8 - World War I

Summary

Even among specialists of World War I, images of the battlefield remain dominated by iconic western-front battles such as Verdun, the Somme, and the third Battle of Ypres (Passchendaele). The mass suffering and horrific conditions of these battles make such prominence understandable. It might, therefore, come as a surprise that the highest casualty rates of the war occurred when the war was at its most fluid and open, in its first months in 1914 and its final months in 1918. This chapter examines the experience of war from 1914 to 1918 at the operational level. It begins by underscoring the shocking casualty rates of the war’s opening months and characterizes trench warfare as a reasonable response, even if many senior commanders resisted it. The chapter then examines solutions to the stasis of trench warfare that generals sought around the globe, with varying degrees of success.

Although one compares catastrophes at one’s own risk, a few points illuminate the general pattern. The French suffered their highest casualty levels in the opening phases of the war, during the so-called “Battles of the Frontiers,” especially during their invasion of the mountainous terrain of Alsace and Lorraine. The French historian Michel Goya calculates that the 13th Infantry Division, a representative unit, took 11,903 casualties in the first seventy-five days of the war. These losses effectively amounted to 100 percent casualties. On average, this division suffered 230 casualties per day of combat in the war’s first months. By contrast, even at Verdun, where the division again suffered badly, its loss rate was 113 casualties per day. Stunning as the latter figure is, it is not half of the former.