Table Of ContentRewriting the First World War
Rewriting the First World
War
Lloyd George, Politics and Strategy
1914-1918
Andrew Suttie
pal grave
© Andrew Suttie 2005
Softcover reprint of the hardcover 1st edition 2005
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First published 2005 by
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ISBN 978-1-349-54262-8 ISBN 978-0-230-50559-9 (eBook)
DOI 10.1007/978-0-230-50559-9
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Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
Suttie, Andrew, 1959-
Rewriting the First World War: Lloyd George, politics and strategy
1914-1918/ Andrew Suttie.
p. em.
Includes bibliographical references and index.
ISBN 978-1-4039-9119-5 (cloth)
1. Lloyd George, David, 1863-1945. War memoirs of David Lloyd
George. 2. World War, 1914-1918-Historiography. 3. World
War, 191 4-1918-Personal narratives, British-History and
criticism. I. Title.
D522.42.S88 2005
940.3'41-dc22 2005047611
10 9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 1
14 13 12 11 10 09 08 07 06 05
Transferred to Digital Printing 2007
Contents
List of Tables vii
Preface and Acknowledgments viii
Introduction 1
1 Writing the War Memoirs 1931-36 10
2 'Pandemonium let Loose': The Outbreak of War 1914 26
3 Strategic Dilemmas: 1914-15 41
4 Munitions 1914-16 60
5 'To a Knock-Out': War Office and Political Crisis 1916 78
6 The Nivelle Offensive 1917 99
7 'The Campaign of the Mud': Third Ypres 1917 120
8 The Western Front in 1918 152
9 Russia: War and Revolution 1914-18 179
Conclusion 195
Notes 204
Bibliography 257
Index 273
v
List of Tables
4.1 Artillery deliveries (July-September 1915, 1916, 1917) 66
8.1 Disposition of divisions on the British front in March 1918 162
8.2 Disposition of Royal Engineer Companies on the
British front in March 1918 163
vii
Preface and Acknowledgments
It seems that the further the First World War recedes into history,
and as gradually but inevitably all personal memory of the conflict
disappears, interest grows on all levels. More people are attending
and observing commemoration ceremonies such as Armistice Day and
Anzac Day at Gallipoli; books are being published by academic and
independent historians at an increasing rate (at least it seems so),
and the history of the war is being taught in all its facets in universities
in many countries. There is even now a specialised Master of Arts in
British First World War Studies being offered at the University of
Birmingham.
The First World War was, arguably, the seminal event of the twentieth
century, shaping even more than the Second World War the Europe we
know today, the way we view war, and even changing the language
we use. For Britain, as for most of the major belligerents, it was a cataclysm:
the casualties were unprecedented and a national trauma which is felt
to this day. Lloyd George's War Memoirs played an important role in
helping to shape what became the popular view of the war, as one of
military incompetence, waste and futility. His portrayal of the British
generals as blinkered and strategically inept, and of their negligence
regarding the lives of the men under their command, made for powerful
reading, and reinforced the message of other more literary war - or
rather anti-war - books which were beginning to appear in the late
1920s and early 1930s. Lloyd George's message could only be given
added gravitas by his status as a former Prime Minister and by the
inclusion in his memoirs of masses of official documents. Given these
factors, it is perhaps to be wondered that a book-length study of Lloyd
George's Memoirs has not until now been published.
I could not have successfully completed the thesis upon which this
book is based without the help of many people. Thanks are due first
and foremost to my thesis supervisor, Associate Professor Robin Prior,
who suggested this topic, pointed me in the right direction for
sources and offered sound advice drawn from his great fund of know
ledge of the First World War. I am grateful that he was able to
maintain his confidence, when my own was faltering, that the project
would one day he completed. No graduate student could hope for
a better supervisor.
viii
l'refilce and Acknowledglllellls ix
I would also like to thank the academic and administrative staff in
the School of History (now part of the School of Humanities and Social
Sciences), University of New South Wales, Australian Defence Force
Academy for their friendship, support and encouragement, in particular
Professor Peter Dennis, Dr Elizabeth Greenhalgh, Debbie Lackerstein,
Christine Kendrick and Elsa Sellick. In addition my thanks are due
to the Academy for its financial support during the research stage of
this project, which assisted me to carry out archival research in the
United Kingdom.
I am grateful for the hospitality extended to me by the late Mr John
Grigg and his wife Patricia. All 'Lloyd Georgians' are indebted to John
for his insights into Lloyd George's life and the challenges he faced
during the First World War. The last volume of his wonderful biography
of Lloyd George, taking the story up to 1918, alas, appeared too late to
be fully utilised in the writing of this book.
My thanks to the following libraries and archives: the Australian
Defence Force Academy Library; the Curators of the Bodleian Library,
Oxford; the Syndics of the Cambridge University Library; the British
Library; Clerk of the Records, House of Lords Record Office; Keeper of
the Department of Documents, Imperial War Museum; Churchill
Archive Centre, Churchill College, Cambridge; Trustees of the Liddell
Hart Centre for Military Archives, King's College, London; and the
Master and Fellows of Trinity College, Cambridge. Copyright material
from the Ramsay MacDonald papers in the Public Record Office, Kew, is
reproduced by permission of the grand-daughter of the late Malcolm
MacDonald, and extracts from the Sylvester papers are reproduced by
kind permission of the National Library of Wales, Aberystwyth.
I am grateful for support and encouragement to, among others in
Melbourne my parents, Lionel and Cecile, my brother Timothy, and
Ying Wei, Perry Dwyer, Anne Unger and Rob Stowell, in Canberra,
Mary Venner and Jenny Rafferty, and in London, Malcolm Rose and
Jenny Mackay. Some of them became almost as familiar with Lloyd George
as I did. Special thanks should also be extended to the examiners of my
doctoral thesis, Professor R.] .Q. Adams, Professor David French and
Professor David Dutton, for their constructive, learned and positive
comments. I would finally like to thank the staff at Palgrave Macmillan
who have been of such assistance in the preparation of this book.
Needless to say, all remaining faults, omissions and shortcomings in
this volume, whether of fact or interpretation, are entirely my own.
Introduction
Historian Anniker Mombauer noted in her recent study of Helmuth von
Moltke, Chief of the German General Staff in 1914, that the origins of
the First World War have been the object of debate continually since
August 1914.1 It is not only the origins of the war, however, which have
been debated since 1914-18. The strategy and conduct of the war have
also been intensely controversial issues. For Britain the big questions
have been not only whether Britain was right to intervene in support of
its Entente partners, but also was the political and military leadership
correct to raise a mass army and fight the main German forces on the
Western Front and could some other, cheaper way, to defeat the
Central Powers have been found?
The British Government's decision to intervene in August 1914 was
publicly justified by the German violation of Belgian neutrality: in reality,
it was based on the Government's assessment of where British national
interests lay, and this was not necessarily concerned only with the defence
of a small nation's independence and neutrality. Some have seen this
decision to intervene as a mistake, and one which helped turn a localised
war into a European and world war.2 But others, beginning with the
British Foreign Secretary in 1914, Sir Edward Grey, have argued that
Britain had little choice but to intervene. The traditional and overriding
British interest was to maintain the balance of power in Europe, and a
German defeat of France and Belgium (and probably Russia) would hardly
serve that interest. British intervention was, therefore, a necessity.
Once committed to intervention and war against the Central Powers,
policy makers made decisions according to the plans drawn up for just
such an eventuality. The British Expeditionary Force (BEF) of four
2 Rewriting tile First World War
infantry divisions and one cavalry was quickly sent to France to stand
on the left flank of the French army. Over the following four years
Britain's military commitment in France alone grew to nearly 60
divisions. The BEF, the largest army ever fielded by Britain, there
confronted, alongside the French and Belgians, the main force of the
main enemy. This together with the static nature of the warfare as it
had developed by December 1914, and the fairly evenly matched forces
during 1915-17, explains to a large extent the horrendously high casualty
rate during the period 1915-18. Was there, however, an alternative?
Critics have suggested yes. On the one hand, there was the option of
fighting the war according to what was seen by some as the British
tradition, that is principally with the Royal Navy and financial support
for allies. This, of course, would have left the costly land fighting to
Britain's allies. The Navy would have blockaded the enemy (which it
did even so) so that its trade was cut off: slowly, if it was not defeated
on the battlefield, Germany would be starved into defeat. This did not
take into account the probability that without British assistance France
would have been defeated in 1914 as it was in 1870, with far-reaching
consequences for British security.
Acceptance of the necessity to raise a large army does not of course
imply agreement with the way it was actually deployed. Thus a further
argument is that the concentration on the Western Front was wrong.
After the front in the west had become static by the end of 1914, a 'way
around' should have been sought, it was argued. Attacks on Germany's
allies Austria-Hungary and Turkey would have knocked away the
'props' and thereby led to Germany's collapse. However a defeat of
Turkey in the deserts of the Middle East or of Austria in the Balkans
would not have done much to curb a massive German army in the
process of defeating and occupying France. It ignores the logistical and
strategic reality: that the German army had invaded Britain's Entente
partner France, and that the closest and most appropriate theatre in
which to deploy British forces in France's defence was in that country.
It also ignores the fact that throughout the war, Germany's allies were
more a drain on its resources rather than strategic assets.
The final criticism was that Britain's generals displayed a lamentable
lack of imagination in their conduct of the war. They were blinkered,
eyes fixed on the shell torn landscape of northern France and Belgium,
where their tactics were to bludgeon the enemy into defeat through
ghastly and futile frontal attacks against impregnable positions, in the
vain hope they would break the enemy defences and the cavalry would
come pouring through. The first point here is that enemy positions
were quite definitely not impregnable. Even before the war of movement
