The War to End All Wars: Chapters 9–12

Beginning on February 21, daily German bombardments pulverized the battle zone as French troops cowered in trenches and dugouts, trying to make themselves as small as possible, praying not to be blown to bits or buried alive.

That evening, General Philippe Pétain arrived to assume command of the French forces.

Falkenhayn had intended to wage a war of attrition: to bleed the French forces to death, maximizing French casualties while keeping German losses to a minimum.

As casualties mounted, Pétain did his best to spare his troops by rotating them in and out of the battle zone. Units at the front were sent to the rear for recuperation, while fresh units took their place.

Early in June, they finally captured Fort Vaux after surrounding it and blowing it up section by section. The garrison surrendered only because the men had no water and were literally dying of thirst.

The other, perhaps more gravely wounded and nearer to death, implores me to kill him with these words, ‘Lieutenant, if you don’t want to, give me your revolver!’

The other, perhaps more gravely wounded and nearer to death, implores me to kill him with these words, ‘Lieutenant, if you don’t want to, give me your revolver!’

For hours, these groans and supplications continue until, at 6 p.m., they die before our eyes without anyone being able to help them.

Allied forces continued their attacks, with little gain, until snowstorms and rain turned the Somme battlefield into a muddy morass.

Most of the British troops were inexperienced volunteers, men who had enlisted while Britain was raising a new army to fight in France, and who marched to the front singing rousing battle songs.

The Italians had been locked in futile combat along the Isonzo River in Austria since the summer of 1915, fighting a succession of inconclusive battles. In November 1916, the Ninth Battle of the Isonzo, like the previous eight, lasted only a few days and resulted in a heavy toll of killed and wounded for almost no gain of ground.

But it was won at the cost of a million Russian casualties, a staggering loss from which the czar’s armies would never recover.

In the Middle East, British and Turkish forces clashed repeatedly in Mesopotamia (modern Iraq), which the British had invaded in 1914 in an effort to gain control of the oil refineries at Basra, at the head of the Persian Gulf.

Second Lieutenant Alfred Joubaire, serving with the French 124th Regiment at Verdun, made the following entry in his diary on May 23, 1916: “Humanity is mad! It must be mad to do what it is doing. What a massacre. What scenes of horror and carnage! I cannot find words to translate my impressions. Hell cannot be so terrible. Men are mad!”

Called U-boats (Unterseebooten, or undersea boats), submarines were the only German vessels that could venture safely into open waters.

The Germans in turn declared all approaches to the British Isles war zones; they would seek to destroy not only enemy warships but also hostile merchant ships, those carrying war supplies to Britain.

Following the outcry over the Lusitania, Germany imposed strict limitations on submarine operations, pledging to warn those on board a vessel about to be attacked so they could abandon ship beforehand.

German U-boats continued to torpedo Allied merchant ships, sinking between fifty and a hundred a month in 1915. But most ships managed to evade the prowling U-boats and made it safely to British shores.

The winter of 1916–17 became known as the “turnip winter,” when that humble vegetable became the staple of many diets.

Hunger-related diseases such as rickets, scurvy, and tuberculosis were widespread, and in the cities, death from starvation was becoming a daily occurrence.

They were convinced that Germany’s submarine fleet could destroy Britain’s ability to wage war within a few months.

Some German military leaders feared that unrestricted submarine warfare would bring the United States into the war, thus guaranteeing Germany’s defeat. “Fear of a break [with the U.S.],” argued Admiral Henning von Holtzendorff, “must not hinder us from using the weapon that promises success.”

The U.S. regular Army was small, with only 130,000 men, no tanks, and few aircraft. As a gesture, a token force of one infantry division and two Marine brigades would be sent to France right away.

Allied generals still dreamed of achieving a dramatic breakthrough, but every attempt to breach the German defenses was frustrated and repulsed.

The failure of the Nivelle offensive was so demoralizing, it almost destroyed the fighting spirit of the French army.

Following the defeat at the Chemin des Dames, French soldiers engaged in what historians have called “the mutinies of 1917.” They weren’t mutinies in the sense that soldiers attacked their officers, but were more like workmen’s strikes, in which entire units refused to return to the trenches or take part in new attacks.

“I set about suppressing serious cases of indiscipline with the utmost urgency,” Pétain explained. “I will maintain this repression firmly, but without forgetting that it applies to soldiers who have been in the trenches with us for three years and who are our soldiers.”

However, the corruption and incompetence of the czar’s government, along with huge losses on the battlefronts, had eroded the army’s morale and darkened the mood of the Russian public.

Early in 1917, acute shortages of food and fuel led to strikes and riots in Petrograd (formerly St. Petersburg), the Russian capital.

A new liberal government under Alexander Kerensky vowed to continue the war for the defense of the Russian homeland.

That summer, a brief Russian offensive faltered in the face of a German counterattack.

Russian defenses crumbled, and the retreat became a headlong rout as entire units refused to fight.

Russian defenses crumbled, and the retreat became a headlong rout as entire units refused to fight.

In September 1917, as a German army moved toward the Russian capital, power began to slip from Kerensky’s hands into those of a revolutionary leader named Vladimir Ilyich Lenin, head of the Bolshevik faction of the Russian Communist Party.

When the Communists finally seized control of the government in November, Lenin’s calls for peace, bread, and land had overwhelming popular support. He immediately asked Germany for an armistice, thereby ending Russia’s part in World War I.

Just before dawn on June 7, following a massive artillery bombardment, the explosives were detonated with a noise heard 140 miles away in London, turning the crest of Messines Ridge into a flaming volcano.

Heavy rains combined with continual bombardments from both sides turned the battlefield into an impassable morass of mud. “The ground is churned up to a depth of ten feet and is the consistency of porridge,” reported a British artillery commander.

Horrible visions came to me with those cries, [of men] lying maimed out there trusting that their pals would find them, and now dying terribly, alone amongst the dead in the inky darkness.

Standing near the [breakfast] cookers were four small groups of bedraggled, unshaven men from whom the quartermaster sergeants were gathering information concerning any of their pals they had seen killed or wounded.

Standing near the [breakfast] cookers were four small groups of bedraggled, unshaven men from whom the quartermaster sergeants were gathering information concerning any of their pals they had seen killed or wounded.