The course of the First World War (1916)

On 04.01.1916 the OHL decided to attack Verdun.

The intention was not a breakthrough battle, but limited German forces were to tie down strong enemy troops at this prestigious point on the Western Front and thereby sustainably weaken the enemy through heavy losses.

On 21.02. the German Crown Prince's army began the attack and achieved initial successes.

Thus, as early as 25.02 Fort Douaumont was captured, on 02.03 the village of Douaumont, and on 08.03 the village of Vaux was occupied.

On 14.03 the height "Toter Mann" was stormed.

21 February: The battle begins with a nine-hour, massive barrage from around 1,200 German guns. Afterwards the German infantry advance.

25 February: The German troops take the strategically important but at that time weakly defended Fort Douaumont without a fight. This triggers a deep crisis in France.

26 February: General Philippe Pétain takes command on the French side. He reorganizes the defense and establishes the "Voie Sacrée" (= The Sacred Way) as the sole logistical lifeline for supplies and troop rotation.

6 March: The Germans expand their attacks to the left bank of the Meuse (including the hill "Toter Mann"), in order to eliminate the French flanking fire. This is followed by weeks of extremely costly fighting.

Fort Vaux belonged to the first phase of strengthening the ring of fortresses around Verdun in the years 1881 to 1884. The fort was not evacuated by the French garrison (approximately 400 men), but - unlike Fort Douaumont - was defended extremely resolutely and tenaciously. After long - above all costly for the German attackers - assaults, the fort capitulated on 07.06.1916 mainly because of a lack of water, but also due to exhaustion.

May 1: General Robert Nivelle replaces Pétain as the direct commander at Verdun, as Pétain is promoted to commander of the entire army group. Nivelle adopts a more aggressive tactic ("They shall not pass!").

June 7: After days of siege and intense close-quarters fighting, the French Fort Vaux surrenders to German troops, as the defenders have run out of drinking water.

June 23: The German army launches a major offensive with the massive use of the new green cross gas (phosgene). They advance to just short of Fort de Souville – the innermost ring of Verdun's defenses.

July 1: Start of the Battle of the Somme. Because Germany now has to withdraw troops and artillery from Verdun to stabilize the new Allied front, the offensive at Verdun finally loses its momentum.

August 29: Chief of the General Staff Erich von Falkenhayn is dismissed because of the failure. Paul von Hindenburg and Erich Ludendorff take over the German army leadership and order the cessation of attacks at Verdun – henceforth the front will only be held.

October 24: Start of the major French counteroffensive. The troops succeed in recapturing Fort Douaumont.

November 2: The German troops must also abandon Fort Vaux and withdraw.

December 15–18: The final French offensive pushes the German lines almost entirely back to their February starting positions. The battle effectively ends without territorial gain for either side.

The German High Command’s aim of bleeding the French army dry did not materialize, as the fighting caused enormous losses on both sides. The hopeless offensive was therefore halted in September.

As early as June 25, British (and French) forces – also to relieve the French troops – had begun a breakthrough battle in the front sector around Verdun in the area of the Ancre and the Somme.

After several days of intense shelling and months of fighting, the German front could be driven back over a width of about 40 km and a depth of 12 km, but a breakthrough – despite the clear material superiority of the British and French – was not achieved.

June 24: Start of the seven-day continuous bombardment by Allied artillery. Around 1.5 million shells were supposed to completely destroy the German positions and barbed-wire obstacles. The plan fails, as the German troops find shelter in deep bunkers.

July 1: The first day of the infantry offensive becomes the darkest day in British military history. On that single day the British Army records around 57,000 casualties (of which over 19,000 were killed), as soldiers ran unprotected into German machine-gun fire.

July: The front immediately freezes into extremely costly attritional fighting over individual villages and woodlands (such as Mametz Wood and the village of Ovillers).

August: Heavy, fruitless attacks on the German defensive lines at Pozières and Guillemont. Losses rise massively on both sides while territorial gains remain minimal.

15 September: In the Battle of Flers-Courcelette the British use tanks for the first time worldwide (Tanks of the Mark I type). The new war machines cause psychological terror among the German troops, but they are still technically unreliable and do not bring the hoped-for strategic breakthrough.

October: The onset of autumn rains and heavy downpours turn the entire battlefield at the Somme into an impenetrable sea of mud. Supplying the troops becomes almost impossible.

November 13–18: The last major Allied offensive on the Ancre brings yet again only minimal territorial gains.

November 18: British Commander-in-Chief Douglas Haig officially suspends the offensive due to the onset of winter.

The battles of Verdun and the Somme had again shown that the defender regularly occupied the better position. A return to mobile warfare was not achieved despite massive use of materiel and mass attacks.

The losses, alone in the Battle of the Somme on both sides 750,000 dead, do not justify the minor corrections to the front line. In the material battles the soldiers involved, moreover, were pushed to the limits of psychological endurance.

The particular demands of material warfare produced a new type of soldier; a community of necessity in the trench emerged beyond hierarchical and class distinctions. The gulf between the units employed at the front and the rear area grew increasingly larger.

While from the perspective of the Entente and the Central Powers the decision was to be made on the Western Front, the Italians tried to achieve a breakthrough in the Alps. The first five Battles of the Isonzo (most recently: March 15–20) had brought only minor territorial gains.

The next four battles in August (4–16), September (14–17) and October (9–12, 29–31) developed into mutual war(s) of attrition with heavy losses for both sides.

In the east the Central Powers were surprised by massive Russian attacks. In the framework of the so-called Brusilov Offensive (June 4 – December 7) the Russians achieved enormous breaches on the southern eastern front and inflicted a significant defeat on the Austro-Hungarian troops.

The Central Powers, heavily engaged by the fierce fighting on the Western Front and in the Alps, had to react, and only the German counterattacks under General von Linsingen halted the successful Russian offensive.

On August 27 Italy declared war on Germany; in August Romania, due to its close relations with Russia, entered the war on the side of the Entente.

This was followed by an attack by the Central Powers on Romania, supported from the beginning of September (September 1) by Bulgaria.

By March 1916 Macedonia had already been occupied by the Central Powers; in January and February the Austrians had marched into Albania. Under the supreme command of Field Marshal von Mackensen, German, Austrian, Bulgarian and Turkish troops went on the offensive against Romania and were able to defeat the Romanian army except for remnants. The latter withdrew toward the Russian front.

Im Zuge des Balkanfeldzuges hatte die neu gebildete deutsche 9. Armee unter General von Falkenhayn die Rumänen aus Siebenbürgen völlig verdrängt. F

alkenhayn hatte nach der erfolglosen Offensive auf Verdun am 29.08. den Oberbefehl an das erfolgreiche Führungsduo Hindenburg/ Ludendorff abgeben müssen. Hindenburg wurde Chef des Generalstabes und Ludendorf übernahm die Funktion eines Ersten Generalquartiermeisters.

Die Abnützungsstrategie Falkenhayns war im Westen gescheitert, er erhielt jedoch auf dem Balkan die Chance zur Rehabilitierung.

Ab Februar/ März wurde der Handelskrieg durch deutsche U- Boote fortgesetzt, allerdings sollte der Seekrieg nach wie vor eingeschränkt geführt werden. Lediglich bewaffnete Hilfskreuzer hatten bisher den Handelskrieg – auch in Übersee – weiter geführt.

Vom 31.05. – 01.06. fand die größte Seeschlacht rangierter Flotten am Skagerrak zwischen der britischen Flotte unter Admiral Jellicoe und der deutschen Flotte unter den Admiralen Hipper und Scheer statt.

Die deutsche Flotte unter Vizeadmiral Reinhard Scheer war der britischen Übermacht zahlenmäßig deutlich unterlegen. Scheers Plan war es, durch einen Vorstoß der schnellen Aufklärungskreuzer unter Vizeadmiral Franz von Hipper einen Teil der britischen Flotte anzulocken und getrennt zu vernichten. Die Briten hatten jedoch den deutschen Funkcode entschlüsselt, kannten den Plan und liefen mit ihrer gesamten Hauptstreitmacht unter Admiral John Jellicoe aus. Insgesamt trafen 250 Schiffe mit über 100.000 Mann Besatzung aufeinander.

On the afternoon of 31 May the scouting squadrons of Hipper and British Vice Admiral Beatty met.

Due to superior German gunnery optics and more stable ammunition magazines, two British battlecruisers (HMS Indefatigable and HMS Queen Mary) exploded within a short time.

When the main British fleet arrived, the tide turned. Admiral Jellicoe succeeded twice in taking the tactically advantageous position of "Crossing the T", where all British broadsides could fire at the head of the German line.

To escape the annihilating fire, Scheer ordered a risky battle about-turn and employed his torpedo boats — such as the V 28 — in relief attacks.

The boats pushed directly into the British battle line under the heaviest fire and launched dozens of torpedoes.

Torpedo boats were used as mobile "smoke generators." By deliberately burning heavy fuel oil in their boilers, flotillas like the IX Flotilla laid down kilometre-long, dense smoke screens between the opposing lines. This deprived the British ships of visibility and prevented accurate fire-control on the German capital ships for hours.

Although the torpedoes scored only a few hits, British Admiral Jellicoe was forced to turn his entire battle line away from the enemy to avoid the torpedo tracks. This bought the heavily damaged German battlecruisers the time they needed to withdraw into the smoke.

In the darkness the German fleet sought to break back to their home bases.

There were chaotic and brutal close-quarters fights between torpedo boats, cruisers and battleships, in which further units were sunk.

The most tragic event on the German side involved the older battleship SMS Pommern. At around 02:10 in the morning she was hit by a torpedo from the British destroyer HMS Onslaught. The torpedo caused a magazine to explode. The ship broke in two and sank within seconds. All 839 crew members perished, including the well-known regional writer Gorch Fock.

The British armoured cruiser HMS Black Prince lost contact in the thick smoke and accidentally steamed straight into the centre of the German battle line. The German battleship SMS Thüringen illuminated the cruiser with searchlights. Several German capital ships broke the cruiser to pieces with extreme-range fire within minutes. There were no survivors among the 857 British sailors.

The heavily damaged German flagship battlecruiser SMS Lützow tried to escape under cover of night. However, the ship had already taken on so much water that the propellers were out of the water and she was unable to manoeuvre. The crew were evacuated onto accompanying torpedo boats, and the ship was sunk at 01:45 by a torpedo fired by her own forces.

In the panic there were also serious accidents. The German light cruiser SMS Elbing collided while evasively manoeuvring with the battleship SMS Posen and had to be abandoned later. The British destroyer HMS Spitfire rammed the huge German battleship SMS Nassau in the dark. The destroyer miraculously survived, but lost almost all of her deck superstructure from the blast of the German 28 cm guns firing directly overhead.

The engagement—at least unintended on the German side—between the German High Seas Fleet and the Royal Navy ended with fewer losses for the German ships; about 6,000 Britons and about 2,500 Germans lost their lives.

British commander Jellicoe had repeatedly had opportunities to force a decision, but through skillful actions the German fleet timely evaded destruction.

Ultimately the fight between 151 British and 99 German ships ended in a tactical success for the German High Seas Fleet, whose crews and ships proved themselves. The battle had no decisive significance.

British Admiral Jellicoe was replaced in November by Admiral Beatty

Overseas, on 18 February the remnants of the German colonial troops in Cameroon laid down their arms.

During 1916 the influence of the war on the internal conditions of the belligerent states became increasingly apparent. All states had to bow to the necessities of war. The Entente's material superiority was already oppressively felt in the Battle of the Somme; in Germany, due to missing imports, the first supply and food problems became visible (turnip winter 1916/17). From 1915 onwards food was rationed. Economic life had to be increasingly regulated by the state and the use of raw materials organized. Shortages forced the procurement of substitutes. Military leadership gained ever greater influence over foreign and domestic policy; central offices for the administration of all raw materials were created and the entire economy was directed toward the needs of the war. Free trade was replaced by a kind of command economy; the state's coercive measures of the so‑called Hindenburg Program affected almost all economic and social sectors. In May the first hunger demonstrations took place in Leipzig. On 02.12. a law on the Patriotic Auxiliary Service was passed. Large parts of the economy were militarized for the purpose of armaments production. Workers could now be compulsorily conscripted. The war aims of the Central Powers prevented realistic peace efforts; a separate peace with Russia did (as yet) not come about.

The year 1916 brought a deep political crisis for Germany. The enormous number of casualties and the difficult food situation led to domestic tensions. The great prestige of Hindenburg and Ludendorff was meant to bring a military turning point; however, after three years of war there were a number of peace initiatives. In December 1916 the American President Wilson presented a 14‑point plan to end the war to all belligerent states. Already on 12.12.1916, after the victory over Romania, there had been a peace offer from the four Central Powers to the Allies. They wanted to reach a settlement from a position of strength, but the Entente's response was clearly negative. The American peace initiative also failed. On 04 and 07.01. the Allies decided in Rome to better coordinate future operations. Since an end to the war according to Germany's views could obviously not be achieved at that time, a military decision was to be sought once again.