The Unimaginable Quagmire
Nations that faced even simple strategic decisions faired little better than anyone else. This was never more true than the situation faced by the armies of Metropolitan France. Since 1871, the French Army had trained for one job only and that was the conquest of their lost provinces of Alsace-Lorraine.
The mutual border with Spain was secured by the fact that Madrid had made it perfectly clear they intended to remain neutral. Italy had quickly renounced it’s treaties with Germany and the Hapsburg regime of Austria-Hungary. The Italians appeared to be more eager to engage in hostilities than the Spanish but they also seemed content to sit back and see who would win before joining a side. The channel coast appeared to be safe for the moment due to the fact that the British were most obviously un-prepared for this war. The Belgium border looked secure for the exact same reason. This left Boulanger with the freedom to concentrate on the one front that had been such an obsession to all Frenchman in the years before the war.
Neutral Luxembourg was quickly overrun by the French army since that nation lacked any military of it’s own. The rest of the French army launched a major offensive at their mutual border with Germany. The plans to mobilize, concentrate, and launch this massive war machine went as well as it could have. Then it met the German Army that was fortified in front of the cities of Metz and Strasbourg. The French army suddenly found itself confronted with what appeared to be nothing less than an impregnable wall.
The French offensive began weeks in advance of the US offensive in Tennessee. One has to wonder if General Miles, back in Washington, paid any attention to the fighting in Europe. It was generally agreed upon that the French Army was the largest, best equipped, and most motivated military at the time. Their war was nothing less than a national crusade that was pressed with zeal. Despite all of the French advantages in numbers, logistics, strategic situation, and morale, all of their efforts came to not. The French army quickly bogged down as had the Confederates in front of Washington and as had the Boers in Natal.
In Berlin, one must believe that Field Marshall Waldersee was more than a little relieved. Prior to the war, it was a commonly held notion that military firepower had become so great that any battle would quickly be decided. No one could imagine how any human flesh could stand up to the greatly improved accuracy of small arms, the overwhelming power of artillery, and the general science that had become military logistics. The sudden quagmires that resulted from the first major offensives of the war most certainly puzzled military planners world wide. It quickly became obvious that something in their carefully laid plans had gone horribly wrong.
Of course, Waldersee would not understand this until it stepped on his carefully laid plans. Unlike Schlieffen, who was now commanding the troops opposing the French, Waldersee had taken the opposite view on the strategic situation of Germany. Schlieffen had always insisted that France needed to be dealt with first. Waldersee thought that Russia presented the greater threat. Many have suggested that Waldersee formulated his strategy only because of his differences with Schlieffen. For whatever reason, history would prove Waldersee correct. Unfortunately, the same problems that would plague Boulanger in Alsace-Lorraine would also complicate matters for Waldersee in Poland and Prussia.
The borders of Imperial Germany jutted into Poland like a knife slicing butter. Waldersee planned on using his geographical advantages to the fullest. The German army would march south from Prussia, East from Pomerania, while the Hapsburg army would march north from Silesia. The Russian stronghold of Warsaw was practically surrounded before the war even started. Waldersee was of the opinion that if the Russians did not do the sensible thing and withdraw then their primary army would be surrounded and destroyed in detail. Waldersee must have been shocked when neither of these things came to pass.
The Russians were much quicker to mobilize than the Germans had thought them capable of. Many of their full time troops were also armed with lever action rifles of similar make to their American allies. Colt had not only been supplying the Russian armies with the rapid fire rifles but Russia had been producing their own licensed copy of the weapon. At the outbreak of the war they were not universally in the hands of all Russian troops but, there were enough to make a difference. The same was true of the Potato Digger machine gun which was also now being manufactured in Russia.
The Germans quickly ran into a hail of firepower that their bolt action Mauser rifles were hard pressed to compete with. Looking at the official reports (and the Germans were quite meticulous about saving such documents) a good number of German officers from the sub-unit level right up to Regimental commanders were constantly complaining about the Russian firepower. Waldersee looked on these reports as excuses. While this might seem to be arrogance, on the part of Waldersee, the record would suggest that he had good reason to think this. As later events would show, the firepower equation was only a part of the problem and quite possibly, a small part at that.
While the technological advances were impressive they were also uneven. Military planners of the late 19th century had good reason to be awed by the tremendous firepower they were now in possession of. Where they went wrong was in being so focused on it that they virtually ignored everything else. Artillery could now fire further than before. Rifles could now fire faster and with greater accuracy over longer distances. The net effect of these combined to spread armies out over an area that, in previous wars, were unheard of. These new capabilities created new problems and the military exercises of the pre war era had failed to detect them.
The largest single problem seems to have been in the area of communications. Longer ranged artillery meant that headquarters were placed further to the rear of the fighting line. The rapid fire weapons, of even bolt action rifles, meant that infantry troops spread that line out more than at any time in the past. This left commanders unable to see the battlefield or adequately communicate with their troops.
The fog of war grew foggier and the ability to coordinate far flung elements of your army was suddenly not as simple as sending a runner or waving a flag. The best communications of the day, the telegraph and telephone, were not up to the rigors of battlefield conditions. They quickly broke down even when the enemy wasn’t lobbing artillery shells at your wires. That left officers at the mercy of those runners who now had further to run. This not only counted for sending orders out but, it also showed itself in getting information back. By the time a commander had word of enemy movements, from the front, the information was already outdated.
This was never more problematic than with the artillery. The pre war planners had every reason to think that their big guns were powerful. To put it simply, they were. The problem with this is that even the biggest, most accurate, of guns are worthless if they can’t hit a target. Blowing giant craters in dirt will, ultimately, only serve to slow down your own advance. By all accounts this is exactly what happened through a great deal of the war.
Artillery fire, in 1898, was tightly controlled by central planners in every army. The guns were most often positioned well out of sight of the targets they would be shooting at. That left the aiming of the weapons at the mercies of not only forward observers but, of the planning staffs way back in the rear. By the time the observer could get word to the planners, and the planners could get word to the artillery, the targets they would be aimed at had already moved. The effect was that a great number of artillery shells fell harmlessly on nothing and most of the supposed benefits of all the advances in gun technology were rendered useless.
While the infantry was also suffering from the communications lag, they had an even larger problem at the start of the war. Not only was communications with their parent headquarters inadequate but, so was the communications within their own formations. This suddenly began to redefine the roles of junior officers and it was a task for which they were not trained to deal with.
In wars past, the roles of Captains and Lieutenants, in battle at least, revolved primarily around holding their battle line together. This was most often accomplished by following the tightly packed line and confronting men who might decide to flee instead of advance. The real maneuvering, the command and control, was done by the regimental commander. Even in the Franco-German war of 71 a Regimental commander (usually a colonel) could position himself to see his entire unit. In 1898 this was no longer possible.
As a result of this extended line the Colonels were no longer able to coordinate assaults as they once had. This meant that the real leading was now in the hands of the junior officers. Prior to the war none of these future leaders had been given any due consideration by those who planned. Strategy was the name of the game in the worlds staff rooms. Infantry tactics went largely ignored. There were tactical manuals written for every army but, it only takes a light examination of these manuals to see that it was the decided opinion of the authors that the only required response to the new weapons was to spread the men out that much more. In hind sight it is easy to see that this only exacerbated the problem.
While the military command structures, of the time, had practiced extensively at such common military staples as economy of force it was only at the strategic level. Such maneuvers as massing troops at the company or platoon level were not taught because no such plans existed. The Captains and Lieutenants were going to have to learn these principles on the job and they were going to have to spend lives in order to do it. The really sad note to this is that even as such techniques were learned, by the individual soldiers, their commanders who were sitting far back in the rear, were not so quick to catch on. They failed to spread the lessons to new troops who were being raised.
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I've not been able to find original sources but I still think Germany had the larger 'standing' army even during this time. But you have picked a sweat spot with have the war between 95 to 00. This was definitely the apex of French land power, and right before the demographics started to hit home with real effect and they started to commit cultural genocide upon themselves in order to have a unified 'French' nation.
Well the German Army at full mobilization was far larger than the French and British put together but that's after mobilization. You also have to remember (I went back to make sure) that the figures included all services and not just the land armies. So I did say army in this thread, my bad but that wasn't what was quoted in the story. France had a much larger navy which remained pretty much at the same manpower levels in war or peace.
You also have to take into account the Boulanger factor. In the real history France was in the Third Republic phase. Here they are under a military dictatorship with definitive plans to fight a war. Of course I don't think that matters here when you look at their military commitments at the time. Indochina, South China, and Algeria, all of which had seen recent active fighting, would have accounted for most of that.