1914

Now, God be thanked who has matched us with his hour, And caught our youth, and wakened us from sleeping, With hand made sure, clear eye, and sharpened power, To turn, as swimmers into cleanness leaping. Glad from a world grown old and cold and weary, Leave the sick hearts that honour could not move, And half-men, and their dirty songs and dreary, And all the little emptiness of love!

-- Rupert Brooke, "Peace (1914)"

In contrast to the popular image of World War One as a war of stalemate and trenches, the Great War in 1914 is a war of movement and sweeping advances. On 4 August, Germany launches the massive attack on France (through Belgium) which she hopes will sweep all the way to Paris. During the Battle of the Frontiers (August 1914), it seems that the Schlieffen Plan might succeed in bringing a rapid victory in the west. While French offensives in Alsace and Lorraine are soon repulsed, the German advance through Belgium proves unstoppable, despite unexpectedly tenacious resistance from the Belgian Army, the French Fifth Army and the British Expeditionary Force (BEF). In the Great Retreat of August and September 1914, the Allies are inexorably pushed south as far as the River Marne, until by 3 September the most advanced units of the German First Army stand within 9 miles of Paris. France urges her ally, Russia, to launch an early offensive against Germany's eastern frontier, in the hope of relieving the heavy pressure on the allies in the West. The huge and cumbersome Russian army is not yet fully mobilised for war, but Russia nevertheless commits her First and Second Armies to a hastily-organised offensive into east Prussia on 17 August. The Russian advance into Germany meets with early success, but both Russian armies are decimated on 30 August at the Battle of Tannenburg - "the greatest defeat suffered by any of the combatants during the war". Russia loses 110,000 men at Tannenburg, but the offensive has served its wider purpose: in response to the attack on East Prussia, Germany has to divert two Army Corps and a cavalry division from the decisive final stages of the advance on Paris. On 3 September, the French resolve that Paris will be defended to the end. Two days later, at the First Battle of the Marne (5 - 10 September), Allied forces finally halt the German advance and take the offensive for the first time, pushing back the German First and Second Armies 60 miles to the River Aisne.

The German Advance and the Retreat to the Marne, August-September 1914.

The First Battle of the Marne marks the end of Germany's hopes for a rapid victory in the west, but not the end of the war of movement. Through September and October, both Allies and Germans extend their operations northward, in the hope of breaking through the other side's defensives by striking around the open flank of the other. By late October this so-called "Race to the Sea" has extended the frontline north through Artois and Flanders to the Belgian port of Nieuport. The arrival at the English Channel ends both sides' hopes of turning the other's line, and they begin to dig trenches to reinforce the defensive positions that they hold.

The "Race to the Sea", September-October 1914.

The last great attempt to win the war of movement begins on 22 October, with a determined German attempt to drive the BEF out of the Belgian city of Ypres, and thence break through to the North Sea and the Channel coast. The First Battle of Ypres (22 October - 12 November) sees the heaviest fighting of the war so far, but with the support of Canadian, Indian and French contingents the BEF holds on to Ypres, which is left as a salient extending into German-occupied territory. First Ypres marks the turning point from a war of rapid movement to a war of stalemate: as it becomes apparent that German hopes of pushing through to the Channel ports will not succeed, the battle becomes a struggle just for Ypres itself. This will be the pattern for much of the rest of the war, as two entrenched armies fight costly, localised battles not for breakthroughs and outright victory, but for small-scale objectives - individual hills, villages, roads and local landmarks. As 1914 draws to a close, the armies on the Western Front are at work building a more permanent defensive system of frontline trenches, communication trenches, dug-outs and strong points, in recognition of the fact that the war which was supposed to be "over by Christmas" will instead be a long and drawn-out struggle.

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