Our editors will review what youve submitted and determine whether to revise the article. He sent his intelligence officer, Oberstleutnant Richard Hentsch to visit the HQs. [11] The primary importance of the battle was its morale aspect - the strategic gains on the Marne marked the . With proper handling, it could sustain a rate of fire for hours. Field Marshal Sir John French, commander of the British Expeditionary Force (BEF), began to plan for a full British retreat to port cities on the English Channel for an immediate evacuation. The request came at a moment when Moltke was becoming perturbed over the way the French were slipping away from his grasp. He used interior lines to move troops from his right wing to the critical left wing and sacked generals. Not sure about the geography of the middle east? Herwig estimated that the five German Armies from Verdun to Paris had 67,700 casualties during the battle and assumed 85,000 casualties for the French. The moves of the 7th and then the 6th Army from Alsace and Lorraine had been intended to secure German lines of communication through Belgium, where the Belgian army had sortied several times, during the period between the Great Retreat and the Battle of the Marne; in August, British marines had landed at Dunkirk. [13] Though in keeping with the pre-war tradition of decentralised command (Auftragstaktik), Kluck disregarded the threat from the west. [11] To accomplish this, the 2nd Army would become the primary striking force with the 1st Army (Alexander von Kluck) following in echelon to protect the flank. It resulted in an Entente victory against the German armies in the west. Devised earlier, the plan was altered slightly in 1906 by Chief of the General Staff, Helmuth von Moltke, who weakened the critical right wing to reinforce Alsace, Lorraine, and the Eastern Front (Map). The temporary advantage which the German First Army had gained over Maunoury was thereby nullified, and it fell back the same day. Entente air reconnaissance observed German forces moving north to face the Sixth Army and discovered the gap. [12] At the time of this Grand Directive, Moltke based his decision on an intercepted radio transmission from the 2nd Army to the 1st Army describing the Entente retreating across the Marne. Following the Schlieffen Plan, the Germans had been moving swiftly toward Paris when the French staged a surprise attack that began the First Battle of the Marne. [15] On 4 September, while meeting with the British General Henry Wilson, d'Esperey outlined a French and British counter-attack on the German 1st Army. Their direction of advance was across a region intersected by frequent rivers, and this handicap was intensified by a lack of initiative on the part of their chiefs. The German 6th and 7th Armies counter-attacked on 20 August, and the Second Army was forced back from Morhange and the First Army was repulsed at Sarrebourg. Place of the Battle of the Marne: France, to the east of Paris. The armoured vehicle would not truly come into its own until the doctrines of J.F.C. Tuchman gave French casualties for August as 206,515 from Armes Franaises and Herwig gave French casualties for September as 213,445, also from Armes Franaises for a total of just under 420,000 in the first two months of the war. On 2 September Moltke issued a Grand Directive changing the order of battle for the German attack. It required a team of two gunners to operate it, one to fire and one to carry ammunition and reload. "First time @NAM_London today. Joffre first attempted to use diplomatic channels to convince the British government to apply pressure on Sir John French. The First Battle of Ypres (20 October-22 November 1914) marked the end of open and mobile warfare on the Western Front. At the start of the war the British bombarded the enemy before sending infantry over the top, but this tactic became less effective as the war progressed. The trench system on the Western Front in World War Ifixed from the winter of 1914 to the spring of 1918eventually stretched from the North Sea coast of Belgium southward through France, with a. On September 14, it was clear that neither side would be able to dislodge the other and the armies began entrenching. In consequence, he gave orders for a general retreat that night. Cannons were replaced by machine guns, which were sometimes used as indirect gunfire, a tactic used to draw out an enemy's location. Pursued by the British and French, they defeated Allied attacks against this new position. Both resulted in hundreds of thousands of casualties for both the Allies and Germans on the Western Front. Communication trenches linked them all together. Infoplease knows the value of having sources you can trust. Thedevastating effect of the mines helped the men gain their initial objectives. [23], The Allies were prompt in exploiting the break in the German lines, sending the BEF and the Fifth Army into the gap between the two German armies. Depth charges were first developed by the Royal Navy during World War I to combat German submarines. The introduction of gas warfare in 1915 created an urgent need for protective equipment to counter its effects. This happened at the Battle of the Marne, fought from September 6 to 12 in 1914. This often involvedclose-quarters fighting in confined spaces so many experienced soldiers preferred to use improvised clubs, knives and knuckledusters rather thancumbersome rifles. These tanks were made for use on the Western Front because of the terrain's rough conditions. The first took place in September 1914, and the second in the summer of 1918. Heavy guns, such as the Maxim and Hotchkiss, made "no man's land" a killing zone, and Isaac Newton Lewis 's light machine gun saw widespread use at the squad level and as an aircraft armament. The Germans used it first during the war, against the French. The attack was cancelled and the IX Reserve Corps was ordered to withdraw behind the right flank of the 1st Army. It ranged in size from the French 75-mm field gun to the massive 420-mm Big Bertha and the 210-mm Paris Gun. But theyremainedvulnerable to enemy fire and were still mechanicallyunreliable. These reconnaissance planes were utilised by the allied forces to discover the military positions of their enemy. National Army Museum, Royal Hospital Road, London, SW3 4HTRegistered Charity Number: 237902. This article was most recently revised and updated by, The Great War Infographic of Deaths and Milestones, https://www.britannica.com/event/First-Battle-of-the-Marne, Military History Encyclopedia on the Web - First Battle of the Marne, 5-10 September 1914, International Encyclopedia of the First World War - Battles of the Marne, The History Learning Site - The First Battle of the Marne, First Battle of the Marne - Children's Encyclopedia (Ages 8-11), First Battle of the Marne - Student Encyclopedia (Ages 11 and up). For his failure, he was replaced as Chief of the General Staff on September 14 by Erich von Falkenhayn. Meanwhile, the First and Second armies were to turn outward and, facing west from the Marne valley, to hold off any countermove, which the French attempted from the neighbourhood of Paris. He wrote that the French official history, Les armes franaises dans la grande guerre, gave 213,445 French casualties in September and assumed that ca. Von Kluck reluctantly ordered his troops to pull back.[35]. Tanks were used primarily in a supporting role. However, planes were first used to spy and deliver bombs. By then the German armies had recovered cohesion, and the German command was expecting and ready to meet such a maneuver, now the obvious course. . The 2nd and 3rd German armies had 134 battalions facing 268 battalions of the French Fifth and new Ninth Army. 250,000 casualties. Now the flank of the wheeling German line would pass the near side of Paris and across the face of the Paris defenses into the valley of the Marne. These reports were dismissed and not passed to the IV Reserve Corps. ThoughtCo, Jul. [54] The Battle of the Marne was also one of the first battles in which reconnaissance aircraft played a decisive role, by discovering weak points in the German lines, which the Entente armies were able to exploit. War: The First World War also known as 'The Great War'. Date of the Battle of the Marne: 6th to 9th September 1914. Fighting a series of holding actions, French forces, led by commander-in-chief General Joseph Joffre, fell back to a new position behind the Marne with the goal of holding Paris. The first Battle of the Marne-- sometimes it's called the Miracle of the Marne-- if the French, with British help, were not able to push the Germans back, they might have accomplished the Schlieffen Plan and actually maybe would have won World War I, or at least been able to win the Western front fairly quickly. Seizing the initiative in the early afternoon, the two divisions of IV Reserve Corps attacked with field artillery and infantry into the gathering Sixth Army and pushed it back. [56] British casualties were 13,000 men, with 1,700 killed. Recovering, Moltke directed his forces across the front to fall back to a defensive position behind the Aisne River. On the left, the Cavalry Corps of General Sordet linked up with the BEF at Mons. The German retreat from 9 to 13 September marked the end of the attempt to defeat France by crushing the French armies with an invasion from the north through Belgium and in the south over the common border. The Vickers machine-gun (above)was famed for its reliability and could fire over 600 rounds per minute and had a range of 4,500 yards. The chief developments of the intervening period had been the machine gun and the rapid-fire field artillery gun. He was concerned in particular with a gap which had opened between his Second and Third armies as a result of the latters having already turned south, from southwest, to help the Fourth Army, its neighbour on the other flank. It is difficult to see how the German command could have reasonably pinned its faith on achieving as an improvised expedient the very task which in cool calculation before the war had appeared so hopeless as to lead it to take the momentous decision to advance through Belgium as the only feasible alternative. 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