World War One: Failures in 1916

For 1916, Britain, France, Italy and Russia planned for simultaneous offensives, assuming this would overwhelm the Germans. Britain and Canada needed more men. They had been relying on volunteers and had seen military conscription as something for feckless Latins or servile Germans. But now they put those opinions aside and began ordering to service men between the ages of 18 and 41 and extending the service of those whose enlistments had expired. In Britain only 16,000 men would declare themselves as conscientious objectors to war. Of these, 819 would spend more than two years in prison, much of it in solitary confinement.

Germany's plan for 1916 was to hold its line in the east and knock France out of the war. Germany transferred a half million men from the Eastern to the Western Front and planned to launch an attack at Verdun, in hope of luring French forces into a salient where they would be more vulnerable to German fire power. The French military command received ample warning of Germany's plan to attack at Verdun, and they saw holding the salient there as militarily useless. A pullback to a shorter line would have strengthened rather than weakened the French line, but public opinion in France played into the hands of the Germans. The French public was driven more by sentiment than cold realities and they gave the old fort symbolic significance and credited it with being the cornerstone of France's defense. No effort was made to convince the French public that the fort was useless. France's premier, Aristide Briand, feared that if Verdun fell to the Germans, public outrage would bring down his precarious government. So he decided to defend the fort. And the commander-in-chief of France's armies, Joffre, needed Briand's support against politicians who wished to replace him. So Joffre sided with Briand and chose to defend the fort.

The French defense of Verdun came before their planned offensive, which was to come in June. The Germans launched their attack against Verdun in late February. The French pushed troops through the salient they called The Sacred Way, and the slaughter of French troops began as Germany had planned. But now it was German public opinion that interfered with military strategy. The German public demanded a more aggressive effort at Verdun. For them, Verdun had also acquired symbolic significance, and they wanted Verdun's capture. German forces led by the son of Kaiser Wilhelm, Crown Prince Wilhelm, was eager for glory and went on the offensive. By the end of June the French at Verdun had suffered 315,000 casualties and the Germans 281,000. And the fighting at Verdun went on.

Meanwhile, in March, as loyal allies, the Russians and Italians had launched offensives to relieve pressure on the French. The Russian offensive was along ninety miles of front and lasted only ten days before it got bogged down, stopped by German machine guns and artillery. The Russians suffered over 100,000 more casualties – about 10,000 a day. The Italian offensive went nowhere and lasted through the year, with the Italians losing 147,000 men and Austria-Hungary 81,000.

The planned French and British offensives for the year began at Somme, in June -- the same month Russia launched its offensive. The French and British offensives began with heavy artillery bombardments that lasted a week, giving the Germans warning of the coming infantry assault and time to prepare their line. The first day that the British infantry attacked it lost 60,000 men. The offensives appeared a waste from the beginning, but it was too much for the British and French commanders to admit error in judgment or defeat, so they stayed the course through the year, to mid-November, the British losing over 400,000 men, the French 200,000 and the Germans another 450,000.

The Russian offensive began along a two hundred-mile front opposite troops of Austria-Hungary and only a few German divisions. The Germans were too involved at Verdun to give Austria-Hungary additional support. The Russian offensive was led by Russia's most able general: Brusilov. Out of artillery shells, Brusilov could not begin his offensive with the usual bombardment, and his attack caught the enemy off-guard. And rather than strike at their enemy's strongest point, as military tradition demanded, the Russians struck at a weak point. Slipping past the enemy gained fifty miles and inflicted on Austria-Hungary a loss of 600,000 men.

The Romanians were impressed with Russia's success. The British, French and Russians promised Romania territory at the expense of Hungary, to the Tisza River, just sixty miles short of Budapest. In late August, Romania declared war on Austria-Hungary, but with unhappy results. The Germans sent fifteen divisions from the Western Front and stopped a Russian and Romanian military advance. Then the Germans and Bulgarians launched an attack against Romania, and on December 6 the Germans overran Romania's capital, Bucharest.

Germany's efforts at Verdun, meanwhile, had tapered off, and the fighting there ended in mid-December. The French had suffered an additional 85,000 casualties there, and the Germans another 69,000. The German commander on the Western Front, Falkenhyn, was held responsible for the failure of Germany's strategy for 1916, and in late August he was replaced by the old war hero, von Hindenburg, and his aide, General Erich Ludendorff -- two men who were to be big players in Germany's future.

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