WI: Germany Takes advantage of 1917 French Army Mutinies

In 1917, demoralized by the Battle of Verdun and the Niville Offensive, large elements of the French army-possibly over 50 divisions-mutinied, and the French forces were in disorder for a couple months until the military executed the ringleaders and promised not to launch any more major offensives against the Germans. Fortunately, the Germans were not aware of the full extent of the mutiny and didn't exploit it.

But what if they had learned of it, say through better intelligence on the French army, and launched an offensive at the height of the mutinies? Would the disorder in the French army have been enough for them to break through?
 

Blair152

Banned
Then she would have been in Paris within a week. Verdun was the key to
that. Marshal Petain, who'd later surrender France to Germany, barely held
that fortress city.
 

Deleted member 1487

Hardly. The French 'mutinies', which were really more strikes and did not affect 50 divisions completely, were based on a refusal to attack suicidally anymore. The Germans could not have taken advantage, as the French would have fought defensively just fine. They had no desire for the war to end, or for letting the Germans win. In fact, whenever the Germans attacked locally, divisions involved in said mutiny fought back tenaciously. Nothing changes directly as a result.
However, if the Germans had enough forces to attack the French during this period, it would mean far greater changes have taken place besides just moving some things around. The Germans were exhausted too and were wrapped up in overrunning Russia and trying to hold the Brits at Ypres. If they have enough extra forces to attack the French during this period, then they are probably doing better in general, though still I don't expect them to score any more successes. The French had switched to a zone defense based on firepower, which the Germans even in 1918 proved unable to defeat. So don't expect much to change, just more German dead in 1917.
 
I think it depends on how the mutineers react when they find out the Germans have actually broken through. If they return to the French colours and fight, the Germans probably get bogged down. Or the Germans thrust deep into France and find themselves in the world's biggest salient once resistance stiffens. I'm not sure how many troops the Germans would have had available for a quick offensive at the time.

But, if the mutiny goes on, then, like Blair152 says, the Germans win. Or at the very least they take Paris and much of Northern France.
 
I think it depends on how the mutineers react when they find out the Germans have actually broken through. If they return to the French colours and fight, the Germans probably get bogged down. Or the Germans thrust deep into France and find themselves in the world's biggest salient once resistance stiffens. I'm not sure how many troops the Germans would have had available for a quick offensive at the time.

But, if the mutiny goes on, then, like Blair152 says, the Germans win. Or at the very least they take Paris and much of Northern France.


My own guess is that some do one and some the other. So you get some units fighting stubbornly, only to find that the one beside them has fled, so that they too have to run whether they originally wanted to or not.

You could get something a bit like Caporetto. $64,000 question is whether the French can find a "Piave" to rally behind before anything really disastrous has happened, like becoming separated from the BEF or having the rail links severed between Paris and the eastern frontier.
 
No, no, no. The mutinies have been blown far out of proportion. Immediately after they subsided, it was discovered that a grand total of two divisions out of over a hundred had been "severely affected" by mutiny, i.e., officers disobeyed or shot, etc. The only symptom of the other dozen or so "seriously affected" divisions was that they refused to go on the offensive. They were totally content to sweep machine guns in front of trenches, even assuming the Germans could throw together enough bodies at that point to make a real offensive possible.
 
As noted by several well informed posters the French divisions in mutiny were willing to fight defensively but refused to take part in suicidal offensive ops. So it is not a good time to march on Paris. It is however a reasonably good time to take on the BEF.
 

Larrikin

Banned
At the time of the height of the "mutinies" the French 1st Army was quite happily engaged in offensive operations on the left flank of the BEF at 3 Ypres. In fact, the 1st Army achieved all their, admittedly limited, objectives to support the flank of the BEF's offensive, and did it first time, every time.
 
As has been said the only Army capable of offensive operations in 1917 was the British.
The Germany Army in the southern portion of the Western front had been worn down by Verdun and the winter battles and was starved of resources and reinforcements which were going up North to fight the British at Ypres and East to fight the Russians.
If the Nievelle offensive had been even vaguely sensible and thought out it could have worked, as the German units on that section of the front were exhausted.
 
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