Controversy

Arguably, Passchendaele is the most debated and argued battles of Word War 1. So did John henry die for a worthy cause?

In my opinion Martin Marix Evans takes a revisionist approach to World War 1 history. He has had the advantage of accessing and analysing official and once secret documents made available since 1965. These enables him to record interpretations that differ from those of historian who wrote between the two wars.  Amongst other things, the revisionist would argue that:

• World War 1 was a war of stalemate, where the advantage lay with the defenders.
• Until the introduction of technology it was a war of attrition; the wearing down of the economy and man-power.
• Despite failings, the only man suitable to lead the British army in such a war was Field Marshal Douglas Haig.

However, Evans still poses questions, the answer to which may be found in future years.

Casualties

It has been argued that by prolonging the battle until November, Haig pushed the casualties to the most grievous level. John Terraine agues this belief is mistaken and calculated the totals killed, wounded, missing and prisoners were:

Source: Terraine John, 'The Smoke and the Fire: Myths and Anti-Myths of War 1861-1945', Sidgwick and Jackson, London, 1980, page 46

Exact casualty figures are difficult to calculate. Evans (2005, page 158) suggests a reasonable total, between 31 July 1917 and 10 November 1917, in the Salient to be:

British      244,897 - of the 238,313 casualties in operational summaries 35,831 were killed, 172,994 were wounded, 29,488 were missing
French:        8,525
Germans: 230,000 approximately

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A wearing down battle

The prolonged battle caused Germany a server damage but 'quantifying the effect is much more difficult and the comparative analysis of casualty figures is an unrewarding minefield'. (Steel and Hart 2000, page 303) Steel and Hart argue that German casualties, despite being reinforced from the Eastern Front following the collapse of Russia, 'were a crushing blow' to a single nation. Even though the Allies were being reinforced by the great reserves of American manpower, 'the heavy losses were severe.' America did not expect to be a compliant fighting force until 1919, consequently 'the prospects for the Allies in 1918 would surely have been far poorer if Haig and the BEF had not so relentlessly attacked and harried the Germans at Ypres in 1917.' (Steel and Hart 2000, page 304)

The weather

It has been argued that the untypical October weather hindered the movement of troops and tanks. Because of this, the battle should have waited for improvements in the weather or should have been off altogether. Evans (2005, page 154) asks 'if the weather had been that of an average year, would the plan have succeeded?' Whilst he admits that the question can not be answered with certainty 'it is possible to doubt that normal weather would have guaranteed success.' This doubt is due, he argues, to Haig's most serious mistake of allocating the attack to General Sir Hubert Gough's Fifth Army. After all Lt. General Sir Herbert Plumer's Second Army had just scored a great victory at Messines and knew the area around Passchendaele thoroughly.

The weather was complicated by the particular geology of the area, which was known having been mapped. The Ypres basin was impervious clay. Over laying this were layers of sands or sandy clays which soaked up water and became water logged. Passchendaele Ridge was dry sand and therefore free draining.

In terms of technology, quantity and quality the war had turned into an artillery war.

It was the weather, the geology and the artillery that combined make the appalling mud.

The state of the French army

It is argued that the Ypres attacks protected the mutinous French whose army had suffered a disaster on the Chemin des Dames after the Nivelle offensive. The reliability of Haig's diary entries is hotly debated. Steel and Hart believe that Haig 'was aware of the seriousness of French situation' and the 'imminent collapse of the French Army'. The question is whether Haig, in his modified diaries, 'exaggerated the urgency of his concerns'.

Tactical advances

The Battle of Amiens, on 8 August 1918, lead to successful campaign of The Last Hundred Days. All aspects of the army from senior commanders to front-line troops were able to draw upon new tactical skills tried out and developed in 1917 during the Ypres campaign: limited objectives of bite and hold; sophisticated close artillery support; the integration of tanks and aircraft; radio communication and platoon tactics. 'Combined, these factors meant that by the summer of 1918 the BEF had evolved into the most effective fighting force on the Western front.' (Steel and Hart 2000, page 307) This, together with the political, economic and military collapse of Germany, broke the stalemate of trench warfare. Even through this success, casualties remained higher than Passchendaele.

Should it have been stopped?

It is argued that the campaign lasted too long and that stopping it sooner would have saved lives. It was soon realised there was to be no cavalry break through to the North Sea ports and the battle degenerated into a typical Western Front battle. Where was the alternative stopping place? The ridge along the Zonnebeke to Langemarck road captured on 26 September 1917 left Ypres exposed from the Passchendaele Ridge.

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As tactics improved it always seemed that one further effort would bring the break through. Slowly, however, the focus of the battle changed. Increasingly the focus of the British was the capture and control of the whole Passchendaele Ridge to allow them to over winter in relative security. The Canadians made the final effort, at a cost, capturing just the Passchendaele part of the long ridge. However, this was dry ground. It was out of the mud of what is now Nieuwe Beek. The ability of the Germans to see British movements in the Zonnebeke area was prevented. And, Evans (2005, page 155) argues the ridge was secure because the successful German offensive of 1918 went further south.

In his book The War in Outline, 1914-1918, (1937) the author Basil Liddell Hart told of a senior staff officer visiting the front for the first time. Seeing the appalling fighting conditions the staff officer is recorded as saying 'Good God, did we really send me to fight in that?' Evans (2005, page 156) argues that contemporary records, released to the public in 1965, shows that knowledge of conditions was detailed and accurate. 'The decision to continue with the campaign in spite of the conditions was not the product of ignorance, nor was it made in defiance of the difficulties the troops faced. It was reached in the belief that it was the right decision.'

Was it worth it?

Evans (2005, page 158) quotes from Robin Prior and Trevor Taylor's book Passchendaele. They write 'the Flanders offensive of 1917 ... appeared at the least to be just one more sorry episode in a war of anguished incidents, unrelated to each other and lacking discernable consequences or achievements'.

After his successful use of 'bite and hold' tactics at Messines, Haig brought Lieutenant General Herbert Plumer to command. By October, Steel and Hart argue, 'serious drawbacks associated with [Plumer's] approach of limited step-by-step advances were apparent. The bite and hold advances took a great deal of time and effort to organise, but only moved the front forward a very small distance. Such limited advances of 1000 to 1500 years meant there would never by any chance of a breakthrough; no lines of German guns would ever be captured and consequently their artillery strength would remain unimpaired.' (Steel and Hart 2000, page 253) Haig's grand plan of reaching the submarine pens would never come to fruition.

Evans writes that 'it is hard to see that there was an alternative':

• The Germans held large tracts of French soil.
• The French had suffered a defeat and a mutiny at the Chemin des Dames.
• The French had appointed a new commander-in-chief to rebuild moral.
• Further south the British faced the massive defences of the Hindenburg Line.
• Haig found 'it was desirable to maintain the pressure on the Flanders front for a few weeks longer to take German troops away from General Byng's Third Army planned and initially successful attack at Cambrai.

Passchendaele was part of the evolution of the final victory of the war of stalemates:

• The futility of massive artillery bombardments of the Somme had been replaced by precise and scientific barrages.
• Radio communications were improving.
• Tank and aircraft tactics were evolving.
• Effective infantry tactics were now organised at platoon level with the man at the front given permission to use his initiative.

'Passchendaele was, then, a part - even a major part - of a chain of developments that took warfare from the mobile conflict of Victorian simplicity, through the stalemate of trench warfare, to a form of mobile warfare [in the last hundred days] undreamed of only four years earlier.' (Evans 2005, page 153)

An Aussie reflects

'When I got to the top of Broodseinde Ridge it was really surprising to see before you the green fields of Belgium. Actual trees! Grass and fields of course churned up a good deal by barrage shells - but as far as we were concerned it was open country! Then, looking back, from where we came, back to Ypres ... There was nothing but devastation. Then I could see why our own gunners had such a gruesome time. You could see the flashes of all the guns, from Broodseinde right back to the very Menin Gate.' Captain W Bunning 24^th Battalion, AIF, in Steel and Hart 2000, page 248)

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