German Strategy and the Path to Verdun: Erich von Falkenhayn and the Development of Attrition, 1870-1916 (review)

At the onset of the twentieth century, military professionals, aware of advances in weaponry, technology, and organization, debated the nature of the next war. Keenly aware of their exposed position in the center of Europe, few debated the issue more intensely than the Germans. As Robert Foley's excellent work illustrates, at heart was the issue of strategy. Were the decisive victories of the past, won by pursuing a strategy of annihilation that led to a dictated peace, still possible? Or, as a group of critics led by Hans Delbrück argued, would the new advances lead to indecisive, drawn-out wars that concluded with negotiated peace terms? The traditionalists, largely officers trained under the tutelage of the famed Count Schlieffen, triumphed, says Foley, and Germany went to war adhering to a strategic concept that risked everything on a decisive victory over France. When the Schlieffen gamble failed, the Kaiser sacked Chief of Staff von Moltke and gave the reins to War Minister General Erich von Falkenhayn, an outsider within the General Staff Corps. Falkenhayn did not come to the strategy of attrition at once; his handling of the 1914 "race to the sea" represented a failed effort to envelop the enemy's left flank in the traditional manner. The experience led Falkenhayn to conclude that the war could not be won militarily. Only by negotiating a separate peace with one or more members of the Entente could the war end. Germany would have to convince at least one major Entente power that the cost of continuing was too great. The entreaty fell on deaf ears. Civil and military leaders felt such thinking was pessimistic given Germany's favorable field position, and it certainly did not sit well with the dynamic duo of the east, Hindenburg and Ludendorff, whose sweeping but inconclusive victories evoked the strategy of annihilation. In a particularly interesting and well developed chapter, Foley details the nasty struggle for leadership that erupted in the German army over the winter of 1914–15.

Most of Prussia's military records for the war were destroyed in World War II, making the exact reconstruction of events impossible. Nonetheless, using records that do exist, the vast memoir literature, and the recently available files from the former U.S.S.R. of the interwar group that wrote the official German war history, Foley traces the evolution of Falkenhayn's operational art and strategy in a work that scholars of the period will find original, stimulating, and interesting. Foley takes us through Falkenhayn's development of the rudiments of an attrition strategy in 1915. The elements were strategic surprise, continuous momentum, and reliance on artillery to blast the enemy into submission. The trial came at Verdun. Foley gives an excellent account of the genesis of Gericht and its subsequent stages. In planning and executing the operation, Falkenhayn proved inflexible and stubborn and paid little heed to his subordinates. Worse, Falkenhayn's excessive secrecy fatally hindered his ability to convey his concept of the operation to his subordinates. The horror of bleeding the French white has captured the attention of history, but it was only step one. Falkenhayn wanted the French to exhaust their reserves at Verdun, which would compel Britain to come to the rescue with an ill-prepared offensive. Falkenhayn would then, says Foley, administer step two, the coup de grâce: a counter-offensive that would crush the British and convince the demoralized and exhausted French to negotiate. Withholding his strategic reserves for this second stage helps to explain Falkenhayn's maladroit handling of reinforcements during the critical opening of the Verdun campaign, but it does not absolve him of failing to recognize the moment when reserves had to be committed.

Disgraced, Falkenhayn headed east into oblivion, replaced by the apostles of the...