The Marne, 1914: The Opening of World War I and the Battle That Changed the World (40 page)

The most critical sector of the front was between Paris and the Marne. There, the battle would rage for four days. Much of it would be fought in a maze of waterways that served as tributaries to the Marne: the Ourcq, which flowed north and south on both sides of Maunoury’s advance; the Petit Morin and the Grand Morin, which ran east and west across the line of advance of French Fifth Army and the BEF; and finally the Saint-Gond Marshes, from which the Petit Morin arose and where Foch’s Ninth Army stood.

At first, both Kluck and Bülow took the forces attacking Gronau’s corps to be nothing more than French rear guards covering Joffre’s withdrawal on Paris—at most a sortie designed to relieve pressure on the French armies south of the Seine. General von der Marwitz, in fact, asked the kaiser’s court chaplain to prepare a suitable “entry text” for Paris, “but not too long!”
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The Germans were disabused of the notion of encountering only French rear guards during the night of 6 September. Men from Duke Albrecht of Württemberg’s 30th IB, Fourth Army, had found Joffre’s stirring appeal to his troops near Frignicourt, south of Vitry-le-François.
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Albrecht’s headquarters, which had a telephone link to Luxembourg, immediately passed the document on to Moltke. Sometime around 8
PM
, the chief of the General Staff sent it out to the other army commands. He did not counter it with a stirring appeal of his own. He was content simply to hand it over to the press with a quixotic message that the war needed to end with a peace that would “for all foreseeable future” see Germany “undisturbed by any foe.”
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There was now no doubt that the Allies’ retreat had ended and that they had gone on the attack. Specifically, Gronau’s battle with vastly superior French forces the day before pointed to an attempt to envelop the German right wing.

Chief of Operations Tappen, just promoted to the rank of colonel, was delighted. The “Day of Decision” was finally at hand. He burst into a meeting of his operations and intelligence officers: “Well, we finally get hold of them. Now it will be a fierce fight. Our brave troops will know how to do their job.” No more retreats, no more avoiding battle by the enemy. It was now just a matter of applying “brute force.”
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Kluck and Kuhl faced another major decision. Should they break off the battle and fall back from their advanced position in the acute angle of the Marne and the Ourcq? Should they, together with Bülow’s Second Army, withdraw to defensive positions between the Marne and the Ourcq and there parry Joffre’s flanking maneuver? Or should they continue the battle and seek a quick, decisive victory over Maunoury’s Sixth Army? Yet again, both opted to blunt the French thrust with a counteroffensive. Realizing that First Army’s three (under strength) corps on the Ourcq were too weak to mount a counterattack against 150,000 French soldiers, they turned to Bülow. Shortly after 8
AM
on 7 September, they telegraphed Second Army headquarters at Champaubert: “II, IV and IV Reserve Corps heavily engaged west of the lower Ourcq. Where III and IX Army Corps? What is your situation?” No reply. They repeated the message, adding “Urgently request answer.” It crossed paths with a radiogram from Second Army wishing to know, “What is your situation?” Finally, a third request from Kuhl, “Engagement III and IX Corps at the Ourcq urgently required.”
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No reply.

The German army’s prewar neglect of communications and control was glaringly apparent.
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During the Battle of the Marne, Luxembourg had direct telephone connections via Fourth Army with Fifth, Sixth, and Seventh armies on the relatively stagnant German left and center. But it could communicate with the fluid First and Second “strike” armies only by way of a single wireless set, which was prone to interruptions by weather and to jamming by French field stations and the Eiffel Tower. Messages often arrived so mutilated at Bülow’s and Kluck’s headquarters that they had to be re-sent three or four times. Field telegraph stations managed to get only twenty-nine of fifty-nine reports from First Army’s fliers to Kluck and Kuhl between 1 and 5 September. There were no electronic ties between First and Second armies, or between them and their army corps and cavalry corps. A host of intelligence officers languished at the OHL and were not attached to the various corps commands where they might have done some good. No one thought of using airplanes to pass important orders along the line. The distance between Bülow’s headquarters at Montmort and Kluck’s at Vandrest (and later Mareuil), after all, was a mere fifty-five kilometers, or half an hour by air. The two commanders were thus effectively cut off from discussing the rapidly developing situation with each other—and with Moltke, who was 435 kilometers by automobile
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away from Second Army headquarters and 445 from First Army headquarters.
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Interestingly, Tappen rejected all suggestions that the OHL, or at least a small operations staff, move up to the front behind the German right wing on the grounds of “technical difficulties as well as stodginess.”
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One can only speculate whether Moltke, for his part, remembered that in 1866 his uncle had supervised the movements of his armies during the Battle of Königgrätz from the Roskosberg, above the Bistritz River, and that he had likewise led from the front in 1870 during the Battle of Sedan from a ridge high above the Meuse River near Frénois.

ALL THE WHILE
, the fighting west of the Ourcq raged on. Blondlat’s Moroccan brigade and the right wing of Louis Leguay’s 55th RID first went into action on the French right flank on 6 September. Linsingen’s II Corps, just arrived, furiously counterattacked with heavy artillery. Soon the entire front from Barny to Trilport erupted with murderous artillery fire and spirited infantry charges. The French initially gained the upper hand, but by nightfall both sides fell exhausted into defensive positions. In the ensuing dark, the Germans could make out the glow of Paris’s massive searchlights.

Linsingen urged greater speed on Sixt von Arnim’s IV Corps; it arrived the next morning, 7 September. As senior corps commander, Linsingen took command and repositioned his forces: From right to left, Sixt von Arnim was to charge the front at Étavigny; Gronau was to hold the middle at Trocy-en-Multien; Kurt von Trossel with 3d ID and 22d RID was to cover Gronau’s left near Germigny-l’Évêque; and Linsingen was to secure the left flank at Trilport. Maunoury in the meantime received reinforcements from Paris: Céleste Déprez’s 61st RID, Drude’s 45th ID, and the rest of Vautier’s VII Corps, just up from Alsace. Unbeknown to the French commander, a German reserve infantry brigade under Rudolf von Lepel had been released by the surrender of Brussels and was marching south toward Nanteuil-le-Haudouin—against Sixth Army’s left flank. Still, Maunoury enjoyed a numerical advantage of thirty-two infantry battalions and two cavalry divisions.

Maunoury vigorously resumed the offensive at 7
AM
on 7 September.
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In the middle of the front, Gronau’s fatigued IV Reserve Corps, stiffened by the arrival of Sixt von Arnim’s 15th Brigade, threw Léon Lombard’s 63d RID into panic with a hurricane bombardment followed by massed infantry charges. Only a heroic counterattack by Colonel Robert Nivelle’s 5th Artillery Regiment of 45th ID—firing shells from its 75s into the massed German infantry at the rate of twenty rounds per minute—prevented a complete collapse.
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French Fifth Group of Reserve Divisions likewise was driven back, and its commander, de Lamaze, seriously considered falling back on Paris. On the southern flank, the men of 8th RID were “in a state of extreme fatigue,” and Lartigue was forced to have the division stand down around noon. In the north, Sixt von Arnim’s 16th Brigade shattered Déprez’s 61st RID, but a combination of exhaustion after its nightlong forced march and a counterattack by Vautier’s VII Corps prevented it from enveloping the French left flank. Still, 61st RID fell back as far as Nanteuil-le-Haudouin. Maunoury sent Louis de Trentinian’s 7th ID from IV Corps to take its place in the left of his line. Galliéni rushed François Ganeval’s 62d RID out to hold the line at the Ourcq.

At 10
AM
on 7 September, First Army headquarters received word that an aviator had spotted two columns of British soldiers slowly moving north out of the Forest of Crécy toward the joint of German First and Second armies.
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Kluck and Kuhl could wait no longer. Still without a reply from Bülow to their request for reinforcements, they seized the initiative and ordered Ewald von Lochow’s III Corps and Quast’s IX Corps, both temporarily assigned to Bülow, to leave Second Army’s right wing in broad daylight and quick-march to the Ourcq.
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For Kuhl had decided to master what now threatened to be assaults on both his wings by way of an all-out offensive on the right, designed to crush Maunoury’s Sixth Army before the BEF could engage German First or Second army.

Incredibly, neither Kluck nor Kuhl was aware that General von Bülow shortly after midnight on 7 September had already pulled back his right wing, fearing that his soldiers were too exhausted to ward off another French frontal attack. Bülow withdrew III and IX corps of First Army as well as his own X Reserve Corps fifteen to twenty kilometers behind the shelter, such as it was, of the Petit Morin River—some eight hours
before
First Army’s duumvirate ordered them to march to the Ourcq. Bülow radioed Moltke of his action at 2
AM
. He declined to inform Kluck via dispatch rider. By his action, Bülow created a gap of some thirty kilometers between the right wing of Second Army and the left wing of First Army. Kluck and Kuhl, by recalling III and IX corps, widened that gap to about fifty kilometers. Failure to communicate once again bedeviled the German army commanders on the right pivot wing.

Having pulled back his right wing, Bülow next ordered an attack by his left wing. Realizing that Second Army was down to the strength of only three full corps, he once again enlisted the help of two Saxon infantry divisions from Hausen’s Third Army.
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General von Einem, commanding VII Corps on Second Army’s right, thought the plan madness: At the very moment that the enemy might discover and then exploit the German gap astride the Petit Morin, “Bülow shifts the center of gravity to his left wing!” What use would victory there be, he mused, “if we are enveloped on the right and separated from First Army?”
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In fact, the German position on the Marne and the Ourcq defies rational analysis. Without firm direction from the OHL, both commanders had developed their own operational concepts. Bülow insisted that First Army’s primary function, as laid down in Moltke’s General Directive of 5 September, was to protect his right flank against a possible French sortie out of
le camp retranché de Paris
. Thus, it was paramount that Kluck break off the battle with Maunoury and shift his army left to join up with Second Army’s right wing. As well, it was critical that Hausen’s Third Army defeat Foch’s Ninth Army on Bülow’s left flank before Fanchet d’Espèrey’s Fifth Army could exploit Second Army’s exposed right flank. Kluck, on the other hand, insisted that the only way to break the French offensive was to destroy Maunoury’s Sixth Army before the British, whose fighting capabilities he by and large denigrated, could take their place on the left flank of French Fifth Army south of the Grand Morin River. Bülow made no effort to coordinate the operations of the two “strike” armies or to bring Moltke fully into the calculus.
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Just after 7
PM
on 7 September, Richthofen’s cavalry corps reported that British advance guards had crossed the Grand Morin at La Ferté-Gaucher. They were about to enter the gap in the German line.

For the Germans, 7 September was the critical day in the Battle of the Marne. Kluck and Kuhl, as noted previously, had hastily taken II and IV corps out of the line on the Marne and rushed them north to aid Gronau’s corps on the Ourcq. Bülow had then withdrawn III and IX corps as well as X Reserve Corps behind the Petit Morin—only to have had Kluck and Kuhl eight hours later order III and IX corps to leave Bülow’s right wing and to march north in order to help defeat Maunoury’s French Sixth Army. None of these orders was shared, much less discussed beforehand. In the process, as is well known, Bülow, Kluck, and Kuhl had created a fifty-kilometer-wide gap between First and Second armies—one into which the BEF was slowly stumbling as it headed north between Changis, on the Marne, and Rebais, south of the Petit Morin. The eighth of September would thus see two distinct battles: Kluck versus Maunoury on the Ourcq, and Bülow versus Franchet d’Espèrey on the two Morins.

Kluck’s bold, aggressive decision remains highly controversial. He had already “disobeyed” Moltke’s General Directive to remain “echeloned” to the right and behind Second Army. Now he literally snatched two corps from Bülow’s right wing and rushed them to the Ourcq. To Kluck, time was the critical factor. Could he defeat Maunoury before the BEF drove through the gap in the German line and into the back of either First Army or Second Army? How long could Richthofen’s and Marwitz’s cavalry corps hold the line of the Grand Morin against the three advancing British corps? When would Lepel’s brigade finally arrive on the left flank of French Sixth Army? Kluck answered those rhetorical musings by ordering “every man and every horse” west of the Ourcq to deliver the final and fatal blow to Maunoury’s Sixth Army. It was a last-minute, all-out gamble. The campaign in the west hung on it.

At Luxembourg, General von Moltke yet again was on the verge of panic. “Today a great decision will come about,” he wrote his wife, Eliza, on 7 September, “since yesterday our entire army is fighting from Paris to Upper Alsace. Should I have to give my life today to bring about victory, I would do it gladly a thousand times.” He lamented the “streams of blood” that had already been shed and the “countless” homes and lives that had been destroyed. “I often shudder when I think of this and I feel as though I need to accept responsibility for this dreadfulness. …”
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These were not the words of a great captain.