December 29, 1914

One hundred years ago today the trigger to one of the most tragic events of World War One occurred. It was on this date that Ottoman forces assaulted the Russian city of Sarikamsih in the Caucasus (located in northeast modern-day Turkey).  

The assault of Sarikamsih was the center piece of a larger battle, that lasted from December 22, 1914 to January 17, 1915, which was an unmitigated disaster for the Ottoman forces. The Ottoman high command had been encouraged by earlier success in November against the unprepared Russian forces along the border and it was the high command's hope that pressing on to the oil fields of the east Caucasus  before the Russians could fully prepare would yield success. But for the Ottoman forces to push farther into Russia they would have to cross the narrow passes of high mountains of the Caucuses. The Ottoman army lacked sufficient winter uniforms and supplies but the attack was ordered and the Ottoman forces, 118,000 strong, began to enter into the passes of the Alluhüekber Mountains and worked its way to its objective, the rail station at Sarikamsih.

The Ottoman army skirmished with the Russian forces as it had climbed to an altitude of more than 6000 feet above sea level as it headed towards Sarikamsih. It was the dead of winter and temperatures regularly reach 20 degrees below zero (Fahrenheit). Before Sarikamsih was reached a series of Russian ambushes took its toll on the Ottoman forces and Ottoman soldiers died by the thousands due to hypothermia and thousands more suffered from frostbite.

By the time the Ottomans reached Sarikamsih its long supply lines were spread so thin over the poor mountain roads that the Ottoman soldiers were extreme short on supplies. Hungry, exaustated, short on ammunition and freezing the Ottoman forces were ordered to launch a direct assault of the prepared Russian defenders of Sarikamsih. The attack was crushed and the Russians began deploy its forces, who were well rested, well supplied and dressed for cold weather, to surround what was left of the Ottoman survivors. What was left of the Ottoman invasion force tried to retreat but was slowed by snow storms and overtaken by the counter attacking Russians.

Between the freezing weather and the clashes with Russian forces the losses were terrible. Of the 118,000 Ottoman soldiers who marched to Sarikamsih only 11,000 would return. As tragic as the loss of the Ottoman soldiers' lives it was not the most tragic aspect of this battle, as World War One would see it share of slaughter on the battlefield. What made this battle so tragic was its aftermath. By all accounts the Ottoman forces fought with bravely and determination during the battle, but poor planning and preparation by the commanders lead to this disaster. Unwilling to accept responsibility for this colossal failure, when the Ottoman General who commanded the attack reported to the Ottoman government he blamed the local Armenian population for the defeat. L ocal Armenians did volunteer to fight with the Russians and some served as guides as they knew the terrain well and this was no small help to the Russians. But blaming the Armenians for the Ottoman loss was little more than an distract from the blatant incompetents of the Ottoman commanders.

But the damage was done. Almost 100,000 Ottoman soldiers had been killed or captured in less than a month and there was a wave of anger in the nation and in the government and the Armenians would become the target of that anger. Over the next year the Ottoman government would began systematic oppression and deportation to concentration camps of the Armenian people which would result in the deaths of approximately one million Armenians within the Ottoman Empire. By the end of the war in 1918 it is estimated that another half million would be killed. The Ottoman Empire would state that these deaths were part of the larger conflict of the war and mostly due to unintended  disease and starvation in the Armenian concentration camps, a position the modern Turkish government still maintains. But much of the western world refers to this as the Armenian Genocide. The first of sadly many industrialized genocides of the 20th century.

December 25, 1914

One hundred years ago today World War I had been raging for almost five months. Already hundreds of thousands had been killed and over a million wounded. Even in the cold of winter the war was still very active. But in late December there was a lull in the fighting along a stretch of the Western Front in Belgium. With no major actions taking place here, exhausted Allied (mostly British) and German soldiers faces off in their trenches, in places no more than a hundred yards apart from each other. It was along this portion of the Front that something happened that no one would have expected.

The events that transpired seem so near unbelievable that it could easily be dismissed as a myth.  But letter after letter and journal entry after journal entry tell the same story (or versions of it, as similar events happened in many different places).

It began on Christmas Eve. In the hopes of boosting the morale of their troops France, Great Britain and Germany issued special Christmas packages to all their soldiers on the Front. They contained extra food, tobacco and alcohol, along with things not normally issued. Soldiers opened small packages with candies and desserts, paper and pencils for letters home, and other small trinkets. The care packages worked and spirits were high, and as the sky darkened on that Christmas Eve British observers noted unusual activity in the German lines. Popping up along the parapets the German soldiers mounted small sprigs of evergreen trees adorn with lit candles. Soon after singing could be heard coming from the German trenches. The British soldier’s interests were peaked and listened intently. The German singing continued into the night until the British heard these words as the Germans began a new song: “Stille nacht, heilige nacht.” The words were unfamiliar to most of the British but the melody was not, “Silent night, holy night.” In a purely spontaneous action some of the British soldiers joined in the singing and by the end of the song both the German and British trenches were singing in full force. Ending together with “Jesus der Retter ist Da!”  and “Christ the Savior is here!” Throughout the night the old Christmas hymns were sung as the tunes were known to both sides.

When the sun started to rise on Christmas day the men in both trenches went about their daily chores but other than occasional the distant fire of artillery no shots were heard. Suddenly, a German soldier started shouting: “English! English! Don’t shoot! Don’t shoot!” and two hands went up above the German parapet. Then a man crawled out. He picked up one of the sprigs of pine adorn with lit candles and started walking to the British trench. Soon a few more Germans climbed from the trench and followed suit. As the pack of Germans crossed No-mans-land, the wary British troops manned the firing line. The approaching Germans shouted again “Don’t shoot!”  Suddenly a British soldier set down his rifle and climbed out of the trench, then another and another. They approached the Germans and came face to face with them. They exchanged “Merry Christmas” and “Frohe Weihnachten,” shook hands and the Germans gave their impromptu Christmas trees to the British. More and more men from both sides started to join the growing throng in the middle of the battlefield. Eventually the commanding officers from both sides met and mutual agreed to a truce for Christmas day. For the remainder of the day no shots were fired and Germans and British passed freely across the battlefield to one another trenches. The men gave gifts to each other from their Christmas care packages. Throughout the day the men from both armies shared stories, joked and showed off pictures of family. There are multiple accounts that various locations parts of the battlefield was cleared and the men played soccer. In some locations along the Front it was more solemn. Where fighting was heavy weeks before No-man's-land was littered with bodies preserved by the winter cold and the soldiers from both sides joined to bury their fallen comrades. Other accounts note that Catholic army chaplains held Christmas mass (which was universally done in Latin at that time) for the soldiers, and the Catholics from both nations took communion. As the day waned and the sun set, men shook hands and parted with a final “Merry Christmas” and “Frohe Weihnachten” and returned to their trenches.

What happened the next day varied from place to place. In some places fighting resumed the next day as usual. But in a few places the fraternization continued unabated until New Year’s day. Reports on both sides note the fighting was halfhearted in most place following the Christmas truce with warning shots being fired more often than shooting to harm. Fighting would not truly resume along this part of the Front until one, or both, of the units stationed at the front during Christmas were rotated off the frontline.

As word of what happened trickled back to the high command of the opposing armies the leadership was mortified and many of the units that participated were broken up and reorganized into other units.

Only the British even officially acknowledge that the Christmas truce even occurred, though the scale was played down. The French, Belgian and German governments denied it even happened, even many years after the war. But the evidence is overwhelming that these events did occur, both in official and personal records. Though the majority of the soldiers involved were British and German, many French and Belgians also observed the truce, though often in a less spectacular fashion.  In some places the fraternization was limited to singing together and on Christmas day signs were put up written in the broken language of their enemies which read something like “You no shoot, we no shoot, Merry Christmas.” All told over 100,000 soldiers participated in the cease fire.

There was very little later punishment for the fraternization during Christmas, mostly because to do so would be to official acknowledge that it occurred and it was the strategy of the high command of the nations involved to dismiss the events and claim it was all rumors and hearsay. 

As for why this happened it is hard to say. Just as it is hard to say why things were able to go back to the way they were so quickly. But that Christmas day something reached across national boundaries. It even went beyond a religious commonality. Companies of Indian Hindu soldiers fighting for the British joined in the day’s events, as did the German Jews who at this time made up a notable portion of the German population.  British, French, German, Canadian, Australian, Indian and Belgian soldiers laid down their weapons for a time and were linked by their common humanity. In a world choked by war when everything went dark, on Christmas day a small shaft of light shown though and there was a moment of peace, one hundred years ago today. 

 

December 20, 1914

Authors Note: This post will introduce the use of some simple maps I have drawn to help explain the events described.

One hundred years ago today the First Battle of Champagne began on the Western Front. By this point in the war trench warfare was fully established all along the Western Front. Manned trenches  stretched continuously from the English channel to the Swiss border. Neither the French, British or German armies had planned for, or even trained for, this type of warfare. Though the use of trenches in warfare dated back to ancient times they had never been constructed on this scale. None of the militaries involved, from the lowest ranking foot soldier to the highest ranking general had any practical experience in dealing with this situation. Any solution would have to come from trial and error and the First Battle of Champagne was the first major attempt to break the deadlock brought on by the creation of the trenches.

At the start World War One the conventional wisdom of the day was that wars were won by aggressive action and brilliant maneuvers. War was to be won much like a game of chess, the player who got all of his pieces in the right places would win. It would be the French who would be the first to apply this thinking to trench warfare with disastrous results.

 

The German invasion into France had been stopped and now the French were trying to expel the Germans from French territory and it seemed by mid December that an opportunity had presented itself. The frontline was shaped like massive bulge (Grey redlined line) that meant that the German forces at the tip of the bulge could be attack from two sides (in this case from the north and the south). Additionally, the Germans realized that the goal of capturing Paris and crushing the French in one fell swoop before Russia could react was not going to happen. Despite Germany's successes in the east, it had to relocate thousands of troops from the Western Front to the Eastern Front to keep from being overwhelmed by the Russian army. Following these movements the French now enjoyed a numerical advantage over the Germans, who were relying on their trenches to make up for their reduced numbers. With the Germans outnumbered and in a vulnerable position the textbook action was for the French to attack, and thus the First Battle of Champagne began.

 

The plan was for the British would launch a series of attacks in northern Belgium (Figure A) prior the main French attack. This would distract the Germans and cause them to move reinforcement to the north were they could not help against the French offensive. Then the French would attack to the north (Figure B) and south (Figure C) of the bulge (or in military terms "salient") in German lines in the Champagne region (hence the name of the battle). This would force the German forces (Figure D) to retreat as they would not risk being cut off and surrounded by the French forces. The Germans would fall back until they could "straighten" their front line (Figure E) so they would no longer have a vulnerable salient (or bulge) for the French to attack. This would allow France to retake much of the territory they had lost to the Germans. But the battle did not go even remotely as planned. 

 

The British attack failed to make any progress against the Germans (Figure A) or even serve as much of a distraction. The French main attacks (Figure B) stalled. The French made almost no progress against the German trenches and could not break through the German lines. The French quickly realized that attacking at specific points was yielding little result. The German could funnel all their reinforcement into the trenches at the points of the French attacks and every German artillery piece for miles could be focused on right were the French were trying to break through. So the French began expanding the width of their attacks (Figure C) in the hopes that the Germans would have to spread themselves (and their artillery support) so thin that at some point the French would achieve a breakthrough through the weakened German lines. But all that was accomplished was that more and more French soldiers were drawn into an offensive that was going nowhere, all the while casualties mounted. Occasionally the French were able to push the Germans back and capture a portion of the Germans front line trenches here and there. But the Germans would inevitable counter attack and the French would be forced back to their own trenches, and no progress would be made.

The First Battle of Champagne would last for more three months with the final attacks were not called off until March. Casualty estimates of the battle vary but approximately 90,000 French soldiers were killed, wounded or captured. The Germans loss were only half as many, around 45,000. The battle was a brutal early lesson in the hazards of trench warfare, which strongly favored the defender. The French learn that relatively small numbers of defending soldiers in a trench supported with machine guns and artillery could resist a much larger force. It was also learned that any attack against an enemy trench that was not supported by artillery fire (to make the defenders keep their heads down) was essentially suicidal. Finally the French saw how even if portions of the first,  or even second, line of enemy trenches were captured they were vulnerable to counter attacks from the defenders in support trenches because it was very hard, as the battle raged, to move up the supplies and heavy weapons needed defend the captured trenches.      

The First Battle of Champagne failed to move the frontline as the French had hoped. This failure would set the tone for the Western front, which would become an obsession with finding a way to break through the enemy's trenches, end the stalemate and get the armies moving again.      

 

December 16, 1914

One hundred years ago today the German navy attacked the coastal towns of Scarborough, Hartlepool and Whitby in Northeast England. At 6:35 in the morning a squadron of nine German warships approached the Northeast English coast and separated into three groups to attack these towns. At 8:00 the first German ship opened fire and by 9:30 the German ships withdrew. In that hour and a half over 1000 shells were fired at the three towns, leaving 137 dead and 592 wounded, most of which were civilians.  

The Germans did not intend, or view, this action as a terror attack. Each of these towns had a fortified harbor (and the British defenders did return fire killing eight German sailors and wounding twelve) and the intended targets of the German attack were the harbor and coastal industrial facilities. However, in the process hundreds of nearby civilian homes were destroyed.

Though the harbor and the industrial facilities were deemed legitimate military targets, there was little value in attacking them. The primary target of the raid actually had nothing to do with any of these coastal towns, but rather the British navy. The British navy greatly outnumber the German navy. The German naval command knew that it would likely lose a large scale pitch naval battle, as the British could muster more ships then they could. It was the hope of the German naval command that an attack on British soil would trigger rash response, and the British would quickly send a small force rather than take the time to assemble a larger one. The idea was that raids like this would allow the German navy to deal with the British Navy in a piecemeal fashion.

Ultimately the Germans failed in their goal as the attacks did not draw the British navy into an ambush and the cautious British response forced the Germans to withdraw, but only after extensive damage was done to these towns.  

The attack was to reverberate though the psyche of the British people. The outcry of the attacks on Scarborough, Hartlepool and Whitby became a rallying against Germany and at the same time shook the British people's faith in their navy.

Across the Atlantic these attacks further soured the American popular opinion of Germany which was becoming increase pro British and French.   

December 8, 2014

One hundred years ago today the German East Asia Squadron, under the command of Vice Admiral Maximilian von Spee was destroyed off the Falkland Islands by the British Navy. Under Vice Admiral Maximilian von Spee command the German East Asia Squadron had harassed French and British interest a world away from the battlefields of Europe. From India, to French Polynesia, to the coast of Chile, the German East Asia Squadron had raided shore facility, attacked merchant ships and clashed with the British navy as it worked its way home to Germany. However, off the coast of the Falkland Islands (off the coast of Argentina in the Atlantic ocean) ships from the British Navy caught up with the German East Asia Squadron and defeated it.

The months of prior success had made Vice Admiral Maximilian von Spee something of a mythical figure, making his defeat a shock in Germany. Even today the destruction of the German East Asia Squadron at the Falkland Islands is something of a mystery. The attack, successful or not, would reveal the Squadron's position to the British and the Squadron had secured enough fuel (in the form of coal) to make it all the way back to Germany, so there was no need to raid the base for coal. Also any damage to the British naval presence in Falkland Islands would be quickly repaired. So why Vice Admiral Maximilian von Spee ordered the attack is unknown. Perhaps Vice Admiral Maximilian von Spee had become over confident, or perhaps he underestimated the British presence in the area.There is some evidence that British intelligence had broadcast phony orders to Vice Admiral Maximilian von Spee using stolen German naval codes, tricking him into attacking the Falklands and luring him into a trap. However, this has never been definitively proven as intelligence services rarely take credit for their actions.

Regardless of how the battle started it ended with the sinking of all of the German East Asia Squadron resulting the deaths of almost all of the over 2000 German sailors including Vice Admiral Maximilian von Spee.

December 1, 2014

One hundred years ago today the Battle of Limanowa began. Fought in what is today southeast Poland, the battle was the last major operation to be headed by the Austro-Hungarian Empire on the Eastern Front.

To the north German and Russian forces were clashing as German forces tried to move towards Warsaw. Austria-Hungary hoped to take advantage of this situation by launching an offensive of its own to the south near Krakow. Nominally the Austro-Hungarian attack was a success. The Russian defense mounted near Limanowa was defeated and took heavy losses. However, even with the bulk of the Russian army to the north fighting German forces the Austro-Hungarian attack had been badly mauled. Even though the Russians were forced to retreat. Cold weather, heavy snow and high losses prevented Austro-Hungarians from being able to take advantage of it, and no further offensive action was take.

Though this battle had little impact on the war military it did have a major impact politically. After a chain of failures and catastrophic casualties on the Eastern Front the Austro-Hungarians gave up on independent military action against Russia. For the remainder of the war all Austro-Hungarian major operations on the Eastern Front were put under German command and control. Where it would assume a support role to the larger, more effective German army.