The military situation in April 1917
The decision for a large-scale offensive was taken by General Joffre when he was still at the head of the French army. The main lines of the offensive are then decided:it will be a joint attack with the English troops on the front between Vimy and Reims. The front has the shape of a right angle:between Vimy and Soissons, the east front runs north-south and between Soissons and Reims, the east front runs west-east. The English must attack on the line between Vimy and Soissons, the French between Soissons and Vimy in order to attack the Germans from two different directions. In December 1916, Nivelle replaced Joffre at the head of the armies. He takes up Joffre's project:his idea is to concentrate as much force as possible on this part of the forehead in order to push it down.
Surely to prevent such an offensive, the Germans withdrew from March 15 to 19, 1917 on the Hindenburg Line. The front is reduced by 70 kilometers. The right angle of the front line is erased:the line of defense now runs in a north-west/south-east direction from Vimy to Reims via the Chemin des Dames. The Allies took 3 weeks to realize the reality of this withdrawal. The initial plan for the offensive is now obsolete. However, Nivelle persisted in his initial project:he contented himself with dissociating the English attack on Vimy from the French attack on the Chemin des Dames.
land
The Chemin des Dames is a limestone plateau, oriented East-West, located between the Aisne valley, to the south, and the Ailette valley, to the north. This plateau is a beautiful observatory, both towards the north and the plain located to the east between Reims and Laon, and that located to the south from Soissons. The Germans have been present on the plateau since September 1914. They had time to transform this observatory into a natural fortress by developing the natural caves (Dragon's Cave), by digging underground passages to connect the rear to the front lines, by building and camouflaging machine gun nests.
It has already been a place of fighting which saw a victory for Napoleon I against the Russian and Prussian armies of General Blücher, during the Battle of Craonne on March 7, 1814. Since that date, it has been a relatively quiet sector which has not has not been the object, since the end of 1914, of major offensives. The Germans hold the ridges and the French are established on the slopes.
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The opposing forces
On the French side
Command
Nivelle is in charge of operations. On the ground, under the command of General Micheler, we find General Mazel who is at the head of the Fifth Army, General Mangin at the head of the Sixth Army and General Duchêne at the head of the Xth.
The troops.
The 5th, 6th and 10th French armies constitute a force of 850,000 men, including a high proportion of "shock" supported by battalions of Senegalese skirmishers, with 2,700 artillery pieces of 75 and 2,300 heavy mortars, including 790 modern guns, accompanied by 200 tanks.
On the German side
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The command
The High Command of the German army is ensured by Hindenburg and in [France] by Erich Ludendorff. It will be under the orders of the Kronprinz, son of Guillaume II that the two most important armies will be placed:the 1st and the 7th. Fritz von Below is at the head of the 1st Army. The VII Army was commanded by Edouard Freiherr von Böhm-Ermolli. There is also a third army set up, it is the Third Army of Karl von Einem. Von Einem (also known as von Rothmaler) has been in command of the Third Army since September 15, 1914.
The troops
The VII Army, which von Böhm has commanded since March 11, then has 14 divisions, it is deployed from Vauxaillon to Berry-au-Bac. South of Berry-au-Bac, General von Below took over. The Germans occupied a heavily fortified area, with machine guns under cover and an excellent underground network communicating with the ridge line. In addition, the Germans had the air advantage.
The Germans have 530 fighter planes.
The French plan
The plan calls for a maximum concentration of forces over 30 km of force. The ground must be prepared by a massive bombardment responsible for destroying the front lines. Then, infantry troops must rush forward protected by rolling artillery fire. This plan does not take into account the terrain which is very unfavorable:the French troops are located below and have to attack the fortified slopes. On the other hand, the bombardment on 30 kilometers of front cannot be as dense as when it is a question of taking a fort.
objectives
The basic idea of the plan proposed by Nivelle is to break through on the Chemin des Dames line, using the method which succeeded in the autumn of 1916 when he regained the ground lost at Verdun.
Once the front is broken, a reserve army will be launched to exploit the gap and obtain the collapse of the German armies. To this end, we will attach to this army 2 cavalry corps, this cavalry which would then find its horses and its classic role instead of the mud of the trenches in which it has been fighting since the stabilization of the front.
The progress of the troops must therefore be very rapid. General Mangin estimates that the soldiers will have to advance at the speed of 100 meters every three minutes. Thus, it is expected that the Sixth Army on the evening of the first day will have crossed the Ailette. On D+1, the cavalry must cover the plain of Laon; on D+4, we must reach the Somme...
means
Nivelle is planning a "Reserve Army Group" (G.A.R.), which will be inserted between the North Army Group and the Center Army Group.
This G.A.R. includes 3 armies, the 5th, 6th and 10th. The first two will be in charge of the breakthrough, Duchêne's 10th army, held in reserve, will be used to exploit the success.
This gives a total of 17 army corps comprising 56 divisions. Among these divisions, 4 colonial infantry and 5 cavalry.
Nivelle, an artilleryman by training, relies heavily on this weapon to crush the German defences. This will offset the advantage given to the defenders by the geography of the places planned for the attack. The idea is to take advantage of the power of a larger number of heavy artillery which, being able to fire further than in previous offensives, should make it possible to annihilate the front line positions but also to prevent the arrival of reinforcements and silence the German guns.
For the first time, at least for the French, special artillery will be massively engaged. Special artillery is armored tanks. They are planned to evolve where it will be possible for them, that is to say to the east and west of the Chemin des Dames whose slopes are impassable for them.
To the east, near Berry-au-Bac, the "Groupement Bossut"[2] was attached to the 32nd corps of the 5th army. The "Chaubès group" in the 5th corps.
To the west, near Laffaux, there will be no tanks to accompany the April assault. In May, we will have the "Lefèbvre group", attached to the 37th corps of the 6th army.
The machines are Schneider and Saint-Chamond. Their role is to accompany the infantry, to make breaches in the networks of barbed wire and to eliminate the nests of machine guns, in short, to favor the progress of the infantrymen. It is not intended that they can act alone. Moreover, their limited autonomy would prohibit them from any long-term action.
A weak point of the plan is supply constraints. The Aisne flows to the south, parallel to the Chemin des Dames, in direct view of the German observatories. This means that the arrival of reinforcements, ammunition, etc. will depend on the crossing points on this river. Likewise for downward flows, such as the injured.
Tactics
* Infantry.
Infantrymen must attack in "assault dress". The infantry regulations of January 1917, specify that it is a question of carrying, in saltire, the blanket rolled up in the canvas of the tent; an individual tool, the bag of food, the bag of grenades (in theory, 5 grenades including 2 VB, but we will go so far as to distribute 16 grenades per man), a can of water of 2 liters and an additional can of a liter, the gas mask (two if possible), bags on the ground, a road sign or bengal fires, the packet of bandages, food for the day, ammunition (120 cartridges)[3]. On the other hand, the bag is left on site.
But some units will attack with all their gear on their backs. This will be the case, for example, of the troops of the 20th corps. In addition, they have food for 6 days.[4]
* Artillery.
The role of artillery is to destroy the first and second enemy line. It must shoot at the targets already identified. The depth of the terrain left to bombardment will have the effect of reducing the density of the bombardment to which the defenders will be subjected.
To comply with the speed of progression desired by Nivelle, the artillery barrage must advance, 100 meters every 3 minutes[5]. We must compare this decision with the last offensives on Verdun where the dam had to advance 100 meters every 4 minutes and remember that the hairy will have to climb the slopes of the Chemin des Dames, reduce enemy resistance while sticking to the dam of artillery to prevent the German defense from having time to organize itself between the end of the bombardment and the arrival of the infantry.
* Tanks.
The 194 available tanks are scattered among different units. This is contrary to the directives of General Estienne, but corresponds to the role we want them to play, to accompany the infantry. To go up in line, the "batteries" move in column. To fight, they line up. The command tank then has two of its tanks on its left and the last one on its right.
To communicate, the unit commander has pennants, which he waves to indicate his orders. It also has racing pigeons whose cages are taken into the cockpit.
In combat, each AS (this is the acronym under which we designate the batteries, AS and a number). is accompanied by an infantry company. For the "Bossut group", there are therefore 5 companies; they come from the 154th RI. For the "Chaubès group, it will be 3 companies of the 76th RI. In practice, the infantry will prove incapable, under German fire, of following the tanks.
battlefield
The weather conditions are terrible when the offensive begins. In the spring of 1917, the rain fell almost continuously and made the ground very muddy. Especially the bad weather hinders artillery preparations and the targeted objectives will not always be achieved. The soldiers who rushed forward on April 16 found German positions very little affected by the bombardment.
Moreover, it was very cold in April 1917, it even snowed on April 16. The Senegalese who trained on the Côte d'Azur are not prepared for such temperatures. Many of them suffer from frost.
The bombardments exposed the earth and sculpted a lunar landscape (shell holes, absence of vegetation). This muddy earth is constantly turned over by the shells:it is therefore not stable, it slips away under the feet so that the soldier keeps falling, only to get up and fall again.
May weather conditions:hot and stormy. (...)
The first assault, April 16
After a huge artillery operation, the assault on the French side is given on April 16 at 6 am. Despite very heavy losses, the French troops break through the first German lines, and take nearly 22,000 prisoners. But then they come up against the German second lines which prove to be much more resistant by the effectiveness of their numerous machine gun nests. Indeed these are perfectly sheltered in the caves of the southern slope of the limestone plateau dominating the valleys of the Aisne and the Ailette and the terrain offers little protective cover to the attackers. To the east of the Chemin des Dames, the tanks were engaged in the Berry-au-Bac sector, but their intervention did not yield great results; the shell holes delayed the machines and the tactics of the heavy Schneiders, which grouped together to attack, offered easy targets for the artillery. In this sector, the German forces were even going to reconquer the lost ground.
Since the French forces were no longer advancing and the results obtained were marginal (taking the California plateau and the fort of Condé- sur-Aisne), the offensive was suspended on April 21.
The second assault, May 4
It is now the turn of the 10th army, the reserve one, to go on the attack. It will engage the 9th and 18th corps, on the eastern part of the Chemin des Dames, between Craonne and Hurtebise.
On May 4, the 36th D.I. will seize the ruins of Craonne. The next day is the general assault for the conquest of the California plateau and the Plateau des Casemates. The French succeeded in gaining a foothold there but could not reach the Ailette.
...to the survivors of the 18th corps, 2 additional rations of brandy were allocated.
...it will last until the end of the month without bringing any notable victory . It was during this month of May that many mutinies broke out in reaction to the many victims and the appalling living conditions in which the Poilus lived in the trenches.
The consequences
Militarily
It is a decisive strategic defeat for the French, who conquer only a few observation posts and beautiful cellars.
A commission of inquiry is set up and headed by General of Division Henri Joseph Brugère, Nivelle is absolved and later transferred to Algiers. Brugère adds to the report that "For the preparation as for the execution of this offensive, General Nivelle was not equal to the crushing task he had assumed".
Following this failure, Generals Mazel (5th Army) and Charles Mangin (6th Army) were replaced by Micheler and Maistre.
Philippe Pétain took Nivelle's place as head of the French General Headquarters (GHQ) on May 15, 1917, with the primary task of stemming the collapse of troop morale and putting an end to the mutinies.
Loss
This battle is an almost total failure for the French army. While this battle was also supposed to be decisive, it ended in an unprecedented massacre:
* 110,000 men hors de combat (dead or wounded) on the French side;
* between 60,000 and 80,000 on the German side.
These appalling losses, for almost no result, will be the trigger for the "mutinies of 1917".
The military tribunals pronounce 3427 condemnations including 554 to death, on 7 occasions Pétain refuses to transmit the files of recourse in pardon and 49 mutineers were to be executed. The name of Craonne, located in the heart of the battle of the Chemin des Dames, was popularized by La Chanson de Craonne which remains associated with the 1917 mutineers of the First World War