August Showcase
This August we'll be coming up on the 95th anniversary of the start of the Great War.
Our Lead Researcher has written an article detailing the beginning of the war for those of you interested in the conflict.
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"The great questions of the day will not be decided by speeches and the resolutions of majorities — that was the great mistake from 1848 to 1849 — but by blood and iron."
--Otto von Bismarck
"The lamps are going out all over Europe; we shall not see them lit again in our lifetime."
--Sir Edward Grey, Britain's Foreign Secretary, 3 August 1914
At 5 a.m. on August 4, 1914, the Imperial German Army poured across the borders of Belgium and Northern France, in accordance with Count Alfred von Schlieffen's Plan to first destroy France's army in Germany's two front European War against the Triple Entente Powers (Great Britain, France, and Russia).
The initial advance of the Imperial German Army was successful, defeating the French Army in Alsace-Lorraine, and ruthlessly crushing Belgium resistance.
By the first week in September, the Germans succeeded in advancing within 20 miles east of Paris.
However, due to several tactical blunders, by September 12th, the Germans were forced to withdraw by the French, commanded by the indomitable French Commander-in-Chief Joseph Joffre at the Battle of the Marne, and the Germans withdrew northwards, just behind the River Aisne; the British Expeditionary Force ("BEF"), commanded by Field Marshal Sir John French, pursued the withdrawing Germans but were unable to corner them.
At the River Aisne, the German Chief of Staff Helmuth von Molkte the Younger issued the most important strategic command of the war: "The lines so reached will be fortified and defended."
The German forces took up positions on the north bank of the River Aisne on the Chemin des Dames ridge, creating a system of simple trenches, and held off British attacks.
Soon the British dug their own system of trenches on the opposite bank of the river.
Then a series of earthen trenchworks appeared, and each side moved infantry battalions northwards and began a "Race to the Sea," with each nation's army trying to turn their opponent's flank.
As the armies moved, the system of trenches grew on both sides, extending north past the Aisne, the Somme, Arras, and the Douai plain.
Each flanking manouver ended in deadlock, further digging in, and a no-man's-land between the respective trench lines.
The Race ended near a small town in Belgium of about 8,000 inhabitants called Ypres, in the historical region of Europe called Flanders.
It was at this moment that Prussian Minister of War Erich Von Falkenhayn was appointed the new Chief of Staff of the German forces, replacing Von Moltke who was dismissed as a result of the Marne; Von Falkenhayn decided to make a second attempt to crush the Western Allies in October, 1914 at Ypres.
Von Falkenhayn's strategic objective was to breakthrough the Entente's lines and capture the Channel ports, thereby cutting off the BEF's supply and reinforcement lines.
Imperial Germany's hope of a breakthrough and an early victory ended at the First Battle of Ypres. 50,000 Germans were killed in action during the course of the battle, including 41,000 German university men and other Freiwillige volunteers who were among the ranks of that society's intellectual elite and future leaders.
The loss of these young men at Langemarck and the nearby village of Bixschoote was called by the German press by the emotive name the "Kindermord bei Ypern" (the Massacre of the Innocents at Ypres).
For the British, it was the death of their professional army. The BEF's casualties were 24,000 killed in action at Ypres; the BEF had been additionally shredded earlier at Mons, the Marne, and the Aisne, so that its unwounded were now less than half the original 160,000 men that had been sent to France, with a total of 30,000 killed in action.
Over 250,000 men had answered the British Secretary of War Lord Kitchener's call for 100,000 volunteers, but Kitchener's New Army would not be prepared for deployment until the spring of 1915.
These men were not the seasoned soldiers who had served in the BEF, but office workers, menservants, and factory labourers who joined the army out of patriotic duty and sometimes just to escape a dull job.
After the third major attempt by the Imperial German Army to break the BEF's line at Nun's Wood (about 4 miles east of Ypres) had failed during the second week of November, the men on both sides laid either tired and exhausted, wounded, or dead.
The ammunition and supplies of shells that had been produced and stockpiled by both sides for years prior to the beginning of the war had been spent.
The men had no way of knowing as the sun set that November evening that the entire nature of the course of the war had changed on the Western Front.
That evening the war of movement ended; from the Belgian coast on the English Channel to the border of Switzerland, 475 miles of trenches had been dug into the ground with a desolate area called No-Man's Land lying in between.
Winter arrived a few days later, and now a condition of deadlocked stalemate existed between both sides that would last until the final months of the war.
And no one knew on that evening of November 11, 1914, that the First World War would end exactly four years later to the day. In the interim, millions of human beings would die."
Copyright 2008 Gamburd USA
We also have some renders and WIP shots for you guys this August.
Here we redid the texture for the Jam tin grenade,
One of our pistols, the Webley MK IV,
Now for a couple melee weapons, first up is a German trench knife,
and an allied trench club,
And for those interested, we have a nice desktop background up which you can find here.
http://ironeuropegame.com/photogallery.php?album_id=4
That concludes our August showcase, stay tuned for future showcases.
