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Today marks 112 years since the bloodiest day in French military history...
Posted on 8/22/26 at 6:19 am
Posted on 8/22/26 at 6:19 am
August 22, 1914.
During the so-called Battle of the Frontiers, French divisions made suicidal frontal assaults against German positions in France and Belgium while carrying out their doomed operation called Plan XVII. In the Ardennes Forest, Charleroi, and other locations, French infantry units marched forward in linear formations only to be slaughtered in their thousands by accurate machine gun and artillery fire.
When the smoke had cleared at dusk, an estimated 27,000 French soldiers had been killed outright with tens of thousands more listed as wounded and captured/missing. By the time the Battle of the Frontiers came to an end at the close of August, the French army had sustained some 329,000 casualties of which 75,000 were KIA.
By the end of the year more than 300,000 Frenchmen would be dead on the Western Front. It truly is a miracle that they survived the opening shock and managed to defeat the Germans at the First Battle of the Marne in September.
During the so-called Battle of the Frontiers, French divisions made suicidal frontal assaults against German positions in France and Belgium while carrying out their doomed operation called Plan XVII. In the Ardennes Forest, Charleroi, and other locations, French infantry units marched forward in linear formations only to be slaughtered in their thousands by accurate machine gun and artillery fire.
When the smoke had cleared at dusk, an estimated 27,000 French soldiers had been killed outright with tens of thousands more listed as wounded and captured/missing. By the time the Battle of the Frontiers came to an end at the close of August, the French army had sustained some 329,000 casualties of which 75,000 were KIA.
By the end of the year more than 300,000 Frenchmen would be dead on the Western Front. It truly is a miracle that they survived the opening shock and managed to defeat the Germans at the First Battle of the Marne in September.
This post was edited on 8/22/26 at 6:20 am
2
Posted on 8/22/26 at 7:12 am to RollTide1987
Maybe this explains why the Germans rolled through there so easily the second time around.
Posted on 8/22/26 at 7:27 am to tigerinexile
quote:
Maybe this explains why the Germans rolled through there so easily the second time around.
That was certainly part of it. The French did not want to fight the Germans again in 1940 because the memories of the First World War were still fresh in everyone's minds. However, when the French and Germans did clash the former gave just as much as they took. What happened in France in May 1940 was more a failure of the French high command than it was the French fighting soldier.
The Allies had the Germans in the Ardennes dead to rights after air recon spotted their armored columns snaking their way through a massive traffic jam. Had French commanders reacted decisively to this information, the RAF and French air units might have decimated the right hook before it ever got going. Instead, they ignored the reports and continued to look for the main German effort elsewhere.
This post was edited on 8/22/26 at 7:28 am
Posted on 8/22/26 at 7:37 am to RollTide1987
When 19th century tactics meet 20th century weapons.
Posted on 8/22/26 at 7:43 am to RollTide1987
quote:
By the end of the year more than 300,000 Frenchmen would be dead on the Western Front.
I guess that's why it was 'all quiet', as one author Remarqued... Boo-Hiss
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