The First Battle of the Marne 1914: The French 'miracle' Halts the Germans (Campaign) [Paperback]

The First Battle of the Marne in September 1914 has long been considered both a decisive and yet controversial military operation, one that could have been won by either side. The fact that it occurred 30 miles outside Paris, the object of the German envelopment through Belgium, lends a gravity to this battle that is missing from most other World War One battles - simply put, the Marne was not about who controlled some section of Belgian woods but who controlled Western Europe. The Marne has been covered in prodigious detail by a multitude of historians, including the recent book by Holger H Herwig, so the logical question is, why one more? Part of the answer lies in the maps, which are head and shoulders above anything else out there in English. Second, the author breaks this complex battle up into three digestible set-pieces, which is far easier to follow than the standard chronological approach favored by most other authors, but which often renders the battle as an incoherent mush. Furthermore, the author Ian Sumner has important things to say about the battle, not necessarily original, but put forth in a manner which is better for general readers to appreciate. Overall, this volume is a success and should be on the bookshelf of anyone seriously interested in the First World War.

The graphic quality of the First Battle of the Marne is excellent and certainly superior to other, larger volumes on this subject. Whereas Herwig's book relied upon out-dated West Point-produced maps, this volume has six very detailed 2-D maps (the German march to the Marne, 15 August - 5 September 1914; overview of the Battle of the Marne; the Battle of the Ourcq; the Battle of the Saint-Gond Marshes; the Battle of the two Morins; the German retreat to the Aisne, 10-11 September 1914) and three 3-D BEV maps (the opening of the Battle of the Ourcq, 5 September 1914; the struggle for Mondement, 9 September 1914; turning the German flank, 8 September 1914). The BEV maps are very good and colorful and well-suited to the scale of this battle. The three battle scenes by Graham Turner (the taxis of the Marne; the German Garde at Fere-Champenoise; French artillery bombardment of Montceaux-Les-Provins) are good, with two from the French and one from the German viewpoint. The author also provides a 3-page chronology with day-by-day entries, a 3-page order of battle that goes down to battalion level, a bibliography and notes on the modern battlefield.

Perhaps the only deficiency in this volume is the opening sections, which are likely to be too brief for the general reader, unfamiliar with the military situation in 1914. While the author does outline how both armies arrived at the Marne, the sections on opposing commanders and forces are extremely brief. The section on opposing commanders is better, but could have addressed German command and control issues - the strength of Herwig's book - in more detail. However, the author's skimping on these introductory sections - although perhaps discomfiting for some readers - allows him to devote over 60 pages to the actual battle. Sumner adopts a fairly novel approach, which is to divide his narrative of the Battle of the Marne into three distinct pieces: the Battle of the Ourcq in the west (French 6th Army vs. German 1st Army), the Battle of the Saint-Gond Marshes (French 9th Army vs. German 2nd and 3rd Armies) and the Battle of the Two Morins (French 5th Army and BEF vs. German 1st Army and cavalry). Each set-piece follows that particular sector in day-by-day format, with maps to support the narrative. The result is a very coherent narrative that allows the reader to understand how the battle developed in each sector.

There are many different theories about why the Germans lost the Battle of the Marne even though they seemed on the verge of decisive victory. Some authors cite German supply problems, or failures of command, while others trumpet the role of the BEF. This author begins by condemning the efficacy of the Schlieffen Plan that brought German armies to the Marne, stating, "The Schlieffen Plan, as modified by Moltke, was always a gamble. It made little provision for the unexpected, relied upon meeting little or no Belgian resistance and discounted the contribution of the British." These are good points, but don't explain the tactical outcome at the Marne. The fact that the French and British armies, who had been retreating for three weeks, were given a chance to counterattack outside Paris was clearly due to German tactical mistakes. The German main effort, von Kluck's 1st Army and von Bulow's 2nd Army, diverged as they neared Paris and the Allies detected the gap and decided to exploit it. Sumner concludes, "the gap had largely been created by the actions of Kluck....It was Kluck's headstrong reaction, abandoning 2. Armee without reference to either Moltke or Bulow, as much as the French assault, that dislocated the whole German strategy." The author also cites the effective Allied use of air reconnaissance and signals intelligence to set the stage for the Battle of the Marne.

While the French had some tactical successes at the Marne, most of their units took a terrible pounding and the situation was less dangerous than that often facing encircled German armies in the Second World War. German retreat from the Marne is usually depicted as a failure of nerve. However, the author notes that the Battle of the Marne used up much of the ammunition reserves available to both sides, neither of whom had planned for a protracted war. The author notes that French stocks of 75-mm shells fell from 530,000 to only 33,000 in the first month of the campaign, and production could not keep up with expenditure. With exhausted troops, ammunition shortages and the prospect of a longer war, pulling back to the Aisne to regroup makes more sense.

Contents:
Opening Moves - p5
Chronology - p9
Opposing Commanders - p12
Opposing Forces - p15
Opposing Plans - p23
The First Battle of the Marne - p28
.The battle of the Ourq 5-9 September
.The Battle of Saint-Gond Marshes 6-10 September
.The Battle of the Two Morins 6-11 September
Aftermath - p81
.Conclusion
The Battlefield Today - p92
Further Reading - p94
Index - p95

Illustrations:
Six full-page colour maps
Battle diagrams - 2-page, ¾ view:
.Opening day of the Battle of the Ourq, 5 September 1914
.The Struggle for Mondement, 9th September 1914
.Turning the German Flank - Marchais-en-Brie, 8th September 1914
Colour plates - 2-page spreads:
The Taxis of the Marne - soldiers assembling to board the convoy.
The Garde at Fere-Champenoise, 9th September 1914 - German infantry advancing, with regimental colour.
The Attack on Montceaux-les-Provins, 6th September 1914 - a battery of French 75mm guns in action.

"Don't Mention the Schlieffen Plan"
This is a very interesting account of the campaign and battle, the detail is good and the maps are helpful. However, the author has read Dr Terence Zuber's Inventing the Schlieffen Plan: German War Planning 1871-1914 (which claims that the idea of `the Plan' was invented after the war by General Staff officers to push blame for the defeat on to generals who couldn't argue back), according to his Bibliography, so he tries to avoid mentioning "The Schlieffen Plan" in his description of the Opening Moves, though he does describe Moltke as "having taken over the war plan of his predecessor Schlieffen" (p14); and
"The German plan followed ideas outlined by Schlieffen in a memorandum of 1906" (p6), and then:
"Schlieffen's successor Moltke accepted the strategic assumptions behind the plan, but made several important revisions" (p7).
Almost there!
"With these new orders, the emphasis of the German invasion had definitely shifted. It was now seeking a decision in just that fortified area of eastern France that Schlieffen's original plan had tried so hard to avoid" (p27).
Slipping again...
None of this affects his description of the campaign, but it does give a partially misleading impression of the German objectives. The Germans reviewed their war plans every year, with war games and field exercises to test them. Schlieffen (who retired in 1905) and his successor Moltke were continually refining their proposals. Due to the Germans being outnumbered by the Franco-Russian alliance, Schlieffen's main preoccupation was with working out how to counter this handicap. His preferred idea was of outflanking and then enveloping his opponents, bringing the maximum force to bear against an enemy being pinned frontally. In fact, if there ever was a Schlieffen plan, it was that used at Tannenberg, first tested by him in 1894.

The author gives a good summing up in his Conclusion:
"The Schlieffen Plan [gotcha!] as modified by Moltke, was always a gamble. It made little provision for the unexpected, relied on meeting little or no Belgian resistance and discounted the contribution of the British. More significantly, it wasd far too ambitious - both in the sheer physical effort required of the German soldier and in the logistical support needed to keep him supplied". He then blames Kluck for going off-objective.

"The German system of command allowed considerable discretion to the commander on the ground. Kluck, therefore, considered his behaviour nothing more than as appropriate use of initiative. But this system needed a strong supreme commander to ensure his subordinates all conformed to the overall campaign strategy. And Moltke was not that man. According to Kronprinz Ruprecht's chief of staff, Moltke `practiced an exaggerated restraint, because he... lacked all self-assurance and thus all self-confidence. He was afraid to lead by himself'." (pp 83-85)

Ignoring the references to the Schlieffen Plan, the Author's summary of what went wrong is spot-on. Moltke simply wasn't up to controlling his subordinates and commanding the battle.

Dr Zuber's The Real German War Plan, 1904-14, published after this book, goes in to more detail on the `myth' of the Schlieffen plan.

In the late summer of 1914 the Germans pushed within a few dozen miles of Paris, their high water mark for the entire war, before the commander of the Paris garrison commandeered the city's taxi cabs to rush men to the right spot to save the day and drive off the Boche. That is the common view of the battle of the Marne and while not entirely incorrect, the true battle was far more and in his work "The first Battle of the Marne 1914" Sumner tries to fill in the details. The problem is that he fills in so many details that the result becomes overly cluttered.

What Sumner does do well is to put the famous taxi cab army in perspective and explains how much more the battle was. Further more although this is usually a battle seen from the French point of view, Sumner is able to jump back and forth between the opposing sides as the French scramble to close gaps and the Germans seek to create them, all the while men on both sides become more exhausted. He covers the strengths of the units and their flaws.

The problem is that while we can talk about THE battle of the Marne, this huge battle was in reality a series of many smaller battles all pushing and shoving along the front and in trying to honor the sacrifice of the men who fought and died there Sumner goes in so close, seeming to covered every single valley and village contested, that the reader is overwhelmed and loses perspective. This is further confused by the chronology as Sumner handles some of the battles separately. So he spends several pages detailing the battles directed by Foch in the St. Gond marches and comments how d'Esperey helped him out, but then the next section is d'Esperey's battles and you're suddenly taken back several days to follow that general's fight when you already know he will be driving into the German's facing Foch.

While many of the illustrations are quite good, the maps are not. Like his text Sumner seems to want to show every unit, the result are very busy maps where the reader has to hunt to find some of the towns named in the text in the clutter of unit icons. I could also have done with out the large number of personal photographs taken by Sumner of the sites. If they were different it would be one thing, but they are not. Each seemed to be green brown fields with trees in the middle distance and when they all look alike it really doesn't matter which one was the battle site on Sept 5 and which was Sept 6. I counted 10 pictures outside of the `battlefield today' section and you really don't care after a while.

Over all this is a good book that goes a long way towards looking at this darkest, most desperate hour of the First World War. While many English language views of the Marne are a brief pause before Ypres, Sumner zeros in on it to show this really was a horrific battle. My main fault with this book is that is zeroes in so close that the overall theme picture gets lost in the clutter. Individual soldiers in the great battle rarely know what part they play but the reader should not also get lost.