Defence & Security Series
Author: John Karkazis
Issue D2, April 2004
THE BRITISH GEO-POLITICAL GAME DURING WWI
AND THE CONTROVERSY OVER
THE BATTLE OF SOMME
(extracts)
………..
CONTENTS
THE WAR IN 1914
THE WAR IN 1915
THE WAR IN 1916
THE WAR IN 1917
THE WAR IN 1914
The Germans were well-prepared for a two-front war, against France and Russia.
Their highly efficient rail network offered them the option of a rapid transfer of troops
from one front to the other.
With the start of war Germans made two grave mistakes. The first mistake, to attack
France via Belgium, was a strategic one and provoked the immediate British reaction.
The violation of Belgium’s integrity was a foolish decision on the part of Wilhelm II
who gambled against the possibility of British decisiveness to defend their vital
interests in the Belgian barrier. This foolish decision was compatible with the lack of
diplomatic instinct and the adventurous personality of the German Emperor who
looked down on the lessons taught by Bismarck’s diplomatic history. The second
mistake was a tactical one. In the most critical moment of the German offensive in
France (three weeks after the start of the war) Germany withdrew considerable forces
from the western front and transferred them to the eastern front to fight against two
Russian armies which were advancing into East Prussia. This resulted in the loss of
momentum in the German offensive. The French exploited this favorable situation
and with the support of a small British force attacked Germans and won, in
September, the critical Battle of Marne forcing them to retreat. From thereon the war
in the western front was reduced to a war of trenches and positions. A similar mistake
was made a quarter of a century later by Hitler who decided, in the most critical
moment of the Battle of Britain, to withdraw considerable air forces from the primal
target of the German offensive against Britain’s key air force installations, and to
divert them to attacks against London which had no strategic impact beyond the
satisfaction of the lower instincts of the German public.
In the eastern front the German armies under general Lundendorff were victorious:
they won the battles of Tannenberg and the Masurian Lakes and captured more than
200.000 Russians (see appendix 5).
THE WAR IN 1915
During the second year of the war the German and the Austro-Hungarian armies
pushed forward with the offensive against Russia, capturing large territories of Russia
and inflicting enormous casualties on the Russian army which amounted to 2 millions
of soldiers killed, wounded or captured.
During this year the Allied powers opened a new war front in the Balkans by
dispatching to the Dardanelles huge land and naval forces with the land ones
amounting to almost half a million soldiers mainly of colonial origin. The most
obvious aim of this offensive was to capture Constantinople and the straits and open
up communications with Russia at a moment it was facing enormous pressures.
Another, heretic, explanation of this offensive was to capture and safeguard
Constantinople before the Russian whose army was victoriously advancing in the
Caucausus region. The Dardanelles offensive turned into a disastrous fiasco during
which 150.000 allied troops were lost.
In the western front the situation was settled down to a devastating (for France and
Germany) stalemate.
During this year the British imposed a naval blockade of Central Powers territories
abolishing the existing international agreements which distinguished contraband
against non-contraband trade. The Germans counter-reacted by imposing their own
blockade of British Isles which proved to be ineffective.
During 1915 a series of secret treaties were signed by the Allied powers. These
treaties regarded colonial issues and the division of the Ottoman Empire into zones of
influence according to the Chinese paradigm of late 19th century. To openly deal with
these issues was a very dangerous matter especially in view of the American
sensitivities on these issues which, in 1918, with Wilson’s 14 points Doctrine, were
upgraded to almost a ‘red line’, imposing a strategic threat on Britain’s colonial
system and policies. As a consequence, the British and French were forced to impose
the secret character of these treaties. With the first secret treaty (Treaty of London in
1915) the Allied powers succeeded in drawing Italy to their side by offering it
colonial territories in Africa of secondary strategic importance. By a second treaty in
1915, the Allied powers agreed (or promised) to offer Tsar Constantinople and the
Dardanelles. Since this issue was of paramount importance for them, the British
worked on a treaty too intricate and obscure to be implemented at the end in favor of
Russia. On the other hand the British were expecting that, in a prolonged war, the
tsarist regime will collapse and with it the validity of such an agreement. Furthermore,
there exist certain facts, related to the slipping of the German warships Goeben and
Breaslau into the safety of Dardanelles, after having crossed the Mediterranean Sea
west to east undetected (?) by the British naval forces, which facts support the
argument (with almost evidential reasoning) that the British exploited this issue in
order to achieve the following:
(a) either weaken Russia’s naval forces in the Black Sea (actually these warships
were employed by the Germans under Turkish flag against the tsarist fleet
there) or
(b) force Turkey into the arms of Germany giving thus Britain the opportunity to
treat Ottomans as an enemy of the Allied powers and consequently offer the
British the opportunity to implement easier the division of the Ottoman
Empire, or
(c) both the above options
THE WAR IN 1916
Since early 1916 Germany and its allies had started to feel the effects of the British
naval blockade. Britain repeated with success the paradigm of economic war of early
19th century, that time against Napoleonic France this time against Central Powers.
The British blockade was imposed on its enemies despite the pressures from US
which insisted that its “freedom of the seas” dogma should be respected. This
situation created serious frictions between US and Britain that were added to the
discomfort felt by the Americans and especially by their President as a result of
Britain’s imperialistic policies and secret treaties.
At the beginning of 1916 the general trend of events was favorable for the British
except for two issues that will be analyzed later: its new and old enemies and
adversaries in Europe were destroying each other with great zeal, the colonial system
of Germany was ready to collapse and the Ottoman Empire was at the final stage of
its disintegration with nobody else being able to fill the vacuum except the British. All
were going well for Britain except for two issues: the first, and most crucial one, was
the anti-colonial and “open-sea” policies of President Wilson (the greatest ever threat
against British Empire) and the second was the anxiously expected showing of the full
strength of Germany’s naval power in the Atlantic Ocean, since in the battle of
Helgoland, on the part of Germany, only coastal warships took place (and they were
easily defeated by the British). The great opportunity for the Emperor Wilhelm II, to
prove that his country’s tremendous efforts to built the highly expensive High Seas
Fleet had satisfied the ‘value-for-money’ principle and also to show to his people that
Germany could retain some (minor) hopes to win the war, came in May 1916. During
this month the great and most decisive battle of World War I, the naval battle of
Jutland, took place between the British Grand Fleet the German High Seas Fleet.
After an almost indecisive outcome (big losses were suffered by both sides) the
Germans withdrew their naval forces behind their minefields protective barrier,
proving how well they knew to built and operate warships but at the same time how
much unable they were to translate into geo-strategic power the power of their fleet.
At the end of May 1916 the strategic phase of the war was over for the British. From
thereon they possessed enough naval power and time but above all enough confidence
to face the main strategic threat imposed by President Wilson. On the other hand, if
US would have the opportunity to join the war in Europe then their demanding
President would be offered the opportunity to impose more effectively his anticolonial dogma on the European colonial powers. The events following the decisive
battle of Jutland exposed with enough clarity British plans.
First of all, the summer of 1916 marked the beginning of one of the most crucial (both
for American and British interests) presidential election campaigns in the American
history, a campaign of the highest importance for the American public which was still
against the involvement of US in the war in Europe despite the ‘Lusitania Incident’
(the sinking, in 1915, of a British liner with military cargo onboard by a German
submarine during which 118 Americans were lost). The Americans did not want to
suffer sacrifices by participating in a horrific war thousands of miles away and in
support of powers which were heavily criticized by their President for their
imperialistic policies. It was a period during which the lights of publicity had been
heavily thrown upon the European theaters of war. In view of the above attitudes of
the American public, it was more than obvious that the projection of the horrific
trench warfare realities of the western front to the American public will make it to
think twice before empowering the government to send the American youth to the
European slaughterhouse. On the other hand, the prevailing perception was that the
British were working hard to draw US into the war.
In the middle of this crucial, for Britain’s vital interests, presidential elections
campaign, in July 1916, the British decided to be engaged in an all out offensive
against the Germans, the famous Battle of Somme, in the first day of which the
British generals sent to death 60.000 soldiers employing highly controversial and
heavily criticized battle tactics. At a first glance, one may assume that the
particularly cautious and studious British diplomacy and its equally cautious
and not at all light-headed military apparatus had made their first strategic
mistake in the war with the unfortunate handling of this battle, an assumption
not at all compatible with British historical evidence and consequently extremely
surprising.
The assumption of a British strategic mistake suffers an almost lethal strike by
the following totally amazing events that took place shortly after the
controversial battle.
At the end of September 1916, during the most critical moments of the campaign
the British dispatched Charles Urban, the official photographer of the British
government, to US to arrange for a private exhibition of a motion picture of the
Battle of Somme. As the New York Times reported on this film in September 30,
1916 (see appendix 1) “…every detail of the forward movement…from artillery
preparation to the bringing back of wounded and prisoners … is recorded in
these films…the pictures of the returning wounded and the winrows of dead are
for the strong only”.
The above events speak of themselves. The privacy of the exhibition was most
probably arranged as a cover up of the real intentions of the British since
nobody could rely on the self-censorship of the audience of these films (probably
including among them journalists and other influential personalities) on such an
issue and at such a moment.
Conclusively, there exists plenty of evidence to support the addition of a new
hypothesis in the efforts to explain the highly controversial events of that period, the
hypothesis of staging or exploiting the horrific events of the battle of Somme in order
to create a repulsive mood in the American public just before the Autumn 1916
presidential elections (the theory of provocation of American isolationism).
THE WAR IN 1917
In early 1917 the effects of British naval blockade on Central Powers and especially
on Germany were intensified. Lundendorff, to alleviate the effects of British
economic war on Germany, decided to gamble with the American participation in the
war and ordered the German submarines (known as U-boats) to start massive and
indiscriminate attacks on convoys transporting supplies from US to Britain. The
effectiveness of German submarine warfare soon started to decrease as a result of
tactical and technological advancements in the anti-submarine operations of the
British and the Americans. On the other hand this decision of Lundendorff forced the
Americans (or offered them the final excuse) to join the war in Europe. If
Lundendorff had other (hidden) aims in mind besides the obvious ones, that proved to
be catastrophic for his country, is an interesting issue but extremely difficult to
explore.
To a desperate attempt to prevent Americans from joining the war the German
Emperor, following the adventurous steps of Napoleon III, tried to form an alliance
with Mexico and Japan (against US) which would enable Mexico, in due time, to
reclaim lost territories to US (New Mexico, Texas and Arizona). As it was expected,
this foolish plan failed but at the same time pushed further the Americans towards
their decision to join the war.
In the eastern front Russia was in an advanced state of disarray. The Germans
channeled more fuel to the internal fire in Russia by allowing Lenin to slip through
German territories into Russia and take the leadership of the Bolshevicks revolution in
October 1917. At the end of the year the Germans forced Bolshevicks to sign a
humiliating peace treaty by which they were annexing huge territories from Russia.
At the same time, the British defeated the Ottomans in the Near East imposing their
rule on Palestine and destroyed the colonial system of Germans in Africa.
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Appendix 1
THE BATTLE OF SOMME IN FILM
Published: September 30, 1916
Copyright © The New York Times
(see next page)