Some Gave All: Joffre Memorial, Paris France

Some Gave All: Joffre Memorial, Paris France:

Joffre Memorial, Paris France

This is the memorial to Joseph Joffre, who was commander of the French forces in World War One from the start of the war into 1916.  While he was basically promoted up out of that position in 1916, his early leadership in the war was responsible for the French being able to stop the tide of the German advance.

Roads to the Great War: 100 Years Ago: Whither Alsace and Lorraine?

Roads to the Great War: 100 Years Ago: Whither Alsace and Lorraine?: French Troops Occupy Strasbourg Alsace, except the Belfort district, and Lorraine had been annexed by the German Empire on 14 Augu...

What was that big gun?

It was a railroad gun.

And a really big one at that.

Or rather, they were really big ones.  There were several.

Details on the giant long range guns are surprisingly sketchy.  They, or it, or whatever, never fell into Allied hands and the Germans took what was left of the guns, whatever that was (and it was likely most of it, or them), back into Germany as they retreated towards the end of the war.  What they couldn't take, they destroyed.

The guns were apparently 211mm guns, a little over 8in.  That would remain a large gun today, but not so large as to not be deployable then or now as field artillery. The M110 Self  Propelled Howitzer, for example, featured an 8" gun.

 

 M110 Self Propelled howitzer

The Paris guns weren't howitzers, however.  They were rifles.  Extremely large rifles with very long barrels.  And over time, likely due to barrel wear, they were bored out to 236mm, 9in.

 They were transported by rail, and indeed they featured a rail turntable as part of their emplacement.  

And they were weapons of terror.

Say what you like about the Germans prior to World War Two, but at the end of the day, the fact of the matter is that the German military seems to have been uniquely prone to acts of terrorism as early as the Franco Prussian War.  And during World War One they undertook several strategies and weapons that were frankly terroristic, of which the giant railway guns were merely one example.  Their only purpose was to silently shell Paris at extreme long range, some 75 miles, and with accuracy that was no better than to simply hit the city, which the guns did at least twenty-one times on March 21, the first day they were used.  They kept up that rate of fire for a considerable time thereafter until the end of the Kaiserschlacht in August and the ultimate reversal of German fortunes mandated their dismantling and removal.  They were never captured by the Allies.  It's telling that while the Versailles Treaty required them to be turned over to the Allies, the Germans did not do it.

250 Parisians were killed by the giant guns and another 620 were wounded.  On this day, Good Friday, 1918, a projectile from one of the giant guns went through the roof of St-Gervais-et-St-Protais Church, killing 91 and wounding 68.

The aftermath of the March 29, terror shelling.

There is no excuse for their use.  There wasn't then, and there still isn't.

Super artillery, into which these guns class these fit, went on to see some use during World War Two by the Germans again, but the advent of aircraft meant that they had become too vulnerable for much use, although they never saw all that much use to start with.  The Germans would deploy some super artillery in the East during World War Two, but the manpower required was so vast that the use of the guns has been calculated to be a net detriment to the German war effort during World War Two.  They didn't achieve much during World Ware One either, as the Parisians grew blase about the big guns which, as destructive as they were, were unlikely to actually get any one person in a city of millions.  In modern times super long range artillery has not seen use although it has been studied with at least Baathist Iraq having taken an interest in them, and having studied a gun that would have been capable of hitting Israel while being fired from Iraq.

Seems if a nation uses these its cause is dishonorable by definition.

Ferdinand Foch made Supreme Allied Commander

On this day in 1918 the Allies obtained a supreme military commander.

Well, sort of.

In actuality Ferdinand Foch, the French Field Marshall, was given the task of coordinating all  of the Allied activities in response to the Kaiserschlacht at the Doullens Conference.  His formal appointment of being the supreme Allied commander would come somewhat later.  Even at that, given the strong personalities involved, the role was always more of formulating policy and then seeking  the cooperation of other Allies.

In these regards, Foch's role was weaker than, but would anticipate, the role played by Dwight Eisenhower during World War Two.  In retrospect it seems amazing that this did not occur until 1918, the last year of the war, but getting to this point was not an easy one, and it came only in the face of seemingly looming military disaster. That it would go to a French commander, rather than a British one, also seems surprising in retrospect, but France had the largest army in the field, and of course most of that field was in France.

Foch was, at least in my view, a good choice. He had been in French military service since 1870 in one way or another, and had seen service in the Franco Prussian War.  He was irrepressible in spirit, something that had served him well not only in the Great War but before as well, as his advancement had been slower than it should have been in the pre war French Army, something that was likely the case because his brother was a Jesuit Priest and Republican France retained a Revolutionary and Napoleonic period anti clerical bias.  His appointment was not without controversy but he filled the role well and worked well with strong personalities that were technically his inferior in the Allied armies but which never saw themselves that way.

It's interesting to note that his appointment came just one day after the US had placed its troops under French command because of the crisis on the Western Front.