4 - The end of the war of movement and reflections on 1914

Summary

The end of the Ypres fighting did not mean an end to activity for Foch. Joffre wanted an offensive in Flanders to take advantage of the relative quiet of the German artillery, which he believed was due to lack of munitions and to their heavy casualties in the recent fighting. Also, train movements indicated that enemy troops were being transported either to another part of the front or to Russia. In August the French and Russians had launched their attack on the same date as agreed, and now the Russians needed support. Their armies were under heavy pressure from the new German Ninth Army that the recently promoted Field Marshal Hindenburg had launched on 11 November against the important industrial town of Lodz. By the time that the weather forced an end to operations there ten days later, Ninth Army had taken 136,000 prisoners. The Russians sent an appeal for the Allies to take the offensive in the west in order to relieve the pressure. The British ambassador in St Petersburg, Sir George Buchanan, sent a wire to GHQ stating that the country would ‘come to a standstill if we did not prevent more Germans from going over’. The telegrams from Russia made Millerand more depressed than Poincaré had ever seen him.