Verdun : Reputations

[Robert Dunlop]

Phil,

As I mentioned before, the build-up of French artillery was down to Petain, not Nivelle. The latter inherited the resources that Petain wrung from Joffre. Similarly, Nivelle inherited the pattern of use of artillery from Petain. No doubt Nivelle added some nuances, but he was not truly innovative. Petain had a strong interest in the use of artillery to protect and preserve infantry. This dated from before the war.

Robert

[phil andrade]

Phil,

As I mentioned before, the build-up of French artillery was down to Petain, not Nivelle. The latter inherited the resources that Petain wrung from Joffre. Similarly, Nivelle inherited the pattern of use of artillery from Petain. No doubt Nivelle added some nuances, but he was not truly innovative. Petain had a strong interest in the use of artillery to protect and preserve infantry. This dated from before the war.

Robert

There must be a perverse streak in me somewhere....for some reason, I feel compelled to rehabilitate Nivelle ! I wonder why. I've never made a serious study of him, and encounter him only as I read general histories of the Great War. Perhaps the notion that he was built up by politicians, who then tore him down, makes him a scapegoat.... the Underdog. Another facet is intriguing : the Anglo-Italian provenance, the strange fervour of the outsider in French affairs : redolent of Bounaparte, or, I daresay, Sarkozy. Is there a phenomenon in French culture of embracing the foreigner and then casting him out ?

Many times when posting on this forum I consult my volumes of Gray and Argyle's CHRONICLE OF THE FIRST WORLD WAR to make sure I've got dates and other things right. At the back of the second volume there's a section titled Who's Who in the First World War with bios of the major personalites. In the paragraphs on Nivelle it reads "...His arty work ( long preparation & creeping barrages) was crucial in halting the German May-July Vedun offensive..." I only discovered that passage last night, and felt rather excited, as if my post had been vindicated !

Thanks to you all for letting me run with this. I've really enjoyed the thread.

As for you, Bob, what a wonderful provenance you have with your father and grandfather ! Gallipoli and Verdun, flamethrowers....you must be unique in respect of your paternal connections with the Great War...please keep well and provide us with those fantastic anecdotes.

I note that Verdun followed almost immediately after the Allies evacuated Gallipoli. It's difficult to imagine two more dissimilar campaigns in the same war....and yet I reflect on how, for the Turks, Gallipoli was their Verdun. Their sacrifice there exceeded that of the French at Verdun : in terms of its political, strategic and cultural reverberations Gallipoli might have had the edge, too.

Phil

[Robert Dunlop]

Phil,

I understand the desire to empathise with the underdog. Nivelle allowed himself to be built up by politicians. In fact, he fed their hopes. He reaped what he sowed, in the political arena.

The comment from Gray and Argyle has to be interpreted with caution. Long preparatory and creeping barrages refers to French offensive artillery activity, not the defensive artillery programmes that severely affected the German offensives. Nivelle did not initiate the defensive artillery approach. Neither did he invent the approach of using long preparatory and creeping barrages, though he may have added refinements. Again, I don't want to denigrate his role. Merely see it in context.

Robert

[bob lembke]

As for you, Bob, what a wonderful provenance you have with your father and grandfather ! Gallipoli and Verdun, flamethrowers....you must be unique in respect of your paternal connections with the Great War...please keep well and provide us with those fantastic anecdotes.

I note that Verdun followed almost immediately after the Allies evacuated Gallipoli. It's difficult to imagine two more dissimilar campaigns in the same war....and yet I reflect on how, for the Turks, Gallipoli was their Verdun. Their sacrifice there exceeded that of the French at Verdun : in terms of its political, strategic and cultural reverberations Gallipoli might have had the edge, too.

Phil

Thanks for your kind words. I am quite aware that I am one of a dwindling number of people with direct links to some of the events of the Great War. I do tend to drag some of this family history into threads and I hope that more people are appreciative than annoyed at my being a bit OT at times. I have now seen some of my anecdotes pop up in print, so I am now recounting some of them without full detail, and am keeping some to myself until I either publish myself, or research them carefully and turn them over to someone in a careful and accurate fashion.

A year ago I got a call from a friend, a military type (oddly enough, he had been both a US naval and army officer) and a published historian (and also a direct decendant of John West Lord Delaware, and thru him Edward III and Henry III, I believe), and he had invited two German gentlemen and reserve officers over for beer and pizza, and thought that I might join them. One of the men turned out to be the great-grand-son of my father's top commander at Verdun, "Little Willi" (or Kronprinz Wilhelm). "Little Willi" and his father were patrons of my father's flame regiment, and I have some evidence that the son initially supported the unit out of his private purse before the army high command had entirely "warmed" to the idea (pardon the pun), and my father told me that the Kronprinz often dropped by in the barracks (both being in Stenay-sur-Meuse), and on at least one occasion brought his father along. My father both told me and wrote in letters of caging packs of cigarettes from the Crown Prince. My father told me a quite hilarous story about a visit of the two Royals, and an incident, and I repeated it to "Prince Fritz" he seemed to find it quite amusing.

Just for the record, "Prince Fritz" was quite friendly and personable, but I have to report that he was more interested in our host's conjac (spelling? I don't drink the stuff) than his beer, and that, to his extreme amusement, is able to produce the most astonishing, deafening heel-click. The night featured an awful ice-storm, I had arrived by cab, the two gentlemen by foot or cab (it was about a mile or more back to Center City), and when we left our host's home we faced an awful icy slope several blocks long, and "Prince Fritz" simply grabbed my wobbly body and half carried me about four blocks down the slope until we reached a level and less treacherous stretch of sidewalk. So I have been portaged by a Hohenzollern!

Bob

[SiegeGunner]

'Cognac', Bob (and 'cadging packs of cigarettes').

[Chris Boonzaier]

"A more petty mind might consider the above a bit of an insult. (But I admit that I have "a bit of a mouth" myself. I recently accused one of our English Pals of suffering from ACBS, or "Acute Colonel Blimp Syndrome". ) You do not know me from a hole in the wall. I do have a bit of pompous pride in thinking that I try hard to be objective and logical, although I certainly suffer from as many predjuces as most people. My study of this engagement is far from over, if I persevere, but I do not expect to get back to it for 2-3 years. But the outlines and general results of the attack are apparent. My statistics on the success are from multiple sources that largely agree between themselves, and with the several Allied secondary sources that mention the attack, like Horne"

Bob, I dont want to aggress you in any way, but its a bit like the movie "Ground Hog Day" with Bill Murray, where he wakes up to re-live the same day everyday...

This topic, the "flame attack at Avocourt" has been discussed on GMIC, here at GWF in this thread, and here on GWF in 2007. Each time you have brought the same info, each time I (and others) have pointed things and sources out to you that you never get around to using.... I state here, before all witnesses... if you have not reposted your version of the attack on the forum, without any modification of text or rethinking of ideas, by this time 2012, I will donate EUR25 to the WWF. (I mean the World wide fund for nature, not world wrestling federation)... I think my EUR25 is safe....... ;-)

[bob lembke]

Dear Chris;

I feel that it is impolite to not respond to direct questions, but I only want to respond briefly to a couple of your points, and drop whatever discussion/squabble we are having. This has been a really fine thread, and has attracted some of the finest and most productive minds on this Forum. Lets not turn these people off, I think that there still is life in this thread.

Bob, I dont want to aggress you in any way, but its a bit like the movie "Ground Hog Day" with Bill Murray, where he wakes up to re-live the same day everyday...

Chris, as you detail below, over the last four years (2007 to 2010) I have brought up the attack at Avocourt three times across two Fora, once on GMIC, once on GWF, and now I have brought it up a second time here, not for itself, but in order to respond to Pals who might seem to still consider Horne's quite dated (and beautifully written) work still the best work in English on Verdun. I feel that the two statements, on succeeding pages, made bt Horne, that I mentioned the clearest example that I know of the deficiencies of Horne's book. Three mentions in four years between two fora is hardly a daily repetition.

This topic, the "flame attack at Avocourt" has been discussed on GMIC, here at GWF in this thread, and here on GWF in 2007. Each time you have brought the same info, each time I (and others) have pointed things and sources out to you that you never get around to using.... I state here, before all witnesses... if you have not reposted your version of the attack on the forum, without any modification of text or rethinking of ideas, by this time 2012, I will donate EUR25 to the WWF. (I mean the World wide fund for nature, not world wrestling federation)... I think my EUR25 is safe....... ;-)

As I have previously said on this thread, I have not actively worked on flame-thrower matters for two or perhaps three years. A couple of years ago it was found that my heart was really in the weeds, that I was in a very bad way (I have been dealing with heart disaese for about 18 years), and I was performing poorly, and I had an epic heart operation described to me by one of the team as three times the length and complexity of a heart transplant, in which they performed five different procedures. My physical recovery was about three months, but my brain was mush for about half a year. (My doctors warned me not to make important business decisions, but as my mind was mush, I forgot the warning and managed to loose over $300,000 in a couple of investments that I should have not made, for reasons not related to the economic downturn, which I have weathered very well, and even profited from.)

Having had a ringing alert as to my mortality, I have dropped the FW work for a while and am finally grinding out my "father/son" book, about my father and grand-father, two very interesting and different guys. This is the book I really have to get out, and only I can do it. My work on flame-throwers and certain other topics is well-organized, about 1500 - 2000 pages already down, loads of files, note-cards, spread-sheets, and the right person could grind out 3-4 books from it if anyone wanted to.

I appreciate the tips that you have given me, and they have been added to my material, but I have not opened up any major research in these areas. When I come across material related to FW, storm battalions, infantry guns, or certain other topics, including material from you, it has been added to my time-lines and material.

However, in the last day I have been poking through the wonderful resource you have led me to, the French war diaries, so far at the divisional, brigade, and regimental level, spending 2-3 hours so far, and again I am seem to be encountering the same sort of avoidance that I feel that I have previously seen in other French materials. My look at this is hardly complete, I have not looked at the diaries of all of the units of the 29th Division, but most of the entries for March 20th don't even seem to mention the attack, although some of the diaries abruptly end on that day, in one case resuming daily entries a month later. But this is really preliminary, please don't try to jump down my throat on that basis. One of the March 20th entries, for a day when the division had half of their units captured in one hour, after being bombarded for seven hours, was about nine words long. But I have to print more of the pages off, and try to translate them better than trying to skim them from a poor printout or from the screen. (Some of the pages are very hard to read; some hand-written beautifully, some written very badly, some typed, but faint, and some pages partially damaged.) But it is apparent that most of the entries seem to barely mention the attack, and certainly with no detail.

I am also reminded of an official US regimental history that I read that in part dealt with a battle that I know very well. The regiment crossed a river, occupied a bridgehead for two days, and then was relieved. The official history described the occupation of the bridgehead in one sentence of normal length. It then described the regiment marching a few miles and pitching a little tent city and occupying it for about 5 days or a week. The little tent city and its occupation was described by a paragraph of about six normal sentences. There was no mention of casualties. But I have read 20 or more books on the engagement (I first thought that my father was in it, but he was fighting in the same general sector about 20 miles to the east), and the US regiment lost half of its strength in those two days, going from 2000 effectives to 1000! And not one word about casualties, and one sentence on the engagement in a book-length regimental history! But most of the officers of the division, the Pennsylvania National Guard division, were or would be local politicians, and upon the return to the US the divisional commander was elected the Governor of Pennsylvania. (I managed to buy a number of books from his library, which was recently sold by his family.)

(A couple of years ago I was reading some Allied war diaries, (British or Canadian, I would have to look for my notes or entries, but I was surprised that the war diaries of the flanking battalions were detailed, but the battalion that took the brunt of a severe flame attack was very sketchy, but then I realized that the battalion attacked had lost many of their officers, and the brief entries were more understandable.)

If I put in more work now on the diaries, and come to some sort of useful conclusions, I might post them, if they are of some interest, or I might just send you via PM or e-mail mention of what I have found. It might even be better to not post it in this thread. I mentioned Avocourt reasponding to several posts about the merits of several secondary sources, and several Pals specifically debating the merits of Horne at the present time. I hope that this interesting thread is not in tatters.

Bob

[Paul Hederer]

Bob wrote:

"Paul, it is interesting that the "OH" exaggerated the amount of ammunition brought up. I remember your figure, I think that it was from the correct Der Weltkrieg 1914 bis 1918 volume. I have not read them for years, but I generally was disappointed with the four Schlachten des Weltkrieges volumes on Verdun. I found them too impressionistic, with too little meat on the bones, so to speak. With their individual authors, I think that they lacked sufficient editing and quality control. If anything, the other series may lean toward over-editing."

The 33 and some trains a day figure for munitions is interesting. Groener gives the same figure in his book, but I'm not sure which came first, the chicken, or the egg. It doesn't really make any sense as they never came close to anything like 900 odd trains a month. It's one of those things people read, take at face value, and use in their own books--I've seen it in various works.

I've seen the original notes calculating the ammunition supplies for the initial phase of the battle from the OH notes in BA-MA. You can actually see that figure handwritten onthe page. I'm not sure who "promised" 33 trains of ammo per day--that's also an odd phrasing.

Paul

[Chris Boonzaier]

First off, apologies to all for taking this off topic, my last post "in the wrong direction"...

"Three mentions in four years between two fora is hardly a daily repetition. "

Bob, its not a question of repetition, if you would just review the facts and sources put in front of you and revise your opinion accordingly. You yourself say you have not researched it, you say Horne is wrong.... and you give your conclusion based on no fact or research.

IMHO it pollutes the Fora, unfounded opinions floating around as fact. I would welcome you to post it 20 times, 100 times... IF you would just review your conclusions between posts and work in the facts presented to you. I do NOT say you have to agree with arguments, but it is important to take account of the facts... especially as in the past, people have taken trouble to dig them out for you.

Unfortunately when a statement goes unchallenged on a forum a later reader accepts it as fact...

Anyway, no hard feelings Bob, I find you a salt of the earth kinda guy, but you need to revise opinions... (if you dont believe me, read through the field punishment thread and all the facts and sources offered up...)

Best

Chris

[bob lembke]

The 33 and some trains a day figure for munitions is interesting. Groener gives the same figure in his book, but I'm not sure which came first, the chicken, or the egg. It doesn't really make any sense as they never came close to anything like 900 odd trains a month. It's one of those things people read, take at face value, and use in their own books--I've seen it in various works.

This is very interesting. The figure was, if my ancient brain still works, was that it was 33 1/3 trains of ammo a day, a figure that I found impressive, a bit odd mathamatically, and that stuck in my grey matter. As you must know, the Germans, post Versailles, which outlawed the German General Staff, used the Reichsarchiv as a sort of warehouse for General Staff officers, rather than have the "best and brightest" disappear into the ocean of civilian life, in case that it became necessary to reconstitute the German General Staff in case of a national emergency. For example, the Schlachten volume on Antwerp, Antwerpen 1914, was written by the First General Staff Officer, or "Ia", of the III. Reservekorps, the unit that attacked Antwerp, and whose Generalkommando directed and coordinated that attack. Arguably, von Tschischwitz was the best qualified person on earth to write that volume, as he in large part planned the attack. (The first Chief of Staff of the Corps, Oberst Meister, was badly wounded during the battle, von Tschischwitz took his post for ten days, untill a replacement arrived from Germany. So I think that I am correct that von Tschischwitz was the best possible person to write that history. (My grand-father was the "Id" of the Generallkommando and reported directly to von Tschischwitz. That is what I am writing up now.)

So generally I have a lot of confidence in the Reichsarchiv histories. (But I refuse to take anyone's "official history" at face value, with good reason, I think.) They generally were written by very qualified men, as above, they had access to the materials, and (admittedly I am a serious Teutophile) I feel that the Germans knew that they had lost the war, were realistic, and generally wanted to atudy the war objectively so as to accurately draw the most useful lessons from its study. (I could write volumes about what to me are the very different natures of the histories written by the different combatants.) I was very struck by the very high ammunition tallies, and I confess that I have written them into a large body of draft text that I have written on some aspects of Verdun, in which I "found" that, depending on caliber, the Germans had 10 or 15 or 20 times as much artillery ammunition on hand on the opening day of the battle than the French had. Thanks for the warning and insight.

I've seen the original notes calculating the ammunition supplies for the initial phase of the battle from the OH notes in BA-MA. You can actually see that figure handwritten onthe page. I'm not sure who "promised" 33 trains of ammo per day--that's also an odd phrasing.

I envy your access to such a range of materials. The German materials are very thin on the ground over here. My wife's library, which has 8 million volumes, probably the biggest/best library between New York and Washington, has five volumes of the Reichsarchiv. Including a few duplicates, I have been forced to buy about 110 volumes. And lots of the material is simply not available over here, especially the archival material.

Paul

[Paul Hederer]

Bob wrote:

"I envy your access to such a range of materials. The German materials are very thin on the ground over here..."

Bob, that is true, though things are pretty thin on the ground here as well. I'll tell you a little secret--historians often travel to the States to research the German army in the war--shocked? The destruction of the archives in '45 has had a tremendous influence on the study of the German's war. I believe I'm beggining to understand the impact of this more and more. There is a fellow writing his thesis on German tactical innovation from 1916-1918. The subject of his study is one Bavarian division. To anyone familiar with the archival situation the choice is obvious. His choice of subject and scope were dictated by what has survived. The late war period is good as well, as a large amount of documents were copied by the Americans and stored in NARA. Unfortunately this leaves a big ole' hole.

Here is a phrase is I often see when ordering materials through German inter-library loan.

"das Buch zu Ihrer Bestellung mit der oben genannten Nummer (insert book title here) ist nur in der Staatsbibliothek in

Berlin verzeichnet, dort aber im Krieg verloren gegangen. "...but was lost in the war." It blows my mind that a library system would continue to list books that were lost over 60 years ago. I haven't quite broken the code on the utility of that!

Paul

[bob lembke]

First off, apologies to all for taking this off topic, my last post "in the wrong direction"...

If this is your "last post in the wrong direction" this will be my last response, with the caveat that I may have to go out to do some work in an hour (it is 5 AM, I have to go out to one of my buildings about 6) and my AOL enviroment is unstable so I may not be able to complete this response, and I will have to send what I have completed or perhaps lose it, and complete my response in a few hours later.

"Three mentions in four years between two fora is hardly a daily repetition. "

Bob, its not a question of repetition, if you would just review the facts and sources put in front of you and revise your opinion accordingly. You yourself say you have not researched it, you say Horne is wrong.... and you give your conclusion based on no fact or research.

My primary conclusion with respect to Horne, the one of particular interest to me, is his statement, in dramatic fashion, that by March 1916 the FW had become a useless suicide weapon, and that the German FW were liable to catch fire and possibly explode in combat, perhaps by being hit by enemy small arms fire. He did not invent this fallacy, as mentioned below, but his repetition of the idea in this well-received book, which has been a classic for over 30 years, and is still held by many to be the best secondary source on Verdun written in the English language. (An important source of the myth is the historically toxic duo of General Foulke (sp? - flying on memory) of the UK Special Brigade, who was also in charge of the British flame warfare effort, and the snake-like US officer Amos Fries {great name for a FW officer! - Some of his private papers are in the Rare Book Room at my wife's library, and, having read them in manuscript form, the man is a bald-faced liar, even in a long memo written to General Pershing.}, who was likewise in charge of the Yank flame warfare effort as well as the US gas warfare effort. These two gentlemen completely screwed up their flame warfare efforts during the war, and then spent almost 20 years fabricating lies false history, and libels about the successful German flame effort, both publishing books. I have a 18 page letter from Major Dr. Reddemann to Amos Fries protesting his falsehoods and libels, the suicide weapon thesis one of the major ones.)

For more logical continuity, I am going to flip the order of your two assertions above. You wrote "you give your conclusion based on no fact or research." This is an astonishing assertion. I have often, in my pedantic style, alluded to the scope of my work on WW I, which has been mostly on the topic of German FW. I started my active work in 2001, and since then I have worked on my study of WW I probably averaging 3-4 hours a day for nine years, so about 10,000 hours of work. I have bought hundreds of books in Europe, mostly by mail, but last year I had a book-buying tour of Austria and Germany. I have worked in the British Library and the National Library in Vienna, also Slovenija (Caparetto = Kobarid), but never in Germany (yet), as the research director at the National Library in Lipzig has given me extraordinary cooperation, photo-copying entire books and mailing before payment. I have collected or borrowed and then read many huncreds of sources, as I said in 10 languages, although only in trace amounts in some. Most research is in German or French, some English, and have read about 500 pages in Italian, and have translated half of a book in Italian related to FW into English. My time-lines, mostly single-spaced brief mentions of incidents, total about 1000 single-spaced pages, probably covering about 8000 or more incidents. I have written hundreds and hundreds of pages of draft text. Probably 65-70% of this work was on Flammenwerfer.

In all of that research and work (I have a spread-sheet with detailed information on most of Reddemann's 653 FW attacks in WW I, but I have not yet collated the 8000 entries in my FW time-line into the spread-sheet), I have only come across 3-4 examples of a German FW device catching fire in combat, and while just reading my time-line I found that one of those incidents was false, a Pionier Unteroffizier was carrying a Brandrohr or fire tube when he was shot and burned another soldier with it. I have the complete and I believe uniqely accurate death roll of the flame regiment, and a less accurate death roll for Storm Battalion Rohr, and I was not able to verify that a single man died in these incidents. You gave me details of a burning/exploding FW incident, and I entered it into my time-line, and I checked it against my death rolls, and was not able to link it to a FW trooper death.

"NO FACT OR RESEARCH" ??????

My "conclusion" on the Avocourt attack is no conclusion, but it clearly was a bery successful attack, and clearly was a very large FW attack. Could it have been a successful infantry attack, but a failed FW attack? Remotely possible. I will spend a few more hours examining the French war diary entries that you kindly pointed me to. But so far the diary entries seem to be largely ignoring the attack. When I complete looking at it I may open a thread in "Western Front".

I have to run to my appointment, I will be late.

IMHO it pollutes the Fora, unfounded opinions floating around as fact. I would welcome you to post it 20 times, 100 times... IF you would just review your conclusions between posts and work in the facts presented to you. I do NOT say you have to agree with arguments, but it is important to take account of the facts... especially as in the past, people have taken trouble to dig them out for you.

Unfortunately when a statement goes unchallenged on a forum a later reader accepts it as fact...

Anyway, no hard feelings Bob, I find you a salt of the earth kinda guy, but you need to revise opinions... (if you dont believe me, read through the field punishment thread and all the facts and sources offered up...)

Best

Chris

[phil andrade]

Bob,

Clearly the flamethrower did not make its debut at Verdun. There is almost a rivalry between the Entente as to where and when the first attack with these infernal weapons was made, and as to whom were the first to suffer its onslaught. The British claim it was their misfortune to be the first victims at Hooge in the summer of 1915 : when I visited that most sinister of all battlefields, the Butte de Vaucquois, there was a memorial to French soldiers who were burnt by flamethrowers, again in the summer of 1915, and who were supposedly the first to endure this ordeal. Now, please tell me, where and when was the FW first used in combat ? Any info as to how many victims of flame ? I can think of nothing more nightmarish on the battlefield...if anything could induce soldiers to surrender without a fight, it would be the prospect of facing attack by flame. Images of Japanese living torches at Iwo Jima and Okinawa come to mind. As to Horne's book, it seems from what you say that his descriptions are hyperbole, very much in the fashion of journalistic history. I'm pleased, though, that you acknowledge the power of his writing - whatever the defects of his account, he made a first class contribution to the historiography of the Great War.

Phil

[bob lembke]

Bob,

Clearly the flamethrower did not make its debut at Verdun. There is almost a rivalry between the Entente as to where and when the first attack with these infernal weapons was made, and as to whom were the first to suffer its onslaught. The British claim it was their misfortune to be the first victims at Hooge in the summer of 1915 : when I visited that most sinister of all battlefields, the Butte de Vaucquois, there was a memorial to French soldiers who were burnt by flamethrowers, again in the summer of 1915, and who were supposedly the first to endure this ordeal. Now, please tell me, where and when was the FW first used in combat ?

Going into WW I, the German Army had issued an early model of FW to some Pionier formations, siege trains, I think (the first anticipated use was offensive and defensive fortress warfare), and these units conducted a few FW attacks in the opening months of the war, but I don't have a good grasp of these attacks. In December 1914 the Army HQ called in Hauptman Dr. Reddemann, one of the two major early workers on the development of the modern FW, and asked him to form an experimental FW unit, first 50 men, first called Abteilung Reddemann. Also about this time the army began recalling FW from the scattered Pionier units which had them, turning them over to Reddemann. Early in the war one Pionier unit that had them on the Russian front attempted a bizarre attack in which they carried out an early poison gas attack on the Russians, spraying liquid gas out of FW without attempting to ignite it. The attack was successful. I have the unit history of the Pionier unit but have not yet written up this attack.

Reddemann began to organize and equip his unit, and at first all of his FW troopers were firemen. (Reddemann was the director of a major fire department, and had written the book on scientific fire-fighting, which was in print for almost 40 years. He carried out his first attack at Malancourt, near Verdun, on February 26, 1915. (Some French sources incorrectly date this attack to 2/27/15.) The attack was enormously successful, and Reddemann was ordered to organize a FW battalion. In this attack only two FW were pressure-tight metal and pressured with gas, the other ten were mostly made of wood and were hand-pumped!

There were several German FW attacks at Butte de Vauquois, the first, I believe, on March 23, 1915. I do not yet have a good grasp of these attacks, but I have collected some material, and some more leads. I also believe that the French also attemped at least one FW attack there, and from memory I think that the flame blew back in their faces. You are right, I gather the fighting there was nasty and creepy. After Vauquois I know of about five single attacks by Reddemann's unit, and a series of attacks at the Priesterwald over a period of five days by two companies of Reddemann's unit.

Then came the first attack by the Germans against the British, at Hooge, on July 30, 1915. (As my narrative suggests, there already had been perhaps 20 flame attacks against the French.) I also have seen this attack described as the "first flame-thrower attack". Even though the British had never faced the FW, their all-wise command had already decided that it was a stupid weapon, and that one merely had to bend over to render one immune to the stream of fire and burning oil, which would then harmlessly pass over one's head. Seemingly the British command was furious that their men had lost a section of front to a flame attack at 3 AM, and my reading of what followed was an order to conduct a suicidal attack over open ground into German wire and MGs to attempt to take back the lost ground, the British troops losing many more men in this hopeless attack than were lost in the initial flame attack. (My prejudices are probably apparent here; I would like to see an objective analysis of this counter-attack by an expert British Pal. Here you can see the germs of the "FW as hopeless weapon" party line perpetuated by Horne, and trumpeted by Foulkes and Fries.)

Then came quite a few more FW attacks in the second half of 1915, including being used, perhaps also by the French, in very bitter fighting on the summit of a mountain-top called HWK at Christmas-time 1915. So by the time that Verdun started, there might have been 60 German FW attacks. (I could rummage about and come up with an exact or almost exact figure.) At Verdun in 1916 Reddemann's unit conducted about 150 FW attacks. My father was wounded in two of them.

Any info as to how many victims of flame ?

I have been working for several years on a spread-sheet compiling the statistics of every German FW attack in which I could find reliable statistics on the number of POWs taken in the flame attack. (I spent most of my working life as an analyst and econometric model builder, and have some credentials as an economist, so analysis is something I resort to readily.) The results are so spectacular that I rarely release them, lest Flammenwerfer-sceptics leapt out of the underbrush and bite me in the butt. I also compile, for those attacks, the booty in cannon, MGs, mortars, and territory captured. I did recently release interim figures during a talk I gave at a regional meeting of the WFA at Baltimore, MD. But you rarely have a reliable "body-count", so I have not attempted to collect such statistics. My father told me that they burned up relatively few Frenchies, as they wisely usually ran off when the FW were turned on.

I can think of nothing more nightmarish on the battlefield...if anything could induce soldiers to surrender without a fight, it would be the prospect of facing attack by flame.

A number of Reddemann's FW attacks involved 60 or 90 or, in the biggest, 154 flame-throwers. (As to the latter attack, in Russia, another student of FW puts the number of FW in that attack much higher, over 200, I think, which I think impossible. My father mentioned that attack in a letter from Verdun to his father, calling it a "great victory".) Sometimes the local defense just collapsed. It is not surprising. At the Avocourt attack that Chris has criticised me about, I admit that I have not completed studying it, but I suspect that there was a correlation between a tired French brigade receiving a fierce seven hour bombardment and then being hit with an assault by 63 FW and the brigade then collapsing and being captured almost intact in one hour. I have studied the battle for years, and I do not know of another example of half of a German or French division being virtually inhaled in practically minutes, with three regimental and brigade HQs being captured intact.

Images of Japanese living torches at Iwo Jima and Okinawa come to mind. As to Horne's book, it seems from what you say that his descriptions are hyperbole, very much in the fashion of journalistic history.

Yes, but there was a long history of the British command proclaming the weapon ineffective, and then Brigadier Foulkes and General Fries (still love that name!) spending 15-20 years spreading mis-information about the German FW effort after the war. Horne was just repeating an oft-told tale. I am thinking of hunting up the autograph manuscript letter of Horne's that I possess and refresh my memory of what he said about FW in that letter, as I have not looked at it in 10-15 years.)

I'm pleased, though, that you acknowledge the power of his writing - whatever the defects of his account, he made a first class contribution to the historiography of the Great War.

It was a landmark book, and everyone agrees that the writing was supurb. But scholarship has passed it by.

Phil

Bob

[phil andrade]

Thank you, Bob, for taking the time and the trouble to post that comprehensive, informative and thoughtful response to my questions. Much appreciated.

Phil

[phil andrade]

What's the moral of the story of Nivelle and his record at Verdun ?

Perhaps it serves to illustrate the folly of "crowing too soon".

" We have the formula" he said : he failed to mention that the Germans had theirs, too.

Both sides had their "learning curve", didn't they ?

Phil

[Christina Holstein]

I'm coming in late to this but here's my view.

Nivelle can't be compared with Petain in any way. Petain brought organisation, logistics and a plan to Verdun. He calmed it down, stopped the chaos, stabilized the line and laid the foundations of later operations. He was, as we know, moved by Joffre who wanted an operation launched that would - hopefully - catch headlines by successfully retaking Ft. Douaumont. Petain was not interested in catching headlines and with the Somme operation coming up, he knew that Joffre wouldn't release more resources. Without resources, Petain wouldn't do it. So he was moved and Nivelle and Mangin were brought in. Mangin knew quite well that the operation to retake Ft. Douaumont in May 1916 would not be a success but he could do nothing but go on with it.

It is possible to argue that Nivelle wasn't even good on the defensive. After all, the Germans managed to push the French back during May and June and they only hung on by a thread on 23 June, when there was considerable panic in Nivelle's HQ. That he was successful during the summer in retaking Fleury can be put down to the fact that the Germans were ordered on the defensive. Nothing else was recaptured by the French that summer. That Nivelle was successful in October owes more to the fact that the Germans were extremely weak by then than to anything else. In fact, while that operation was successful in retaking Ft Douaumont, it failed to retaking Ft Vaux and Nivelle didn't order them to try again. They just waited until the Germans withdrew from the fort a week later. Why Nivelle should have thought that he had the formula when his victory was against such weakened forces, I don't know.

Petain's real greatness comes out in his handling of the mutinies. There is no way that Nivelle could have calmed those down. In fact, I can't think of another general that could have done it either.

It is a great pity that there is no work being done on the French generals. Some in-depth biographies would be very useful to assessing who was 'good' and who wasn't.

As regards the Avocourt battle in March 1916, Petain considered the troops in Avocourt wood to be of doubtful value and was not surprised at what happened there. I have a quotation somewhere from him about undesirable elements that were likely to fall at the first push but I can't find it at the moment.

On Horne's book, I cannot let Bob get away with saying that 'scholarship has passed it by'. That may be your personal view, Bob, but I don't agree at all. That Horne may have got something wrong on flamethrowers is irrelevant to the quality of the book as a whole. After all, how much of it do flamethrowers take up? Far less than 1%. I think Horne is wrong on the story of Sgt. Kunze but I know where he got the story from and I can see why he accepted it. Otherwise, the book is accurate to 99.9%. Horne demonstrates a really great overall grasp of the events, the characters and the history. What's more he actually understands the battle; he's got inside it. And in addition he writes well. I would be surprised if his book was ever surpassed by anyone. Others may one day write another history of the whole battle - and I have myself been asked to do so several times - but I don't believe it will ever be surpassed.

Christina

[Halder]

Otherwise, the book is accurate to 99.9%. Horne demonstrates a really great overall grasp of the events, the characters and the history. What's more he actually understands the battle; he's got inside it. And in addition he writes well. I would be surprised if his book was ever surpassed by anyone. Others may one day write another history of the whole battle - and I have myself been asked to do so several times - but I don't believe it will ever be surpassed.

... which is a bit of an indictment of half a century of publishing and historiography. Given the amount of source material, published and unpublished, which has appeared since Horne's book, it's surprising no-one has tackled Verdun in a Price of Glory style, updated with the new material.

I remember Midway was a nolite tangere with the same old stories repeated (thanks in part to Fuchida's rather disingenuous post-war account) until Shattered Sword came along a few years ago and re-wrote the course of the battle. I'm not saying the same would occur with Verdun, but until you start delving, you never know...

The problem I have with Horne is that his books have become an elephant in the room. Publishers keep reprinting Price of Glory and To Lose A Battle and other mainstream publishers are reluctant to tackle the same subjects. It's a bit like Beevor - try getting a mainstream publisher to consider a Stalingrad or Berlin book and they'll laugh (a friend tried...). Horne's is also prone to occasional rather sweeping generalisations - his dismissal of Falkenhayn's early career as being a mystery; he was very critical of the Wehrmacht in 1940 - "a more fragile instrument, less consistently solid throughout than the Kaiser's Army of 1914". Such a remark really doesn't stand up to scrutiny when you read about German units panicking in some of the battles along the Franco-German frontier in 1914, or study some of the accounts from German infantry at, say, Stonne in 1940. Does it fundamentally alter the story, no. But it is worth challenging.

Don't get me wrong, I love both books, have read them three or four times apiece each, and having ploughed through much of the original German source material for the 1940 campaign, can't fault Horne's account, but they can't be the last word. Whether they can be bettered rests in our hands.

[phil andrade]

Poor Nivelle ! My attempts to encourage a more sympathetic appreciation of his reputation, based on what I imagined was an unsung but highly competent defensive battle in the summer of 1916, have been given the thumbs down....

Allow me to reiterate the important point that the words "Ils ne passeront pas!" have been erroneously attributed to Petain, thereby depriving Nivelle of credit for one of history's most resonant battlefield rallying cries. I suppose that in itself justified my suspicion that Nivelle might have been given a bit of a rough ride by historians. With that said, I hope that I recognise a dead horse when I see it.

I'm intrigued, Christina, by your assertion that Mangin knew the counter attack at Douamont in May would not succeed.

Did he himself admit that ? If so, when ? History has many examples of generals who like to postulate after the event that they knew a certain attack that they were ordered to carry out was bound to fail. I suppose Longstreet's post war writing about Lee's final atttack at Gettysburg is the best illustration of this.

I wonder if Nivelle himself wrote much about his role at Verdun. He died in 1924. Did Mangin outlive him ? Longstreet waited until Lee was dead before he unleashed his critique of his - Lee's - generalship at Gettysburg; many Southerners never forgave him. But while Lee was - and still is - revered, Nivelle is reviled by posterity. Petain, of course, is another matter....

Phil

[Paul Hederer]

...I was trying to avoid this, but since it came up again I'll post something.

In reference to Horne and his book on Verdun...

It's great narrative history, well written, gripping, and has kept Verdun in the consciousness of the public for about 50 years--for that I applaude the author and the work.

I will agree with Christina about half-way. I think Horne understood Verdun as a human event, but as a military, or historical event I think he's not on such firm ground. He makes assertions in his book that are not backed up with facts. He uses eye-witnesses that give very human accounts of events they saw, flawed accounts that the author does not caveat or correct. I am not by any means alone in this opinion. "Brilliant, but deeply flawed," was a quote I saw the other day.

A lot of what he writes about Falkenhayn is an echo of what was in German print after the war. He presents him as weak, and manipulative. I especially remember his describing Falkenhayn's portrait, the weak mouth, "the weakness comfirmed by the dimpled chin." I wonder what Horne would make of Stephen Hawking, since it seems we can judge a book by its cover. Horne is parroting the Reicharchiv writers in this respect, who even had Falkenhayn's handwriting analyzed. The Reicharchiv writers did not have a good read on the man (this is evident by their research into him)--they did everything but call in a medium and have a seance!

Halder his the nail on the head when he wrote about the elephant in the room...what whole generations know about Verdun comes from Horne, and, as I wrote, he has a good grasp of the battle from the human aspect, the experience of the soldier, but as history of a military event there is a lot more to be written, and (dare I say the emporer has no clothes?) corrected.

As a disclaimer I have to mention that I'm writing my PhD thesis on Verdun. In fact I'm addressing the issue of "what's been written before," right now. It's an interesting subject--I'll put it this way--a lot books have been published about Verdun, but not a lot has been written about Verdun.

Sorry, I have to cut this short--must head to work.

Paul

[phil andrade]

Paul and Christina have both made us very aware that Verdun is a historiographical challenge.

There are two distinct attributes of Horne's book that endear it to me : it hit the market in the sixties, and made its impact at a time when we were commemorating the fiftieth anniveraries of so many episodes from 1914-18, and its compelling style and gripping narrative gave it the edge over so many other lacklustre accounts. For me, entering my teenage years, the effect was to inspire a consuming interest in the Great War. In purely subjective, emotive terms, this is the book as far as I'm concerned. On another level it also deserves plaudits : it awakened an awareness of the monstrous suffering endured by the French in the Great War, and helped to melt down that trenchant "anglocentricity" that still permeates the public consciousness of the Great War in this nation.

Phil

[Christina Holstein]

Phil,

You've said it in one. What you say about Horne is exactly why I think his book won't ever be surpassed.

Paul,

I am looking forward to reading your work when it is published and I will be interested to see what 'flaws' you identify.

And Phil again - I'll come back on the Mangin story.

Christina

[Christina Holstein]

Hello again Phil,

I've been looking up my Mangin stuff for my recollection of his views on the attempt to retake Fort Douaumont in May 1916.

His war letters to his wife were published under the title of Lettres de Guerre. In a number of those, before the Douaumont operation, he laments that he is not being given the resources he needs to be successful. Then, on 29 May 1916, he wrote 'The success was not complete because the fort was not sufficiently demolished (I had not been given all the ammunition I needed) [my translation].

He had originally asked for four divisions This was refused outright by GQG. He then asked for two divisions, with a third in reserve and this was also refused. Mangin was annoyed and in a scene described by one of his staff officers and quoted in Pericard's book, retorted that quite apart from fighting soldiers he already needed a division of labourers to prepare the jump-off positions. The scene is described by a staff officer present at the time and appears in Pericard's book.

In the only biography of Mangin that I have ever seen, his biographer, describing the Mangin's various difficulties with the divisions to the left and right over which he had no control, writes "The base of departure thus became too narrow and Mangin expressed the most formal reservations as to the possibility of keeping the fort after occupying it' [my translation].

I'll send you the original French if you would like it but I didn't think I'd burden the forum with long French quotes.

Christina

[phil andrade]

Thank you, Christina. Verdun grips my imagination more and more, and the personality of Mangin especially so. He was a caricature of martial ferocity, but in private he was, apparently, a very charming man. This afternoon I visited the RUSI library, and took down Petain's history of the battle for a quick glance through it. The measured assessments, the rather understated and controlled analysis of the way he contained the German onslaught. No hyperbole whatsoever, and I detected an implicit disdain for Nivelle's showy claim that by July the Germans had suffered half a million casualties in the battle. " What are we to make of the Commander of the 2nd Army's claim that the Germans had already lost half a million men?" Petain asks in the opening lines of one of his final chapters, depicting the events of mid July. He quickly adviises us that, in fact, the French loss was slightly higher than that of the enemy, exceeding that of the Germans by about ten per cent after the first two months of fighting. In an indefinable way, I felt Petain's charisma coming from those pages.

Phil

[Christina Holstein]

If you want an ego - and I don't mean that in a critical way - read Mangin's Lettres de Guerre. He had the highest opinion of himself and his abilities. His letters really gallop along. He comes over as an extraordinarily powerful personality.

I have come to appreciate Pétain's very precise history of the Battle of Verdun more as I have got to know more about the battle itself. Like the authors of the French Official History, he says a lot in few words.

Christina