Nivelle, Mutiny, Foch, and Defeat: The French Crisis of 1917
Joseph Joffre, holding onto his job with his fingernails, sealed not only France’s doom at Verdun, but his own. Yet he was not the first to go. Although the practice of throwing reinforcements into battle by fragments, as they became available, was as much Joffre’s strategy as Petain’s, the latter was blamed for the failure to counter the German thrust. Petain had not even been present on the scene until three days after the attack had began, and had absolutely nothing to do with Joffre’s earlier decision to weaken the sector. But as his name became fixed with the battle in the public and military mind, blame naturally came his way. Joffre lost confidence in Petain as early as the last week of April, but cannily waited until after Petain had ordered a retreat on his own hook to replace him.
Robert Nivelle took command of Second Army on May 10; a month later, he was Commander-in-Chief of the French Army, as Joffre was kicked upstairs to a ceremonial position, having failed to save himself by offering Petain’s scalp to the government. The offensive-minded Nivelle, an artillery expert with unswerving faith in both firepower and himself, quickly decided that what France needed was a new offensive. The British, under new commander Douglas Haig, agreed, and requested that the French support its offensive at Passchendaele with an attack along the Somme River, on the British right flank.
That first day at Passchendaele (the offensive's unrealized objective, called that to differentiate from earlier battles in the Ypres sector) has, of course, gone down as the black day of the British army - upwards of 50,00 casualties in the first twenty four hours, as the massive bombardment prepared by Douglas Haig failed to dislodge the German defenses, and attacking troops had to slog through the marshy ground. The citizen-soldiers of the Kitchener battalions were slaughtered for a mile of conquered territory, with some battalions suffering 100 percent casualties in the offensive. The British Empire never regained the hope which died in the mud of Passchendaele.
The French supporting attack on the right flank at the Somme, though much necessarily smaller in scope, fared little better. Nivelle, in a rare bout of common sense, recognized that the French Army needed more time to refit after the disaster of Verdun, and therefore acceded to a "bite and hold" doctrine of limited objectives, the ultimate goal of which was to prevent the Germans from reinforcing at Passchendaele. But he persisted in continuing these attacks long after it was clear that the British offensive to the northwest was going nowhere. Needless casualties piled up by the thousands, and the raising of new units slowed as replacements were ordered to the Somme.
The twin battles at Ypres and Somme finally petered out in the autumn. Though it has attracted much less attention in the history books, the Somme offensive actually cost the French far more casualties than Verdun had. Nivelle claimed victory, citing an impressive German casualty list (later revealed to be substantially inflated) and a gain of six miles at the deepest French penetration. Encouraged by the (voluntary) German withdrawal to the Hindenburg Line, the British and French continued to plan for another simultaneous offensive in the spring.
This time the roles were reversed: The British planned a series of limiting supporting attacks at Arras, on the far right end of their line in France, making heavy use of barrels (which they still called "tanks"). While the British held the Germany's arms, Nivelle planned on a knockout blow along the river Aisne. Utilizing his own theories of artillery bombardments, he planned to blast channels in the barbed wire in no-man's-land. The infantry would then attack through the channels, following closely behind a creeping barrage which would first stun the German front line, and the isolate the trenches from their support lines. Each successive German line would be hit by French infantry just as the barrage passed over it, carving a path directly into the German rear.
None of this happened, of course. The Germans, thanks to French indiscretion (especially Nivelle's) were well aware that a spring offensive was coming along the Aisne, and had reinforcements waiting to counterattack. But more fundamentally, Nivelle's plan was deeply flawed. Pre-battle plans are always too optimistic - lamentable in most cases, disastrous when a precise timetable is necessary. As the advance slowed, the creeping barrage failed to keep pace, moving well beyond the infantry. (Forward observers were few in number and short in lifespan; and while airplanes had great promise, wireless technology had not yet progressed to the point where they could quickly and directly communicate with the artillery.)
Under the new commanders, Hindenburg and Ludendorff, the Germans had perfected elastic defense, whereby a thinly-held forward line was backstopped by a second, much stronger line out of range of the initial attack, sometimes by a mile. And German trenches on the Western front were formidable, in a way seen nowhere else during the Great War. Ventilated concrete bunkers, dozens of feet below ground, were standard, Rather than an indistinct, continuous defensive line, their defense built around mutually supporting strongpoints. Thus Nivelle's bombardment, rather than rupturing the German front, fell on nearly empty trenches that were manned and ready almost as soon as the shells stopped falling.
The slaughter began at Chemin des Dames on 16 April 1917, the anniversary of the capture of Douaomont. All along this plateau (named for the foot path constructed for a pair of French princesses) the Germans held the high ground. Though French troops, along with several colonial regiments, managed to fight their way up the slope and gain the ridge, the murderous fire from the German second line on the plateau cut down soldiers by the platoon. And as the distance between the infantry and the barrage grew to be measured by hundreds of yards, more and more German reserves were freed to counterattack.
Having refused to allow for failure, Nivelle now declined to acknowledge it. Seizing on the "successful" capture of the Chemin des Dames, he ordered on local attack after another, not comprehending that the momentum had been lost on the first day, when the French had suffered casualties equal to the British at Passchendaele. Though efforts had been made to re-for the artillery barrage and isolate targets, Nivelle was, in many case, asking his men to run straight into a wall of metal - and even when they succeeded, they were promptly chewed up by the inevitable German counterattack, by fresh troops who had stayed safely below ground.
The French army medical corps was overwhelmed by the flood of casualties, and wounded men were forced to wait days in agonizing pain beofre ambulances became available to evacuate them to the rear. Replacements, waiting their turn to attack, were everywhere greeted by the results of Nivelle's "breakthrough." Survivors rotatated off the front line returned with horror stories, claiming that the Germans had a machine-gun waiting for each and every man to climb the slope. And they were infuriated at the condition of their wounded comrades.
Since 1914, the French Army had been torn and mutilated by the Germans occupying their soil. Each new promised breakthrough resulted in, maybe, a mile or two of blood-soaked ground. Many regiments had suffered two hundred percent casualties throughout nearly three years of war, and another three years beckoned. Enough was enough.
The mutinies began simply enough, with men who, by themselves, by the squad, or by the company, simply refused to march forward. There was no uprising, no demands, no violence, real or threatened, against officers (those of field-grade were trapped in the same hell, and may have sympathized). Soon, soldiers were leaving the front line; but these were less desertions than a series of individual, autonomous withdrawals. Observers would have been hard-pressed to notice any significant discipline problems in most units, which left the trenches as orderly as they'd entered them.
The French policy of frequent rotation of front-line troops, intended to lessen the risk for each man, ironically played a major contributing role, as survivors of the Aisne offensive, and their grievances, circulated in the rear areas. Nivelle was sacked on May 15, a month after his promised "48 hour victory" had begun. But rather than halt the rot, this merely confirmed to the average soldier that their opinion of the high command had been confirmed.
The number of troops who participated in the mutinies is unknown. Chafrles XI's government claimed that no more than ten divisions were involved. The destruction of Paris may have destroyed on any hope of discovering the truth, but an estimate of fifty affected divisions is not out of the question.
Nivelle's replacement, Ferdinand Foch, shared his predecessor's aggressive instincts and reputation for innovative thinking; his prewar writings have been identified as contributing to the "cult of the offensive" which dominated military thinking. But his unshakable belief in willpower and elan denied him a subtle appreciation of the private soldier's desperate situation, and his response to the disorder was swift and brutal. Early in June a series of mass arrests took place; tens of thousands of soldiers were herded into the stockade. Court-martials were rapidly convened, and justice meted out just as quickly. Foch leaned heavily on these tribunals to eliminate "agitators," and they responded to the pressure. During June, nearly a thousand men were executed by firing squad.
Although the Army had tried, with some success, to keep the mutinies a secret (even Foch's opposite number, Haig, was deceived as to its true extent), leaks inevitably developed. Members of the British government and command were informed in early June that the French army would not mount its promised supporting attacks that month. News of the mutinies soon became widespread, and the repression of the disorder only provked violence between enlisted men on one side and officers and military police on the other.
With the Confederates reeling from repeated armored offensives, and its supply line to Argentina in danger, the British government was forced to ask the French to join in a last-ditch offensive to knock the Germans out of the war. Foch, as Commander-in-Chief, readily agreed, but it provoked a political crisis when the Socialists withdrew their support of the coalition government. The new Prime Minister, Georges Clemenceau, despite his affection for Foch, had already concluded that even if the French Army could fight, it would not do so under Foch. He asked his friend the Commander-in-Chief to resign. The general refused.
Three days of chaos ensued, marked by wild rumors of civil war. Clemenceau recalled Maurice Sarrail, the failed leader of the Salonika expedition, from the military oblivion to Commander-in-Chief. A confrontation ensued, during which Haig surreptitiously informed Foch that he woud gladly use the forces at his disposal to help him overthrow the French defeatists and continue the war. This jolted Foch into the realization that he had gone from fighting a foreign enemy, to plotting with foreigners to attack his own countrymen. He had broken his oath to defend France. He resigned on June 26, and was arrested. France asked for an armistice two days later.
The British Army was ordered to evacuate French territory, and regrouped within Belgium. With the Confederacy being driven back on every front, France out of the war, and Russia in chaos, the Entente situation became hopeless. With dizzying speed, the remaining combatants surrendered. By the war's three-year anniversary, fighting had ended everywhere but East Africa and South America.
Unlike the United States, which was hammering the Confederates with barrels in 1917, the Germans did not field a single barrel during the war, and never managed a breakthrough on the Western Front. They sat back happily and watched their enemies disintegrate. But the startling ease with which France finally fell would later haunt them. A "stab in the back" legend grew, alleging that France, undefeated and unbowed in 1917, had been betrayed by cowards, foreigners, and socialists. This resentment boiled over during the collapse, and inspired the rise of Action Francaise. when Charles XI issued his ultimatum to Wilhelm III in June 1941, he did so confident that there was no weapon on earth that could defeat the new France, cleansed of disloyal elements and united under God and King. He was wrong.
