French Mutinies of 1917

[BDV]

Romania had already effectively been "solved". Almost its entire teritory had been conquered and its natural resources were in the hands of the Central Powers. Certainly the remnants of its army were still in the field, but were entirely dependent on French supplies brought in across Russia.

Hello Major

I disagree. The joint KuK-German attempts to dispatch with Romania in the summer of 1917 were defeated, and quite the contrary Romanians punked the KuK forces at Marasti.

After the Bolshevik Rebellion, I agree with the asessment, but that would be too late for this WhIF.

Salonika had also been satisfactorily "solved" at little diversion of German resources but at a massive diversion of Allied efforts. The Germans jokingly referred to Salonika as "the largest self-administered prison camp in the world"!

Yes, but wasn't this the backdoor through which the Central Powers' house of cards was finally colapsed in Fall of 1918?

[glenn239]

Terry - your strangely silent on this discussion. What's your opinion?

I dont think the Germans are capable of defeating the British in 1917 to anything like the extent they need to to force them to withdraw, and the land they would have to launch any offensive over is not good ground - Flanders being somewhat boggy in 1917.

I also do not see the Germans as having the opportunity to defeat the French decisively in 1917 even allowing for the mutinies, as the army was willing to defend even in the worst affected units. The problem is that German morale is not exactly unbreakable, so huge attacks against strong positions could see them push too hard and suffer a break themselves. Even with the troops from the east in 1918, the Germans had relatively few divisions of fully reliable troops for all out attacks, so it could simply speed up the process towards the historical ending.

Concur on both points - if the assumption that the French army does not collapse when attacked holds true.

[glenn239]

Probably the best-case outcome for Germany would be that they drive the Entente out of Belgium - as you say, the British time and again faced enormous pressure without cracking, and I don't see a breakthrough being on the cards here.

If the attack upon the British cannot achieve a strategic result, then attacking the British because the French are weak is pointless.

What I think you could see making serious traction are the political implications - the British are now aware that a substantial portion of the French army is of questionable value offensively. From the British perspective, they're looking at one major ally which is politically unstable and one which is militarily unstable - would this be enough to get them to a conference table?

No, of course not. The French would naturally say their difficulties were of a passing character, that by 1918 things will be better. The British will breath a sigh of relief that the Germans attacked the British, for in doing so history will judge the Germans as having thrown away their one chance against the French.

More realisticallly, though, you'd probably just see the British being forced to concede some land and suffering some casualties. by - incomprehensibly - attacking where the French were not.

Both are acceptable prices to pay; France is still in the war, the Americans are coming and British casualties in this ahistorical German offensive might very well be less than those suffered in the major British offensives of 1917 anyway. Since the Germans have just ruptured themselves on Haig’s defences, no attack on France is in the cards until at least 1918.

I think that this all hinges on what state, precisely, the French army was in. My understanding is that for the French soldiers in the trenches, the effect of several utterly failed offensives was that they had lost all faith in the abilities of their commanders to lead them in offensive action, and that as a result they were not interested in making out and out attacks. They do seem to still have been capable of defensive action.

The key phrase being “seemed”; once your troops are voting on whether they'll follow orders, then all bets are off.

Defence at this time required active counterattack. But attacking is what the French had just decided they will not do. If the reserves will attack, the Germans fail. But what if the reserves vote not to counterattack? Then a debacle becomes a possibility.

[Kingfish]

Defence at this time required active counterattack. But attacking is what the French had just decided they will not do.

No, they decided they weren't going to be used as fodder in futile and wasteful offenses.
Big difference there.

[|AXiN|]

Terry: I can't see the Germans voluntarily giving up Alsace-Lorraine at this point, so I guess that's out of the question then. Could France settle for prewar borders in Europe?

Glenn - clearly we disagree on the state of the French army, because as Kingfish stated, the evidence supports the French refusing offensives, not refusing combat. I would also appreciate it if you would keep your snark to your own words rather than inserting it into your quotes of mine.

If the French state to the British in May-June 1917 that their troops will not be available for offense before 1918, there should be enormous alarm bells ringing for the Imperial General Staff. If the Kerensky offensive goes ahead and fails as miserably as it did historically, the British are looking at a situation where their two major continental allies are incapable of offensive action, and the other major partner hasn't even turned up yet and certainly isn't ready to be thrust into centre-stage. Lloyd George was at this time still convinced of the viability of winning the war away from the Western Front, so if he is informed that the French are out for at least six months then that strategy could become British military policy - this would see the British focus shift probably to Palestine under Allenby, reducing the troops in France to holding the line. Bear in mind that L-G wanted to subordinate the British forces to Nivelle, and that he spent most of the war trying to increase his control over his generals and shift focus away from the Western Front.

[Sid Guttridge]

Hi Baltasar,

You seem to be under the impression that a collapse in morale can be confined to one of either offensive or defensive activity. It cannot. A mutiny is a mutiny. A soldier whose moral has crumbled and will disobey orders to attack becomes less useful generally because he will have undermined group discipline and therefore defensive capacity as well.

Indeed, you seem to believe that even offensive morale can be subdivided into unbearable attacks on prepared defensive positions and bearable other forms of attack. Both require getting out of one's trenches and risking casualties. The side that refused to get out of its trenches was doomed to concede the battlefield and a breakthrough to an attacking enemy.

The reason why the attacker's and defender's casualties were generally of similar magnitude in WWI was that ground lost to attacks had to be regained with counter-attacks to prevent a breakthrough. The reason why the failure of the Nivelle strategic offensive had such a big impact was because it came on top of far worse losses on the strategic defence at Verdun. The Poilus weren't dismayed by one or other of either offensive or defensive losses, but because of the scale of losses whatever the circumstance.

Had the Germans learnt of the damage these losses had done to French morale, their only logical course of action was to exploit it.

Furthermore, the British knew this and that is why they undertook almost the entire the burden of Allied offensive activity during the second half of 1917. They couldn't just sit on their backsides awaiting your notional German attack, in case it actually fell on the weakened French. They had, at all costs, to draw German attention away from the damaged French and give them time to recover. The fact that the Germans never discovered the true scale of French problems indicates that the British were successful in this, even if their offensives failed tactically to achieve the desired breakthrough.

[Sid Guttridge]

Hi BDV,

My previous post takes into account minor actions like Marasti, Marasesti and Oituz. I say "minor" because, although they are important successes to Romanian military historians, they had only local impact and are so insignificant globally that they are often (unjustly) left out of wider histories of the war.

I can only repeat, "Romania had already effectively been "solved". Almost its entire teritory had been conquered and its natural resources were in the hands of the Central Powers. Certainly the remnants of its army were still in the field, but were entirely dependent on French supplies brought in across Russia."

The Romania situation in 1917 was very akin to that of the Serbs in Salonika. Both had largely lost their countries and the much reduced remnants of their armies were sustained by their allies.

[Baltasar]

Hi Baltasar,

You seem to be under the impression that a collapse in morale can be confined to one of either offensive or defensive activity.

Indeed, and I don't seem to be the only one.

It cannot. A mutiny is a mutiny. A soldier whose moral has crumbled and will disobey orders to attack becomes less useful generally because he will have undermined group discipline and therefore defensive capacity as well.

This is where we disagree. The mutineers were sick of being sent to their almost inevitable deaths by old and stupid superiors. However, they didn't leave their trenches, they did stay and they did defend themselves and their country when being attacked.

Indeed, you seem to believe that even offensive morale can be subdivided into unbearable attacks on prepared defensive positions and bearable other forms of attack.

Not per se. However, they mutineers wouldn't have refused to attack if they had seen a reasonable chance to succeed.

The reason why the attacker's and defender's casualties were generally of similar magnitude in WWI was that ground lost to attacks had to be regained with counter-attacks to prevent a breakthrough. The reason why the failure of the Nivelle strategic offensive had such a big impact was because it came on top of far worse losses on the strategic defence at Verdun.

Which again just proves that offensives in general were the single major cause for casulties. It does not matter if you call them counter-offensives or just offensives; offensive actions of any kind were the reason for horrible casulties.

The Poilus weren't dismayed by one or other of either offensive or defensive losses, but because of the scale of losses whatever the circumstance.

I then wonder why they did stay to defend their country.

Had the Germans learnt of the damage these losses had done to French morale, their only logical course of action was to exploit it.

This is where we agree upon, we just disagree about the best way to exploit it.

Furthermore, the British knew this and that is why they undertook almost the entire the burden of Allied offensive activity during the second half of 1917.

They knew something was afoot, but they didn't have any idea about the magnitude of the mutinies.

They couldn't just sit on their backsides awaiting your notional German attack, in case it actually fell on the weakened French. They had, at all costs, to draw German attention away from the damaged French and give them time to recover. The fact that the Germans never discovered the true scale of French problems indicates that the British were successful in this, even if their offensives failed tactically to achieve the desired breakthrough.

The fact that the British never truly knew how widespread the mutiny was was a success of the French. It also disproves your rather generous picture of the British at the time, since they would have had to know about it to make such a sacrifice. Instead, they conducted offensives, but much rather to help out Russia than the French. The Germans, at the time, didn't have any plans for offensives anyway, they were busy defeating Russia and helping out Austria Hungary.

[glenn239]

Glenn - clearly we disagree on the state of the French army, because as Kingfish stated

I direct your attention to MajorT’s comment, which highlights the difficulty to what you are suggesting,

You seem to be under the impression that a collapse in morale can be confined to one of either offensive or defensive activity. It cannot. A mutiny is a mutiny. A soldier whose moral has crumbled and will disobey orders to attack becomes less useful generally because he will have undermined group discipline and therefore defensive capacity as well.

The French army on defence still might collapse – once a soldier is voting on whether he is going to follow orders, all bets are off. This is not to say that collapse was inevitable, only that the if the Germans had discovered the French difficulties in time for an offensive, that the only way to find out if it would collapse was to attack the French and see what happens.

[Baltasar]

Glenn, MajorT is not a source, he just has an opinion. If it happens to correlate with yours, that's fine, but it is not a fact.

[Kingfish]

You seem to be under the impression that a collapse in morale can be confined to one of either offensive or defensive activity. It cannot. A mutiny is a mutiny. A soldier whose moral has crumbled and will disobey orders to attack becomes less useful generally because he will have undermined group discipline and therefore defensive capacity as well.

To be fair It's not like the French soldiers organized a 'flash mob' mutiny on twitter. It spread across the front slowly in various degrees, and not all units succumbed to it.

[Terry Duncan]

It spread across the front slowly in various degrees, and not all units succumbed to it.

I was going to post much the same thing. Not all French units were effected, and not all to the same degree, but we do know none refused to man their positions. Certainly such things as mutiny are not desirable, but the problems in France were of a different magnitude to what happened in Russia, where it took months to really weaken the army and even then after more failed offensives that incurred huge losses.

Had the Germans learnt of the damage these losses had done to French morale, their only logical course of action was to exploit it.

This is the problem. How? The Germans still need huge numbers in Russia, still need to prop up allies, and still have to find the troops to fight the coming offensive from the British at Ypres. After that, how many reliable men of their own do they have to throw at the French in a test of morale? A line from Napoleon comes to mind 'Troops! Where do you expect me to get them from? Do you want me to make some?' springs to mind.

[|AXiN|]

Glenn and MajorT: The reason that I see a difference between the affected forces defending and attacking is that the mutiny wasn't a yes/no switch at the unit scale. AFAIK Pedroncini is still the definitive source for the scope of the impact, and he notes that of the units cites as being affected, over half were affected by isolated, repeated events - so half the mutinous divisions were mostly combat capable, but not capable of offering the sort fo coherency needed for offensive actions. Defensively, though, they were still viable as the mutinous portions could be managed and local defensive counterattacks were very much still possible for these units. There were not, as far as I am aware, soldier's councils or mob rule or anything of the sort seen on the Eastern front - the character of these mutinies was entirely different to that of the Russian problems.

[glenn239]

Glenn and MajorT: The reason that I see a difference between the affected forces defending and attacking is that the mutiny wasn't a yes/no switch at the unit scale. AFAIK Pedroncini is still the definitive source for the scope of the impact, and he notes that of the units cites as being affected, over half were affected by isolated, repeated events - so half the mutinous divisions were mostly combat capable, but not capable of offering the sort fo coherency needed for offensive actions. Defensively, though, they were still viable as the mutinous portions could be managed and local defensive counterattacks were very much still possible for these units.

If this assessment is correct, then the French muntinies were not of the character necessary to offer Germany a strategic opportunity. If this opinion is not correct, then the French divisions were not defensively viable and the declarations of the trooops were words that would fly away when the Germans attacked.

The answer to the question is not anyone's, including Pedronicini’s, to make; we don't know what would have happened.

This is the problem. How? The Germans still need huge numbers in Russia, still need to prop up allies, and still have to find the troops to fight the coming offensive from the British at Ypres.

In addition to raw numbers would be another obstacle; the time factor. Gathering the troops from all over Europe where needed and when needed.

Glenn, MajorT is not a source, he just has an opinion. If it happens to correlate with yours, that's fine, but it is not a fact.

Yes, Baltasar we are exchanging opinions. Opinions are not facts. An opinion is a hypothesis. A hypothesis is a proposition that if tested in real world conditions, becomes fact or is rejected as invalid. The real world conditions necessary to battlefield test any hypotheses involving the French mutinies of 1917 are lost to the universe. We can go no further than having opinions. We can participate with arguments and counterarguments. No one is required to change their minds.

[Baltasar]

Yes, Baltasar we are exchanging opinions. Opinions are not facts. An opinion is a hypothesis. A hypothesis is a proposition that if tested in real world conditions, becomes fact or is rejected as invalid. The real world conditions necessary to battlefield test any hypotheses involving the French mutinies of 1917 are lost to the universe. We can go no further than having opinions. We can participate with arguments and counterarguments. No one is required to change their minds.

Point being that your theory lacks credibility. The mutineering troops vowed to defend when attacked, since they were the men who would be (and actually had been for a long time already) in the trenches, their word should be worth more than your assumption.