought that this would please the French.” (A. J. P. Taylor, Illustrated History of the First World War [New York: G. P. Putnam’s Sons, 1964], 82–83.)

422 ★ THE JOURNAL OF Joffre and Allied Military Planning for the Somme authority over the high command was well under way. The French government thus began to play a more aggressive role in interallied coordination. Joffre’s consistent operational goal, determined by the political and physical realities of the situation, was to beat the German Army and drive it out of France.17 Failure of the costly offensives launched in 1915 was blamed on the lack of heavy artillery and munitions. The response was to order massive amounts of heavy artil- lery and shells, which French industry provided in remarkable quantities. Though not unresponsive to the tactical needs of the new conditions of trench warfare, the French staff ’s reevaluation of tactics proceeded more slowly.18 The experiences of 1915, in its view, demonstrated that French troops could always penetrate the Ger- man trenches. The problem was not how to breach the trenches but how to exploit victory. In its analysis, the Artois offensive in the spring of 1915 failed because of the narrowness of the attack, which, after an initial breakthrough, exposed their flanks to enemy counterfire, and because of the availability of German reserves. The 1915 fall offensives were thus launched on two fronts, with an initial attack by the British at Loos to draw in enemy reserves followed by the main French attack in Champagne to make a breakthrough.19 But, in the French view, the availability of German reserves proved decisive, leading to failure of both attacks. To win the war, the French concluded, the Allies would have to use up available enemy reserves on all fronts before engaging in the decisive battles. Joffre’s growing concept of the need for the attrition of the enemy prior to ultimate victory formed the backdrop to his plans for the coordination of Allied military operations in the fall of 1915.20 French Grand Strategy: Background to Allied Coordination French grand strategy prior to 1914 relied not only on French military strength, but also on the support of French allies, of which Russia, deemed a faithful ally, was the chief cornerstone. From the time of his appointment as French Chief of Staff in 1911, Joffre had recognized fully that the next war would be a coalition war, which could be won only by the concerted action of allies. One of his first moves

17. [ Joseph J.-C.] Joffre, The Memoirs of Marshal Joffre, trans. Colonel T. Bentley Mott, 2 vols. (London: Geoffrey Bles, 1932), 1: 327. 18. See Michel Goya, La chair et l’acier: l’Armée française et l’invention de la guerre moderne, 1914–1918 (Paris: Tallandier, 2004); Captain James K. Hogue, “André Laffargue and the Birth of Infiltration Tactics,” paper presented at the Meeting of the Western Society for French His- tory, 21 October 1989, at New Orleans, Louisiana. 19. Note au sujet des conditions générales de la guerre sur le front occidental, 25 mai 1915, France, Ministère de la Guerre, État Major de l’Armée, Service Historique, Les Armées Françaises dans la Grande Guerre, 105 vols. (Paris: Imprimerie Nationale, 1923–39) (hereafter AFGG), II, A (II), no. 360. This official history, with massive tomes of accompanying documents, is excellent on operations, but omits important diplomatic and political documents. 20. 3e Bureau, Note sur l’emploi des forces anglaises pendant la campagne d’hiver 1915– 1916, 7 October 1915, AFGG, III, A (III), no. 2792; Doughty, Pyrrhic Victory: French Strategy and Operations, 250–52.

MILITARY HISTORY ★ 423 ROY A. PRETE therefore was to ascertain the nature of the diplomatic setting, and then to enter into closer collaboration with Russia, France’s principal ally.21 His decision in 1911 to take the offensive in any future war with Germany was based on the assurance that Russia would also launch a major offensive against Germany in East Prussia by the sixteenth day of mobilization in order to divert at least a fifth of available German forces to the East.22 On the other hand, repeated attempts by the French government to draw the British, linked only by the tenuous Entente cordiale, into a firmer commitment prior to 1914 had failed. While staff and naval conversations laid down a contingency plan, the arrangement contained no firmer assurance than the promise to consult in time of crisis, and, as a result of the 1912 naval accords, for the British to defend the French northern sea coast. The apocryphal story of a conversation between Major General Henry Wilson and General in 1910 contains the germ of the relationship. “What would you say was the smallest British military force that would be of any practical assistance to you . . . ?” Wilson queried. “One single private soldier,” replied Foch, “and we would take good care that he was killed.”23 To draw the British deeper in their commitment to French defense was a major French goal from the outset of the war. In this the French government and high command worked hand in glove. Joffre’s consistent goal was thus to obtain maximum partici- pation from his British allies, and to submit them to French strategic control.24 The goal of fully involving French allies had been pursued with at least a modi- cum of success in 1914, the initial Russian offensive in 1914 having contributed significantly to the Battle of the Marne by the diversion of German forces to the Eastern Front, and the British having played an ever-increasing and significant role in all the left-flank battles from the outset of the war.25 The Russian attack in Galicia in March 1915 had led the Germans to withdraw eight divisions from the Western Front, and ultimately to choose the Eastern Front for their 1915 offensive.26 By mid-1915, however, the seeming unity of Allied efforts had broken down, as the British pursued a competing policy of peripheral operations in the Dar- danelles offensive, and the Russians retreated before the combined might of the German and Austro-Hungarian offensive. As a military man possessed of a strong

21. Joffre, Memoirs, 1: 36–42, 55–61. 22. Joffre, Memoirs, 1: 55–57ff. 23. Major-General C. E. Callwell, Field Marshal Sir Henry Wilson. His Life And Diaries, 2 vols. (London: Cassell and Co., 1927), 1:28–29. Though somewhat dated, the best account remains Samuel R. Williamson, Jr., The Politics of Grand Strategy : Britain and France Prepare for War, 1904–1914 (Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press, 1969). 24. See Roy A. Prete, “The War of Movement on the Western Front, August–November 1914: A Study in Coalition Warfare” (Ph.D. diss., University of Alberta, 1979), 502–6. 25. See William James Philpott, Anglo-French Relations and Strategy on the Western Front, 1914–18 (London: Macmillan Press, 1996), 15–50. 26. See Foley, German Strategy and the Path to Verdun, 126–55.

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The Western Front [adapted from the West Point Atlas] sense of Allied solidarity, Horatio H. Kitchener, the British Secretary of State for War, was motivated by concerns for the overall effectiveness of the coalition earlier than many others.27 As early as March 1915, he had suggested to the French that Joffre ought to play a larger role in the overall coordination of the coalition with a view to simultaneous attacks on both Eastern and Western fronts.28 The Italians

27. See Prete, “War of Movement,” 100–101, 135–38, 250–55, 265–70; Neilson, Strategy and Supply, 7–11.

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