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Note on Comparative
General Officer Ranks
Rank
structures and titles in the various armies of the Great War were
not exactly equivalent. In the French Army there were only two
permanent general officer ranks: General of Brigade (Général de
Brigade) and General of Division
(Général de Division).
A General of Army Corps (Général de Corps d'Armee)
or a General of Army (Général d'Armee)
was actually a General of Division appointed to that higher
command: He wore the insignia and used the title of his appointment
during his tenure in command only. The title of Marshal of France (Meréchal
de France) was technically not a
rank but an honorific, conferred for distinguished service.
In the German
Army all general officer ranks were permanent. These were
Colonel-General (Generaloberst), General of Arm or Branch (General
der Waffengattung), Lieutenant-General (Generalleutnant)
and Major-General (Generalmajor).
A
General of Arm or Branch used the name of his parent branch of
service, e.g. General of Infantry (General
der Infanterie). The highest Army rank was Field Marshal (Generalfeldmarschall);
in 1914 no general officer on the active list held this rank, which
by custom was only conferred for distinguished service,
usually in wartime.
Kaiser Wilhelm II held it ex officio as monarch and "Supreme
Warlord."
In the British Army also general
officer ranks were permanent. These were Field Marshal, General,
Lieutenant-General, Major-General and Brigadier-General. The Belgian
Army had two general officer ranks: Lieutenant-General (Lieutenant-général)
and Major-General (Major-général)
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For clarity, German formations
are rendered in italics.
The first
campaign of the Great War in the west was dominated by two factors:
Germany’s amended
Schlieffen Plan and France’s Plan XVII. The latter was a
straightforward proposition: a mobilization and deployment scheme
anticipating an all-out offensive, the objective of which was to
clear German forces from Alsace and Lorraine and carry the French
armies to the Rhine River. For this purpose France’s five field
armies were to be concentrated between the Belgian and Swiss
borders. On the left, Fifth Army was to act as a flank guard in case
the Germans attempted an attack through Luxembourg and southern
Belgium. The remaining armies—from left to right the Fourth, Third,
Second and First—were to drive into Lorraine. To the south of this
main effort, a detached corps would advance into Alsace. (Map 5
shows the deployment areas of the French and German armies on 2
August. Note how the concentration of forces on the German right
flank overlaps the French left.)
Department of History, USMA West
Point
Though the
French commander-in-chief, General Joseph Joffre, recognized the
possibility of a German flank attack through southern Belgium he
never seriously considered the idea of a large-scale German maneuver
on the pattern of the Schlieffen Plan. Joffre reasoned that the
Germans possessed insufficient first-line divisions for such an
audacious operation. Discounting the value of his own reserve
divisions, he failed to foresee that the Germans would use theirs in
an offensive role. Thus the Fifth Army, supplemented by the British
Expeditionary Force (Field Marshal Sir John French), seemed to him
adequate to secure the French left flank. He paid no attention to
the warnings of Fifth Army’s commander, General
Charles Lanrezac, that the Germans were deploying in great strength
along the Belgian border. Lanrezac was uncomfortably aware that
until the BEF appeared, there would be nothing to
the left of his army than a thin
screen of second-line Territorial troops along the Franco-Belgian
border.
Joffre's strategic
misjudgment was compounded by some serious tactical deficiencies. In the
years prior to the war the French Army had fallen under the sway of
a faction that preached the doctrine of the offensive in its most
extreme form. All professional soldiers in Europe shared this view
to some extent, but in France the offensive was embraced with an
almost religious fervor. Relying on the bayonet and an aggressive
spirit supposedly native to the French soldier, the troops would
attack in dense formations, supported by the rapid fire of the
excellent French 75mm field gun, overrunning the enemy in one
audacious rush.
There were,
indeed, doubters and critics. Some argued that insufficient
attention was being paid to infantry tactics or to the problems of
coordination between infantry and artillery. Others pointed to the
French Army’s material deficiencies, especially in medium and heavy
field artillery. These criticisms the prophets of the offensive
waved away with assurances that French cran—guts—would
compensate for any such minor shortcomings. To suggestions that the
traditional infantry uniform—dark blue coat, madder red
trousers—should be replaced by something less conspicuous, they
replied scornfully: Les pantalons rouges, c'est la France!
Department of History USMA West Point
Given this
background, what happened when Joffre launched his offensive seems
sadly inevitable in retrospect. Between 14 and 23 August the French
First Army (General Augustin Dubail) and Second Army (General
Édouard de Castelnau) were bloodily repulsed at all points in
Lorraine. Attacking in close order, bayonets fixed, regimental
colors and saber-waving officers in front—sometimes even with
regimental bands playing—the French infantry were mowed down in
droves by rifle, machine gun and artillery fire. Against Sixth
Army (Colonel-General Crown Prince Rupprecht of Bavaria) and
Seventh Army (Colonel-General
Josias von Heeringen), whose
troops occupied well-sited defensive positions, the 75mm field gun proved
ineffective. Only in Alsace, where the defending Germans were
weakest, did the French enjoy some measure of success—but the ground
gained there had mostly to be yielded back after the disaster in
Lorraine.
Thus
preoccupied with the fortunes of his attacking armies, Joffre was
slow to recognize the danger looming on his left flank. The
information that did come to hand convinced him that the Germans
were attempting no more than the anticipated flank attack through
southern Belgium. He therefore ordered Fifth Army to sidestep to its
left, establishing touch with the BEF, now in the field with four
infantry divisions, a cavalry division and an independent cavalry
brigade. (The BEF was supposed to have been six infantry divisions
strong but an invasion scare led the British government to hold two
divisions and some cavalry back.) The Third Army (General
Pierre Ruffey) and Fourth Army (General Fernand de Langle de Cary)
were ordered to advance into the Ardennes, there to blunt the German
advance. The French attack in this sector began on 21 August. But as
in Lorraine the attacks, delivered in close order against
well-posted defenders, broke down amid heavy casualties. (Map 6c
shows the French offensives in Lorraine and the Ardennes.)
Farther north
the
German right wing, consisting of First, Second and Third
Armies, was advancing through Belgium. First Army
(Colonel-General Alexander von Kluck) initially moved northwest,
engaging the Belgian Army (six infantry divisions and a cavalry
division) on 17 August. After a hard-fought action, the Belgian
commander, King Albert, ordered his army to withdraw into the
fortified position around the port of Antwerp. Thereupon First Army
turned left toward Brussels; the Belgian capital fell on 20
August. Meanwhile Second Army (Colonel-General Karl von Bülow)
and Third Army (Colonel-General Max von Hausen) advanced into
the gap between the Belgians and the French Fifth Army.
Fifth Army, stretching its left flank northward, found itself badly
outnumbered and was driven back by Second and Third Armies.
This heavy pressure on the French left also forced Fourth Army
to give ground.
The advance of First Army
brought it into contact with the BEF, deployed in defensive
positions around the town of Mons. After some preliminary cavalry
skirmishes, the Germans attacked in strength on 23 August,
mainly in the sector held by the BEF's II Corps (General Sir Horace
Smith-Dorrian). The rapid, well-directed rifle fire of the British
infantry inflicted heavy casualties on the Germans before weight of
numbers compelled the BEF to fall
back. Maps 6a and 6b show the advance of the German right
wing through Belgium and into
northwestern France up to 26 August. Note
how the line of advance of First Army began to diverge from
that laid down for it in Schlieffen's scheme of maneuver. His
attention fixed on the immediate tactical situation, Kluck deviated
from the plan in an attempt to outflank the BEF and Fifth Army.
German infantry of von Kluck's
First Army on the march in Belgium (Bundesarchiv)
The Battle of Mons was the
epilogue to a grievous and costly Anglo-French defeat. With the
repulse in the Ardennes and the advance of the German right wing the
Battle of the Frontiers was over, and the Great Retreat was
underway.
But at the
headquarters of OHL (Oberste Heeresleitung or Army High
Command) in
Koblenz,
General von Moltke was growing more and more uneasy. His armies had done
well thus far but where were the spoils of decisive victory:
prisoners, captured guns and impedimenta? What was happening at the
front? Moltke could not be sure. For as the field armies advanced,
communications between them and OHL became fitful and uncertain.
Radio, still in its infancy, was unreliable. Telegraphic and telephonic links
were mostly unavailable. Dispatches from the armies carried by couriers took
time to reach headquarters. And from the east, where a mere fraction
of the German Army stood in defense of East Prussia, there came grim
tidings of a massive Russian offensive. As the terrible
uncertainties accumulated, the nerves of the Chief of the Great
General Staff began to fray.
