Assessment
With winter approaching and the first campaign season drawing to a close, OHL was wrapped up in vigorous evaluation of the strategic situation and the performance of the German army. The Allies were also going through the same process, setting priorities and plans for the coming year. On all sides massive gaps in the ranks needed to be filled and new formation raised to put increasing pressure on the enemy. Germany was in a particularly dangerous spot, as since August the British had been increasing a blockade of all seaborne trade with Germany and attempting to limit the trade of her neighbors that might be trading war materials imported from abroad.
http://www.ww1accordingtobob.com/pBlockade.php
Though Germany was still able to gain valuable imports throughout the year, by 1915 the blockade had tightened and blockade-runners became increasingly scare. To combat the limited access to resources, Falkenhayn, still head of the war ministry, working in conjunction with the government created the war materials board headed by the famous industrialist and scientist Walter Rathenau. His efforts would enable Germany to continue to fight the war long after critical materials had become scarce. Furthermore, as in all countries, there had been a shell shortage that needed to be rectified. Falkenhayn’s subordinates in the war ministry had been hard at work to increase production and by 1915 demand was being met. The difficult position with regards to nitrates, crucial in shell production, promised to be alleviated by Fritz Haber’s process that drew nitrates from the air. There were still some problems with the method that would need to be worked out and time was needed to construct facilities to produce these nitrates. As Germany’s imports were cut off of this crucial material and blockade running was not fulfilling demand, the situation seemed bleak. That is until the capture of Antwerp in October. Veritable mountains of nitrates were found in the city, enough to tide war industries over until domestic production could be increased.
In France vast tracts of land had been captured from France and the entire nation of Belgium were now in Germany’s sphere of control. From France, nearly 90% of both her coal and steel producing areas had been captured and could now be put to use for the war effort. The region Nord-Pas-de-Calais and the section of Department Somme that had been captured also accounted for 25% of France’s industrial production. Furthermore, these areas were also some of the most productive agricultural regions within the country. In fact almost all of the sugar beet production was now in German hands. Though these were massive losses to the Allied war effort, there were several areas of under- or non-developed coal resources, such as near Rouen, which until the war, had been owned by German industry. These could now be exploited by the French government. Factories would be built to replace those lost and orders placed with neutral nations like the US. Ultimately though, the losses would cause a drop off in production in the interim. This would be the principle reason for drop off in allied attacks after November, as shells could not be produced to keep up with demand. It would also cause the Germans to hold back on the planned counter assaults that month.
OHL had initially anticipated renewing their drive on Paris and turning the Allied flank in September when the 6th army was taken from the frontier and reformed on the Somme. Due to French interior lines being uncut and shorter, they were able to reach the region first and dictate the pace of the campaign. When the 6th army arrived, it was thrown into the desperate fighting raging along the Somme and was pushed back by the furious allied attacks, desperate to pierce the line and open a path to the channel ports. British commanders and politicians were adamant that these cities be liberated, as the Germans could use them as a means to invade the home isles and disrupt supplies line running through the channel. The French also realized the danger that the loss of these ports would entail, as their loss would losing some of their largest facilities and would have the shortest remaining supply lines running from Britain be interdicted by the High Seas Fleet. The arriving German forces were forced to dig in and hold out against the furious attacks all along their front. Through November attacks would be launched by both sides in an attempt to fix the enemy and to probe for weakness. Both sides would experience success: the French would retake Compiegne and push the front back to the Somme river and the German 1st army to Montdidier. The Germans would launch what became known as “bite and hold” attacks in the Argonne, an innovation of the old pioneer general von Mudra, which would push the French out of the forests and inflict over 30,000 casualties. The major successes would be the retention of Verdun by the French and the holding of the Somme line by the Germans
Both sides began forming new units or importing others throughout 1914. British Indian units and French North African formations would appear on the line towards the end of the campaign, while the Germans were still forming several new corps. Falkenhayn was under pressure by his staff and the Kaiser to conclude the western theater by the end of the year. Wetzell, his operations chief and indeed much of his intellectual impetuous, would form much of the policy that would drive the German war effort. Distinctly different from the previous chief, Tappen, Wetzell was everything he was not: hard working, intelligent, young, and middle class. He achieved his position by ability and drive, a metaphor for the change occurring in the Heer. Given his motivation, he would be active in touring the front and trying to form a picture of what was going on. He would put forth a plan that would be adopted by Falkenhayn in October, once it was obvious that the original intention to renew the advance had fallen apart. Wetzell would suggest letting the allies fritter away their strength on German positions and renew the attack when the new corps were ready to be put to use. But as the year went on, Wetzell began to form an entirely different conception of war. Material and not bodies would decide the outcome of battles and it was becoming obvious that Germany needed to preserve its strength while reducing the enemy’s. By November, shells were running short and the additional attack would be running into prepared allied positions. The opportunity for an attack was long gone and the use of the new corps would likely only result in a higher body count. Instead, Wetzell and Falkenhayn by extension, were turning to the successful model of attack being developed by men like von Mudra and crown prince Rupprecht in their attacks in the Argonne and Alsace respectively. Limited attacks supported by heavy artillery concentrations had smashed the enemy and allowed for the capture of important terrain. Of course the older forms of maneuver were still viable in the East, but in the West, with its higher concentration of firepower and men, a new way needed to be developed. Decisive battle and victory was beyond the reach of any one power; there was new way of war needed.
Ermattungsstrategie
By November the need for munitions was dire and with battles in the East now taking precedent, the planned offensive was called off. A new plan was being developed for the new year, one that would involve the terrible concept of attrition. The French would need to be bled out. The British could just continue to send men over from their empire, or pull back to their island. The Russians could retreat into the depths of the Rodina, thoughts of Napoleon present in the minds of all. But the French were uniquely vulnerable and forced to stand and fight. They would have to be bled out until they could no longer stand alone and then become the focus of a decisive battle that would break their will. Then they would be given the option of a white peace. Peace had to be the most attractive option to the enemy to force him out of the war. Once separated the others could be focused on and forced to exit the war. Falkenhayn was convinced that the British were Germany’s main enemy and would need to be the focus of Germany’s long-term plans, once Russia and France were dealt with. In the meantime, they could be interdicted by the navy.
Remarkably, throughout the race to the sea, the navy was never consulted to assist with the destruction of British forces being landed on the continent or to support the German advance. But once the lines had settled, Falkenhayn established firm ties with the Kaiserliche Marine. They would be a crucial component to his plan against France. With the captured channel ports, a guerilla offensive would be waged against the allied supply lines. The High Seas Fleet was outnumbered and currently unwilling to put to sea so close to the British Isles, but the U-Boot force and the torpedo boats were seen as an expendable resource. They could be used to interdict the British supply lines to the continent, as the major ports supplying the expanding BEF were Le Havre and Dieppe, both close to the most forward German port of Boulogne. The ports of Calais and Ostend were sabotaged by the British during their retreat from the continent, but they would come back online by early 1915. The interdiction of supply through the channel would be the priority of the navy for the new year, delaying the British buildup and hopefully forcing a rerouting of supplies to France through a port farther west. The reduction of usable ports would force the allies to expend more rolling stock and time shipping in supplies and resources such as coal. As it was, the delay in having to ship in the necessary resources was having an effect on French production and the interdiction of supply from Britain would hopefully exacerbate this deficiency. Unbeknownst to the Germans, the Royal Navy was planning on establishing a mine barrage that would block access from the captured channel ports to the rest of the Allied controlled areas. The channel would become one of the most hotly contested zones of the, consuming most of the German navy’s resources; they would be forced to cancel several planned capital ships, as their allotted resources would be wrapped up in replacing losses to the torpedo boats, destroyers, and U-boots that would fight the battle of the channel.
The proposed plan that Falkenhayn and Wetzell put forth, though known only to a select few in OHL (Falkenhayn was notorious for taking few into his confidence), was partly apparent, as the offensive actions planned for 1914 were cancelled in favor of limited pushes in 1915. Wetzell, under direction of Falkenhayn solicited plans from each western army for small scale bite and hold attacks to take important ground and wear down the enemy. As this was against the doctrine of decisive battle that had come to dominate the thinking of most of the upper echelons of the officer class, the backlash was abrupt. Much of the fracture that was forming between the new school of Ermattungstrategie and the older school of Vernichtungsstrategie was based on geography. The Easterners were of the mind that the last front of decisive maneuver was in Russia, where Ludendorff had managed to demonstrate traditional flanking attacks and bold movements could still trump numbers and firepower. It helped that the Russian army proved of lesser quality to the German army and the AH’s needed help badly. The Westerners, based off the work that Wetzell was doing to disseminate the strategy of his commander, were of the mind that Germany could not win decisively in this new form of war. The sides were far too evenly matched and it would require that peace be made with one or more opponents to enable German strength to be focused on the remainder. This group was initially small as few knew the scope of the full plan for security reasons, but the principles began to win new converts as members of the Westheer were directly experiencing conditions at the front.
Last Throes
By December the situation in the East had changed dramatically, not for the best. The AH’s were frantic that their fortress, Przemysl, was quickly running out of supplies in the dead of winter, surrounded by the Russians.
The Austrians were going to launch and offensive out of the Carpathians to liberate the fort and requested that the Germans launch their own attack to draw off enemy forces. Ludendorff finally had a decisive argument to leverage some of the considerable reserve of troops that OHL had created to his front. As part of the joint action on the Eastern front, Ober Ost relinquished some of its forces to the Austrians to for the Südarmee to fight with in Galicia. In Prussia the 10th army was created for the pinning offensive and a further corps was released to fill the gap left by the forces given to Conrad. The offensives proved to be polar opposites; German forces in the north smashed the Russian 10th army and forced them out of most of Lithuania, leaving behind tens of thousands of prisoners, masses of supplies and hundreds of guns. The retreating Russian forces, previously unaware of the formation of a new German army, were stunned by the massive forces brought against them in the middle of a blizzard. The battle only served to increase the mythos that had developed among the Russians about the supposed superiority of the German army. Further south von Plehve, the Russian commander of the new 12th army took the Germans in the flank, halting the offensive and breaking down some of their moral superiority. Further south the situation was a disaster. Advancing out of the mountains, AH forces were being slaughtered by the Russians. Many men were lost in the fierce snowstorms and found frozen to death later on. The situation was bleak as more men were lost than at Przemysl, quickly frittering the semblance of order that the Austrians had tried to restore to their forces. The lackluster assaults continued until March, when the fortress surrendered, leading over 100,000 AH soldiers into captivity. The fall of the city caused a drastic fall in moral for the Habsburg forces. It was obvious that something must be done before the Eastern Front fell apart.
Politics
As part of a larger narrative, the first power struggle for control of the war effort began in 1914 when Falkenhayn took over OHL, but the intriguing finally boiled over in December. Many in the Heer considered it unseemly for the head of the war ministry to head OHL simultaneously. It was viewed as a concentration of power that left the Easterners out in the cold. Never mind that the arrangement had done much to remove the tension and overlapping responsibilities between the Feldheer and the war ministry. The army knew exactly what it needed and the war ministry worked with the government directly to get it. But many, such as Ludendorff and Gerhard Tappen, the former operations chief of Falkenhayn, were actively campaigning to get him thrown out of OHL and get a “true” soldier such as Hindenburg into high command. The only problem was that the Kaiser was the personal sponsor of Falkenhayn and it was he who had final say in the matter. Wilhelm was lobbied by a variety of characters including his own son and his wife, who was approached by a junior officer with stories of the incompetence of the current chief. Finally, Hindenburg and Ludendorff, aware of the renown they had built up in the media for their actions at the front, approached the Kaiser in February 1915 with their demands for Falkenhayn to be sacked, implying that they would use their influence with the public to force him into their desired course of action.
Furious that his own family had been used in this power play and that he was being threatened by officers in HIS army, Wilhelm decided matters then and there. Falkenhayn had his full confidence and would remain CiC of the army. He would be removed from his position at the war ministry, but would pick his own successor. Hindenburg and Ludendorff were rebuked for their arrogance and were nearly cashiered. Due to their popularity, it was politically impossible, but they were aware that they had overplayed their hand. Falkenhayn was no idle during this power struggle either. He struck back, impuning the character of his opponents, including Tappen, who was subsequently forcibly retired from the army. He also cleared out the OHL staff of members that had specifically challenged his authority by supporting his political opponents. Once it became apparent that the general was playing for keeps, his opponents in field command positions became remarkably silent about their negative feelings. Falkenhayn left the situation strengthened against his enemies and would emerge with new confidence in his ability to lead Germany without doubts in his character. Nonetheless, there would remain ill will towards the man that many felt threw away victory at the Marne and by remaining on the defensive throughout 1914.
Plans
The situation in the East remained dangerous and after the political game had died down, it was obvious that something had to be done. With a heavy heart, he abandoned his plans for an offensive in the West and turned to the East to secure breathing room for next year to settle the score. Previously OHL had been aware that the defensive would be the default action in the West for some time and von Lossberg, OHL’s tactical expert was dispatched in November to interview the front commanders and develop a new doctrine based on their experience. By 1915 von Lossberg produced a new manual that would take German forces from the linear defense and move them to zonal defense with a focus on strong points. For the tradition bounded German army, the move shift in thinking would take time, for some even years. Wetzell and Lossberg would tour the front to ensure that the methods were being used. They would prove themselves effective and by 1916 most had finally adopted them. The battles over the winter of 1914-1915 would prove them to many in the Westheer and the full allied assaults in 1915 would see their widespread use.
Back in the East, there were numerous plans put forth for the offensive along the front; Ludendorff was fixed on the Baltic, but Conrad had something else in mind. He saw that an offensive at the edge of the Carpathians would give the Central Powers a chance to outflank the Russian units emeshed in the mountains. Falkenhayn also had several operational ideas to experiment with. Aware of the German technical and material superiority over the Russians, he intended to fight according to his strengths and draw the Russians into a set piece battle that would destroy them. Drawing from his experiences in the West with the bite and hold battles, he enlarged the conception to its logical outcome. The blow would fall not where the Russians were the weakest, rather, it would strike at their strength so that they would be forced to defend and send their men into a death trap. The hammer would fall at the fortified area between Gorlice and Tarnow.