Abstract
Following his account of the outbreak of war, Lloyd George provides a critique of several aspects of British strategy in the first weeks of hostilities. He first argues that the decision to deploy the BEF on the left wing of the French was wrong and instead that BEF would have been better placed to inflict a severe, even decisive blow against the German advance by concentrating in Antwerp and joining forces with the Belgians. He then describes his proposal to circumvent the developing stalemate in France with an audacious Allied attack on Austria-Hungary in alliance with the Balkan states. This was rejected by the Cabinet, however, in favour of an attack on Turkey in the Dardanelles, initially with naval forces alone and later with substantial land forces, with well-known results. Allied forces were later deployed in Salonika at the end of 1915, but rather than launching a powerful attack on Austria as Lloyd George wanted, they were too weak in numbers and equipment to be anything but an irritant to Austria and Bulgaria until the last months of the war.
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Notes
Robert Blake (ed.), The Private Papers of Douglas Haig 1914–1919 (London: Eyre and Spottiswoode, 1952), pp. 68–69;
C.E. Callwell (ed.), Field Marshal Sir Henry Wilson: His Life and Diaries, 2 vols (London: Cassell, 1927) p. 158;
Samuel R. Williamson, The Politics of Grand Strategy: Britain and France Prepare for War 1904–1914 (London and Atlantic Highlands NJ: Ashfield Press, 1990), p. 365;
Maurice Hankey, The Supreme Command, 2 vols (London: Allen & Unwin, 1961), 1, pp. 170–71.
Trevor Wilson, The Myriad Faces of War: Britain and the Great War 1914–1918 (Cambridge: Polity Press, 1986), pp. 36–37.
See also Sir Llewellyn Woodward, Great Britain and the War of 1914–1918 (London: Methuen, 1967), p. 31;
George H. Cassar, The Tragedy of Sir John French (Newark: University of Delaware Press, 1985), p. 84.
Paul Guinn, British Strategy and Politics 1914–1918 (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1965), pp. 13–14;
William J. Philpott, ‘British Military Strategy on the Western Front: Independence or Alliance 1904–1918’ (DPhil thesis, University of Oxford, 1991), pp. 19–28 (published in revised form as Anglo-French Relations and Strategy on the Western Front 1914–1918 [London: Macmillan, 1996]).
Randolph S. Churchill, Young Statesman: Winston S. Churchill 1901–1914, Companion vol. II (London: Heinemann, 1969), pp. 1117–18, Churchill to Grey, 30 August 1911, Churchill to Lloyd George, 31 August 1911.
B.H. Liddell Hart, History of the First World War (London: Pan, 1970) (pbk ed. of A History of the World War 1934, itself was a revised edition of The Real War, 1930), p. 44.
B.H. Liddell Hart, Strategy: The Indirect Approach (London: Faber & Faber, 1967) (rev.ed. of The Strategy of Indirect Approach, 1941), p. 168.
Michael Howard, The Continental Commitment (London: Temple Smith, 1972), p. 55.
Asquith was impressed with Lloyd George’s effort. As he wrote to Venetia Stanley: ‘I have also received to-day two long mem[oranda] — one from Winston, the other from Lloyd George (quite good, the latter) as to the … conduct of the war. They are both keen on a new objective & theatre, as soon as our new troops are ready: W, of course, for Borkum & the Baltic: LI.G for Salonika to join in with the Serbians, & for Syria!’, Michael and Eleonor Brock (eds), H.H. Asquith: Letters to Venetia Stanley (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1985), pp. 357–58.
On the Austro-Hungarian army see Alan Sked, The Decline and Fall of the Austro-Hungarian Empire 1815–1918 (London: Longman, 1989), pp. 258–64;
Gunther E. Rothenberg, ‘The Habsburg Army in the First World War: 1914–1918’, in Béla K. Király and Nándor F. Dreisziger (eds), East Central Europe in World War I (Highland Lakes: Atlantic Research and Publications, Social Science Monographs, 1985), pp. 289–300;
István Deák, ‘The Habsburg Army in the First and Last Days of World War I: A Comparative Analysis’, in Király and Dreisziger (eds), East Central Europe in World War I, pp. 301–12; cf. Geoffrey Wawro, ‘Morale in the Austro-Hungarian Army: the Evidence of Habsburg Army Campaign Reports and Allied Intelligence Officers’, in Hugh Cecil and Peter H. Liddle (eds), Facing Armageddon: The First World War Experienced (London: Leo Cooper, 1996), pp. 399–412.
David Stevenson (ed.), British Documents on Foreign Affairs: Reports and Papers from the Foreign Office Confidential Print, Part II Series H, The First World War 1914–1918, 12 vols (University Publications of America, 1989; General Editors Kenneth Bourne and D. Cameron Watt), p. 17, No. 38, Grey to Erskine, British Chargé d’Affaires in Athens, 11 August 1914. Venizelos a few days later told Erskine that support for a Balkan grouping was his ‘personal view’, and that he was anxious that the initiative should come from Russia; p. 19, No. 43, Erskine to Grey, 12 August 1914.
David French, British Strategy and War Aims 1914–1916 (London: Allen & Unwin, 1986), p. 68.
Ibid. For an examination of the issues of supply and communications in the Macedonian campaign, see Cyril Falls, Military Operations in Macedonia from the Outbreak of War to the Spring of 1917, Vol. I (London: HMSO, 1933), ch. 12.
Kitchener to French, 2 January 1915, quoted in ibid., p. 382. See also Sir George Arthur, Life of Lord Kitchener, 3 vols (London: Macmillan, 1920), I, pp. 85–86.
J.F.C. Fuller, The Conduct of War 1789–1961 (London: Eyre and Spottiswoode, 1962), pp. 161–62.
Keith Robbins, ‘British Diplomacy and Bulgaria 1914–1915’, Slavonic and East European Review, XLIX, 117, October 1971, p. 566.
Stevenson (ed.), British Documents on Foreign Affairs from the Confidential Print, Part II Series H, I, p. 383, No. 670, Lord Eustace Percy, The Balkans, 1914–15, from the Outbreak of War to the Offer to Bulgaria, 9 July 1915.
See ibid., Edward, Viscount Grey, Twenty Five Years, 2 vols (London: Hodder and Stoughton, 1925), I, p. 180;
G.M. Trevelyan, Grey of Fallodon (London: Longmans, 1937), p. 283. The latter notes that ‘Grey could not alienate Russia and bring Turkey and Bulgaria into the war against us, merely for Greek aid’. This is particularly pertinent considering the state of the Greek Army. On this point, see Prior, ‘World Crisis’ as History, p. 185 and Prior’s comments on Churchill’s discussion of the ‘lost opportunity’ of Greek aid, p. 44.
A.J.P. Taylor (ed.), Lloyd George: A Diary by Frances Stevenson (London: Hutchinson, 1971), p. 28. See Lloyd George’s nine-page letter to Grey, 7 February 1915. At the end of the letter he tacked on one line: ‘The financial conference was a great success’; HLRO LG MSS: C/4/1/16.
See Grigg, Lloyd George, II, p. 207 and Alan Palmer, The Gardeners of Salonika (London: Andre Deutsch, 1965), p. 28. Although as Lloyd George said one month later, ‘the reason why Greece did not intervene was not the general opposition of the King, but the fact that by the most competent military judges in Greece Germany was still expected to win … The same impression was influencing the other neutral countries — Bulgaria, Roumania, Italy. It required a man of real imagination and insight like Venizelos to realise the immense staying power of Great Britain which in the end would determine the issue.’ Scott Diaries, pp. 120–21.
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© 2005 Andrew Suttie
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Suttie, A. (2005). Strategic Dilemmas: 1914–15. In: Rewriting the First World War. Palgrave Macmillan, London. https://doi.org/10.1057/9780230505599_4
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