From my readings to date I had understood that the success of the Messines campaign was due to excellent planning and execution. However, I have very recently read that the success was more to do with good German intelligence which enabled them to withdraw from the area covered by the British Mining activity, leaving only a skeleton number of troops. This is supposed to have occurred a week prior to the attack. The British high command were, it was said, aware of this fact and even discussed whether the mines should be blown or not.

If this is indeed the case, then the German withdrawal saved many lives and the British efforts were successful in achieving an advance/straightening out the Salient at minimum cost in casualities. As one with little expertise in strategy etc, can any pal please clarify matters as I am now somewhat confused as to the reason for the general view about Messines in 1917.

Bernard P

The holding of the forward zone with less than normal the amount of troops hqd nothing to do with the mines at Messines. It had to do with the of defense in depth doctrine which the Germans had until then developed. Of every battalion in the front line only one company was in the forward zone and they held the strong points and machine gun positions. The rest were to come forward at the moment of an attack and would be used in a localized counter attack.

regards


Lawry

The answers you are looking for are contained within 'Pillars of Fire - The Battle of Messines Ridge June 1917 by Ian Passingham first published in 1998:

The subsequent German inquiry identified five factors which led to their failure at Messines, broadly speaking these are:

1. Concentration of effort on the part of the British Forces, thorough planning, preperation and conduct of the battle. British superiority both in the air and on the ground, especially in the number of infantry, artillery and tanks. (the first true all arms battle)

2. Unprecedented scale of destruction arising from the siting of 19 mines. The surprise being total for OLH had dismissed the threat of mines by early May.

3. The German frontline was on the forward slope and with hindsight this was seen as unfavourable.

4. The cramped defensive deployment area, vulnerability of German Artillery. The British assault had coincided with a relief in place in both the front and second line defences, with disastrous consequenses for the 40th Saxon and 4rd Bavarian Divisions.

5. Those involved in the late arrival and subsequent German counter attack proved to be vulnerable and suffered high casualties.


Philip

Bernard

Not only was there no 'thinning out', but the very night the mines exploded the final stages of a handover of the Spanbroekmolen area was taking place between 40th Inf Div and 3rd Bavarian Inf Div, barely a man of which ever came back from the front line after the mines went off. I cover this in some detail in the first chapter of my German Army at Passchendaele. One of the outcomes of the Messines action was a debate about whether to use the tactic of a planned withdrawal when the main British blow fell at the end of July. I quote, on p 36, General von Kuhl, Chief of Staff Army Group Crown Prince Rupprecht, who wrote, 'This... brought to the fore the question which to our cost we had failed to answer before Wijtschate [German name for the Battle of Messines] and to decide whether or not to learn from experience and avoid the first blows of the forthcoming offensive by conducting a planned withdrawal...' and he goes on to explain why the decision was taken not to do so.

Jack

Correction to my observation on the consequent German enquiry point 4 should read 3rd Bavarian Division and not the 4th.

Two things, in my view, need to be considered when considering the British success at Messines:

1- The casualties were more or less even- some 23 000 for the Germans and just under 21 000 for the British

2- While the advance to the Black Line (first objective) went smoothly (perhaps because of a combination of factors including the mines, British artillery support, RFC air superiority, the fact the ridge shielded the first wave from machine guns beyond it etc.) the advance down the lee side towards the Oostaverene Line cost substantially more casualties and proved troublesome particularly in some sectors. Indeed, there were some pretty dramatic moments during the afternoon and evening, including the temporary abandonment of a section of line in the south by Australian troops of the 4th Division.

It was successful- in that it achieved the objectives set out in the operations orders- but it was neither easy, nor cheap.

Michael

It can't have been easy, surely, or why would the British have sustained 20,000 + casualties, of whom 12,000 were on June 7th itself ?

If the Germans had thinned out their lines to the extent that only skeleton outposts were manning the front, then how did 7,600 prisoners fall into British hands, not to mention the killing of many hundreds who went up with the 19 mines ?

Strikingly successful... yes; but easy....no.

There were many ANZAC casualties from friendly fire.

Phil.

Gentlemen

Thanks for all of your comments as they have certainly clarified my views and have passed doubts on my source. Clearly, the suggestion that the Germans upped and left wasn't the case but neither did the allies have it as easy as was also suggested.

Thanks again

Bernard

Bernard,

Did you happen to read about the alleged withdrawal of German front line troops in Winter's "Haig's Command" or Moiser's "The Myth of the Great War" (which quotes Winter on this point)?

If so- I'd treat both as pretty suspect. They've been widely discredited.

Given its a question on the Germans you should definitely listen to Jack Sheldon (I recommend his book "The German Army at Passchendaele")

Michael

I second Michael's comments.

I have discussed this question in my book on Underground Warfare 1914-1918 (which is at the proof stage). On the eve of the battle, the British captured of a copy of the new German defensive tactics which involved thinning out the front line. Haig therefore asked Plumer to consider whether to blow the mines before the battle in order to induce the Germans to give away their artillery positions, so that some value would still be derived from the mines. Plumer discussed this with his corps commanders and decided not to.

I also discuss the report by the commander of miners of the German 4th Army, Col. Füsslein, who attempts to justify his failure to prevent the British mining attack. He blames divisional commanders for not taking his advice in altering their defensive tactics to deal with the likelihood of mining, i.e. thinning out their front lines, and not taking the threat seriously. Whilst his report is inevitably self-serving, he paints a picture of commanders at the divisional level not adopting the new defence in depth tactics which would have negated the threat of mining.

Michael and Simon

Many thanks for your additional comments. I will try and get hold of the the two books mentioned.

Have in fact just read Winter's book and glad I only paid less than half price for it. Nonetheless it was thought provoking and took away some of the gloss which I have read elsewhere. No doubt the truth is somewhere in between.

Bernard

Bernard,

In the case of Winter unfortunately not. Many of his assertions are fiction. The Australian historian Jeffrey Grey checked the sources in the Australian War Memorial Winter quoted from and found Winter had both distorted and doctored the quotes he used. Jack Sheldon kindly provided this link on the criticisms of Winter’s book.[/i] http://www.johndclare.net/wwi3_winter_thesis.htm Haig's Command destroyed Winter's reputation as an historian.

At half price you paid far too much for it. Other comments are here http://1914-1918.invisionzone.com/forums/i...g's+Command

Cheers
Chris

Simon is quite right to draw attention to Fusslein's warnings. Their discounting certainly placed the forward German troops in the totally unenviable position of being subject to a huge threat from a source which came as a massive surprise. Many of the mines (not all of course) had been in position for months; the Germans not having appreciated the ability of the British miners to pierce the quicksands layer down to the blue Ypresian clay a long time previously. As a result there were as good as no mining noises to be detected and, even on Hill 60, where some noise was picked up, but believed to relate to relatively insignificant shallow mining, the German sat tight - or at least the infantry did. They were not going to take risks with their valuable skilled miners, so they were withdrawn. However, here too, to understand the reason for the apparent inaction, you have to place yourself in the mindset of the German chain of command. They were occupying the dominating high ground because it provided them with excellent fields of view and fire from Hill 60 to Ploegsteert. If they had voluntarily relinquished it on the off-chance that Fusslein was right, they would have yielded a huge advantage and one for which they had fought long and hard. It would have taken a swathe of hard evidence (which was lacking) to convince the commanders at Army level and above that such action was essential. Flexible defence did not involve giving up ground for the sake of it - as demonstrated by the debate, followed by a high level conference called at the end of June 1917 to discuss, in Gen der Inf von Kuhl's words, 'whether or not to learn from experience and avoid the first blows of the forthcoming offensive in Flanders by conducting a planned withdrawal... ' The decision was to avoid any such thing yet, as we know, the flexible defence conducted by Fourth Army right through to the 'bite and hold' Battles of the Menin Road Ridge worked much as planned.

Jack

The south end of the line around Le Pelerin is flat as far as I can see, so there was no advantage of height for the Germans in that position. I seem to have gathered the impression that because the Germans had withdrawn from this position the Birdcage mines were deemed "redundant" and not exploded on the 7th June when the others were detonated. So the position may have differed in other sections of the German front line...
regards
Tom

Tom

I understood that the Ploegsteert Mines were not fired because of the close proximity of the two armies and the possibility that the German forces would have gained a tactical advantage by being close enough to occupy the mines before the allies.

Bernard P

As Jack has said, the British miners had an advantage. The high ground conferred many advantages on the Germans but one significant disadvantage. The ridges were partly composed of a geological layer which acted as a barrier to mining. That layer had been eroded on the lower ground and allowed the British miners access to a stable layer through which to drive their access tunnels. The Germans knew they were sitting above a mineproof layer, they did not realise the British were under it.