The prince lent back and closed his eyes. In his mind, the grizzled heads of the generals from the day before yesterday and the young faces of the infantrymen from earlier were strangely intermingled. First one group then the other pushed forward in time with his heartbeat. It had only been raining for a month, but the casualty figures for the rifles had already reached 30 per cent, sometimes more. Men caught cold, were feverish and had to be sent to the rear for treatment. It was because of the position of the front line. The front line had resulted from the furious fighting in July. It had not been selected or prepared for winter conditions. It was no use either as a base for future attacks or as a defensive position should the French ever decide to attack between Tavanne and Pepper ridge, since it was overlooked, badly damaged and drowned in mud. The artillery was in a hopeless situation except where it was served by the narrow-gauge railways. That was the only way of bringing materials and ammunition up to the front line. He had agreed wholeheartedly when a couple of officers said that the line should be moved further back, relinquishing the gains of recent months, that positions should be prepared on the hills of Hardaumont, Fort Douaumont and Pepper ridge, and that the front should be ‘shortened’ one night and the whole quagmire chucked back to the French, and good luck to them.
The prince shivered. He pulled his fur rug tighter round his legs and rubbed his shoulders inside his fur jacket nervously against the upholstery. The twin lines that ran from his nostrils to the corners of his mouth gave him, in profile, a certain resemblance to his ancestor, Old Fritz. Unfortunately, such half measures wouldn’t fix the problem. The East Meuse Group Command had sent in its most capable officers, and they had established that moving the line would do nothing to alleviate the main problems of long approach routes, lack of accommodation for reserves, and inadequate supplies and ammunition. Neither would it be possible to use the position on the hills for further sorties, as the French were much too clever to allow themselves to be lured into the sludge. It was tough, but what was required was to evacuate the ground so arduously conquered and pull back roughly to where they’d been before the February attack. That would mean moving to near the railway line to Azannes; they couldn’t even hold Hill 344 and Fosses wood. It was very sensible – and completely impossible. Given how the year 1916 had turned out, the House of Hohenzollern’s reputation could not tolerate such a retreat. The battle of the Somme had turned out badly, and the eastern front, thanks to the Brusilov offensive, very badly. The Austrians were taking a pasting as usual. They were stuck in the Adige valley, and entire regiments had deserted in Bukovina – the Czechs had simply had enough of the Habsburgs. And you only had to think back to the year 1908 and the annexation of Bosnia by Aerenthal to realise that the entire war had started with Habsburgian home affairs. Now the Romanians were intervening with 15 army corps, which was hardly small beer. It looked bad for Germany. And added to that, a retreat on the western front? Impossible! The German soldiers would start to have doubts, and the officer class, which they still trusted blindly, would be seen in an unfavourable light, with potentially unpredictable consequences within Germany. Germany was facing its hardest winter yet. It had been necessary to reduce the bread ration to half a pound, and even the soldiers faced months of hardship. It was morale alone that kept the people going, belief in the imperial house, the unvanquished army and the certainty of eventual victory. To admit that the battle of Verdun was hopelessly lost was to elevate Karl Liebknecht to the status of prophet, invite attack from the parliamentary majority in the Reichstag, and make the imperial house and army command look like fools, which would lead to demands that all the ‘senselessly spilt blood’ be accounted for. Should that be allowed to happen? It should not. Was it avoidable? It was avoidable if they did nothing, left everything as it was and, with a heavy heart, burdened the German soldiers with yet more sacrifices. The German soldiers would bear it. They’d be glad to die for the glory of the Fatherland, would stand all winter uncomplaining in the sludge, keeping guard against the ancestral enemy. Signs of weakness and false humanity must be avoided at all costs. The Germans liked to be led, loved a strong hand. Then they’d fetch the stars down from the sky.
The crown prince visualised the wrinkled face of the old Junker who spoke those words with such conviction, his small eyes and rasping voice, and smiled to himself. Others had contradicted him, for example von Lychow, who had been in command on the left bank of the Meuse for some time. But their arguments didn’t hold water. They were very sensible, but you didn’t get the stars down from the sky through good sense alone. He, the prince, had watched his father, the supreme warlord, while the generals were arguing. Ah yes, Papa understood how to give the right sort of appearance, how to play the royal chieftain of the council of war, imposing as an eagle. But he didn’t fool his son. His face sagged, his eyes were wreathed in wrinkles, and it was a struggle for him to maintain his confident imperial mien. His son knew what only sons can guess: that dear Papa had imagined the war would turn out quite differently when he unleashed it with such panache. More like his manoeuvres no doubt. But that wasn’t how the barrow was rolling, your majesty; it was rolling quite differently. At the beginning of the war, the old man had thought he’d be his own chief of staff; that had been a lovely dream in the idle hours of peacetime. Then he’d had to send brave old Moltke out into the desert, followed by the unctuous Falkenhayn, and summon two new gods whom he couldn’t stand. Half-measures, nothing but half-measures! The war would be over in six months if they would stop worrying about neutral countries and order the U-boats to sink whatever passed in front of them, knocking out Great Britain’s provisions and the American shells supplied to France. The American gentlemen and their Wilson could protest as much as they wanted. They could even send their miserable army over. They’d be very welcome. Fodder for the field howitzers, nothing more.
The car ran well. Perfect engine, springs made of outstanding German steel. When the Romanian business was sorted out, Papa wanted to risk a bid for peace in order to shut the pope up. It couldn’t hurt because Belgium would certainly stay in German hands, as would the Briey-Longwy iron ore basin. If you thought about it properly and took a look at the map, the whole Verdun offensive was really just about strategically safeguarding those conquests ahead of the coming peace agreement. Naturally, they didn’t say that to anyone, not even to their esteemed members of parliament, who liked to honour General Headquarters with their annexation memoranda. Military decisions, naturally, were taken for purely military reasons. That was why poor Falkenhayn had invented the famous ‘battle of attrition’ after the first strike on the fort failed and the Verdun adventure lost its shine. From a military point of view, Verdun was just another fort behind which the French, supported from Châlons, had prepared another line of defence. But politically speaking, Verdun was unique and irreplaceable for Germany’s future and for her industry. And for that reason, the old front line would have to remain, the heir to the throne saw with a sigh, and the men would have to get through the winter there.