Will be interesting post war once the Berlin to Baghdad (and then Basra) is completed, giving the Germans their Indian Ocean access they so wanted. Would be better if they get East Africa back and then it really secures that connection of Indian Ocean and then China access that bypasses the Suez Canal completely (hence why they'd also want Tsingtao back and their Pacific colonies). It depends how badly they want it. I know we treat like Britain wouldn't give back a single colony and would rather continue the war than do so but I doubt anyone is willing to give up peace for an African colony. So it really comes down to who wants it more.
REDUX: Place In The Sun: What If Italy Joined The Central Powers?
- Thread starter Kaiser Wilhelm the Tenth
- Start date
And of course the German-American demographic as well. Not to forget that in 1916 there were the Presidential Elections going on, so the candidates probably would not want to alienate a decent chunk of the voter base by committing to either side of the Great War (as long as stuff like the Lusitania doesn't happen and someone keeps Zimmermann away from the telegraph office)
Also you know, it's gonna be hard to argue in favor of intervention as everyone can see the death toll. Could have a expose of how much loans the supposedly neutral US owes both parties, perhaps?
@Kaiser Wilhelm the Tenth I have a question.
At the start of WW1 Italy, like almost every other country, didn't equip its soldiers with metallic helmets. After entering the war on the side of the Entente Italy received some shipments of French Adrian helmets and then started to produce a simplified copy, the Adrian Mod. 16. So what are the Italians going to use in this timeline? A locally produced new design, still a copy of the Adrian (maybe based on captured equipment) or german helmets?
Because I'm trying to imagine the Alpini and the Bersaglieri wearing the Stahlhelm with the addition of the typical black feathers and it's rather unsettling.
At the start of WW1 Italy, like almost every other country, didn't equip its soldiers with metallic helmets. After entering the war on the side of the Entente Italy received some shipments of French Adrian helmets and then started to produce a simplified copy, the Adrian Mod. 16. So what are the Italians going to use in this timeline? A locally produced new design, still a copy of the Adrian (maybe based on captured equipment) or german helmets?
Because I'm trying to imagine the Alpini and the Bersaglieri wearing the Stahlhelm with the addition of the typical black feathers and it's rather unsettling.
Same here but thinking about the problem, well getting the Stahhelm is the better and quicker method to get result, even because the italian experimentation with their own models were really really unsatisfactory.
Which helmet protects the soldier's head and neck the best?
The US PASGT helmet was introduced in 1983. At the time its resemblance to the Stahlhelm was noted. The Stahlhelm was based on the 15th-century sallet. Reportedly AH rejected a modernised, sloping helmet design to replace it due to the attachment of the World War One generation to the old design.
Perhaps Italy could use the new design, since the Germans passed on it.
US PASGT helmet
15th Century Sallet
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Agreed, as far as performance goes the Stahlhelm is the superior choice.
The only problem is that is also the most expensive and complicated to manufacture and I don't know if the already overburdened Italian industry can make them in enough numbers. The same can be said for the German industries that, while more capable, also have to produce material for the german army and have the added problem of shipping everything trough the Alps.
A knock-off version of the Brodie, for example, would be far easier to produce in great numbers being simply a circular sheet of metal pressed into a hat form. Worse than the Stahlhelm by any means, but good enough.
I really like this design: it looks like a simplified Stahlhelm crossed with the Italian M33 helmet, so it's perfect for a Germany influenced Italy.Perhaps Italy could use the new design, since the Germans passed on it.
The Brits are likely going to have to start the Somme offensive a lot earlier and will give it a lot more priority. The French army will need the rescue and the circumstance will be a lot more dire - I can definitely see it having to start a lot faster than it did.
The buildup is definitely gonna be telegraphed. So will Falkenheyn determine it's a big enough threat he has to cut off possible reinforcements for Verdun to hold the line? If the French are throwing everything they have into the gap they can at least slow it. The idea is to bleed the French, nto take territory, so if they counterattack I can see the Germans just digging in and holding - or as the reserve divisions have to be sent to the Somme instead.
Also a possible change for the German doctrine. At this point their doctrine was to as soon as a trench was breached counterattack. If it was a probe, if it was an assault, if it was a raid.. Counterattack. Drive them out immediately or slow them down (the theory was). Instead it gave up a lot of the benefits of the trench and opened them to nasty casualties.
Them doing better here also means that may not be standard doctrine, so they might not do as /well/ on the defense but they won't be bled as bad either.
Also dunno if Foch will decide to evacuate Nice and pull back to a better defensive line. He seems to be prioritizing Verduna nd hasn't put up a 'not one more centimeter' call so there doesn't seem a political imperative to hold both no matter what. So if he pulls back and mostly levels the city, the Italians get little from it beyond more land - a big morale boost, but little else. Fall back to better defensive terrain, dig in, the Italians have to build railroads, bring forward supply dumps, etc. They won't be heading forwards again for months. Transfer the divisions northward.
French yelling for help also virtually guarantees more of the RN being sent tot he Med. They can easily spare a Battleship division or so - another 6-8 BB's and cruisers won't strain the Home Fleet too much and they'll still have a minimum 2:1 supremacy over the Kaiserlichemarine. That lets them lock down the Med and still threaten Italy's coast with bombardment. The RN is still much, much better than the French and thier ships will outperform the Italians/AH. So that just puts it again as a stalemate where both sides patrol aggressively. The AH won't deploy thier own fleet so far forwards against the RN, that makes the Med a relatively safe zone (beyond all the submarines). The Germans could always go for something exotic like sending some of thier submarines over the rail line to be reassembled there that they'd thought of a few times over WW1 but never did?
In the Balkans Bulgaria is gonna be demobilized, Greece is neutral (but ould have a pro-CP government). But Greece being neutral also means no Salonika, and no weird dispatch of divisions to there (was this already commented on?). Romania (even if neutral) will sell lots of grain to the CP. WIth Russia being the only active front likely this will solve all the food issues. Could even have the Germans sending some things down to the Ottomans to help (getting them to the front is still an issue with the nonexistance of the Ottoman rail network). Ottomans can push for Baku or something?
The Kaiser will want the navy to get in on the glory as well and might even let them get aggressive. This will likely not go well given the British had pretty well broken thier ciphers. But hey, north sea naval battle! If the French are being desperate, and the British are being slaughtered in the Somme the Kaiser might tell them to go out and sail for victory to push them over the edge.
The buildup is definitely gonna be telegraphed. So will Falkenheyn determine it's a big enough threat he has to cut off possible reinforcements for Verdun to hold the line? If the French are throwing everything they have into the gap they can at least slow it. The idea is to bleed the French, nto take territory, so if they counterattack I can see the Germans just digging in and holding - or as the reserve divisions have to be sent to the Somme instead.
Also a possible change for the German doctrine. At this point their doctrine was to as soon as a trench was breached counterattack. If it was a probe, if it was an assault, if it was a raid.. Counterattack. Drive them out immediately or slow them down (the theory was). Instead it gave up a lot of the benefits of the trench and opened them to nasty casualties.
Them doing better here also means that may not be standard doctrine, so they might not do as /well/ on the defense but they won't be bled as bad either.
Also dunno if Foch will decide to evacuate Nice and pull back to a better defensive line. He seems to be prioritizing Verduna nd hasn't put up a 'not one more centimeter' call so there doesn't seem a political imperative to hold both no matter what. So if he pulls back and mostly levels the city, the Italians get little from it beyond more land - a big morale boost, but little else. Fall back to better defensive terrain, dig in, the Italians have to build railroads, bring forward supply dumps, etc. They won't be heading forwards again for months. Transfer the divisions northward.
French yelling for help also virtually guarantees more of the RN being sent tot he Med. They can easily spare a Battleship division or so - another 6-8 BB's and cruisers won't strain the Home Fleet too much and they'll still have a minimum 2:1 supremacy over the Kaiserlichemarine. That lets them lock down the Med and still threaten Italy's coast with bombardment. The RN is still much, much better than the French and thier ships will outperform the Italians/AH. So that just puts it again as a stalemate where both sides patrol aggressively. The AH won't deploy thier own fleet so far forwards against the RN, that makes the Med a relatively safe zone (beyond all the submarines). The Germans could always go for something exotic like sending some of thier submarines over the rail line to be reassembled there that they'd thought of a few times over WW1 but never did?
In the Balkans Bulgaria is gonna be demobilized, Greece is neutral (but ould have a pro-CP government). But Greece being neutral also means no Salonika, and no weird dispatch of divisions to there (was this already commented on?). Romania (even if neutral) will sell lots of grain to the CP. WIth Russia being the only active front likely this will solve all the food issues. Could even have the Germans sending some things down to the Ottomans to help (getting them to the front is still an issue with the nonexistance of the Ottoman rail network). Ottomans can push for Baku or something?
The Kaiser will want the navy to get in on the glory as well and might even let them get aggressive. This will likely not go well given the British had pretty well broken thier ciphers. But hey, north sea naval battle! If the French are being desperate, and the British are being slaughtered in the Somme the Kaiser might tell them to go out and sail for victory to push them over the edge.
Chapter XXI- Petain's Retreat
CHAPTER XXI
Petain's Retreat
Philippe Petain received the poisoned chalice on March 14, three weeks into the Battle of Verdun. He was promoted from commander of the Second Army responsible for the immediate battle to commander of Army Group Centre, placing some 52 divisions at his disposal and making him the most important man on the Western Front.Joffre hoped that placing so many resources in one capable pair of hands would improve coordination and remove as many bureaucratic obstacles as possible to getting the job done. Petain now commanded more than half of the country's manpower and was determined to make the most of it. In the meantime, he still had an emergency to manage at Verdun. If France's position collapsed there, all of the reserves in the world would make no difference.
At a meeting of the Army Group Centre staff on the 16th, Petain addressed de Bazelaire, Guillaumat, Balfourier, and Duchene, as well as the commander of the XX Corps, France's only reserve unit in the theatre.
Germany had handled the French Second Army, there was no other way to put it. Months of poor preparation and a lack of planning had left the French outnumbered and outgunned. All the forts on the east bank of the Meuse had done was buy time for the defenders to fall back: now they would have to defend Verdun itself. With all of Army Group Centre under his command, Petain said, he could strip divisions from the rest of the front to create a new tactical reserve: this was less risky than it seemed as Germany was too invested to strike elsewhere. In the meantime, the Second Army had to hold Verdun itself. This would be France's greatest struggle yet- even harder than stopping the foe at the Marne- yet Petain had faith in the French soldier and his commanders. Victory would humiliate the Germans and give national morale a much-needed boost, to say nothing of breaking Germany's best army.
Petain had two principal concerns for his subordinates: logistics and reinforcements.
A railroad line ran along the west bank of the Meuse into Verdun proper: German guns were doing everything in their power to shut it down. As they were not yet laying siege to the city, this was not a priority, and their lack of guns so close to the river made it difficult for them to strike. Once the Germans made a concerted attempt to seize Verdun, the railroad would become a major target; the defenders had to assume they wouldn't be able to use it. That left only one supply path: a road running up from Bar-le-Duc the south, past several small woods, and in to the city. It was far back enough to not be in immediate danger of falling; while German guns could still shell it, being a concrete road, it could take far more damage than rail track. As long as that road remained open, supplies and reinforcements could enter the city while casualties and civilians could leave. Severing la Voie Sacree- the sacred road- would suffocate Verdun.
Keeping la Voie Sacree open was a tactical problem that the French could solve in the short term; something they could not afford to fail at, but still achievable with the resources on hand. The long-term question of how many divisions could arrive and how soon was what worried Petain. His new subordinates at Army Group Centre had told him everything he needed to know over the past few days, none of it good. Simply put: France was running out of manpower. Joffre and the War Ministry had committed the strategic reserve to holding the Western Front, making no provision for future attacks. Even this left France with only seventy divisions squared off against over a hundred German. Petain informed the corps commanders that in his new role, he had requested reinforcements from Italy and was moving as many divisions from other sectors as he thought safe, but this would take time and amount to little. In other words, the four French corps on the Meuse were going to have to play David to Falkenhayn's Goliath and survive on their own.
In his memoirs, Petain claimed he knew victory was impossible even at this early stage, but postwar correspondence from Balfourier and Duchene describing the battle quotes their leader as calling for "triumph... over any odds and at any cost." Given the rapidity with which his reputation collapsed after the fall of Verdun, and his fruitless struggle to keep his successor from throwing men into the fire for no purpose, it is easy to believe Petain changed the wording in his memoirs to appear as though he had always advocated standing on the defensive, when he remained determined to fight back. The most simple proof of his determination to fight was the plan he now outlined to his four corps commanders.
The last strongpoints on the east bank were going to fall no matter what as there weren't enough bridges or boats to send adequate reinforcements or supplies over, and the Germans held all the tactical strongpoints. Besides, the east bank was not as important as the high command had made out. Germany had taken most of the key positions- only the crossing at Dieue held out- and was no nearer entering the city for it. In fact, Petain said, the whole east bank was a trap. Every soldier the French put into the fighting for Dieue or any of the hamlets surrounding it was a soldier unable to defend Verdun proper. Germany had widened its attack frontage in the hopes of overstretching French forces; while they had their breakthrough in the east, France could limit the damage by not getting sucked into a battle of attrition. Soldiers from XX Corps could hold the west bank opposite Dieue to ensure the Germans didn't cross over, but aside from that, Duchene's only concern should be to withdraw as many of his men from the east bank as possible. Whatever he could pull out of the east bank would be folded into XX Corps as an "independent division" which he would command- this was not a slight to his performance, but a reflection of how little Duchene had to work with. While far from ideal, the current situation was stable; Petain explained that his worst nightmare was for the enemy to form a bridgehead at Dieue before breaking out west and cutting la Voie Sacree.
Petain then instructed de Bazelaire to shorten his front. Germany's advance over Le Mort Homme and through the Corbeaux Wood had blown a hole in his front line, but everything west of the breach remained intact. De Bazelaire was to conduct a fighting retreat to within a few miles of la voie sacree and put all his efforts into keeping the road open. Having a few half-empty forts fall would inconvenience Verdun; losing the last link to the rest of the country would kill it. De Bazelaire objected with as much strength as he could, while stopping just short of insubordination. Conducting a fighting retreat was difficult under ideal circumstances: men had to pack everything up and pull back to pre-prepared positions while still taking fire, while some of their comrades had to stay back and delay the enemy; these stay-behinds always took the heaviest casualties. Circumstances at Verdun were far from ideal. Petain wanted de Bazelaire's men to pull back through six miles of broken ground, which the enemy could shell nearly at will. Once they reached the new positions, their only cover would be three old forts bereft of artillery cover. Petain was adamant, and de Bazelaire understood how dire the situation was- besides, good soldiers followed orders. Verdun was far too critical for any man to dream of mutiny.
Guillaumat and Balfourier had expected a tongue-lashing for how their position had crumbled; Petain's response was a surprise, as pleasant as anything could be in this madness. Both men had done their best with what they had and no tactical genius could have turned the situation around. As long as he had anything to say about it, neither man would face consequences for their failure to hold the east bank- nor, he added with haste and a smile, would Duchene. Petain had decided to merge their two shattered corps into one, whose mission was to hold the city of Verdun and ignore all else. La Voie Sacree would hold, and that was all that mattered. Only if enemy troops cut the sacred road, and all attempts at relief failed, could the new corps break out to the west. Germany would have to take Verdun street by street, house by house, brick by brick, which would be too much even for the cold-blooded Falkenhayn. All of France was counting on these two humble corps commanders, Petain said. Their victory was France's victory, and their defeat would be France's defeat.
Unlike too many of his contemporaries, Petain had learned the right lesson from the failed offensives of autumn 1915- as he wrote in their aftermath, "artillery conquers, men occupy." Elan had failed the French even in the first weeks of the war, when the density of firepower in the field was much lower. Weight of metal had massacred Frenchmen and Italians in Champagne and the Alps. Petain had no intention of throwing good men away like that ever again. Like a good officer, he assumed the enemy had learned the same lesson as him, but if he was wrong and Falkenhayn wanted to make the same mistake, it was all to the good. Petain would do everything in his power to make Falkenhayn fight on his terms, and with any luck, to trip him up and shove him back into his own mincing machine.
The twin French retreats commenced before dawn on March 17th. Duchene had the easier time of it. His men had been reduced to a few pockets on the eastern bank, and everyone who was going to get out was in a position to do so- smaller packets of men further from the river were already lost to the cause, and received word from field telephones and carrier pigeons to lay down their arms. The garrisons of Houdainville and Dieue fought delaying actions all day long and throughout the night to let as many of their countrymen cross the Meuse as possible. German artillery did its best to destroy the bridges in each town but failed- had they succeeded, thousands of Frenchmen would have been forced to choose between fighting to the last or trying to swim. De Bazelaire's men didn't reach their objective on the first day, falling past good forts which could have delayed the enemy for at least a few days, just as Le Mort Homme and Corbeaux Wood had. Just as their commander had feared, casualties were high and many wounded were left to fend for themselves, yet discipline held. By dawn on the 20th, the men had taken up position inside Fort Sartelles, a name which was to become infamous as a symbol of what the Great War inflicted on its unwilling participants.
pls don't ban me
Monthly Donor
yeah, sure. Remove people from the Alps front.
Cadorna will have a party when he'll discover this. he can throw even more people in the enemy lines! 🤣
Cadorna will have a party when he'll discover this. he can throw even more people in the enemy lines! 🤣
Chapter XXII- Fort Sartelles
Chapter XXII
Fort Sartelles
Erich von Falkenhayn had launched the Verdun Offensive with a simple goal: to take the city on the Meuse and then let the French advance to retake it, whereupon he could destroy their men with artillery fire and thus bleed the French Army white. The offensive was now behind schedule and Falkenhayn faced much pressure from his rivals in the General Staff and, indirectly, the civilian authorities, to show results. Only now, almost a month in, were the French drawing in closer to the city. The eastern bank of the Meuse lay almost entirely in German hands, but he still had to contend with an oversize corps protecting the city itself. On the western bank, German forces sought to cut la Voie Sacree- the Sacred Road- which kept the city supplied. Falkenhayn remained confident of victory, but the margin of success was much slimmer than would have liked.
Falkenhayn thus watched the French retreat beginning on March 17 with much interest and sent several confident telegrams back to the Kaiser. He did his best to disrupt de Bazelaire's movements, but refrained from a mass infantry charge- instinct told him it might be a trap. Excessive caution let many Frenchmen get away, and it was not until the morning of the 21st he felt comfortable sending the men forward. German soldiers occupied four forts that day without firing a shot, and for the first time in a month some thought the French were at last cracking. Kronprinz Wilhelm wrote to his father that "at last, we have reached a moment of decision in the struggle". It was all a ruse, however, as the men found out when they tried to move on Fort Sartelles the next day.
The First Battle of Fort Sartelles was the closest Germany came to losing the Battle of Verdun. Everything about it bore the telltale signs of rushed planning, of hubris and the hope which had led France to such ruin that all would work itself out, that elan and innate superiority would win the day. The Germans who assaulted Fort Sartelles on the morning of March 23rd, 1916, did so in the same spirit as the men who'd marched through Belgium and northern France eighteen months prior. The previous day's advance had pushed the Germans forward six miles- unheard of in the West- and left them out of range of the heavy guns, most of which were pointed at the eastern approaches to Verdun in any case. No spotter rounds identified French guns inside Saretelles, no artillery barrage softened up the defenders before the men advanced. Having reached a safe haven after a harrying day's retreat, and then enjoyed a whole day to prepare, the French were more than ready to repel whatever came their way. A massed infantry assault did nothing more than give the gunners practice on their antiquated pieces.
By the end of the day, a furious Kronprinz cancelled the assault on Fort Sartelles and sacked the corps commander who'd led it. One battalion had melted down to two platoons; that division was disbanded and the survivors moved about. Falkenhayn never regained full trust in the Kronprinz's military capabilities, though he knew of the planned assault and could have cancelled it, and thus deserves much of the blame. German forces occupied Fort Choisel to the north and prepared to starve the defenders of Sartelles out.
Things didn't go as well for the French on the eastern bank. Forts Vaux and Belleville- whose name had long since become a sick joke on both sides- had fallen weeks prior, and now everything east of Verdun proper had gone. The city was now under the greatest siege in the history of Europe. More than one correspondent drew parallels between the bitter defenders of the Meuse and the men who had lost Constantinople five centuries ago.
The men preparing to hold Verdun were ever so slightly too busy to pick up on the finer points of classical analogy. It was a good thing Guillaumat and Balfourier got on so well because they had to coordinate as complex an operation as the war had ever seen. Any day might bring a mass German bombardment followed by an infantry assault: holding the eastern perimeter of the city was the first priority. After that came evacuations and assessing supplies. Before the war, and even when the German armies before it remained docile, Verdun had been lively, a center of wine-tasting and fine French culture. Modern war was an anomaly to the good country folk, who lived a world apart from the killing fields of Champagne or Menton. Once it became clear that the Germans were going to attack, the government had ordered mass evacuations yet many had remained: a noble decision most would pay for with everything they had. Every able-bodied man had been conscripted months ago, while a motley blend of men too old for the reserves and boys too young for the recruitment office- with more than a few single women thrown in- formed militia units. These were all well and good, even if their supply needs weren't accounted for, but the mothers and children had to go. Verdun was going to have to withstand a siege or at minimum a frontal assault, and every useless mouth brought it three meals closer to collapse every single day. Soldiers turned innocent mothers and widows out of their homes, shoving them onto la Voie Sacree and telling them to keep walking until they reached Bar-le-Duc. This was cold and inhuman but necessary: none of these civilians understood what was about to happen to their homes and all would have died had they stayed put. It also clogged up the great road, making it just that much more difficult for supplies and reinforcements to reach the city.
This was the decisive moment for Falkenhayn. After a month of fighting, his armies finally stood before the city gates. It had taken longer than expected and casualties had been fierce, but the city lay before him. He now had a difficult choice to make. Would he lay siege to the city, surrounding it on the eastern bank and cutting la Voie Sacree on the west, or storm his way in? At the meeting with Kronprinz Wilhelm a month ago, he had decided on the latter, to let the French die in droves taking it back... but his confidence wavered. Falkenhayn had based that plan on the assumption that everything before Verdun would fall in a few days, and his men could enter the city unscathed. Instead, the French had fought as if these hills were holy ground, making his men conquer in a month what an athlete could run in an hour. Casualty estimates hovered around forty thousand, and Falkenhayn knew that was a rough guess and the real number was likely higher. The First Battle of Fort Sartelles had been a painful reminder that rushed attacks serve only the defender. He also knew too well that if he tried to take Verdun by storm and failed, everything would be over. Such a failure, no matter the damage wrought on the French, would shatter the Fifth Army and end the offensive, perhaps even threaten the outcome of the war. He thus summoned Kronprinz Wilhelm and all the subordinate officers to his headquarters on March 27 and explained why the plan had to change again. Rather than a frontal assault on Verdun, which was too likely to descend into street fighting, he would focus on taking Fort Sartelles and cutting la Voie Sacree. Once surrounded, the defenders of Verdun would surrender and Germany could switch to the defensive.
For the first time, men began to wonder if the Chief of the General Staff was everything they had imagined. Falkenhayn had promised a quick victory in which the enemy would take three times as many losses, and what had he brought instead? A battle of attrition which he could no longer control. Falkenhayn consoled himself by remembering that he had initially sought just such a battle of attrition and that taking Verdun had only become a military objective at the last moment. Proof that he had been right the first time. Yet in the darkness of his room, as he snatched a few hours of sleep between reading reports and issuing orders, Falkenhayn had no choice but to confront the possibility that all might not work out according to plan. Against all the odds, the outnumbered French might hold Verdun and keep la Voie Sacree (a damned stupid name for a bloody road, he thought), open. That would kill his career, and the war effort would die with it. Erich von Falkenhayn had staked everything he had to his name- his career and income, his honour and reputation, the Kaiser's ear, the Army's institutional prestige, the fate of the war and the country he had sworn to serve half a lifetime ago- on Gericht. History would pass ein gericht on both sides, and perhaps it would find him, not the foe, wanting.
Failure was not an option.
The Second Battle of Fort Sartelles commenced at dawn on March 30, and the opening shots made clear that this time would be different- those shots came not out of a Mauser rifle, but a howitzer and contained not lead, but gas. Shells with the fateful gurgle and green stripe flew through the air and exploded above Fort Sartelles. Panicked poilus rung bells to warn of gas attack, and everyone ran to their positions, struggling to breathe through the gas masks. German logisticians had spent two miserable days moving heavy guns up, and all of their hard work was about to pay off. Armour-piercing shells fell down on Fort Sartelles, followed by more gas shells. One wave of phosgene crashed down to make the poilus vomit, forcing them to remove their masks, at which point the gunners released a witch's brew of chlorine and nerve gas. Not everyone had been exposed to the phosgene and were thus able to pull their masks back on in time, while others braved the stench of their own vomit and were sick in their masks- it was disgusting but it saved their lives. Patrols went forward at noon and took heavy fire; they scrambled back to German lines and informed their commanders that whatever damage the gas had done, it wasn't enough.
No matter, the German captain declared. They were almost through, and it was time to bring in the flamethrowers. A squad of burly men in feldgrau prepared to go forward at 1300 hours, tanks of compressed on their backs hooked up to a hose. Machine-gun fire chattered as the flamethrower squad rushed forward, their backpacks weighing them down, with an infantry company as escorts. A French bullet pierced one of the kerosene tanks, which exploded with a roar deafening even over the din of combat. The poor sod carrying it never knew what happened, but the men next to him felt it. Flames leapt out from where he had stood a moment before, catching their uniforms and setting them alight. French fire put the lucky ones out of their misery, but others fell to the ground, writhing as the heat licked their clothes and singed their flesh. Comrades rushed by as the human torches burnt out, most conscious to the end.
Doubtless the flames terrified the men inside Fort Sartelles, but they knew the best way to avoid the grisly fate was to get the job done. More bullets flew out towards the enemy, chewing up the dirt and forcing the men to crawl forwards- the kerosene tanks were close to death sentences as they made easy targets and a single bullet would detonate them. Two more German flamethrowers were burnt alive, but the others closed the gap. A hand grenade blew off the doors to the fort, and in the Germans charged. A quick flamethrower burst in each room set Fort Sartelles ablaze and trapped countless men inside, but it still was not enough. Poilus raced through the blaze with buckets and hoses, quenching the flames while their comrades repelled the invaders. Their tanks exhausted, the flamethrower troops threw them to the ground and fought with rifle and bayonet, but there were just too many Frenchmen, and come dusk, the last survivors threw down their arms. Fort Sartelles would remain French for a little while longer.
Kronprinz Wilhelm sacked the battalion commander that night and informed Falkenhayn that no matter what, Fort Sartelles would fall within a week. If gas and fire couldn't quell the defenders, artillery and weight of numbers would have to do the trick. The Kronprinz tasked a regiment of Hanoverians with taking the fort, and ordered divisional artillery to give it full support. A regiment was likely overkill, he knew, but it was worth leaving other sectors bare to get this done. Besides, if the regiment took Sartelles in a day, they would be in an excellent position to cut la Voie Sacree and defend against the inevitable French counterattack. The division's guns, augmented by two Big Berthas, moved up in the night as the French were taking in supplies and loading the bodies of their fallen into Army trucks, and at dawn on April 1, the bombardment began once more.
By this point, Fort Sartelles was a broken shell of its prewar self. Its armour was designed to withstand bombardment but could only take so much, and like a battleship which has spent too much time trading shots, the damage had become serious. Gaping holes in the walls, support beams knocked out of place, ceilings collapsed in, and the like- all of these could become ten times worse under heavy fire. Electricity and plumbing could go at any moment. Repairing the damage would take months of quiet, and there was nothing the French could do but hold on. The stench of phosgene and vomit infested the corridors, as did traces of smoke and chlorine. Worst of all was the smell of blood and of death- the odd red stains on the walls and floors, the inescapable memory of seeing your countrymen burning alive or collapsing with a hole in their chests and knowing that the men who did it were not even a mile away, just waiting to strike again. What would the next day bring? Had their masks been saturated the previous day, or destroyed by vomit and smoke? Would German soldiers use fire once more and shoot up the escape ladders? Neither officers nor men had any idea. Every man reeked of sweat, of fear and piss and shit, no one had bathed or even shaved in days, and only a few day's rations remained. Dread killed everyone's appetite but made them weaker. Soldiers took snatches of sleep between watches or repairs.
As March turned to April, the defenders of Fort Sartelles enjoyed a last night in waiting before the invaders turned the fires of hell loose on them once more.
The bombardment was every bit as bad as the French had feared. One-ton shells from the Big Berthas crashed into the base of Fort Sartelles while lighter shots hit the top and the perimeter. French gunners did their best to return fire but they were outmatched and couldn't hope to dent the German barrage, while every shot they fired gave the enemy a chance to locate and destroy them. Soldiers huddled inside the underground tunnels, praying that they would not be buried alive just as their comrades had six weeks prior. Le bon Dieu answered most of their prayers, but once in a while, He let the Germans get lucky. Armour-piercing shells rained down on Fort Sartelles for two straight days, reducing it to a pile of rubble and its defenders to a frightened mass, who as the Kronprinz wrote in his diary, "scurried about in the manner of ants after their mound has been destroyed by a boot-strike."
At dawn on April 3, the German battalion donned their own gas masks and fixed bayonets just as the bombardment ceased. There were no flamethrowers this time- no one wanted to risk burning a thousand men to death if something went awry- but there were three times as many men and that would make all the difference. When the barrage resumed, the shells carried the same witch's brew as before, but this time, their men would fight in the contaminated environment. The risk was high, but the battalion commander had absolute faith in the Army's gas-masks and so agreed to the plan.
Even with gas, it took twenty-four hours to clear out Fort Sartelles. De Bazelaire recognised how dire the situation was and that defeat would expose la Voie Sacree; he thus sent every available reserve into the battle while warning Petain that the situation could crumble in a few days. Unfortunately, not all of these men carried gas masks; many died of exposure to the fumes while others were forced to turn back. Out-of-breath soldiers on both sides died pulling up their masks for just a few moments to get some air; the witch's brew contaminated their lungs and they died in agony. Others assumed the danger was past (phosgene does not have a distinctive smell, while the odor of battle overshadowed that of chlorine) and took their masks off with the same results. The German battalion commander knew that if he failed, the Kronprinz would have his head. Yet despite heavy casualties, his thousand men held firm and kept fighting throughout the night, lighting torches and using flashlights after dusk (the electricity went off around seven AM after a lucky Big Bertha shot).
By midnight, the fort's commander and all of his subordinates had been killed, and the highest-ranking Frenchman inside was a first lieutenant. It was this man who ran up a white over the last surviving gun emplacement, illuminated with four Army lamps. Getting the surrender order through to all the defenders took almost an hour, during which at least fifty people were killed, and plenty of Frenchmen decided to fight to the death rather than give up and admit that it had all been for naught. Nonetheless, by three AM the battle was over. Exhausted poilus threw their rifles to the ground and Germans escorted them outside the fort, where they would be marched up to division headquarters and taken to a prisoner-of-war camp. The victors brought in a caged canary to verify that the gas was gone- the bird died within minutes, and everyone grumbled about having to keep their masks on for another few hours. In fact, there was no reason for the Germans to have occupied the fort itself. Bombardment, fire, and combat had destroyed its military value, and the contaminated ruins served no military purpose... as they were about to find out.
A furious Petain telephoned de Bazelaire and ordered his corps to retake Fort Sartelles at once. Every hour it stayed under German control put la Voie Sacree in that much more peril. De Bazelaire's reply was very simple: "avec quoi?" The French corps had fought retreat after retreat for the last six weeks, always looking over its shoulder to a safe spot, be that Corbeaux Wood or Fort Sartelles, and every time the Germans had thrown them back. This last battle alone had consumed over a thousand of his men- where would replacements come from? If de Bazelaire sent whatever ragtag forces he could, and the enemy destroyed them, that might delay the enemy push towards la Voie Sacree by a day or so. Who would then be left to protect the sacred road?
How Petain wanted to accuse de Bazelaire of insubordination, incompetence, lack of strategic understanding- anything to get out of admitting that the corps commander was right! De Bazelaire had put his finger on the problem which cost France the Battle of Verdun and, ultimately, the Great War: there were not enough men left. XX Corps needed to cover the southern half of the west bank to prevent a German crossing, and it was the only available reserve. Suppose the enemy tried to break in to Verdun proper while XX Corps was fighting to recapture Fort Sartelles- the weary corps in the city would not have a prayer of holding. But neither could Petain keep XX Corps idle while the situation crumbled. There was no choice, Petain explained. XX Corps had to go into battle, trusting in the weight of numbers to recapture Fort Sartelles. His one concession was to separate Duchene's independent division, which he would only send forward in a true crisis. Fort Sartelles should have been the anchor for de Bazelaire's corps and a shield for la Voie Sacree. If it was a battlefield, so be it- but Petain could not let it stay an enemy strongpoint.
De Bazelaire's offensive would have fared better had Kronprinz Wilhelm not planned his own push in the same sector. With all the forts on the west bank taken, the next step was to sever la Voie Sacree and force the city's defenders to give up. The hard part should have been over, but the Kronprinz knew too well that nothing was easy in this damned war. A counterattack was inevitable, and the best thing to do was hit first. Kronprinz Wilhelm underestimated the speed with which Petain moved, however. More reserves travelled down the west bank on the night of April 4-5, while XX Corps moved into position. Both began their artillery bombardments within a few minutes of each other at dawn... and it became clear that the French and Germans were going to charge head-on at each other.
After a few hours of confused fighting, the Kronprinz ordered his men to switch to the defensive. It was clear that the French were after Fort Sartelles, and they had to be running short of men. Why charge into their teeth when the need for a victory forced them to attack? So the Germans used the shell of Sartelles as a defensive position, beating off French charges with artillery and machine-gun fire. After a week of fighting which failed to move the frontline, XX Corps commander told de Bazelaire he'd had enough. If this continued for much longer, it would destroy his unit and the remnants of Fort Sartelles would be no nearer falling. De Bazelaire agreed with the corps commander but had no authority to suspend the counteroffensive: both agreed that de Bazelaire would take it to Petain. He visited his commanding officer at dusk on the 12th to make his case.
De Bazelaire explained how broken his men were. His corps had been fighting without pause since February 21 and the men were worn out almost to the point of being useless. The men on loan from XX Corps, by contrast, had the opposite problem- they were underprepared. These men had sat inn the rear for two months: they had heard the fighting and seen the casualties but did not know the battle with the same dark intimacy as everyone else. German ferocity, de Bazelaire explained, had taken them by surprise and now they were beginning to lose their nerve. If this counteroffensive carried on much longer, it would grind the two corps into powder- which would play into Falkenhayn's hands as there would be nothing left to defend la Voie Sacree.
Critics of Petain abounded after the war, with charges ranging from incompetence to treason. Captain Serrigny, his aide-de-camp during the Battle of Verdun (who would have, at the price of his honour, been able to divulge and/or concoct all manner of incriminating stories about the man), always defended his one-time commanding officer as best he could, and the two remained friends after the war. When interviewed many years after Petain's death, Serrigny said that "the one thing one could say against General Petain was that he thought too much about the French, and not enough about France." Hearing de Bazelaire explain how good men were being cut down for no purpose hit Petain in the heart. A stronger commander might not have made a decision based on emotion, but in fairness to Petain, he had spent the last three weeks directing the greatest battle the world had ever seen with a fraction of the necessary resources. The stress showed on his face and in his voice, and it was inevitable that it would start to affect his decision-making.
Petain thanked de Bazelaire for informing him and summoned Serrigny to begin drafting orders: there was no point to continuing the counteroffensive. Changing his strategy of defence and artillery had been foolish, and he could only hope it was not too late to salvage whatever he could of the two corps. Retaking what was left of Fort Sartelles would do nothing- far better to let the Kronprinz's men die trying to break through to la Voie Sacree. Had Petain realized this a week earlier, the French might still have survived Verdun, but it was too late now. Too many good soldiers lay dead north of la Voie Sacree, while flamethrowers and gas had killed too many more in the bowels of Fort Sartelles.
For all his commitment to holding Verdun, Petain had not been able to come up with a coherent tactical plan, nor had he implemented his ideas of artillery-based defence as well as he could have. Self-serving ex post facto claims aside, he had ordered the retreat on the west bank not as part of some master plan to draw the Germans in and overextend their supply lines, but as a stop-gap to buy time. He had directed his men to hold Fort Sartelles because he felt a need to draw the line somewhere, not because it was ready to withstand a siege. He had tasked Guillaumat and Balfourier with holding the forts to the east of Verdun, but then refused to commit the reserves to holding them, instead refocusing his corps commanders on the city itself. When he finally did release the reserve corps, he threw it away in a counterattack that, even had it succeeded, would have made little difference to the outcome of the battle.
Despite this, Petain deserves a balanced assessment, not the caricature which a hundred years of history have given him. Indecision had never been one of his vices in decades of service, nor had he experienced combat before the war. France's General Staff had no plans for a defensive battle of attrition, not least one where the enemy had a massive numerical advantage and the prospect of reinforcement was slim. Petain conducted himself at Verdun with as much dignity and competence as he knew how. Especially in light of the massacres his successor would oversee, he deserves at least a modicum of credit for doing the best he could with what he had.
Unfortunately, Philippe Petain's best was not good enough. April 1916 would prove the month Verdun- and his whole career- collapsed.
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The irony is that historically, von Falkenhayn was right. In the age before armored/motorized/mechanized warfare, the only way to win against an enemy willing to fight to the death is to all but literally drown them in blood. The Napoleonic Wars proved this, the Crimean War proved this, hell, even the Russo-Japanese War proved it. To add to the irony, von Falkenhayn's strategy of victory through attritional warfare was practically the Allied strategy from 1916 onward. Von Falkenhayn just didn't have the numbers IOTL to pull it off, at least once the Americans joined in (if the Americans hadn't joined in it's very up in the air, considering Britain and France were practically bankrupt by 1917, and the latter similarly scraping the bottom of the manpower barrel). Here, with Italy being a part of the CP, von Falkenhayn actually has a fighting chance to pull off all but literally drowning the Entente in blood.
Exactly right. Here, as in 1.0, the balance is tilted against the French and Germany has the numbers to do what it couldn't in the real world. Unlike the first version of the TL, the Verdun Mutinies won't make France drop out of the war, but they will light the fuse on a bomb, set to go off some point in 1917.
Nerve gas not invented yet.
Nitrogen? Shouldn't it be napalm or something?
"had sat in the rear"
Great chapters! Really well done.
Thanks for catching those- I deleted two or three other references to nerve gas but I'm not surprised I missed one. This is a consequence of trying to increase my output by writing more late at night, typos being another. (My keyboard is very sensitive, it likes to add an extra letter or space whenever I brush against a key)
AFAIK, napalm was only invented during World War II, and at this point flamethrowers still relied on nitrogen.
Good to have you here.
Nitrogen would surprise me since it neither burns, nor supports burning. Great chapters overall
Chemistry was the only class I failed in High School.
Retconned to Nitrogen- is this right?
While I don't know specifically what was used, that would work. That or gasoline would work just fine. . The originals are glorified water guns. Pressurize a tank, add a source of ignition, and away you go. And if it gets punctured, you definitely will notice.
Note that throwing water on a gasoline fire actually spreads it; Gasoline floats on water, and now you have fire floating around to set more fires. One of the biggest dangers of the flamethrower is not being burned, but rather being asphyxiated.