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Requisitioned Cabs used at the Battle of the Marne, 1914
Now + Then: The Miracle on the Marne
NOW: Ukraine and Russia are locked in a bloody, frustrating trench war, stalemated for years after the attempt to blitz through to Kyiv during Russia’s initial invasion was thrown back by the sacrifice of thousands of Ukrainian troops.
THEN: On this day 110 years ago, French and British forces along the Marne River were suffering through arguably the most important battle of World War I – an early clash that saved Paris and broke the German war plan but also ushered in the horrors of trench warfare.
The Great Retreat: The war began with disaster for the Anglo-French Entente. The aggressive French pre-war plan to strike into the heavily fortified German positions along their frontier had shattered against the macabre realities of industrialized warfare. Nearly 330,000 French soldiers were killed or wounded between Aug. 6 and Sept. 5 as the Germans rebuffed the strike and swept across Belgium and Luxembourg (the infamous Schlieffen Plan). They bottled up the tiny Belgian army before slamming into the small British Expeditionary Force at Mons, who fought hard but were forced to retreat because the French collapse left their flank unguarded.
The 1st and 2nd German armies then marched headlong toward Paris, and the French government departed for Bordeaux, expecting a prolonged siege. But the ferocity of the German advance concealed serious vulnerabilities: they were outpacing their supplies and their lines of communication were breaking just as generals were shifting plans on the ground. So severe was the dysfunction that Germany's top general, the infamously neurotic Helmuth von Moltke, issued no orders to the fighting armies during the six days of battle that began on Sept. 6.
Keep calm and fight on: Meanwhile, French Commander-in-Chief Joseph Joffre’s oft-noted cool head saved the day. He rapidly saw the futility of the pre-war plans and regrouped, pulling units from the east to defend the capital and relying on the extensive French train network. He appointed an old mentor, Gen. Joseph Gallieni, military governor of Paris, and Gallieni spotted a crucial mistake on the German side.
Rather than encircling Paris from the west, which might have prevented French forces from checking them in time, the Germans moved to positions to the northeast along the Marne. On Sept. 6, the French 5th army, which had been in retreat, turned and counterattacked across the river east of Paris, reinforced by the fresh 9th Army. Simultaneously, Gallieni’s newly formed 6th Army struck from Paris itself, even using Parisian taxicabs to ferry some 3,000 men to the front in the earliest known use of automobiles in warfare.
Mind the gap: Attacked on two sides, the German commanders scrambled to respond. The 1st and 2nd Armies gradually began pulling apart, allowing a 30-mile wide gap to form between their forces — a gap into which the British Expeditionary Force began pouring its battalions. By Sept. 9, German Gen. Karl von Bülow realized he was no longer in a position to end the war by taking Paris — and so ordered a retreat north to the Aisne River.
Dig in: At the Aisne, the Germans put to use one tiny advantage that would come to define the whole war: spades to dig trenches. German soldiers carried them; British and French troops did not. But by Sept. 17, the Entente were digging their own trenches, and over the course of the next month, the network would grow to stretch from the Swiss Alps to the Flemish coast.
Over 4.5 million soldiers and civilians lost their lives on the Western Front during the course of the next four years, and we live with the consequences — from the conflicts in Ukraine and Israel to European unity and American hegemony — to this day.Reich President Paul von Hindenburg and Reich Chancellor Adolf Hitler are greeted by the people with the Nazi salute on the occasion of the Day of Commemoration of Heroes on 25 February 1934.
The night Hitler consolidated totalitarian power
How do democracies fall? They implode. Sunday marked the 90th anniversary of the day on which, in retrospect, the tide of totalitarianism in Germany couldn’t be turned back — Adolf Hitler’s violent purge of Nazi leadership known as the Night of the Long Knives.
Hitler’s rise
Two years before the putsch, chaos reigned in German politics. The feeble Weimar Republic struggled to keep order as Nazi and Communist paramilitaries fought in the streets. Unemployment and inflation — already severe problems for the post-World War I German economy — were compounded by the Great Depression. The Nazi Party had capitalized on the ensuing political polarization to surge to national prominence, blaming social outsiders including Jews, Roma, and homosexuals for polluting Germany’s racial purity.
In December 1932, center-right Chancellor Franz von Papen stepped aside after a series of snap elections had given the Nazi Party the largest share of seats in Parliament. President Paul von Hindenburg reluctantly appointed Hitler chancellor in January 1933 — whereupon Hitler used a fire lit in the Reichstag building by a Dutch communist in February to intimidate the legislature into giving him emergency powers.
Last obstacles
Hitler then had just two major internal threats to his regime. The first was von Hindenburg, who as president could still dismiss the chancellor at will, and as a national war hero carried immense cachet with the military. The second was Ernst Röhm, a cabinet minister andleader of the powerful Nazi SA paramilitary, whom Hitler feared might be able to take power by force.
Hitler struck out on a strategy of flattery with von Hindenburg, playing to his conservative social values and military background to stay on his good side. But that strategy necessitated aggravating Röhm, who wanted the SA to be officially incorporated into the German military and advocated a “continuing revolution” that threatened Hitler’s consolidation of power.
By April of 1934, the 86-year-old von Hindenburg was increasingly bedridden with cancer, leaving him slow to respond to political events — though he did not resign.
Three days of blood
In the wee hours of June 30, 1934, Hitler and loyal SS guards arrived at the Munich hotel where Röhm and other SA leadership were staying. The SA leaders present were arrested, as were others arriving at the train station for an expected meeting that day.
At party headquarters in Munich, Hitler made a speech denouncing the SA and its leaders to roaring applause. A bit after 10 AM, death squads went to the prison where the SA was being held and executed all of them, including Röhm, who refused an opportunity to kill himself first.
Over the course of three days, Nazi operatives purged at least 85 members of the German conservative elite not personally loyal to Hitler. That includedGregor Strasser, a former Nazi top official who had challenged Hitler’s leadership, former Chancellor Kurt von Schleicher, former Defense Minister Ferdinand von Bredow, conservative leader Edgar Jung, journalist Fritz Gerlich, and Bernhard Stempfle, a defrocked Catholic priest who had been imprisoned with Hitler and helped him write “Mein Kampf.”
Amid all the bloodshed, which he could have stopped by removing Hitler from power, von Hindenburg did nothing. He died on Aug. 2, 1934, and it would be another 56 years before a united Germany held its next free election.