Wwi-Ext-Reading-1916.Pdf

THE WAR IN 1916 The costly failures of 1915 had led to changes in com illusionment to the Germans, who sustained a third of a mand before the end of the year. In the autumn, million casualties in occupying a crater filled wasteland against the advice of his ministers, Tsar Nicholas II one-sixth the size of the Isle of Wight. Never again was assumed command on the Eastern Front, sending morale steady, either in France or Germany. Grand Duke Nicholas to hold the Caucasus against the Ultimately the defenders of Verdun were relieved by Turks (page 163). The heavy casualties at Loos tfo acLions elsewhere. By midsummer Haig, supported by credited Sir John French who, in December, was Foch's Sixth Army, was ready to attack on the Somme. replaced as British commander-in-chief by Sir Douglas 20,000 British soldiers perished on the first day of the Haig. At the same time Kitchener, though remaining battle, more than were killed in action during the five War Minister, surrendered responsibility for operations years of Wellington's Peninsular Campaign. Yet,despite to a new Chief of the Imperial General Staff, Sir the terrible losses, Haig continued to pound the William Robertson, an ex-footman who had enlisted as German lines on the Somme, employing in September, a private thirty-nine years before. Only in France did for the first time, tanks to cross trenches and destroy Joffre's supremacy pass unchallenged. machine gun nests. The Somme was a traumatic as Haig and Robertson were a formidable partnership. Verdun. They insisted that, after the frustrations of Gallipoli, Success in 1916 came on the south-west sector of the the Western Front was to have priority over all other Eastern Front where General Brusilov convinced the Fronts. This decision was endorsed by the Cabinet on Tsar that it was possible to break through the Austrian 28 December 1915; it was welcomed by Joffre. His own defences and, if assisted by an enveloping movement plans for 1916 looked for wearing-down operations by farthernorth, to knock Austria-Hungary out of the war. his allies preparatory to a major offensiveby the French Brusilov forced the Austrians to fall back sixty or later in the spring. But the initiative on the Western seventy miles in confusion: the Germans rushed Front was seized by the Germans. Falkenhayn won the divisions from the Western Front to plug the gap, the Kaiser's consent for a different concept of military Austrians relaxed pressure on Italy, and even a Turkish operations: he proposed massive attack on a narrow Corps was hurried to Galicia. The northern attack sector where reasons of national sentiment would never materialised, but Brusilov gained a remarkable 'compel the French General Staff to throw in every triumph, sufficient to tempt Rumania into the war as an man they have'. The sector he recommended for this ally, although the Rumanians were speedily defeated attempt 'to bleed France white' (Falkenhayn's own (page 162). The victory over Rumania was won by expression) was Verdun, the historic city on the Meuse Mackensen and Falkenhayn, who had been replaced as whose fall in 1792 precipitated the panic September Chief of the German General Staff by Hindenburg massacres in revolutionary Paris. when the Kaiser despaired of his Verdun policy at the The battle of Verdun, which began with a con end of August. centrated artillery barrage on 21 February 1916 and At sea, 1916 was the year ofJutland (pages 256-261), continued for 300 days, overshadowed-and to some of intensified measures by the British to blockade extent predetermined-all other military events of the Germany, and of a fifty per cent increase over the 1915 year. Verdun, like Ypres, never fell to the Germans; it figures for the tonnage of Allied shipping sunk by consumed Joffre's reserves; it left the French Army U-boats. The outlook for 1917 was ominous. permanently shell-shocked; but it also brought dis- 147 .

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