sunreader_attrition

“War of Attrition: Fighting the First World War,” by William Philpott. New York: Overlook Press, 2014. 400 Pages, $32.50.

When World War I began, it was thought it would be a short war. It lasted more than four years and resulted in 9,408,615 killed and more than 21 million wounded. Its beginning was unintended, the result of a series of miscalculations brought on by alliances that had been created to prevent such a war. Ironically, it was a war that everyone had been prepared to fight, but with weapons that none of the armies had used before. In effect, technology had outrun doctrine, and the result was stalemate and by necessity a war of attrition.

When the war started Aug. 1, 1914, all the major powers put their pre-war plans into motion. By early September, they had failed and the generals began to improvise large-scale maneuvers to outflank their enemies – the so-called “Race to the Sea” in the West, the German drive on Warsaw and the Russian attack on the Austrians in Galicia. All failed with considerable losses; in one week, the French army lost 10 percent of its force.

By early 1915, a line of trenches had been constructed from the North Sea to the Swiss Alps, French and German reserves had been fully mobilized and large-scale attacks were renewed – the French attacking in the Champagne and the Germans’ successful Gorlice-Tarnau offensive that gave them control of most of Russian Poland and stabilized the Austrian front. The campaigns were not decisive; the German lines held in the west and the Russians traded space and numbers and retreated. Neither side had enough reserves or shells to stage a breakthrough.

At that time, military leaders on both sides decided that the only way to win wars was to continue to attack and weaken their enemy to the point that his forces would collapse. It had become a war of attrition, in which the odds were stacked against the Germans. The allies had greater numbers of men and far greater resources when the support of the United States was factored in.

In February 1916, the Germans launched an attack on Verdun. Its goal was not to take Verdun, but rather “bleed the French army white” defending it. It succeeded. During the course of the battle that lasted 16 months, 90 percent of the French army was rotated through the battle, suffering more than a million casualties. At the same time, the Germans sustained losses that were increasingly difficult to replace.

To relieve pressure on the French at Verdun, the British launched an attack on the Somme on July 1 and lost 35,000 men the first hour and 60,000 men for the day. By the end of the battle, they had suffered 482,000 casualties. The German losses were higher than at Verdun. More importantly, the British had fired more than 5 million shells into the battlefield. Germany was losing the battle for production. Over the next few months, 2 million German soldiers were released from military service to work in war industries.

In 1917, French causalities and conditions on the front lines reached a point that the French army almost collapsed. After a failed attack, a wide-spread mutiny was barely contained and for the next year, the new commander, Gen. Henri Petain, limited operations to small-scale, carefully planned attacks trying to rebuild its capability. The British were forced to take over and launched several small-scale “Bite and Hold” attacks and one ill-fated major offensive that resulted in huge losses. At the same time, the Germans successfully ended the war with Russia, conquered Romania and almost destroyed the Italian army at Caporetto. The German attempt to starve England with unlimited submarine warfare failed, and the United States entered the war April 1, 1917. The Germans had to win before the U.S. army was trained and deployed in France.

In 1918, the Germans launched five major offensives between March and July. Although successful locally, they were not decisive and when Field Marshal Foch launched a counter-offensive in August, the German army collapsed. The strategy of attrition worked. The United States played a major role, defeating the Germans in the battle of St. Mihiel and the Meuse-Argonne.

The cost of the strategy of attrition was higher. France suffered the most with 78 percent of those mobilized being causalities, Austria-Hungary lost 77 percent; Russia, 59 percent; Germany 58 percent; Turkey, 48 percent; and America, 8 percent. “In all 71.5 million men were mobilized, of which 53 percent became causalities of some kind” (p 342).

“War of Attrition” is one of the best books written about World War I in the last 10 years. Carefully researched and well-written – it remains interesting in spite of the large amount of statistics quoted – the book presents an alternative view of the mind-sets of the generals on both sides and a better understanding of the way the war was fought. The military commanders were not inept butchers; they understood that, given the number of soldiers available to both sides and the massive amounts of munitions available, the only way to win the war was to gradually and continually grind the enemy down. It became a war of statistics – killing enough of the enemy to fatally weaken him. Ironically, the Germans were better – killing almost two Frenchmen for every German lost and more than two Brits and 10 Russians. In the end, numbers counted the most.

— Reviewed by J.W. Thacker, Department of History, Western Kentucky University.