LOSS OF THE GERMAN
OVERSEAS COLONIES
As the war went on, the Allies now proceeded to invade
and attack all German colonial holdings worldwide. The British and the French
seized Togo land and the Cameroons. In Namibia, British and South African forces
invaded there in September 1914 and by July 9th, 1915 had overrun
the German colony.
The German Port of Kwangchow was overrun by the Japanese
in September 1914 with the help of a British squadron. The Japanese occupied
the German overseas territories of the Marianas, the Caroline Islands and the
Marshals in the north Pacific after the departure of the German naval squadron
there.
By the end of August 1914, Western Samoa, fell followed
by the overrunning of German New Britain in September 1914. The conquest of
German East Africa however was a different story as the local German commander,
Paul Von Letobeek became ingenious in using his stock of African trained forces
to stand up to the British, French and Belgian forces that attacked him.
It took two years
of fighting and casualties of over 130,000 men before he was forced to
surrender on November 25th, 1918 long after the armistice in Europe had
been signed.
THE WESTERN AND
EASTERN FRONTS
A number of sustained attacks by the French in
February-March 1915 on the German trenches in Champagne won only 500 yards (460
meters) of ground at a cost of 50,000 men. On the British side, Sir Douglas
Haig’s First Army between Armentieres and Lens tried a new experiment at Nerve-Chapelle on March 10th, when after an intensive artillery
bombardment, his men tried to advance on the shelled German trenches while
the bombardment moved steadily up front
in a creeping bombardment that kept pace with the infantry assault.
The slowness of the follow- up infantry assault gave the
Germans ample time to recover lost ground while shortage of ammunition crippled
the second round of the bombardment. The result was a needless loss of lives.
In the meantime, a French offensive in April against the Germans Saint Michel
salient southeast of Verdun sacrificed 64,000 men to no visible effect or gain.
A German attack launched on April 22nd, 1915
with chlorine gas on the Ypres salient where French forces had replaced the
B.E.F only succeeded in sending the defenders into chaotic flight, but did not
succeed in effectively breaching the lines as the Germans did not commit any
substantial reinforcements to rupture the Allied lines in this onslaught.
Another series of coordinated attacks by British and
French forces on September 25th, 1915 with the support of hundreds
of heavy guns achieved little as the length of bombardment was such as to amply
warn the Germans of the Allied plans as the Germans quickly brought in reserves
to plug the gaps torn open by the bombardment.
At Loos, the British use of chlorine gas was less
effective than General Sir Douglas Haig had hoped for, as the reserves to
exploit the gap caused by the attack failed to arrive in time due to the slow
response of Sir John French, the overall British commander. The operation
however led to Sir Douglas Haig taking over from Sir John French as the overall
British commander.
THE EASTERN FRONT
1915
The Russians plans for 1915 included strengthening her
flanks in the north and in Galicia before turning westward again towards
Silesia. However Erich Ludendorff suddenly struck at the Russians from East
Prussia enveloping four Russian Divisions in the Augusto forests east of the
Masuria Lakes in the second week of February. However, the Russian offensive in
Galicia won them the town of Przemysl on March 22nd, from the
Austro-Hungarians.
The Central Powers finally devised a plan on the urging
of Austria’s Chief of the General Staff Franz Conrad Von Hortzendorf to work
together to drive Russia from the war. For this operation in April, fourteen
divisions together with 1,500 guns were massed against the Russians six
divisions present. German General Malkensen’s was in command assisted by Hans
Von Seckt as his Chief of Staff.
The Golice attack was opened on May 2nd, and
it succeeded beyond all expectations as the Russians were routed from the
Dunajec and the Wisloka. By May 14th, Malkensen’s forces were on the
San River 80 miles from their starting point, and at Yaroslavl they even surged
across the River. As reinforcements poured in from France, Przemysl fell to the
Germans on June 3rd and Lekberg (Lvov) on June 22nd.
By this time, the Russian front was now bisected but
Falkenhayn and Conrad had not anticipated such a result and therefore made no
preparations to exploit the breakthrough. That enabled the Russians to pursue
an orderly retreat and stabilize their lines.
German Chief of
the General Staff, General Falkenhayn now decided to pursue a new plan which
was hinged on moving his forces up north with a view to catching the Russians
in the Warsaw area between his forces and Hindenburg’s which were to drive
southward from East Prussia.
Ludendorff felt
that the plan was too brazen and frontal and as a result would not cut the Russians
route of escape to the east; he rather advocated a wider maneuver and a bigger
encirclement which would have involved more troops and a wider commitment.
On July 2, the German Emperor endorsed Falkenhyans plan.
The subsequent battle justified Ludendorff’s concerns. The Russians held
Malkensen’s at Brest-Litovsk and Hindenburg on the Narew River long enough to
enable the main body of their forces to escape through the open gap in the east.
Though by the end of August, all of Poland had been taken
and 750,000 Russians had been taken prisoners in four months, the Germans had
missed their opportunity to force Russia out of the war.
When Falkenhayn
finally decided to implement Ludendorff’s plan, the Germans ability to compress
the Russians in kovno-Dvinsk Vilna triangle was greatly reduced as the
Russian’s were too strong for his greatly reduced forces whose supplies were in
any case running out, and by the end of the month, the operation was suspended.
The Russians had simply escaped the encirclement.
An Austrian attack eastward from Lutsk (Luck) began later
in September and continued into October incurring heavy losses for no obvious
gain. By October 1915, the Russian retreat had come to a definite halt along a
line running from the Baltic Sea just west of Riga southward to Chernovtsy on
the Romanian border.
THE CAUCASUS
1914-1916
On the Caucasian front between Russian and Turkey were
two battle grounds; Armenia in the west, Azerbaijan in the East. With the Turks
working hard to capture and hold on to the Baku oilfields in Azerbaijan, with a
view to penetrating Central Asia and Afghanistan in order to threaten British
India, their first tactical move was to seek to capture the Armenian fortress
of Kavas which together with Andaman had been under Russia control since 1878.
The Russians had opened on offensive advancing from
Sarianis towards Erzurum in Turkish Armenia in November 1914, but this was
countered by a Turkish offensive in December led by Envier himself in a three
prong attack against the Kars-Ardahan position. The Turks were dramatically
defeated in battles at Sarianis and at Ardahan in January 1915.
The Turks however ill clad and ill provided for, lost
many more men to exposure and exhaustion than to the battle itself. The 3rd
Army being reduced in one month from 190,000 to 12,400 men; meanwhile, battle
casualties totaled only 30,000. Turkish forces that had entered neutral
Persia’s part of Azerbaijan and taken Tabriz on January 14 were expelled by a
Russian counter-offensive in March 1915.
During this campaign, the Armenians had created some
disturbances behind the Turkish lines in support of the Russians and had
threatened the wobbly Turkish communication lines. To counter this, the Turkish
government on June 11 1915, decided to deport the Armenian nation wholesale. In
the process of the deportation, the Turkish authorities committed large scale
atrocities amounting to genocide and widespread human rights abuse according to
some historical sources.
Over 600,000 Armenians were estimated to have died in
this deportation saga that has remained a sore spot between the Turkish and
Armenian community till date. The Armenians also took revenge on the Turkish
population in their midst but on a much smaller scale. At this point, the
Russian Emperor Czar Nicholas II took over field command of the Russian forces in
September 1915 ostensibly to facilitate a fresh direction for the war.
With the help of
General NN Yudenich’s army, the victor of Savakis, the Czar opened an offensive
on the Turks in Armenia in January 1916. Ezumm was taken on February 16,
Trabzon on April 18, Erzincan on August 2 and after a long delayed counter
attack the Russians were held down at Hognut. The lines thereafter remained
stable and free from Turkish threats.
MESOPOTAMIA 1914-
APRIL 1916
British forces had been in occupation of Basra, Turkey’s
key port at the head of the Persian Gulf since November 1914, basically to
protect the oil wells of Southern Persia and the Abadan refinery.
The British forces were then directed to advance deep
into modern day Iraq in Ottoman Turkish territory and this they did for a
distance of 90 miles up the Tigris all the way to Al-Mara from May-June 1915. They
continued the advance in spite of their overstretched lines until they entered
into Baghdad.
T. E. Lawrence
British soldier and writer
T. E. Lawrence gained fame in World War I when he organized an Arab revolt
against the Ottoman Empire. Although hailed as a hero by Arabs, Lawrence felt
he ultimately failed them in his unsuccessful bid for their independence at the
postwar Paris Peace Conference.
Hulton Deutsch
Microsoft ® Encarta ® 2009. © 1993-2008 Microsoft Corporation. All
rights reserved.
At this point they were more than 500 miles from their
base in Basra when they were suddenly invested on all sides by the Turks at
Ctesiphon, 18 miles from Baghdad, and retreated to Al-Kut from where they were
surrounded on all sides by the Turks; they surrendered on April 29, 1916. Their
commander was Major General Charles Townsend.
THE YEARS OF STALE
MATE IN THE WAR
No comments:
Post a Comment