The race to the sea
At the beginning of September 1914 the war decisive Schlieffen plan of the Germans could be put to the files. Senior General Alexander von Kluck, commanding officer of the right army wing decided to change the plan high-handedly not to go round Paris from the west as provided but to perform the swivel north-east of the town. Thereby he laid bare his right flank only protected by cavalry and virtually invited the 6. French Army to a flank attack. It only dawned on the German general staff when the heads of the German cavalry happened to manoeuvre right into the assembly area of the French.
The German leadership answered the 1. Army`s threat with a retreat in its original north westerly attack direction. The entire plan got insignificant through this since a 40 km wide gap opened up between 1. Army and the 2. Army under leadership of Senior General von Bülow. Units of the British expedition army under leadership of Field Marshal Sir John French immediately pushed into this breach and the French 6. Army went over to the attack at the same time. The German 1. Army retreated to escape encirclement and all German lines had to be taken back behind the river Aisne . The "Miracle at the Marne" stopped the enormous German superior strength.
After this defeat the German Field Army had to regroup to avoid chaos caused by the French-British counter-offensive. The so far left of the 1. Army fighting 2. Army was directed to the right of the 1. Army. That seat was taken by the 7. Army coming from the Alsace and the 6. Army was ordered from Lorraine to integrate to the right of the 2. Army in the region of Lille. However, there was still a long front gap gaped between Lille and the fortress Antwerp. The Supreme Command (OHL/Oberste Heeresleitung) placed all available reserve divisions into this gap and put them in charge of Senior General Duke Albrecht of Württemberg. The Allied troops reacted to the activities of the German Army promptly and started with regrouping troops for their part in the direction of the North of France. The race to the sea had begun.
The first Battle of Ypres
The first Battle of Flanders also known as 1. Battle of Ypres was opened by the German 4. and 6. Army to conquer the channel ports Calais and Dunkerque. These two towns were of special strategic importance since almost the complete British reinforcements were carried out via them to France. The German 4. Army tried to advance at the Flemish coast to Ypres, the German 6. Army (Kronprince von Bayern/Bavaria) advanced from the region of Lille to the north and could stabilize its front to the north and to the north-east in shortest time. The four Reserve Corps of the German 4. Army which consisted to a relatively large portion (approx. 5 -10 %) of young war volunteers (students) were drawn up without sufficing training and thrown to the front in due hurry. Facing them were the best British troops of the expedition army, the Guards.
The Allies reached Nieuport at the Channel Coast in October 1914. The troops of the Commander-in-Chief General Erich von Falkenhayn took Antwerp on October 9 and moved toward Ypres. Ypers, an important transposition point of road, train and waterways was due to its cloth trade part of the most powerful towns of Flanders with Ghent and Bruges. The Gothic cloth hall from the 13/14th century, the oldest and most beautiful of Belgium was the emblem of the town. This beautiful town had come through numerous battles and sieges since the English siege of 1383. But this was nothing in comparison to what the place had to endure in the next years.
After the fall of Antwerp the British Expedition Army retreated under the command of Field Marshal Sir John French to Ypres. The units arrived there between October 8 and 19 to strengthen the Belgian and French units. These troops formed a semicircle around Ypres. The Brits lined up the 35 miles long central sector while the French occupied the flanks south of the town under the order of General Ferdinand Foch. At first the Allies put their hopes into a coordinate attack which should liberate the already occupied Lille and take Brussels. But von Falkenhayn foiled these plans.
He put into place the 4. Army which had been drawn up from war volunteers, members of the education elite and a new generation of graduates as well as older reserve officers. They only were trained poorly over a period of eight weeks. The number the German troops was superior, because of the unexpectedly high consumption of ammunition the attack strengths, however, did not get the necessary artillery support after. Falkenhayn opened the 1.of three battles around Ypres, October 20.
The myth of Langemarck
The battle plan provided that the XXVI. Reserve Corps (General Freiherr von Hügel) together with the 51. Reserve Division (Lieutenant General von Dankenschweil) and the 52. Reserve Division (Lieutenant General Waldorf) should encircle the city of Ypres from the north via Paschendaele, Poelkapelle and Langemark. Both divisions formed points of main effort on the left and on the right to achieve a fast breakthrough. This first Battle of Ypres raged from October 20 through to the middle of November. The "legend Langemarck" was born according to the German reports on November 10. Students and other young volunteers were supposed to have attacked and fallen at the French lines with the German national anthem on their lips
Langemark found the way to the German consciousness by a news report of the Supreme Command, November 11, 1914: "West of Langemarck young regiments advanced while singing "Deutschland, Deutschland über alles" against enemy lines and took them. About 2000 French line infantry were taken prisoners and six machine-guns were captured". This passionate news which made a victory from a military catastrophe is in future mentioned and repeated in a thousand ways to make the "Myth Langemarck" grow.
Ulrike Brunotte, culture scientist at the Humboldt university in Berlin, wrote in the Frankfurter Rundschau on November 11, 2004: „Among other things the myth was helped by simple cosmetic means like the manipulated naming: Langemarck instead of Ypres. Langemarck sounds more vigorous anyway, reminded of Könismark or also Bismarck. Another remedy for the myth building is the permanent conjuration of the "young regiments" which were connected with "students" and "grammar school pupils" in the legend formation although approximately a third of the employed troops only consisted of academic youth. The prefix "young" had already got to a magical formula around 1900. By 1914 the "myth of the youth" should admittedly be militarized to finally change to a fight concept after 1918. Whereby the power of the "Youth of Langemarck" should primarily start out from its song. Later the "eternity" of one "unbeatable Germany" was connected with it later.
However, this representation of the things is pure fiction. In spring 1998, the British historian Robert Cowley wrote in the "The Quarterly Journal of Military History" that the date of the attack already was wrong. An event which comes closer to the truth took place already on November 9. Not at Langemark but at Bikschote. And no enemy trenches were taken either. The war diary of the 206. Reserve Infantry Regiment, published in 1931, reported of it. The author, Werner Maywald wrote: “The soldiers leave the trench almost silently with unloaded guns, the bayonet put on, at six o'clock in the morning of November 9. French troops discover the attackers and open fire. The song starts at this moment. First only one, then a small group and in the end the entire formation: Deutschland, Deutschland über alles! Even the injured soldiers joined in! The attack is aimed at the French positions and kills 14 officers as well as 1.154 men, mostly older soldiers of the Territorial Regiments “.
Myth makers at work
The fact that not Langemark was the place of action but Bikschote did not concern the legend knitters. Langemark is spelled with a simple K in Belgian. However, the German propaganda specialists of the Supreme Command spelled the place with a CK. This looked and sounded more heroically. Bikschote, however, did not have the heroic expression and therefore was ignored, but not only this is strange. There was not only one "Langemarck", there were several. Such "attacks with song" were reported by different places of the Ypers front between October 21 and November 16. From the river Yser via the Langemark sector to Neuve Chapelle.
On October 21, a British eyewitness near Zonnebeke, eight kilometres far from Langemark, reported such an incident: "Young German volunteers with student caps attacked down the hill of Paschendaele, singing and waving their guns. As soon as they were mowed down they were replaced by others. Even when their own artillery fired in their rows they carried on their attack. They were unbelievably, madly brave".
Of course such reports reached London very fast. Sir Henry Wilson, the deputy British Chief of Staff, wrote into his diary about such an action at Langemark on October 24: ”The I Corps has butchered the Germans... these German attacked in a narrow formation five times and sang "Die Wacht am Rhein" and the area turned into a slaughterhouse".
After the war the legend was supported by the middle class society whose enthusiasm for war was filled with fighting spirit for the "superior culture" of Germany. That gave the lost war a meaning afterwards. But still it should become a vision for the future in the course of the time. The first “Langemarck celebration” was carried out in 1919 by a reservist unit of a corps involved in the First Battle of Ypres.
"Langemarck" became fast a "meaning and prototype of youthful elevation" within the youth movement and the students. In this sense the conservative (bündische) union author Rudolf G. Binding, also a Ypres fighter, held a speech of serious consequences in front of 200 members of the "Bündische Jugend" (union youth) at the uncovering of the honour monument to the fallen from Langemark on the Heidelstein/Rhön on November 11, 1924: "This event does not belong to history any more where it nevertheless would be stiffened and buried soon, but to the continually proving, continually lively power of the myth".
During the Weimar republic "Langemarck" was celebrated by nationalistic and right-wing conservative students and army circles every year with great staging effort. The commemorations of 1919, 1924, 1929 and 1932 were of special importance. It was primarily the anti republican commemorative culture around "Langemarck" which was used by the NSDAP (Nazi Party) to win parts of the academic youth over for themselves.
Ulrike Brunotte wrote in the Frankfurt Rundschau about the propaganda weapon "Langemarck": "the National Socialists developed an extensive Langemarck cult. Whether the NS propaganda even managed to establish the "legend of Langemarck" in the heads of the complete population in the end is controversial under historians to this day. However, undoubted is: The rather romantic myth of the "youth of Langemarck" filled with a heroic self-sacrifice belongs likewise in the history of mentality of the first World War and its political consequences like the far more realistically acting Verdun legend which designed the "new human being" as a fighting machine under the steel helmet.
Hitler keeps a low profile
This cult stirred up by the Nazis manifested itself also in an architectural way. In 1936 the Olympic Stadium was opened in Berlin. Part of the complex is the Langemarck Hall under the Maifeldtribüne (Mayfield tribune). The intention of its builders is unmistakable. It brings insistently the double youth cult of the National Socialists together: the body cult of sporting toughening up and the sacrificial cult of military courage.
Unlike the propaganda activities of the Nazi party, Adolf Hitler behaved rather restrainedly. He was stationed on November 10, 1914 as a soldier of the Bavarian Reserve Infantry Regiment no. 16 in Ypres. That`s why he described himself as a "Langemarck Fighter" from time to time. Hitler nevertheless only gave the legend little attention. Welcoming speeches which he wrote for Langemarck-commemorative documents were always kept scarce and distant conspicuously. The romantically transfigured soldier's death near Ypres conflicted with his ideal of the dehumanized fighter who proceeds as tool of an ideology. He nevertheless went to the military cemetery of Langemark in June 1940.
The Waffen SS (weapon SS), however, used the legend for their purposes until the end. The first Langemarck unit was the 6. SS Freiwilligen Sturmbrigade (Volunteers Storm Brigade), the last one the SS Panzerregiment 10 "Langemarck" (tank regiment 10 "Langemarck" of the SS Panzer Division (Armoured Division) "Frundsberg").
The real reason for the "Myth Langemarck", the First Battle of Ypres, which was aimed at capturing the Channel ports and the breakthrough in the depth of the room, ended in a stalemate. At the end of October Belgian troops opened the sea sluices at Nieuport and put the battlefield under water. The German units therefore had to retreat behind the river Yser again. With the flooding all efforts of the Germans to force a breakthrough north of Ypres were prevented by Belgian troops. The German offensive had already failed at this time although the High Command did not like to admit this. One of the reasons for the defeat was the dreadful defensive fire of the English. English marksmen fired up to 15 shots per minute with their Lee Enfield rifles.
Von Falkenhayn re-started the offensive at the road to Menin, October 31. This thrust was stopped by remains of regiments crushed completely amassed most quickly only at Gheluveld. 24,000 British and 50,000 Germans fell until November 22, the day which historians describe as the end of the First Battle of Ypres. The Germans occupied the ridges around Ypres and dug themselves in like their opponents.
