Chantilly Conferences
The conferences of Chantilly were several conferences of the Entente during the First World War . They took place in 1915 and 1916 in Chantilly, France, in the local castle , where the Grand Quartier Général of the French armed forces was located from late 1914 to early 1917 . The conferences were important in the preparation of the Allied summer offensives in 1916 and the spring offensive on the Western Front in 1917.
history
At the beginning of the First World War, the Triple Entente did not yet have an established mechanism for consultations at the highest politico-military level. Visits and meetings of individual ministers and the military took place sporadically and in response to acute crises. These include the visit of the British Minister of War Lord Kitchener to Paris in September 1914, the visit of the French Minister of War Alexandre Millerand to London in January 1915, the trip to France of the British Prime Minister Herbert Henry Asquith in May / June 1915 and the meeting of the British Minister of Munitions David Lloyd George with his French counterpart in Boulogne in June 1915. In the light of the complicated war situation, it seemed necessary in the summer of 1915 to coordinate joint measures more effectively with the involvement of all the important allies. As a result, the first official mutual British-French government consultation was agreed in Calais on July 6th .
First Chantilly Conference, July 1915
As a result of this meeting, the following day, July 7, 1915, the first Chantilly conference took place. Military representatives of the Entente powers Great Britain , France , Russia , Italy , Belgium and Serbia took part in it. The conference was chaired by the French Minister of War Millerand, the most important participants were the French Commander in Chief Joseph Joffre and John French for the BEF and his Chief of Staff William Robertson . Belgium was represented by Major General Félix Wielemans , Russia, Italy and Serbia by Colons Ignatjew, di Breganze and Stefanović.
No serious decisions have been taken or concerted action agreed at this conference. Italy should keep up the pressure on Austria-Hungary on the Isonzo Front, while Great Britain and France prepared their autumn offensive on the Western Front. Serbia should also stay active. Due to the successes of the Central Powers since the Battle of Gorlice-Tarnów in the spring of 1915, Russia was on the defensive and should first consolidate its forces again. The consideration of national sensitivities and the very different circumstances on the individual fronts initially prevented more effective planning of the coalition warfare.
Second Chantilly Conference, December 1915
The second Chantilly Conference took place from December 6th to 8th, 1915 and again followed a British-French government meeting in Calais (December 5th). At this conference the effort was first made to plan joint warfare over the longer term. The war situation had meanwhile turned extremely negative for the Allies. After the “ Great Withdrawal ”, the Russian army faced a complete reorganization. Serbia was initially out of the game due to the Serbian campaign of the Central Powers . The British-French Gallipoli enterprise had ended with a spectacular failure, and the autumn offensives on the western front in Champagne and Artois had not brought the hoped-for successes either. In the year 1916, then, there was an urgent need to move from a strategy determined by national interests to a genuinely coordinated strategy.
At this three-day conference the most important participants were General Joffre, Field Marshal French for the BEF and Lieutenant General Archibald Murray as Chief of the Imperial General Staff (both relieved from their posts in the same month), General Jakow Schilinsky for the Russian Army, and General Carlo Porro for Italy , General Wielemans for Belgium and Colonel Stefanović for Serbia. General Joffre received the delegates from the other countries with a prepared memorandum which was unanimously approved. He planned, as soon as possible, i.e. H. when the armies involved had completed their relevant preparations to begin large-scale coordinated offensives on all the main fronts (the Western, Eastern and Italian fronts) . Joffre hoped that the development of a strategic breakthrough would be possible, particularly on the Eastern Front, where the fortifications of the front line were less developed and the forces of the enemy were less concentrated than on the Western Front. For this purpose, it would be necessary for the western partners of the alliance to equip the Russian army with all the military equipment it needs after its great loss of material in the autumn of 1915. Until this plan is carried out, vigorous efforts should be made to weaken the forces of the adversary by attrition. Large stocks of material and ammunition should be built up for the planned offensives.
Joffre also took it for granted that after the liquidation of the Dardanelles company and the severe defeat of Serbia, a continued military presence of the Allies in the Balkans (on the Salonika Front ) would be of strategic advantage. However, there was no agreement on this with the main partner Great Britain. Greece and Romania should be encouraged by all possible means to enter the war on the side of the Entente. The Serbian army should, if possible, assert itself on the Adriatic coast with the support of the Italian expeditionary force in Albania. The British forces withdrawn from Gallipoli were supposed to build an insurmountable defense on the Suez Canal and to prepare for later active reuse in Egypt.
The result of Joffres' ambitious plans were the huge major offensives in the summer of 1916 in the south of the Russian front ( Brusilov offensive ) and on the Somme , which brought the Allies back in motion. The original plan was to start the coordinated offensives as early as spring 1916, but this was prevented by the opening of the Battle of Verdun by the Germans at the end of February. In Chantilly (in memory of the offensives of the Central Powers in the east in the second half of 1915), General Schilinski had proposed in such a case that the pressure on the beleaguered allies be relieved by attacks on other fronts. This agreement then triggered the Battle of Lake Narach and the Fifth Battle of the Isonzo .
Third Chantilly Conference, March 1916
A third inter-allied military conference in Chantilly took place on March 12, 1916 and dealt with changes to the plans of the second conference of December 1915 in the light of the German major attack at Verdun. The main participants were Joseph Joffre and Douglas Haig , who had succeeded Field Marshal French in December 1915.
Fourth Chantilly Conference, November 1916
The fourth Chantilly Conference took place on November 15, 1916 - parallel to an Intergovernmental Conference in Paris - and had plans for the war year 1917. It was the last Allied conference at which France was represented by General Joffre. Joffre wanted a French offensive between Somme and Oise for the coming spring , which should be supported by the British between Bapaume and Vimy . Later the French would attack on the Aisne . The attacks should begin as early in the year as possible in order to prevent the Germans from advancing with their own attack like in early 1916. The British eventually agreed to these plans, although they would have preferred to attack Flanders to neutralize the German submarine bases there.
Ultimately, however, not Joffre, but the aspiring General Robert Nivelle , who replaced Joffre in December, would lead the offensive on the Aisne and Champagne ( Battle of the Aisne ) named after him , supported by a British offensive at Arras . The German withdrawal to the Siegfriedstellung in the Somme area in March 1917 ( company Alberich ) made Joffre's preferred renewal of the attacks on the Somme obsolete.
The conference was also dominated by the temporary victory of the "Westerners" within the British military-political leadership, led by Haig and Robertson, against the political leadership of Prime Minister Asquith, who resigned a few weeks later. The resolutions were practically a reflection of the December 1915 conference, with a slightly shifted emphasis on a military decision on the Western Front. A politico-military conference in Petrograd planned for the end of the year, which was supposed to discuss, among other things, Russian participation in the spring offensives of 1917, did not take place until January and February 1917, when the crisis of the Russian state was already well advanced and an imminent revolution was foreseeable was. In the end, there was no Russian offensive in the spring of 1917 due to the February Revolution , and the January battles on the Aa were of a rather local nature. The coordination of the Allied war plans was less successful than in the previous year , partly due to the events in Russia and the several months of paralyzing the French army after the mutinies that began during the Nivelle offensive in 1917.
Web links
Individual evidence
- ^ PMH Bell: France and Britain, 1900-1940: Entente and Estrangement. Routledge, 2014, p. 65 f.
- ^ Andrew Rawson: The 1915 Campaign. Casemate, 2016, p.
- ↑ Text of the memorandum on firstworldwar.com
- ^ David French: The Strategy of the Lloyd George Coalition, 1916-1918. Clarendon Press, 1995, p. 50.
- ↑ George H. Cassar: Asquith as War Leader. A&C Black, 1994, pp. 204 ff .; see. also David R. Woodward: Lloyd George and the Generals. Routledge, 2004, p. 108 ff.
- ^ David French: The Strategy of the Lloyd George Coalition, 1916-1918. Clarendon Press, 1995, p. 51.