Hitler's Violent Youth: How Trench Warfare and Street Fighting Moulded Hitler by Carruthers Bob

Author:Carruthers, Bob
Language: eng
Format: epub, azw3
Tags: HISTORY / Military / World War II
ISBN: 9781473859647
Publisher: Pen and Sword
Published: 2015-06-30T04:00:00+00:00

They could not have known it at the time but Hitler and the men of the 16th RIR were marching into the gates of Hell. They were about to face an ordeal which made all of their previous trials seem mild by comparison. The Battle of the Somme, was a long-drawn-out affair. It lasted, in fact, some three and a half months, from 1 July 1916, well on into the autumn. The battle is often considered solely from the British perspective but it was in fact an allied offensive and was planned on a single front of about twenty-five miles and was preceded by immense preparations and reinforcements in men and material. The French were initially successful but despite some small gains amounting to around eight miles the British failed to break the German line. The reason was, of course, that the German lines consisted of an entire belt of territory scored with lines behind lines, every one of which had to be taken and cleared and held before the British could be said to have broken through.

The British failed to do so and at frightful cost and over two months were spent in trying to secure objectives marked down for the first day or two of the battle: it took weeks upon weeks to decide the possession of a single patch of woodland; prolonged struggles waged backwards and forwards over a few metres of contested ground. The futility of the German attack on Verdun was balanced by the desperate defence of Bapaume. The Somme, even more than Verdun, was to prove the crucible which ultimately ground down the German army. The flow of losses which began on 1 July 1916, were irreplaceable. During their short ten day spell in the lines near Bapaume, the 16th RIR suffered 120 casualties for every day. Ignatz Westenkirchner naturally recalled the awful reality of the fighting as experienced by both he and Adolf Hitler:

‘That Somme Battle, a witches’ cauldron of horror and fire and death, went on for weeks. Some time before we’d all been issued with fresh equipment. Now, on the 25 September, we were marched off to Haubourdin, there to entrain next day for Longwy. From there we marched endlessly it seemed to us through Cambrai to Fremicourt, where we set to work at top speed to dig ourselves in, constructing trenches, traverses and dug-outs day and night. We took part in the battle on the 2 October and found ourselves in the sector between Bapaume and La Barque. It was all new ground to us, and we messengers were lost half the time. We relieved the 21st Regiment. The men came straggling back scarcely recognisable in their mud, blood and rags. Once a shell dropped plump into the middle of our dug-out. For the moment the lot of us were too stunned to know what had happened. Then we saw four of us lay dead, and seven others lay hideously wounded spouting blood on the ground. That was the first time Hitler caught one.

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