Engines of War by Christian Wolmar

Author:Christian Wolmar
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: PublicAffairs
Published: 2010-10-19T16:00:00+00:00

SEVEN

THE GREAT RAILWAY WAR ON THE WESTERN FRONT

The Germans did not get to Paris in thirty-nine days. Or in fact ever. The Schlieffen Plan did not work and generations of historians have subsequently analysed its shortcomings. Moltke took the rap and soon resigned but it was the inherent failings of the plan, not his tinkering, which led to its undoing. Neither can blame for its failure be laid at the door of the German railways. They had been taken over, as envisaged, by the military authorities, who, despite being at times ‘overzealous and overbearing’,1 carried out the task of mobilization remarkably efficiently. On 4 August, the long-prepared war timetables were introduced, which greatly limited any traffic other than military. The first trains to be despatched carried infantry brigades destined for the capture of Liège, the vital Belgian railway junction in the Meuse Valley, and over the following two weeks 3 million soldiers were carried by the railways in more than 11,000 trains. Yet, according to John Westwood, ‘nevertheless, the German railways were never extended to their full capacity during this period; they could have carried even more traffic.’2 There were, though, enormous bottlenecks on the Belgian railways, notably in Liège, through which much of the attack was funnelled.

The plan failed because of its strategic and logistical flaws. Not only was it based on the mistaken assumption that the Belgians would surrender without a fight and keep their railways intact, but it expected too much of the troops on the right flank, who were supposed to march much further than was realistic if they were to be in a fit state to fight. In fact, after the failure of German diplomatic negotiations – which had all the subtlety of an armed bank robber demanding the money from a terrified teller – Albert, the Belgian king, ordered the destruction of railway tunnels and bridges even before the first German troops had set foot in his country. Consequently, the Belgians set about disabling their railway system with ruthless efficiency, concentrating on blowing up the tunnels to prevent any hope of rapid repair. After the invasion, the Germans deployed large numbers of men, a force of 26,000 workers, to try to sort out the broken railways but to little avail. Even a month after the German occupation of Belgium at the onset of the crucial battle of the Marne in early September, only a sixth of the 2,400-mile Belgian rail network was functioning. Moreover, the surviving lines were in a poor state. Most of the rolling stock had been destroyed or taken to France by the Belgians, and even where the track had been left intact, signalling equipment was sabotaged. The Belgians also indulged in the kinds of tricks deployed the world over by reluctant railway workers, such as routing trains onto the wrong lines at junctions or ‘mistakenly’ sending them into sidings.

The destruction of the Belgian railways delayed the progress of the German troops but did not entirely put paid to the Schlieffen Plan.

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