The First Battle Of The Marne 1914

In 1914 the Germans launched an offensive that swept through Belgium and into France, threatening to crush French resistance in one fell swoop. However, through careful maneuvering and stubborn resistance, the French Army, aided by the BEF, blunted the assault, winning an important strategic victory that kept France in the war. This victory ensured that Germany would have to fight a two-front war, and the Western Front descended into the stalemate of trench warfare. One of the most important battles in the First World War, the First Battle of the Marne would be the last battle of maneuver to be seen on the Western Front for several years to come.

For the first time in a generation, here is a bold new account of the Battle of the Marne, a cataclysmic encounter that prevented a quick German victory in World War I and changed the course of two wars and the world. With exclusive information based on newly unearthed documents, Holger H. Herwig re-creates the dramatic battle and reinterprets Germany’s aggressive “Schlieffen Plan” as a carefully crafted design to avoid a protracted war against superior coalitions. He paints a fresh portrait of the run-up to the Marne and puts in dazzling relief the Battle of the Marne itself: the French resolve to win, and the crucial lack of coordination between Germany’s First and Second Armies. Herwig also provides stunning cameos of all the important players, from Germany’s Chief of General Staff Helmuth von Moltke to his rival, France’s Joseph Joffre. Revelatory and riveting, this is the source on this seminal event.

“Long-out-of-print account of the first weeks of the Great War by Alexander von Kluck, Commander of the German First Army, which fought and lost the decisive Battle of the Marne after clashing with the BEF at Mons and Le Cateau. ...Von Kluck was given the crucial role in 1914 of commanding the German First Army, the ‘fist’ of the famous Schlieffen Plan to knock out France in a lightning six-week campaign. Kluck’s mission was to march through Belgium (bringing Britain into the war), drive through north-east France and scoop up Paris, thus trapping the main French armies between their capital and the Franco-German frontier where the German left-wing was waiting. Kluck did all that was asked of him, but when Schlieffen’s plan left the drawing board and was tested on the battlefield, it began to unravel. Firstly, the British Expeditionary Force arrived in France much faster than the Germans had expected, fighting delaying actions against Kluck at Mons and Le Cateau. Secondly, as he approached Paris, Kluck’s exhausted army began to lose touch with the Second Army of von Bulow to their left. Crucially, Kluck sidestepped westwards to keep in touch with Bulow, thus giving France’s General Joffre the chance to launch the counterstroke attack on his flank that became the Battle of the Marne; a series of engagements which first checked, then reversed, the hitherto victorious German onslaught. Cyril Falls, doyen of Britain’s Great War historians, called Kluck’s book “One of the most interesting and important of German war books’. Written with all the headstrong fierceness which made Kluck famous, this book is one which no student of the Great War will want to miss. It comes complete with maps, an appendix giving the First Army’s Order of Battle, and a frontispiece photograph of the author.”—N&M Press Reprint

Details the opening campaigns of the First World War on the western front in 1914, the defense of Paris by the French Armies and the British Expeditionary Force, the decisions of the German and French commanders von Kluck and Joffre, and the retreat of the German Army after the battles of the Ourcq, the two Morins, the Aisne and the Marne.

The First Battle of the Marne produced the so-called Miracle of the Marne, when French and British forces stopped the initial German drive on Paris in 1914. Hundreds of thousands of casualties later, with opposing forces still dug into trench lines, the Germans tried again to push their way to Paris and to victory. The Second Battle of the Marne (July 15 to August 9, 1918) marks the point at which the Allied armies stopped the massive German Ludendorff Offensives and turned to offensive operations themselves. The Germans never again came as close to Paris nor resumed the offensive. The battle was one of the first large multinational battles fought by the Allies since the assumption of supreme command by French general Ferdinand Foch. It marks the only time the French, American, and British forces fought together in one battle. A superb account of the bloody events of those fateful days, this book sheds new light on a critically important 20th-century battle.

In 1914 the Germans launched an offensive that swept through Belgium and into France, threatening to crush French resistance in one fell swoop. However, through careful maneuvering and stubborn resistance, the French Army, aided by the BEF, blunted the assault, winning an important strategic victory that kept France in the war. This victory ensured that Germany would have to fight a two-front war, and the Western Front descended into the stalemate of trench warfare. One of the most important battles in the First World War, the First Battle of the Marne would be the last battle of maneuver to be seen on the Western Front for several years to come.

Though not so famous as the battles of Tannenberg or the Marne, the fight between the French and German armies at Alsace and Lorraine marks the first battle of World War IOn August 7, 1914, a week before the Battle of Tannenburg and two weeks before the Battle of the Marne, the French army attacked the Germans at Mulhouse in Alsace. Their objective was to recapture territory which had been lost after the Franco-Prussian War of 1870-1871, which made it a matter of pride for the French. However, after initial success in capturing Mulhouse, the Germans were able to reinforce more quickly, and drove them back within three days. After 43 years of peace, this was the first test of strength between France and Germany. In 1929 Karl Deuringer wrote the official history of the battle for the Bavarian Army, an immensely detailed work of 890 pages; World War I expert and former army officer Terence Zuber has translated this study and edited it down to more accessible length, to produce the first account in English of the first major battle of the World War I.