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The Rest Is History - Episode 596: The First World War: The Miracle on the Marne (Part 3)
Episode Overview In this episode of "The Rest Is History," hosts Tom Holland and Dominic Sandbrook delve into one of the pivotal moments of World War I: the Battle of the Marne, which took place in September 1914. The discussion covers the strategic decisions, the military leadership involved, and the legendary aspects that have shaped the narrative surrounding this historic battle.
Key Themes and Discussions
The Context of the Battle
- French Defeat and German Advance: At the start of September 1914, the French were facing dire circumstances, with the Germans closing in on Paris after significant victories, including the obliteration of French forces during the Battle of the Frontiers.
- Fear of Siege: The French government contemplated abandoning Paris, indicating the gravity of the situation.
The Turning Point
Miracle on the Marne
- General Joffre's Plan: French General Joseph Joffre developed a counter-offensive plan designed to save Paris and turn the tide against the German army.
- His plans included mobilizing troops and using surprise as a tactical advantage.
- The Role of the British Expeditionary Force (BEF): Joffre urged the British commander, Sir John French, to support the French effort, framing the moment as critical for the future of Europe.
Tactical Moves
- Use of Taxis: The episode highlights the famous use of Parisian taxis to transport troops to the front lines, which has since become a legendary element of the battle.
- Artillery and Mobility: The episode describes how the French artillery opened heavy fire on German positions, resulting in a massive clash as French and British troops surged forward.
Psychological Warfare and Leadership
- Leadership Dynamics: The relationship between Joffre and French was tense, with both generals facing immense pressure.
- Dominant figures like Joffre maintained composure, contrasting with the despair exhibited by their German counterparts.
- German Miscalculations: The German command faced internal disarray. The shift in strategy from encircling Paris to attacking the Allies directly led to a breakdown in their plans.
The Outcome and Significance
- Victory at the Marne: The battle resulted in a significant victory for the Allies, halting the German advance towards Paris and marking a turning point in the war.
- Historical Legacy: The episode discusses how this victory fed into narratives of national pride and resilience in France, as well as the emergence of the "stab-in-the-back" myth that affected German morale post-war.
Key Takeaways
- Strategic Importance: The Battle of the Marne was crucial not only for its immediate military outcomes but also for setting the tone of World War I, highlighting the importance of morale and strategic adaptability.
- Myth-making in History: The narrative surrounding the taxis of the Marne illustrates how legends can be formed around historical events, influencing national identity and memory.
- Lessons Learned: The episode emphasizes the complexities of warfare, including logistical challenges, the importance of communication among commanding officers, and the psychological aspects of leadership under pressure.
Future Discussions
- Upcoming Episodes: The hosts indicate that future episodes will delve into the struggle for Ypres, exploring both heroism and horror in World War I, as well as controversial stories that reverberate into later periods.
Conclusion This episode of "The Rest Is History" showcases the intricate details of the Battle of the Marne, its key figures, and the broader implications for both the French and German sides during World War I. The gripping storytelling by Tom Holland and Dominic Sandbrook brings to life a moment that defined a generation and shaped the course of history.
Written by AI. May contain mistakes. Listen to the episode to check what was said.
Transcript
Automatic transcript. May contain errors.0:02This episode is presented by Adobe Express, the quick and easy create anything app. What does that mean? Well, say you need to make a presentation or a video or a social media post or a flyer, maybe even a video. To some, certainly to me, that sounds intimidating. But Tom, with Adobe Express's intuitive features like templates, generative AI and real-time collaboration, it has never been easier. Adobe Express, the quick and easy create anything app. Click or tap the banner to try it for free or search Adobe Express in the App Store.
0:55General Joffre was now developing his plan. We hung on his every word. We saw, as he evoked it, the immense battlefield over which the Corps, drawn by the magnet of his will, were moving like pieces of intricate machinery until they clicked into their appointed places. We saw trains in long processions laboring under the weight of their human freight, Great piles of shells mounting up by the sides of the ready and silent guns And all this was taking place behind a veil so thin and tenuous that none could perceive it But through which no German appeared able to see Yet Joffre seemed to be pointing the Germans out to us Blundering blindly on, hastening to their fate Their huge, massive, dusty columns rushing towards the precipice over which they would soon be rolling.
1:51As a prophet, he was heard with absolute faith. We were listening to the story of the victory of the Marne, and we absolutely believed. Reminiscences there of a crucial exchange on the 5th of September, 1914, from Edward Spears, who was a British liaison officer with the French army, and I suppose specifically with General Joffre, the commander of the French army. And this is a decisive moment in the history of the First World War and therefore the entire 20th century, because it is when Joseph Joffre is outlining his plan to save Paris, to save France, and to save the entire Allied war project in the face of what many of the Allies had come to fear was an irresistible German onslaught.
2:49Yeah, it's an incredible scene, Tom. And actually, we'll come back to it a bit later, this exchange when Joff outlines his plan. So we're into the third episode of this epic series, and maybe we should remind ourselves and our listeners where we've got to, and the terrible danger in which the Allies now find themselves. So the war has been going, depending on when you date it from, for exactly a month. I know you use the Austrian dating tongue, but let's keep you on your toes. And on the Western Front, the Germans have swept through Belgium and they've swept through Northern France. They've taken Brussels.
3:19They've absolutely obliterated the French in the Battle of the Frontiers. They've driven the British back at Mons and at Le Cateau. On the 30th of August, with the Germans closing in on Paris and the city preparing for a siege, a million refugees on the move, the French had announced that the government was going to abandon Paris for Bordeaux. The next day, we talked about this at the end of the last episode, Sir John French, the British commander, telegraphs London asking for permission to abandon Paris and to fall back west of the River Seine. And what follows is one of the great turnarounds, one of the great comebacks in modern history.
3:56So it's gone down in legend, I suppose, as the miracle on the Marne. And the numbers alone are mind boggling. We've done a lot of battles on our show, you know, the Battle of Cannae or the Battle of Agincourt or whatever. But the Marne, you know, it defies the imagination. You're talking about a million Germans, a million Frenchmen, a slightly smaller, I have to say, contingent of Britain. So about 125 ,000. But still very important. I mean, we want that put on the record. Transformational, I think, Tom. It's quality, not quantity. Exactly. And the future of Europe is at stake, right? Right, because if the Germans win and if they take Paris, the story of the First World War and indeed of the 20th century, not just in Europe but around the world, is completely different.
4:42Absolutely, because of course there is a sense in which this is a dress rehearsal, what will happen in 1940. And that perhaps is the measure of the miracle of the Marne. Imagine the Blitzkrieg, the British withdrawing to Dunkirk, the French government fleeing to Bordeaux and then it is stopped. Yes. That is the scale of what happens here. It is. Exactly. So actually, you mentioned that it's quality, not quantity that matters. So why don't we start with the British? Yeah, let's. Clearly the most important players in this story with their minuscule numbers. So Sir John French had sent that telegram to London to Herbert Henry Asquith's cabinet.
5:20And they gathered to discuss it at midnight on the 31st of August. They were really, really. So Asquith, he's not out playing bridge or. He's probably played bridge earlier in the evening. Writing letters, love letters or anything. I like to think he's done that early in the evening. He's probably had a few sharpeners before the meeting. Anyway, they're really shocked to get this message. And now they could have agreed with Sir John French. The cabinet had already talked kind of hypothetically about how they could withdraw the British Expeditionary Force, the BEF, via the channel ports. Instead, at this meeting, they say, no, we will stand by the French.
5:57We'll basically double down on our strategy. and we're actually going to send the Secretary of State for War, who we've talked about a little bit earlier on, Field Marshal Kitchener, to steady Sir John French's nerve. The most British military moustache of all time. Yes. Your country needs you. You know, Kitchener is a walking poster, a walking recruitment poster. So Kitchener left overnight. He reached Paris the next day. He went to the British Embassy and basically summoned Sir John French to meet him. And he says to Sir John French, none of this talk about withdrawal. you will stay in the line and you will work with your French comrades.
6:33And French hates him, doesn't he? French hates Kitchener and vice versa. He hates various groups of people. Kitchener is one of them and the French are another. And he's very resentful this time because Kitchener is wearing his uniform of a field marshal. Yes. And French feels that this is poor form. The reasons I'm not, I don't entirely understand. It's poor form, I think, because Kitchener is there in a civilian capacity. Yes, because he's the Secretary of State for Defence. So he's wearing his uniform performatively in order to intimidate Sir Jean French. And Sir Jean French knows exactly what he's doing.
7:03And he's always enraged, isn't he, Sir Jean French? He's very florid, about to explode. Well, he's got this tight cavalryman's kind of stock around his neck, hasn't he? Exactly. So he's constantly being strangled. Folds of purple flesh, quivering with rage. Do you know what? Later in this series, we have some more excellent generals on the eastern front with enormous moustaches. And one of them has got emphysema and another one has got asthma. So basically, assume at any point that none of the generals can breathe. Right. So that's what's happened to the British. Now, what about the French? The French government had basically appointed a veteran general called Joseph Galliani as the military governor of Paris.
7:40So Galliani, like every single commander in this story. That would be ill. Yes, really ill. And he just seems like the wrong person. So he's 66 years old. His wife has just died. And he's severely ill with prostate cancer. Lloyd George, the British Chancellor, met him around this time and said he looked, quote, sallow, shrunken and haunted. Death seemed to be chasing the particles of life out of his veins. God, that's not what you want. A man charged with the defense of Paris. But, you know, he's amazing. So he absolutely throws himself into this. He says, this is going to be my last mission for my country.
8:14Well, Dominic, he had fought at Zidane, hadn't he? And he'd been a German prisoner of war. Yes. So he kind of knows what the stakes are in a visceral manner. This is personal for him, right? And he says, let's turn Paris into an armed camp. We will mobilize every last resource. We will fight to the last man. And he issues this brilliantly terse proclamation to the people of Paris, which reads as follows. Residents of Paris, I have received the mandate to defend Paris against the invader. This mandate I shall carry out to the end. So it's not exactly Danton. No, but I like that. I think the conciseness of it is actually quite reassuring.
8:52This is what we're going to do. I'm going to do it. End of story. Now, the slight misfortune is that like all commanders in the First World War, he and Joff have a very tense relationship. Are there any generals who like each other? Hindenburg and Ludendorff. The great bromance that we'll be covering in a future episode. I think there's a scope. I'd like to see a detective series. Solving Crimes in East Prussia. Will Ferrell and John C. Reilly play Hindenburg and Luther. Oh, Hindi! What are you doing? There's been a murder in a country house in Allenstein in East Prussia. But is it a murder? Is it a slapstick comedy?
9:36It's like Bergerac, I think. I think it's like Bergerac or something like that. I was thinking Dumb and Dumber. No, I'm doing character intuitive casting, you see. I'm thinking a cozy Sunday night. The BBC has spent a lot of money bringing in Hollywood stars. Come on, we've got to get back to the story, Tom. This is Matt. Okay, okay. All right. Galliani and Joffre. Before the war, Galliani had been offered the job, Joffre's job as Supreme Commander of the French Army, and because of his health, he turned it down. And it went to Joffre, who'd once been one of his officers. Galliani, even though Joffre had been kind of one of his protégés, he now has a very low opinion of Joffre.
10:07He saw him out walking or something in the Bois de Boulogne, and he wrote in his diary how fat and heavy Joffre is. He will hardly last out his three years. I mean, there's riches coming from him. Meanwhile, Joffre knows this and he refuses to have Galliani at his headquarters. He says to his aides, I can't stand him. He's always wound me up. I suppose Galliani could say in reply that Joffre so far has had a shocker of a war. I mean, he's basically wiped out half the French army. He has. For nothing. Joffre's had a very poor start to the war. He's basically killed all his men with this mad plan.
10:41Max Hastings points out quite rightly, he says that if Joffre had basically died of a heart attack on the 1st of September, which is what Gelliani expects at any moment, then history would remember him only as a bungler and a butcher. However, Joffre has one big thing in his favour. He never, ever loses his cool because he's so large and he's always eating these enormous lunches. He's very relaxed. So everybody else is completely panicking and he's actually just been sitting in silence thinking and to quote Max Hastings that's an excellent line his unbelievable calm is about to transfer him from quote abattoir superintendent to allied saviour yeah amazing so first of all he says right I'm going to sack all my officers like it's basically their fault so among them he sacks that guy Longerzac who we talked about last time the man from Guadeloupe so his crime is to have been right yes exactly he's been right about everything but Joff says basically you lot are all tainted by failure you've got to go and actually I think that's as it turns out a good call So he brings in a lot of new blood who are basically very energetic and desperate to prove themselves.
11:42But also, Joff sees something that most people have completely missed. Most people at this point assume the Germans are going to win. The Germans themselves now think they're going to win. So one of their chief strategists on the 25th of August, a guy called Colonel Gerhard Tappen, tells his colleagues, he says, in six weeks, we shall finish the job. And that was the target, wasn't it? Of the Schlieffen plan, that it had to be done within six weeks. Yeah, we will finish the French off and then we'll use the trains to get all our troops back to East Prussia, to Galicia, whatever, to deal with the Russians.
12:13But Joffre, as he looks at these maps, he can see that the German offensive is now very, very stretched. So they have come an incredibly long way in a very short time. In three weeks, they've travelled 200 miles and have thrust deep into France. But that's a problem for them. Half of their lorries are broken down. They're using thousands and thousands of horses to transport their supplies, or they're carrying their supplies, physically carrying them themselves. Their horses are dropping dead with exhaustion. Their men, who are not rested and rotated at all, there's no system for doing that, are carrying massively heavy packs.
12:49They've all got, I'm very familiar with this issue, they've got new ill-fitting footwear that means they've got horrendous blisters. It's very hot. And so they have begun to, A, to slow down, and B, to become very ragged and disorganized. So the further they go, the more mistakes they make. They get lost. They get jumbled up. They're basically making map reading errors. That's not very German, is it? No. This is the thing. They're behaving in a very un-German way. You could argue this was the fundamental weakness of the whole Schlieffen plan. It looks great on paper. But in reality, your lorries are going to break down.
13:25Your men are going to get blisters. And the Schlieffen plan made no allowance for basically, you know, natural human failings. So, I mean, this is a key element of war, isn't it? Dominic, you mustn't overextend your supply lines. And you have spotted this, whereas Schlieffen hadn't. You and I and Joff are clearly cut from the similar. We're unflappable in that way. But we're not histrionic like a German general. Having our lunch. Right, exactly. Arrested History Scheduling Meeting, I think, is the technical term for a lunch. Right. Now, the Germans are about to make a massive, massive misjudgment.
14:01So, Molker's original plan was for them to go over the top of Paris and to encircle it, to go all the way around it and encircle it from the west. But in the last days of August, the top German field commander, who's a man called Karl von Bülow, he decides, let's change the plan. We probably don't even need to bother encircling Paris. And he says to the topmost bit of the army, so the right wing of the German army, which is under Alexander von Kluck. He says, don't bother going around Paris. Turn inwards before you get to Paris. Kind of turn down towards the flank of the retreating British and French.
14:37Can I ask a question? Is this because genuinely he thinks they don't need to bother enveloping Paris? Or is it because they're all so tired and knackered that they think, oh, we'll just cut a corner? I think it may be a tiny element of both. They are very tired by this point. They are exhausted and they are very worried about their supply lines. But as well, they think, they assume the British and French, because they've been retreating so far, are beaten. And they can just turn, sort of envelop them, squeeze them against their borders. And we're talking about enormous armies and enormous distances and crush them between them.
15:10The Battle of Canae. Yeah. Instead of doing the whole plan, they will basically use Eastern France as their battlefield and they will envelop the Allied armies and crush them. So they crush the armies, they crush the armies and then Paris surrenders. That's the plan. And then the French will have no one left and they'll have to surrender. They won't even need to take Paris. I have to say, I am massively, massively simplifying this because to emphasize, we are not. The rest is military history. But the key point is that the German commanders have abandoned their original blueprint. They think the British and French armies are so broken, they just need to pursue and annihilate them.
15:42So now they are not following a sort of plan. They are basically making it up as they go along. And the key thing about this is that they are massively underestimating the Allies. And the reason for that, presumably, is the sheer number of people that you were talking about. We're talking about hundreds of thousands, millions of people. So even if you wipe out, you inflict what seems countless numbers of casualties, you aren't necessarily breaking the capacity of an industrial nation to continue the fight. I mean, is that essentially the misjudgment? I think exactly. I think especially a country like France, which is very highly militarized, which is basically now gone to honor to a total war footing, is mobilizing all its manpower.
16:28There are a lot of Frenchmen left. And France is a very serious country. And, you know, you can win these enormous battles in the Battle of the Frontiers, but there's still a long way to go. And I think the Germans don't realize that, actually. Because I guess the only war fought previously in history that would have taught that lesson would have been the American Civil War. Yes, I guess so. Because the Franco-Prussian War was done and dusted pretty quickly. They encircle and capture the emperor, Napoleon III, and then it's pretty much done. Whereas with this, the canvas is so much bigger and the numbers are so much bigger.
17:05I guess the Americans… But also the industrial capacity is so great and the supplies and everything. Yeah, railways, all of that stuff, factories. Yeah, exactly. And this is something that nobody really understands, I guess, at this point. And it's also a testament, actually, to the French and the British have retreated 200 miles, but they have actually kept their discipline. They haven't fallen apart in a complete chaotic sort of shambles. They are very well-trained armies, by and large, and very cohesive. So they've actually managed to pull it off, as we will see. Now, then there's a big stroke of luck.
17:38On the 1st of September, one of the staff officers, the French 5th Army, is handed a gift from the front, and it is a blood-drenched backpack taken from the body of a German cavalry officer. And he opens it, and inside is some food and some papers and clothes, but above all there is a map, and the map is marked. And the map shows the deployment of every corps in Alexander von Kluck's 1st Army, with pencil markings even showing where they're going to be sleeping. And it shows without doubt that this bloke Kluck is turning away from the French capital. He's going inwards and he's actually, without realising it, he's exposing himself to an Allied counter-attack.
18:16And isn't there also, the French are getting information from the Eiffel Tower, which kind of serves as an eavesdropping device. Oh, that's a good fact. I didn't know that. To intercept German signals, I gather. So the Eiffel Tower is an important military installation. Yeah, it's not completely useless. No. So let's move forward three days to Friday the 4th of September. The Allies have fallen back to the Valley of the Marne. so you have a million french and british soldiers stretched across this front and to get this into people's minds the front is 150 miles long it goes from the suburbs of paris all the way east to the great eastern fortress of verdun and advancing towards them are a million germans just under a million really they're very confident the germans they think they're going to win but They are sore and hungry and ragged and very tired.
19:08We did the Battle of Mons in the last episode. We quoted a bloke called Walter Blum, and he describes his own troops. He says, we looked unshaved, unwashed, like prehistoric savages, covered with dust and spattered with blood, blackened with powder smoke and torn threadbare by thorns and barbed wire. So although there is this image of the Germans as sort of invincible and indomitable and whatnot. They are at the absolute limit of their endurance. They're wearing this. We'll see this again and again in this story, actually. They're wearing the same clothes by and large that they set out in, and they haven't washed for weeks.
19:42So they really are in a terrible state. So a pungent smell descending on Paris. Right, exactly. So that very day, actually, the 4th of September, General von Kluck sent a signal to German supreme command, And he said, we're at the limit. My men cannot really go on. They are exhausted and we need reinforcements. And at his headquarters, you know, as he's polishing off his long lunch, General Joff thinks to himself, this is the moment. And that evening, the 4th of September, he issues General Order No. 6. And he says, now that the German First Army has turned inwards to finish us off, we'll concentrate all our forces against this army.
20:24We'll strike when they're least expecting it. We will thrust a wedge between the German 1st and 2nd armies, so that's on their sort of western flank, and we will drive them from our sacred soil. Great stuff. But he actually, for this to work, the wedge that he wants to drive between the two German armies is going to be the British Expeditionary Force. Our own dear countrymen. Is that because they're positioned where they happen to have ended up? I mean, it's not a kind of our fighting spirit. No, no, no. He's not saying the only people who can do this are the British. He's actually looking at his map and saying, well, the British are the people in the right place, so they're going to have to do it.
21:05I just wondered if perhaps there was a kind of political dimension to it as well. I don't know. I don't think so. I think it's just that they're in the right place to do the right job. Maybe, I mean, I know the trouble with doing the First World War is there are a load of people there who literally know the details of everybody's backpack and stuff. so they're almost certainly going to be flooding the rest of the system. They'll be enjoying our forensic. Forensic.
21:30Yeah, it's like that bloke who wrote like a 40 ,000 word essay about the bows that people used at Ashencore or something. Remember that when you did Ashencore? I do. Yes, I do. Anyway, I don't want to open old wounds, Tom. So the 5th of September, we began with this. This is the scene we began with. This is the crucial moment. And I have to say, it is an absolutely, unbelievably melodramatic scene. Joffre, as we said before, loves a drive. He puts on his massive cape and he drives 100 miles to the chateau. He doesn't drive, Dominic. No, of course, he doesn't drive. Formula One winning. Yes, that's right.
22:04He is driven, I should say, to the chateau of Vaux-les-Péniles. So that's where Sir John French is staying. And he begins by telling Sir John, he says, on your decision now rests the fate of Europe. And then he sets out his plan, as you described. the sweep of the battlefield all these intricate bits of machinery the germans blundering on towards the precipice all this and then he turns to sir john french and his voice is throbbing with passion he barely ever speaks so this is a really remarkable moment and he says the lives of all french people the soil of france the future of europe depends on you joining this battle i cannot believe the british army will refuse to do its share in this supreme crisis then he looks Sir John in the eyes and he says, Monsieur le Maréchal, c 'est la France qui vous supplie.
22:56Phil Marshall or whatever, it's France who is begging you. The honour of England is at stake. And he's been thumping the table while he's doing that. And then there's this long silence and everybody looks at Sir John French with his great red face, bright redder than ever. and there are tears trickling down his cheeks and he tries to say something in French but he can't he stumbles on his words and eventually he just turns to one of his officers and he says damn it I can't explain tell him that all that men can do our fellows will do and the officer says in French to Joff the field marshal says yes c 'est oui so Joffre drives back to his headquarters where his junior officers are waiting now he knows that some of them are very sceptical about this, they worry that their men have been retreating for so long they're too tired or they're too demoralised but Joffre gathers them and he says it's now or never, it's victory or death gentlemen, we shall fight on the Marne and that night he gives the final order to his million men, troops who can no longer advance must keep the ground that has been warned at any cost they must die where they stand rather than give way now that same day in paris his old boss general galliani dying has been talking to his subordinates and um one of these guys says to galliani well what happens if it goes battling what happens if we're overwhelmed where where should be the point that we retreat to galliani says to him nowhere we fight to the death.
24:32Great stuff. So Dominic, this is, I mean, this is thrilling, isn't it? Because at dawn on the 6th of September, the artillery barrage begins. Thousands and thousands of guns. And I guess this is, I mean, a noise like it has never been heard before. It's the greatest man-made storm in history. And then for fans of French military bugles, the exciting moment comes when they sound tens of thousands of Frenchmen begin to pour forward. The French Elan combined with French industrial might and the Battle of the Marne begins. And the excitement is so intense that I can't really cope with it. I doubt you can cope.
25:14I can see seeing you on the video. You can't possibly cope with it. So we are going to take a break, have a breather, and we will be back in a few minutes.
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Read the full transcript
26:52Hi everybody, it is Dominic here. Now, I have been working on something incredibly exciting, a special treat for the members of the Rest Is History Club. Every Friday for the next few weeks, I will be joined by our regular Rest Is History producer, Tabby Syrett and we will be discussing a different great book from history from J.R.R. Tolkien's fantasy classic The Hobbit to Bram Stoker's horror novel Dracula to Margaret Atwood's dystopian fable The Handmaid's Tale and we will be exploring the lives of authors from Albert Camus to Truman Capote and we'll be looking at the history behind their great books, the world they inhabited, the social and cultural context and the secrets that the books hold.
27:40So if you want to hear Tabby and me delving into these great books, then all you have to do is to go to the rest is history dot com to join the rest is history club. And you will get a thrilling books episodes every Friday. You'll get the regular bonus episodes of the rest is history club that everybody loves so much. You'll get all the other amazing benefits. You'll get early access to episodes. You'll get ad-free listening. Unbelievable benefits. So that is therestishistory.com. This thrilling new content will be starting on Friday, the 5th of September. Bye-bye.
28:21Hello, welcome back to The Rest is History. Dominic, the Battle of the Marne has begun. Just how exciting is it? Tom, it's unbelievably exciting. So where are we? We're in Paris. We're on the night of the 7th of September, 1914. So the Battle of the Marne has now been raging for two days. But at his headquarters, General Galliani, he's got a dilemma. On the front, you know, it's all kicked off and Joffre needs every man that he can get. And they have commandeered every train and every truck in the city to get men to the front. However, the railway network is so clogged, the trains are wounded, with supply trains, with refugees and whatnot, that basically the whole system is close to breaking down.
29:06The army's 7th Division have been on trains for 24 hours. They are now stuck in a place called Pontin, which is a suburb of northern Paris. Now, Gelliani wants to get these men to the front. You know, the front, Tom, you may be wondering how far the front is. I'm wondering that. It's miles away. It's some miles, I'll put it that way. It's some distance. So they can't walk anyway. how are they going to get there there's talk of using army lorries but there's basically none left and then somebody at galliani's headquarters maybe galliani himself says yeah i know this sounds mad let's feel but could they not take taxes to the front now paris normally has 10 000 taxes and only 3 000 of them are operating basically because so many drivers have gone to join the army but 3 000 taxes is not nothing and so galliani says great let's do it so one of driver's officers rings the central police station and says, I want all taxes, every single taxi in the city, sent to the Esplanade des Invalides.
30:07So the Invalides, the big military complex, where Napoleon is buried. In every street in Paris, the police go out and they flag down these taxes. They basically kick the passengers out, and they say to the drivers, go to the military college at Les Invalides. Now, most of these taxes are Renault taxis. I have to say I'm not a massive fan of a Renault car, but there you go. They've got room for about five people each, and they can go no faster than 25 miles an hour. But by the standards of the day, that's not bad. It's quicker than walking, isn't it? It's a lot quicker than walking. Considering how many miles they've got to go.
30:41Well, exactly. And we don't want to pin down exactly how many miles because we don't want to give everything away. But it's quite a distance. I think that's a detail for our subscribers, no? But it is a distance. Yeah. So about 10 o 'clock, the first convoy of taxis heads out. about 250 cars. They're led by this officer called Lieutenant Le Fasse, and only he knows where they're going because it's a secret. And he says to the drivers, right, you stay in single file, you turn your headlights off, you can use your sort of reel, your kind of tail lights, but not your headlights. The drivers, I have to say, are very, very unhappy about this.
31:19They're unhappy about losing their fares. They're also unhappy about driving with their lights off because they say, well, we're just going to drive into each other, which indeed a lot of them do. Anyway, after an awful lot of kind of getting lost and faffing around, by four o 'clock in the next morning, these empty taxis reach a place called Damata, which is northeast of Paris. There's nothing there. There's nobody there to meet them. So the drivers just get out and lounge around in the sunshine because it's a sunny day. And a nice detail, past them go loads of blokes on bicycles heading to the front.
31:49And the drivers all shout, Vive les cyclistes! Vive les cyclistes! Whatever. That must have been inspiring to see taxisers shouting that to you. As he's lying there with like a bottle of wine on the verge of the road, eating his cheese. Anyway, they're eventually redirected to a railway siding near a village called La Barrière. And here they find their men, their passengers. And these are the men of the 103rd and 104th Infantry Brigades. And the soldiers, the men, cannot believe it when the taxis turn up. because in 1914, you only took a taxi if you were rich. Taxis are a luxury. And what is more, of course, most of these men have never been in a car of any kind.
32:34So it's very exciting. They get into these cars. The convoy has swollen to about 400 vehicles. This is the first installment of the taxis. And there's other vehicles too. So they've managed to rope in some buses. They've got some limousines, and they've even got a couple of racing cars. I mean imagine going to the front in a racing car I love the contribution of the Grand Prix to the war effort so there's the guy who's driving Joffre around and now they're driving soldiers up to the front there's a magnificent reflection on French sport and cyclists right yeah them as well vive les cyclistes great stuff so the soldiers have been on the road you know on the train for ages so they're knackered most of them try to sleep in the cars it's very difficult actually because it's an incredibly unrelaxing journey the cars because they've got the headlights off.
33:20They keep bumping into each other. They keep getting flat tires. They keep getting lost and breaking down. Anyway, you asked how long it was, Tom, and actually I'm going to give you the detail now. I'm not going to make you join the rest of this history club. It's 30 miles. I read it in my notes. They've gone 30 miles. So as dawn is breaking on the 8th of September, they reach this village called Nontoy, which you'll be pleased to hear because I know you're a big fan of this organisation, is near Disneyland Paris today. Presumably not then. They should have a ride. It'd be a brilliant ride, the Texas of the Marne ride, wouldn't it?
33:52First World War theme park. Actually, they have that theme park. Pijufu. You know that place where you can go and do, there's like Verdun and stuff. Yes, and gladiators and things. Yeah, it's run by monarchists, French monarchists or something. Dominic, if only you knew someone at Disney and you could get them to do a Miracle of the Marne ride. Bob, if you're listening, you know what to do. You know where to call us. Exactly. Right. Anyway, so basically they've reached Disneyland, they decant the soldiers, and now the soldiers can take their place on the front line to defend their homeland. And the reason we've spent so much time on this story is that this in France becomes probably the great legend of the First World War, a symbol of patriotic solidarity, a sign of the determination of the French people to drive the invaders from their sacred homeland, all of this kind of stuff.
34:46and the story kind of spread in the years after the war but it really was turbocharged in the 1950s there's a writer called jean du tor who wrote a book called the taxis of the man and he said and i quote that this was the single greatest event of the 20th century which is a big claim greater than the angels of mons surely not even greater i think than the angels of mons tom and i think it's interesting because he wrote that in 1956 and the context of that was that france had just been kicked out of vietnam they'd lost at dnb and phu things have just kicked off in algeria they're obviously still very bruised after second world war and the humiliation 1940 and there were people were desperate for kind of patriotic consolation so the story of the taxis of the man became incredibly important to them and if you go to the army museum at les invalides i'm sure theo is there all the time they have a very handsome old renault taxi with, I almost said that in a French way, that was weird.
35:42Yeah, you did. Yeah. Getting more of a microphone as you go on. Exactly. Inspector Clouseau joins us now on The Rest is History. It's got a red body and yellow wheels and it's registration. Do you want to know it's registration? Of course you do. It's 2862G7. Is that significant? No, it's just an interesting fact. You just knew that. I think that's the single most boring fact we've ever had on The Rest is History. No. No, I'll tell you the worst fact, the fact that you wanted to cut out General Custer's father's beard. Yeah, this is even more boring than that. No, no, no, no. But the whole story is incredible, right?
36:20And I'm wondering if, as with the Angels of Mons, whether there have been sceptics and people who've doubted its veracity and whether it actually mattered at all. Oh, well, hold on. Nobody doubts its veracity. This is different to the Angels of Mons. It definitely happened. There's no question about that. However, did it make any difference at all? None whatsoever to the story. It's completely inconsequential. So basically, the taxis transported about 4 ,000 men out of a million. And the idea that it's this sort of hurrah, hurrah, very Hollywood kind of rousing music, everybody shaking hands and saying, vive la France, is not really right.
36:58The drivers spent the entire time complaining. They basically kept saying, are we going to be paid for this? I'm not doing this for free. So are the meters on? They kept the meters running. Of course they kept the meters running. And the French government eventually agreed that they would pay them a quarter of the amount on the meter. They were paid 130 francs, which is the equivalent of a fortnight's wages, which is not bad. And it's better than being shot, isn't it? It is better. Or getting horrible blisters. And the thing about the First World War is everybody thinks of it as it's all very boring and it's about munitions and barbed wire and trenches.
37:33In reality, the First World War is an absolute kind of, it's fertile territory for myths, for legends, for patriotic inventions, all of this stuff. This is what we'll be exploring in our bonus on the Age of Le Mons. The supernatural stuff plays a big part in the way people think about the First World War, for example, because it's the age of spiritualism. Anyway, let's get back to planet Earth. What has been happening at the front? You described at the end of the first half how the storm had broken at the beginning of the 6th of September. all of these hundreds and hundreds of thousands of Frenchmen and more than 100 ,000 Britons armed with 3 ,000 heavy guns charging forward on this vast front line that goes from Paris all the way to Verdun in the east.
38:16And actually, the person who probably incarnates the spirit of that day is a man who's not well regarded in France these days, who is a future top collaborator, Philippe Pétain, who is a great star, actually, of the Great War. Pétain, at dawn on the 6th, told his men, he said, right, we're going to advance on this village, Saint-Bon. And his men, yeah, they're tired, they're anxious, they hesitated. Pétain got off his horse, he went up to the front line, joined his infantry, and he said, I will lead you personally. And he personally led them towards the front. So in other circumstances, it would be a very inspiring story, and everybody in France would know about it.
38:55But unfortunately, Pétain rather let himself down in 1940. so he's not as celebrated as he might be. In 1914, Napoleonic Aylann. Yeah, totally. It's what you want. But is it enough? Surely the lesson of the Battle of the Frontiers is that patriotic Aylann is not, you know, you have to, there's a lot of industrial might that is required alongside sort of fighting spirit. Presumably that you need a good strategy and you need good timing. You do indeed. Now the thing with the Battle of the Marne is it is so vast that it actually isn't really one battle. It's several battles going on simultaneously.
39:30And the interesting thing is that officers in one part of the front generally have no idea what's going on elsewhere. So in some places, the French actually do very well. So for example, if you imagine on the west side, the French 5th Army absolutely batters Carl von Bülow's German 2nd Army. At the same time, the British are advancing actually almost unchallenged into this crucial gap between the German second and first armies. That's von Bulow and von Kluck. So there's a brilliant detail in Max Hastings' book. He records Lieutenant Lionel Tennyson, who was not only the grandson of the poet Tennyson, but also becomes England cricket captain.
40:11And he says that while the French are furiously fighting the Germans, we passed Jimmy Rothschild's beautiful house and saw masses of pheasants running about everywhere and longed to be able to stop and get some. And then another detail that, this is reported by some other guy, quoting Max Hastings again, seeing the road littered with weapons and equipment, Eginton, so this is the guy who sees it, was fascinated and rather shocked that one of the abandoned German vehicles proved to be laden with women's underwear. Wow. See, I think the British have the right attitude. They're doing a lot of fighting, but not too much.
40:47you know they're also strolling around kind of inspecting pheasants and whatever and underwear but actually the allies don't have things all their own way because in the east they do quite badly the germans are quite close to breaking through at nancy and at verdun and in the center things are very very tight so there ferdinand foch who is commanding the ninth army of the french is taking on the german third army it's very dicey it's when foch sends joff one of the most famous messages in french history mon centre said ma droite recule situation excellente my centre is giving way my right is retreating situation excellent i'm going to attack and that sort of um you know the sort of combination of like you're going backwards and going forwards at the same time is the whole battle in microcosm because on the morning of the 8th of september the germans launched this massive bayonet charge against foch's right and they pushed them about eight miles back but the germans were so tired that after eight miles it just stopped and most of them just sat down and started went to sleep they stopped for a second and they were so exhausted they just fell asleep but foch's men who would think would now seize the advantage they are equally shattered and also by now the weather has changed which is actually a crucial part of this story the weather changes it starts raining it becomes very foggy so the french have no idea actually where they are literally the fog of war the fog of war exactly so really the story of the marne it's not it's the victory is not one so much on the battlefield as in the head it's it's basically a test of nerve you know do you think you're winning or not or are you going to give way and the problem for the germans is their communications are terrible so on the western side these two really important armies von kluck's first army and von bulow's second army there's no direct cable link between the two until late on the 9th of September.
42:45So the two commanders have no idea where the other one is and what he's doing. And they're sort of fighting separate battles. And the Supreme Commander, Helmut von Moltke, formerly Spahr, obitue, very depressed, thinking about reincarnation. He's 150 miles away in Luxembourg, and he has no idea really what's going on, sort of studying wire reports and getting very anxious. And he sends West a really, really important figure who's an obscure Lieutenant Colonel called Richard Hench. And after the war, the American chief of staff said that the Allies should build a hall of fame and build a statue to Hench and give it pride of place, which seems very peculiar, but I'll explain exactly why that is.
43:34Hench is a very smart guy, he's an intelligence officer who works for the German general staff and Malka has been using him as an emissary to all his generals and by the 8th of September so a couple of days two or three days into the fighting Malka has got in a massive panic and he says I'm going to send Hench to the front to talk to Kluck and Bulov. Hench goes to the headquarters of the German second army and there he finds this Bulov in a massive funk so the second army is in real trouble Bulov says my troops are exhausted The Allies are in danger of breaking through the gaps. Budapest himself is in a terrible state.
44:11Like all first world generals, he's 68, he's got massive thyroid problems, and he's got severe arteriosclerosis. Is there any who doesn't have a kind of fatal illness? I don't think so. I think because the nature of it is you don't become a sort of supreme commander type person until you're in your late 60s. And at that point, people are quite – they've had a very unhealthy lifestyle, I think, probably. There's been drinking a lot of fine wines and it hasn't done any good. Late on the 8th, while he's talking to Hench, Bulov starts to get these more reports in the front. The Allies are breaking through.
44:43And he says to Hench, my army's being reduced to cinders. We're facing total catastrophe. And Hench says to him, well, look, Molka has given me authority to say to you, if you want to retreat, it's your call. And this is the first time that anybody in the German army has really talked about retreating. So this is a kind of landmark moment. They don't make the decision straight away, but overnight, the mood gets bleaker and bleaker. Three times, Bulov breaks down in floods of tears. Says, you know, I can't cope with this. I'm too stressed. We're going to lose. My men are all going to die, all this kind of thing.
45:17And at five o 'clock in the morning, they get reports from air reconnaissance that the French are coming ever closer. And so at nine o 'clock in the morning, at 9.02, in fact, we love a forensic fact, Hench says to Bulov, okay, fine, make the call, retreat. So Bülow, whose nerve is basically snapped now, issues the order for his second army to retreat. So now Hench continues his driving tour of the front, the most disastrous drive in German military history. He drives 50 miles west to the headquarters of Alexander von Klux, a first army. It's a terrible journey. The roads are clogged with terrified refugees.
45:55There are exhausted and wounded soldiers everywhere. There's loads of artillery. There are wounded, you know, there's kind of men lying in the ditches, whatnot. It's a complete war zone. And at various points, his car actually comes under attack from his own side because it's so confused and every order is broken down. He arrives at First Army headquarters. When he gets there, the First Army officers are actually quite confident. They say, yeah, the British should come in, but we reckon we can handle the British. We've handled them before. And Hensch says, no, no, no, the Second Army is already retreating, so you probably need to fall back too.
46:27and the first army officers are stunned they're like what we think we can win this he says no no no moltke has told me i've got authority to make these decisions you know you should you should pull back so by the time he goes back to luxembourg the decision has actually been made and later that day the french advanced on where the second army had been the place called montmirail and they're astounded when they get there because there's nothing there von bulow's Second Army has vanished. In their wake, they've left fields strewn with rubbish, including an unbelievable quantity of empty wine bottles, which probably tells its own story.
47:06The Germans have had a fine old time in the back of the battle. The next day, the 10th, is the same story further west. Sir Max Hastings quotes a gunner called Paul Lantier, who had survived the slaughter at Verton in the Ardennes that we talked about last time. This bloke, Lantier's unit, they wake up and they just find it's really weird. The birds are singing. The sun is shining. There's no guns. And a load of French infantry marched past. And the colonel of this unit marching past shouts, we've won. The Germans are retreating all across the line. Lantier said afterwards, the news as it passed from mouth to mouth shook us with joy.
47:46Victory, victory, when we were so far from expecting it. So the Germans have cracked. The French have won. And for the French, this becomes an absolutely legendary moment. It achieves a kind of sacred status as the miracle on the Marne. And the guy who actually coined that expression, unfortunately, at the end of the year, was an ultra-nationalist, anti-Semitic writer called Maurice Barres. and he invented he basically said that the miracle on the man you know that this element that you talked about that in the angels of mon's bonus the supernatural very important to sort of very right-wing ultra-nationalist writers in france and he said this is here i associate the miracle in the man with and i quote the eternal french miracle the miracle of joan of arc the idea that in extremis, somehow God will intervene and he will save France from the invaders.
48:47I mean, actually, of course, the people who really deserve the credit are A, the French soldiers, and B, Gallini and Joffre, who in the crucial moment had not panicked as their successors panicked in 1940. And Joffre in particular, when he's sitting there eating his enormous lunches, he has chosen the right moment to strike back. I mean, his grasp of timing was perfect. But if you read most accounts of the Marne, actually most historians are less interested in what the French got right and more interested in what the Germans got wrong. You could blame the individual generals for changing their plan, but I think most historians would say the real problem is actually with the whole concept, the Schlieffen plan, or the Schlieffen-Molke plan.
49:28This idea of the six-week timetable was so unrealistic that there's probably no way that it could have worked unless the Allies panicked and lost their nerve. Basically, if the Allies kept their cool, the wheels were always going to come off the German juggernaut. So can I ask, is there a sense perhaps that the commitment on the German part to this plan means that they are less able to kind of think on their feet than they would otherwise have been? It's an interesting question because, of course, when they do think on their feet, it goes wrong. when they start to change the plan. I think that the truth of the matter is that the German plan is born of a really poor strategic position, which is your sandwich between France and Russia.
50:12And so they're probably right. I mean, I suppose they could have just sat and done a defensive war and waited to be attacked by the Allies, but, I mean, who wants to be attacked on two fronts? I think they were probably right that in an offensive war this was the only way they could win. But it's just a massive, massive gamble. I mean, would it have worked better if they'd stuck to the original and not improvised? But the improvisations are forced on them by the fact that the plan is simply impossible to stick to. Yeah, I think to some extent you're absolutely right that they have to start improvising.
50:47And I think as well, maybe there is a psychological element. To go back to your question, I think if you have been told we have to do this in six weeks and this is the only plan that will do it, when the plan starts to go wrong. Massive panic, yeah. Well, this is exactly what happens. So I think the Germans are probably psychologically much more shaken by their retreat from the Battle of the Marne than the Allies were by their retreat from the Battle of the Frontiers. Well, the British love a retreat, don't they? I like going backwards, because you know you're going to win that way. Yeah. Well, you lose first, and then you retreat, and then you win.
51:22Exactly. That's the story of all British history. because all the accounts that you have, the sort of diaries and letters, German officers are talking. They say, you know, people are crying. They're devastated. They confused, all of this kind of thing. I mean, here's a key thing, and I think it's really, really important in the long run in German history. At this point, they didn't think they were losing. You know, a lot of people in the Battle of the Month thought they were winning or that at least they were holding their own. They didn't feel like a beaten army when they got the orders to go backwards.
51:54So I think it's actually here, a month into the war, that you have in embryo the origin of a very poisonous political meme, I suppose, which is the idea we've been betrayed. We've been cheated. Okay, so stab in the back. We've been stabbed in the back by defeatists in high places. Now, at this point, they're not talking in such explicit terms. And they're obviously not talking about communists, Jews, all the rest that they blame at the end of the First World War. but there is this sense we we should have won you know we deserved victory and for some reason it has been denied us and dominic where is the kaiser in all this is he hanging out with molke the kaiser's hanging around at the back obviously he's um as as baffled and as confused and as angry as anybody although he's not quite as devastated as von molke is because von molke who as we've said is sickly and depressive and basically always on the brink of a breakdown.
52:50I mean, he's really taken this whole business incredibly badly. And in fact, during the battle, during this period, he's been writing these extraordinary letters to his wife. I cannot find the words to describe the crushing burden of responsibility that's weighed on my shoulders in the last few days. The appalling difficulties of our present situation hang before my eyes like a dark curtain through which I can see nothing. The whole world is in league against us. It would seem that every country is bent on destroying Germany once and for all. They're very self-pitying. But also, there's a lot of guilt, actually.
53:24He says, I feel sick to think of how many Germans have died. Often, terror overcomes me when I think of this, and I have the feeling that I must answer for this horror. And this is very sub-ideal from your supreme commander. Yeah, it's not great, is it? And when people go to his headquarters in Luxembourg, They're horrified by what they find. I mean, again and again, people say, God, he's a wreck. He's a broken man. There's one general who turns up called Karl Einem, and Moltke just says to him, my God, you know, how could this have happened? And Einem loses his temper with him and says, well, if you don't know, who knows?
53:57You should know better than anybody. How could you have remained in Luxembourg and allowed the reins of leadership to slip from your hands? So a few days after the Battle of the Mar, 14th of September, Moltke really starts to lose it. He's sort of pacing up and down the room in a very agitated way, whistling through his teeth. And basically, word gets back to Berlin. People say to the Kaiser, you've got to fire him. He's got to go. He's lost it completely. So on the evening of the 14th, the Kaiser appoints a new Supreme Commander, a new chief of the general staff. And he is a much chillier character.
54:32He is the Prussian War Minister, Erich von Falkenhayn. That's a good name. I mean, we've mentioned this, like the falcon swooping down. Exactly. Now, he's from a Prussian landowning family, which means he's a Junker. But actually, unusually, he's quite young for a top general. So he's only 53. And he is greatly disliked by everybody else. It will amaze people to hear. He's a lonely kind of saturnine kind of man. Very acerbic. Does he have death in his eyes? He almost certainly does. Cold eyes. Churchill thinks he's brilliant though doesn't he Churchill rates him as the best of the best of the German generals I think he probably is actually I think Falkenhayn makes a series of pretty decent calls I think he knows what he's doing the other generals don't like him for what they call his mocking superiority so he thinks he's better than they are the Kaiser likes him though I mean he's spent a lot of time sucking up to the Kaiser and Falkenhayn he's smart he thinks I always thought it was going to be a long war he thinks our priority you know for germany is we what we have we hold we're probably not going to win this on the battlefield if we win this at all we'll win it politically ideally we're probably going to have to strike a deal with one of our adversaries probably russia you know we'll have to fight the russians to a standstill and then strike a deal with them but in the short term obviously the priority is to find a new defensive position.
56:04Now, the Germans, like the British and the French before them, have not lost their cohesion. They retreat in very good order, and they're nowhere near giving up. They're still inside French territory, remember. They still control the industrial northeast of France. They still control the iron ore field of Lorraine, for example. They don't want to give that up. So on the 12th of September, they call a halt just above the River Aisne in the northeast of France, on a long kind of chalk ridge north of the river. And the next day, the French and the British, in pursuit, cross the river after them. And it's a very cinematic opening to the Battle of the Aisne.
56:39The British troops are kind of crossing on these improvised pontoon bridges in dense fog. It's like the attack by the orcs on Osgiliath in the Return of the King film. Maybe you're not comparing the British to orcs. and I'm comparing the use of pontoon bridges and fog important to put that on the record but at this point it has started to rain so the weather has broken the summer is over now both sides at this point in previous wars with it pouring with rain they're absolutely exhausted they've been back and forth across France in the great northern war which we did recently on the show they would have gone to winter quarters even Charles the 12th would have gone to winter quarters but these days these people don't go to winter courses.
57:22They keep going. And one reason for that is basically they don't need supplies in the same way. They have tinned food. They have bully beef and stuff like that. So they can just stay out there for as long as, you know, throughout the duration. And so it's at the Aine, this point, in mid-September 1914, that three key features of the First World War really become apparent. So first of all, both sides now are relying very heavily on their artillery. The days of cavalry charges are over. They are pounding each other with shells for hours on end. In some places, you know, a shell will be landing every few seconds.
57:56So that's number one. And Dominic, the other thing I'm guessing, you mentioned that this is chalk land and chalk is very easy to dig. So do the spades come out at this point and the picks? So digging and it's raining, right? So it's wet, wet chalk, you can dig it quickly. And if you're a German infantryman holding your position under attack from the Allies, the obvious thing to do is to take out your trenching tools. The Germans actually have better trenching tools than the Allies do. They've been practicing digging trenches for the last 10 years. And, of course, they want to hold their positions.
58:30They're not anticipating moving, so they dig very deep. And this is one reason why, for the whole of the First World War, the German trenches are usually better than the British ones. The Germans don't want to leave their trenches, whereas, for example, the British or the French, their expectation is that they will advance and move on to new positions. I've never really thought of that. I've learned something. So, wow. You've actually gained something from the podcast. I have. That's lovely. That's lovely. First time in 700 episodes or whatever. It's been occasional. A few times before this, but that's a very good insight.
59:06That's a top insight. So, well, I mean, it's not my own. And it's in every single book about the First World War. I know, I know. It just never really registered until I heard it from your lips. Okay. Oh, that's lovely. So that means that the character of the fighting now has fundamentally changed. Waterloo, 100 years before, done and dusted pretty much in a day. But there's no way that's going to happen again. These battles are going to take weeks or months. And a lot of the time, they will involve men cowering in their trenches from shell fire before the whistle or the bugle goes and they have to go over the top.
59:38so this is actually the third element of the first world war that is different from other wars maybe not the american civil war and it's a sense that this will never ever end it's a sense of interminable hopelessness so now you have men there's the scenes for the first time they're pouring with rain men are knee-deep in mud they're covered in dirt they're hungry they're exhausted the british we mentioned what they're wearing the british have been wearing the same clothes since the Battle of Mons. They haven't changed in all that time. It's a lot of pubic lice. Almost certainly. And the weird thing is, even though they're not moving, they're still losing 2 ,000 men a day killed and wounded.
1:00:18So they're just sitting there and they're just being pummeled by shellfire. And of course, it's the same for all sides. There's a quote. I can't remember which book this was in. Maybe Max Hastings. Creston Anderson, a German soldier. He writes in his diary on the 28th of September. we all know we're on our way into the jaws of hell we aren't ourselves we're hardly human any longer at most we're well-drilled automatons god if only we could become human again and he never did he was killed two years later at the battle of the somme and that's the kind of sentiment i think you see a lot in the first world war but you didn't see it so much in other wars where every day is different bring there's a tremendous variety you're kind of riding or marching about and there's a sense that who knows, the war could end next week.
1:01:01This time, I think everybody knows this is not going to be over anytime soon. So the issue for both sides is how on earth do you break this deadlock now, now that you've started digging in? And this is the one thing that Schlieffen had feared. It was the reason he had dreamed up his plan. And from this point onwards, I think the story of the war is both sides were coming up with various wheezes, gas, massive kind of frontal attacks, tanks, all of these different things to try to break the deadlock. But there is just one last chance that the Germans could snatch victory before Christmas. Because by mid-September, the trenches stretch all the way southeast to the border with Switzerland.
1:01:48Okay, and they stop there, do they? Yes. So why don't the Germans do what they've done to Belgium and go through Switzerland? the Swiss you can't underestimate the Swiss I think crack at the Swiss a crack at the Swiss why did that's the great question of history why has nobody ever had a crack at the Swiss I don't know maybe a Swiss listeners if we've got any Swiss listeners they'll be able to explain well don't they all do military service yeah they do but I'm just thinking you know they could the Germans could just say you know like they did with Belgium we're really sorry we've just got to go around the corner but I think it's actually hard to go through Switzerland isn't it I mean it's not like flat with loads of railways I mean although they have very good railways in Switzerland, but I think they're built for tourists rather than built for kind of a million men.
1:02:29Well, I just throw it out as an interesting question. Crikey. That's just not an angle I've ever... So in all those books on the First World War, I've never seen anybody, you know, Max Hastings, all these great scholars. Yeah, well, they haven't got my grasp on the operational level. That's what it is. Clearly not. Well, anyway, the trenches stretch all the way to the Swiss border. You can't go beyond that. It's off limits. It's out of bounds. That's the rule. Yeah. but above the river ain right there is a 170 mile space to the channel if what if you could reach that if you could go up around the trenches through this space you could outflank your opponents and then maybe you know who knows you could get into their rear and cause all kinds of carnage so for two months for the next two months there is what is called the race to the sea and the germans are launching assault after assault going ever further and further north trying to breakthrough and the allies are kind of catching up with them they're kind of keeping pace with each other as they're going further north and they're sort of pushing them back and so some of these battlefields albert aras tip val messine they become very famous kind of first world war names and by mid-october this race to the sea has come down to the last bit of open territory and these are the fields the flat fields of flanders just south of the channel and there's one town in particular that represents the last hope of a german breakthrough it's a medieval town it's just inside the belgian border it's just 20 miles from the sea and its name tom will become synonymous with the first world war because this town is ypres okay so uh in our next episode we will turn to the struggle for ypres um extraordinary story of of heroism but also of horror and we will also be exploring one of the most controversial stories of the entire first world war it reverberates into the nazi period the kindermort the massacre of the innocents and members of the rest of history club of course can hear that episode as well as the next two episodes of this series the concluding episodes right now and if you're not a member of course you can sign up at the rest is history.com goodbye
1:04:46You
From the publisher
What extraordinary events saw the French - already on the brink of defeat - take on the formerly formidable German army in a remarkable counter-offensive on the 4th of September, in France, in a clash that would later become known as the Miracle on the Marne? Why was this such a decisive moment in the events of the First World War How did it relate to the famous Schlieffen plan? Did it really see the French charging into battle in Renault taxis? And, why did it become one of the most legendary moments in all of French history?
Join Dominic and Tom as they discuss one of the most astounding clashes of the First World War: the Battle of the Marne.
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