The Marne, 1914: The Opening of World War I and the Battle That Changed the World (20 page)

As soon as the debris could be cleared from the roads, German First and Second armies filed through and around the city and headed for the Liège Gap. Lieutenant Colonel Wilhelm Groener’s Field Railway Service of twenty-six thousand men had restored the lines between Aachen and (now) Lüttich, and only the great tunnel at Nasproué remained blocked, for the Belgians had rammed seventeen locomotives at full speed into one another inside the tunnel.
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Leman’s gallant defense of Liège had cost the Germans perhaps two days on the Schlieffen-Moltke master timetable.
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MILITARY WISDOM NOW SUGGESTED
that King Albert concentrate his remaining units at Namur, Belgium’s second great fortress on the Meuse, and there force the Germans into another bloody siege. But Albert was determined to maintain his army on Belgian soil—the only escape from Namur would have been south or west into France—and to keep open his line of retreat to Fortress Antwerp. Hence, he regrouped his formations along the line of the Gette River. At the little village of Haelen, Leon de Witte’s cavalry division, fighting as dismounted riflemen, on 12 August gallantly blunted the saber and lance charges of six regiments of Marwitz’s II Cavalry Corps as it attempted to storm the river crossings.
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Known as the Battle of the Silver Helmets in Belgian folklore, Haelen was the first cavalry battle (and the first Allied victory) of the war. Still, Namur, to the southwest of Liège, and Louvain (Leuven), to the northwest, lay squarely in the path of the German advance.

On 17 August, Moltke issued new orders for the main German thrust into Belgium by sixteen army corps and two cavalry corps, three-quarters of them the pride of the Prussian army. The three northernmost armies were to converge on the Sambre River; First and Second armies were to cut off any Belgian attempt to withdraw to Antwerp; and Third Army was to attack the line of the Meuse between Namur and Givet. Speed was of the essence. First and Second armies had to pass through a dangerous eighty-kilometer-wide corridor between the fortresses of Namur and Antwerp, all the while securing their left flanks against suspected French forces south of the Sambre.

Unlike the armies in the German center and south, these were commanded not by royal princes but rather by professional soldiers with the special rank of
Generaloberst
(literally, colonel general, or a “four-star”). At the extreme right wing, Alexander von Kluck’s First Army consisted of 120 battalions and 748 guns. Schlieffen had assigned this formation the role of “hammer” in his plan: First Army was to march some seven hundred kilometers through Belgium, across northern France, and along the English Channel before descending on Paris from the northwest and driving the French armies against the “anvil” of the German forces holding in Lorraine. Its commander in 1914 was a rarity in the highest echelons of Prussian field commanders: a self-made man, non-noble and non-Prussian. Kluck was born at Münster, in Westphalia, on 20 May 1846 and saw service with the Prussian army against both Austria (1866) and France (1870–71). Thereafter, he rose rapidly through the ranks on the basis of merit: command of a division by 1902, of V Corps in 1906, of I Corps one year later, and then of Eighth Army Inspectorate at Berlin in 1913. Kluck was rewarded for his military career with a patent of nobility in 1909. His service had been primarily commanding troops rather than staff work. He was fierce-looking and self-assured, almost to the point of arrogance.

South of First Army ranged Karl von Bülow’s Second Army of 137 battalions and 820 guns. Its primary task, along with First Army, was to deliver the decisive blow against the French forces in and around Paris. Bülow was a striking contrast with Kluck: Born at Berlin on 24 March 1846 into an ancient Mecklenburg noble clan, he had a plethora of career paths open to him. He chose the military. His brother Bernhard opted instead for the diplomatic corps and then served as chancellor from 1900 to 1909. Like Kluck, Bülow had fought in the Austro-Prussian and the Franco-Prussian Wars. Thereafter, he had enjoyed a notable rise: commander of the prestigious 4th Foot Guards, department head at the Prussian War Ministry, and in 1902 deputy chief of the General Staff under Schlieffen. The following year, he received III Corps and in 1909 Third Army Inspectorate at Hanover. In 1914, Bülow was given Second Army and would soon be entrusted also with command over Kluck’s First Army. With white hair and mustache and a puffy face, he looked more the genial uncle than the fierce warrior. Much of the campaign in the fall of 1914 would depend on how closely these two vastly different personalities cooperated.

South of Second Army was Max von Hausen’s Third Army—the third formation of the pivot wing, the so-called
Schwenkungsflügel
. At 101 battalions and 596 guns, it was the smallest of the German armies. And it was Saxon. Hausen was born in Dresden on 17 December 1846. During the Austro-Prussian War of 1866, Saxony sided with the Austrian Empire, and as a result Hausen had fought against Berlin.
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After German unification, he taught at the Military Academy from 1871 to 1874, and then transferred to the General Staff (1875–87). He commanded XII Corps from 1900 to 1902, and then served as Saxon war minister until 1914. During his tenure, Hausen worked diligently to uphold and even to expand the Prusso-Saxon Military Convention of 1867.
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He resisted all attempts from within the army to reassert Saxon particularism. In May 1914, Hausen retired after a brilliant career that had spanned half a century. But given that King Friedrich August III had no military interest and that Crown Prince Friedrich August Georg was but twenty-one years old, Wilhelm II on 1 August reactivated Hausen’s commission and entrusted him with Third Army. Hausen’s was a difficult role: to cross the Meuse River near Dinant and, as the situation demanded, offer assistance either to Bülow’s Second Army on his right flank or to Duke Albrecht of Württemberg’s Fourth Army on his left. His relationship with the senior Bülow would be critical to the execution of his mission.

THE ADVANCE ON PARIS
by three German armies of 358 battalions of infantry and 2,164 guns required tight command and control. It received neither. Instead, Imperial Headquarters—the Großes Hauptquartier (GHQ), of which the OHL was but one, albeit major, part—consisted of what one scholar has called “a middle thing between a supreme military council and an imperial court.”
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It, in fact, was a mammoth, unwieldy conglomeration consisting of the kaiser, the chief of the General Staff and his deputy, the chief of the Admiralty Staff, the Prussian war minister, the chiefs of the Civil, Military, and Navy cabinets, the chancellor, the state secretary of the Foreign Office, the military plenipotentiaries of the German federal states, the military representative of the Austro-Hungarian ally, and the kaiser’s host of adjutants and personal staff. Master of ceremonies for this vast camp was an imperial favorite, General Hans von Plessen.

Imperial Headquarters remained in Berlin during the period of mobilization and concentration. Then, at 7:55
AM
on Sunday, 16 August, it departed for the front—or at least Koblenz, eight hundred kilometers southwest at the confluence of the Rhine and Mosel rivers—in eleven trains. Karl von Wenninger, the Bavarian military plenipotentiary, captured the enormity of the operation in his war diary.
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“Wonderful express-train cars; a separate compartment for every 2 gentlemen. I even saw a dining car.” The sign on one compartment startled him: “‘Her Excellency v. Moltke with lady’s-maid.’ So, we are even being mothered.” The chief of the General Staff had insisted that his wife accompany him into battle. There were no cheering crowds to see them off in Berlin. Just out of the station, Wenninger stood in amazement as the “gigantic royal train of H[is] M[ajesty] glided by.” The chefs were already at their stations, perspiring profusely as they prepared the midday meal. The trains avoided major routes and slowly rolled toward Koblenz on stretches of rail well off the beaten track. Guards had been posted at every crossing. Before noon, a major from the General Staff distributed seating lists for the dining car: “12 o’clock breakfast, 7 o’clock dinner.” Within minutes, he returned with the list of sleeping car assignments. “Now, are we truly warriors,” General von Wenninger caustically wondered, “or sybarites?” Whatever the case, the minute his train entered the Kingdom of Bavaria near Ritschenhausen, he had a hundred-liter keg of beer meet it.

Precisely according to plan—this was, after all, the German General Staff—the trains pulled into Koblenz station at eight o’clock the next morning. “Patches of fog enveloped castles and vineyards,” Wenninger noted. Wilhelm II established his headquarters at Koblenz Castle; the General Staff, at the Hotel Union; the rest of the retinue, at the Parkhotel Koblenzer Hof. That afternoon, the kaiser took his military paladins on an automobile outing to Bad Ems, where on 13 July 1870 the fateful interview that helped launch the Franco-Prussian War had taken place,
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and he planted a small oak beside the memorial stone. “I wonder,” Wenninger mused, “whether the little oak will become a mighty tree?”

It was pure theater. The kaiser’s place was in Berlin, supervising the war effort, directing the machinery of government, and offering encouragement to the home front. His pretense of conducting military operations from Koblenz, where he ostentatiously dined on the silver field service of Frederick the Great, fooled no one. An anecdote perhaps best caught the Supreme War Lord’s true role. During a walk in one of the local parks with Admiral Georg Alexander von Müller, chief of the Navy Cabinet, and General Moriz von Lyncker, chief of the Military Cabinet, Wilhelm II sat on a bench to rest. The two officers, not wishing to disturb the kaiser and concerned that the short bench might not hold three stout, middle-aged flag officers, pulled up a second bench. “Am I already such a figure of contempt,” Wilhelm II churlishly inquired, “that no one wants to sit next to me?”
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Moltke insisted on remaining at Koblenz partly to keep a close eye on the volatile kaiser, and partly to be equidistant from the Eastern Front. He resisted several pleas from Lieutenant Colonel Gerhard Tappen, his chief of operations, to move at least the OHL closer to the front in Belgium, perhaps somewhere north of Namur, with the argument that this “insurrectionist” land had not yet been pacified.
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Incredibly, Moltke directed General William Balcke, his chief of field telegraphy, to take up headquarters at Bad Ems, well hidden in a small valley east of the General Staff nerve center at Koblenz. And in sharp contrast with his French counterpart, Joffre—who used his private chauffeur, Georges Bouillot, winner of the French Grand Prix in 1912 and 1913, to rush him to the various army commands—Moltke left execution of his war plans to the individual army commanders. He remained firm in the belief that peacetime staff rides and war games had sufficiently honed their skills at interaction and cooperation, and that the “intentions” of the General Staff could best be relayed “orally through the sending of an officer of the High Command.” Most especially, he placed his trust in the sixty-eight-year-old Bülow, whom he considered to be Germany’s “most competent” army commander.
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BY 18 AUGUST
, the second Battle of the Frontiers (also known as Sambre-et-Meuse, or Charleroi) was about to begin. The northern German armies were driving west across the undulating plains of Brabant into Hainaut Province—Kluck just south of Brussels, and Bülow along the Wavre-Namur axis. The right wing of Hausen’s Third Army as well as elements of the left wing of Bülow’s Second Army were closing on Namur, at the junction of the Sambre and Meuse rivers. At Andenne and Seilles, where Bülow’s men crossed the Meuse, and at Aarschot, where Kluck’s troops drove the Belgian army behind the Gette, the pattern established at Battice and Visé repeated itself. German soldiers were convinced that civilians had fired on them and, worse, mutilated the bodies of their fallen comrades.
“Man hat geschossen!”
(“We have been shot at!”) became the battle cry. Reprisals were swift and harsh: Suspected shooters were rounded up and executed, homes of suspected armed civilians burned to the ground, priests as well as burgomasters taken hostage, and hundreds of Belgians deported to Germany in cattle cars.
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General Ludwig von Sieger, chief of field munitions and recently returned from Liège, regaled Imperial Headquarters with gruesome stories of the “bestiality” of Belgian civilians in the path of war. Many had “clawed out the eyes and cut the throats” of wounded German soldiers. Despite the constant prewar reminders of francs-tireurs in 1870–71, Moltke’s warriors simply had been unprepared for this form of irregular warfare. “But now we are finally moving against [Belgian] residents with utmost severity,” Sieger was happy to report. “They have been executed en masse, their villages razed.” He concluded that such “ruthless severity” had not been “without effect.”
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At other places in Belgium, the German advance was more orderly and less brutal. After Liège, General von Einem’s VII Corps, part of Bülow’s Second Army, pointed west toward Wavre. The plains of Brabant were a welcome relief from the concrete forts of Liège. “The land has been cultivated just like it is at home,” Einem noted in his diary. “It is very pretty, stretching well off to the distance; a great region to do battle.” By 20–21 August, VII Corps had passed Wavre and approached Waterloo. “99 years ago all those people who today are our enemies defeated Napoleon and his Frenchmen there,” he ruefully noted. “We are now on historic ground and today will advance along the same roads that took [Field Marshal Gebhard von] Blücher and his victorious formations to Waterloo or Belle Alliance.”
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Einem, the graduate of the Prussian Military Academy, had fulfilled one of his youthful dreams. He could not repress his feelings. “On the basis of [my] studies, I knew the configurations of the land so well that nothing surprised me”—except the British Lion Mound of 1826, a conical heap with 226 steps leading up to a great stone lion. A century ago the battle had been fought in rain; in 1914, a blazing sun scorched the fields.