This Day in World War 1 History: AUGUST 06, 1915 : ALLIES LAND AT SUVLA BAY

On the evening of August 6, 1915, Allied forces commanded by Sir Frederick Stopford land at Suvla Bay, on the Aegean Sea, to launch a fresh attack against Turkish and German forces on the Gallipoli Peninsula during World War I.

 

The landing at Suvla Bay was part of the larger “August Offensive,” which was an attempt by the Allied forces to break through the Turkish and German lines to take command of the Gallipoli Peninsula. The large-scale Allied land invasion of Gallipoli had begun the previous April 25, after an attempted naval attack on the Dardanelles failed miserably.

On August 6, Hamilton attempted to reinvigorate the Allied campaign with an offensive push from positions of the Australia and New Zealand Army Corps (ANZAC) against the Turks at Sari Bair ridge. The simultaneous landing of troops at Suvla Bay, to the north of Sari Bair, was intended as a supporting attack, but when the ANZAC attacks failed, Hamilton presented the Suvla Bay landings as the principal thrust of the offensive.

At Suvla Bay, British troops of the 10th, 11th and 53rd Divisions in Gallipoli were under the command of General Stopford, an officer nearing retirement, whose previous service was limited to a ceremonial post in London. German commander Liman von Sanders had received a warning from Berlin about a possible Allied attack in early August and had previously dispatched some Turkish and German divisions to protect the most likely targets. After the landing, British troops quickly secured the local hills but Stopford’s inexperience and the delay of his orders allowed time for General von Sanders to send reinforcements to recover lost ground, inflicting more than 12,000 Allied casualties in the process.

When Turkish snipers and artillerymen took the high ground in positions above the Allied troops on the peninsula, the British lost any chance to regain the upper hand. An easy scapegoat for the failure of Hamilton’s planned attacks, General Stopford was relieved of his command of the division on August 15, 1914; General Sir Henry de Beauvoir de Lisle succeeded him. In total, the Allies suffered nearly 20,000 casualties during the landings at Suvla Bay.

Article Details:

August 06, 1915 : Allies land at Suvla Bay

• Author

  History.com Staff

• Website Name

  History.com

• Year Published

  2009

• Title

  August 06, 1915 : Allies land at Suvla Bay

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  http://www.history.com/this-day-in-history/allies-land-at-suvla-bay

• Access Date

  August 06, 2015

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  A+E Networks

This Day in World War 1 History: AUGUST 05, 1914 : GERMAN ASSAULT ON LIEGE BEGINS FIRST BATTLE OF WORLD WAR I

On August 5, 1914, the German army launches its assault on the city of Liege in Belgium, violating the latter country’s neutrality and beginning the first battle of World War I.

By August 4, the German 1st, 2nd and 3rd Armies—some 34 divisions of men—were in the process of aligning themselves on the right wing of the German lines, poised to move into Belgium. In total, seven German armies, with a total of 1.5 million soldiers, were being assembled along the Belgian and French frontiers, ready to put the long-held Schlieffen Plan—a sweeping advance through Belgium into France envisioned by former German Chief of Staff Alfred von Schlieffen—into practice. The 2nd Army, commanded by Field Marshal Karl von Bulow, was charged with taking the city of Liege, located at the gateway into Belgium from Germany. Built on a steep 500-foot slope rising up from the Meuse River, some 200 yards wide, and defended by 12 heavily armed forts—six on either side of the river, stretching along a 30-mile circumference—Liege was considered by many to be the most heavily fortified spot in Europe.

Bulow’s 2nd Army, numbering some 320,000 men, began its attack on Liege and its 35,000 garrison troops on August 5. Six brigades, commanded by General Otto von Emmich, were detached from the 2nd Army to form a special “Army of the Meuse” that would open the way for the rest of its comrades through Liege. Confident of an easy victory with little significant Belgian resistance, the Germans assumed Emmich’s men could topple Liege while the rest of the German troops were still assembling. In fact, the Belgians put up a valiant defense from the first moment—a struggle led by their sovereign, King Albert, who had earlier urged his subjects to fight this threat to their neutrality and independence at all costs. By the end of the day on August 5, all of Liege’s 12 fortresses remained in Belgian hands.

Liege eventually fell to the Germans on August 15, but only after they had brought up the most powerful land weapons in their arsenal, the enormous siege cannons. One type of cannon, built by the Austrian munitions firm Skoda, had a barrel measuring 12-inches (305mm); the other, manufactured by Krupps in Essen, Germany, was even more massive at 16.5 inches (420mm). Until that point, the largest guns had measured 13.5 inches and were used by the British navy; the largest on land had only measured 11 inches. The heavy shelling of Liege began on August 12; on August 15, after taking 11 of Liege’s 12 forts and exploding the walls of the 12th , Fort Loncin, with a shell, Emmich and his comrade Erich Ludendorff entered Loncin to find Liege’s commander, General Gerard Mathieu Leman, alive but unconscious. Taken prisoner by the Germans, he later wrote to King Albert from Germany, “I would gladly have given my life, but Death would not have me.” For their parts, Emmich and Ludendorff were awarded Germany’s highest military medal, the Pour la Merite cross, for their capture of Liege.

The main German advance through Belgium, towards France, began three days later, on August 18. Fearful of civilian resistance, especially from snipers, or franc-tireurs, shooting at them from hidden positions in trees and bushes, German troops from the first day in Belgium took a hard line against the native population. As early as August 5, the Germans had begun not only the shooting of ordinary civilians but the deliberate execution of Belgian priests, whom German propaganda at home insisted were encouraging franc-tireur activity. “Our advance in Belgium is certainly brutal,” wrote German Chief of Staff Helmuth von Moltke to his Austrian counterpart, Conrad von Hotzendorff, on August 5. “But we are fighting for our lives and all who get in the way must take the consequences.” In total, German troops killed 5,521 civilians in Belgium and 896 in France, earning Germany the full measure of Belgian hatred and damning it in the eyes of many foreign observers. The steadfast Belgian resistance, meanwhile, at Liege and elsewhere during the German advance, would earn the small country and its valiant king the world’s respect, and provide a shining example, and a worthy cause, to the other Allied nations then entering what would become Europe’s most devastating conflict.

Article Details:

August 05, 1914 : German assault on Liege begins first battle of World War I

• Author

  History.com Staff

• Website Name

  History.com

• Year Published

  2009

• Title

  August 05, 1914 : German assault on Liege begins first battle of World War I

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  http://www.history.com/this-day-in-history/german-assault-on-liege-begins-first-battle-of-world-war-i

• Access Date

  August 05, 2015

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  A+E Networks

This Day in World War 1 History: AUGUST 04, 1914 : U.S. PROCLAIMS NEUTRALITY IN WORLD WAR I

As World War I erupts in Europe, President Woodrow Wilson formally proclaims the neutrality of the United States, a position that a vast majority of Americans favoured  on August 4, 1914.

Wilson’s initial hope that America could be “impartial in thought as well as in action” was soon compromised by Germany’s attempted quarantine of the British Isles. Britain was one of America’s closest trading partners, and tension arose between the United States and Germany when several U.S. ships traveling to Britain were damaged or sunk by German mines.

In February 1915, Germany announced unrestricted warfare against all ships, neutral or otherwise, that entered the war zone around Britain. One month later, Germany announced that a German cruiser had sunk the William P. Frye, a private American vessel that was transporting grain to England when it disappeared. President Wilson was outraged, but the German government apologized and called the attack an unfortunate mistake.

In early May 1915, several New York newspapers published a warning by the German embassy in Washington that Americans traveling on British or Allied ships in war zones did so at their own risk. The announcement was placed on the same page as an advertisement for the imminent sailing of the British-owned Lusitania ocean liner from New York to Liverpool. On May 7, the Lusitania was torpedoed without warning by a German submarine just off the coast of Ireland. Of the nearly 2,000 passengers, 1,201 were killed, including 128 Americans.

It was revealed that the Lusitania was carrying about 173 tons of war munitions for Britain, which the Germans cited as further justification for the attack. The United States eventually sent three notes to Berlin protesting the action, and Germany apologized and pledged to end unrestricted submarine warfare. In November, however, a U-boat sunk an Italian liner without warning, killing 272 people, including 27 Americans. Public opinion in the United States began to turn irrevocably against Germany.

In late March, Germany sunk four more U.S. merchant ships, and on April 2, President Wilson appeared before Congress and called for a declaration of war against Germany. On April 4, the Senate voted 82 to six to declare war against Germany. Two days later, the House of Representatives endorsed the declaration by a vote of 373 to 50, and America formally entered World War I.

On June 26, the first 14,000 U.S. infantry troops landed in France to begin training for combat. After four years of bloody stalemate along the Western Front, the entrance of America’s well-supplied forces into the conflict was a major turning point in the war. By the time the war finally ended on November 11, 1918, more than 2 million American soldiers had served on the battlefields of Western Europe, and some 50,000 of these men had lost their lives.

Article Details:

August 04, 1914 : U.S. proclaims neutrality in World War I

• Author

  History.com Staff

• Website Name

  History.com

• Year Published

  2009

• Title

  August 04, 1914 : U.S. proclaims neutrality in World War I

• URL

  http://www.history.com/this-day-in-history/u-s-proclaims-neutrality-in-world-war-i

• Access Date

  August 04, 2015

• Publisher

  A+E Networks