Уильямс Джон. Ефрейтор Гитлер и Великая война 1914-1918

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WEST FLANDERS 1914

will of the Allied commanders Joffre and Galliéni, and the resoluteness of

Franco-British troops.

During that leapfrogging movement and counter-movement towards the English

Channel that followed the battles of the Marne/Aisne, the Germans drew first

blood when they entered Ypres on 3 October. On 10 October, the day their first

cavalry unit entered Lille, the German Fourth Army was ordered ‘to cut off the

fortresses of Dunkirk and Calais’. Between 10 and 13 October, 5,000 German

shells were also poured into Lille, which surrendered on 13 October. The Allies

were having the occasional success as well, as with the British capture of Bailleul

on 14 October. But these successes were few and far apart. On 15 October, the

Germans reached the North Sea at Ostend. The

Times

sought to minimize the

seriousness of this loss with flippancy, suggesting that the Digue at Ostend

offered the Germans little more than ‘an excellent place for practicing the

goose-step’. Since the Allied line now extended ‘from Ypres to the sea’, it was

announcing victory of a kind in the ‘Race to the Sea’.

On 18 October, the Germans suffered a major reverse when the British

recaptured Ypres. Given its strategic importance, it was no surprise for the British

to learn from reports by aviators and Belgian refugees that massive numbers of

German troops were moving in to the town. On 21 October, Sir John French told

Lord Kitchener that ‘the enemy are vigorously playing their last card’ and added

simply, ‘they will fail’. For Falkenhayn, the coming battle represented his first

serious test. The loss of Ypres had been a blow to his plans, and he could only

hope that his willing but inexperienced reinforcements would suffice for one last,

brutal attempt to retake Ypres and clear the way to the Channel ports. His desper-

ation to succeed at was compounded by the knowledge that the chancellor Bethmann

Hollweg and Falkenhayn’s own sacked predecessor, Moltke, were seeking to

undermine him. The embittered Moltke even warned the Kaiser that Falkenhayn

did not ‘possess the inner forces of spirit and soul to draft and carry through

operations of great scope’.

On 28 October Falkenhayn’s reinforcements were in position. He scheduled

the last serious German breakthrough offensive on the Western Front (until March

1918) for 5:30 on the morning of 29 October. In 1923 the Bavarian official

history described his force as consisting of ‘war proven older units at whose

side stood young, scarcely trained troops, but filled with the spirit of love for

the Fatherland’. For tactical reasons the 6th BRD was immediately broken up. The

List’s sister regiments would fight independently near Wytschaete while the

List Regiment joined Saxons, Württemburgers and a militia (

Landsturm

) detach-

ment to form the 54th Reserve Division. In succeeding days this ad hoc force

would be pitched into battle at Becalaere and Gheluvelt, suffering losses that

caused Adolf Meyer to write: ‘Only a few regiments have had to give such a

heavy toll in blood in their first fight.’ After three days the ‘proud List Regiment

had melted down to the strength of a battalion’. More than half of its officers

were killed, including the ‘brave regiment leader, Colonel List, felled by a direct

hit in the furthest forward line’.

WEST FLANDERS 1914

By October 1914 both the Kaiser and his supreme command knew that the grand

strategy of August had failed. The Russians had set their elephantine war

machine in motion more quickly than the Germans had foreseen. Although the

Russian thrust into East Prussia ended in catastrophe near Tannenberg (where

a resurrected General Paul von Hindenburg achieved fame), this incursion

presented enough of a threat for two corps to be detached, at a crucial point, from

the German armies surging through Belgium. Thus weakened in the west, the

Germans failed not only to knock France out, but to deliver the decisive blow on

the Eastern Front that would put an end to war on two fronts: although the

Germans were winning battles, they were not winning the war. Their strategy, as

it existed, was now made up on the run.

Yet all was not without hope. The British force in Flanders was both tiny and

vulnerable; a decisive blow against it must diminish British will. Then, if the

Channel ports could be taken and an invasion of the British Isles threatened,

would not the British either sue for peace or decide that every Briton was needed

for defence of the realm? Thus, the focus of the war turned away from Paris

towards Calais. With German troops occupying Antwerp, Lille, and cleaning up

most of unoccupied Belgium (excepting the salient around Ypres), the threat to

Dunkirk and Calais – a day’s easy ride for Uhlans from German-occupied

territory – was real enough for the

Times

to warn: ‘Now that the war is reaching

the climax of its violence we must anticipate that all the living forces of Germany

will be thrown into the conflict’; for the Germans, with ‘a million and a half men

under arms in France’, it was ‘now or never’. Nonetheless, they would be making

their ‘huge effort with troops which to a large extent are either battle-weary, or do

not belong to the first line’; it was now known that German reinforcements

must ‘consist of new units of men recently trained, “some very young and others

fairly old”’.

The List Regiment did ‘not belong to the first line’. Yet, its men saw them-

selves as anything but cannon fodder. Some may have been concerned about

their state of training, but the idea that a motley force of Scottish, Irish and Welsh

mercenaries augmented by ‘coloured’ Englishmen from the outposts of empire

could be a match for them was intolerable, and had been constantly hammered

into their consciousness. Newspapers that had viciously attacked France and its

people throughout 1913 and 1914 now called ‘Franzmann’ a worthy and honourable

foe, as devoted to his

patrie

as a German was to his

Vaterland

. Yet even this

worthier foe seemed destined to crumble before the German onslaught: the

Norddeutsche Zeitung

already described ‘French Withdrawal Plans’ prefiguring

an inevitable German victory. It was only a matter of days or weeks that the

French and English would no longer be able ‘to hold the Aisne sector [and] the

force exerted by the extended German right wing will become ever stronger’.

[Since] the fall of Antwerp, finding safe and secure roads of retreat has

become much more important to the French commander than any further

pursuance of the often dashed hope of breaking through the German

WEST FLANDERS 1914

lines. In addition, it is now clear that the English will not send one more

man to help, as the approaching threat to their own land represents

sufficient justification for abandoning its Entente partners to their fate.

This was no fantasy-based prediction by a scandalmongering

Käseblatt

, but

the opinion of a paper regarded as the mouthpiece of the regime. As if the task

confronting the half-fit, under-trained and untried troops of the List Regiment

was not daunting enough, it was made even more so because they were encour-

aged to underestimate it, lulled into over-confidence by the efforts of German

propagandists to disparage the English soldier as a mercenary who would quickly

capitulate. The coming first battle of Ypres would be a certain German victory.

Even before the battle concluded, the realization that this kind of propaganda

might be counterproductive – at least where experienced soldiers were concerned –

was bringing changes in the war reportage of German newspapers along with

a more realistic kind of war correspondence. Thus, one officer-correspondent still

in action near Ypres wrote:

Eager for the fight and certain of easy victory, the young men of the

regiment marched off ‘to catch the English’, as our soldiers said. Every-

body was firmly convinced that God had given the English long legs so

that they could run all the faster...We thought of portrayals in our

newspapers and humorous magazines of Tommy Atkins . . . [All] we

faced was an army of mercenaries [fighting not] for love of Fatherland

or sacrificial courage, but for a few pence a day.

The Germans would be forced to change their opinion. The British quickly ‘gave

us the answer as to whether they could shoot...already after the first encounter

our battalion had half melted-away’. These English soldiers were anything but

uncommitted soldiers-of-fortune, for the ‘English infantry that opposed us in the

vicinity of Ypres must be marked down as among the best of troops.’ They

defended their ‘occupied land against our attacks’ with immense energy, and

when ‘forced back, inevitably, above all at night, attempted to win the lost land

back’. These were worthy enemies indeed, for the ‘natural hunter-instinct’ of the

‘sports-practising Englishman’ meant that ‘“Tommy” was faster to shoot [and]

quicker to make use of the available ground on patrols etc.’. Fed on high-quality

‘conserves, corned beef and bacon’, he lived in well-built trenches, ‘superbly

buttressed with steel reinforcements’ which were ‘almost invisible to the naked

eye’. The Germans had to be on guard now ‘not to underestimate English

mercenaries. Our advance in West Flanders can only succeed slowly, step by

step.’

By the time this was written, Hitler and his comrades had already come to

a similar conclusion. Hitler later described how they had been encouraged to

form a negative ‘conception of the Englishman’s character’ by the ‘the press and

comic magazines’, until gradually ‘everyone was infected by this nonsense, and

WEST FLANDERS 1914

the consequence was an underestimation for which we would have to pay most

bitterly’. He recalled the ‘looks of astonishment’ on the faces of comrades when

they ‘faced the Tommies in person in Flanders. After the very first days of battle

the conviction dawned on each and every one of them that these Scotsmen did

not exactly jibe with the pictures they had seen fit to give us.’ The results ‘were

devastating; for now the German soldier...felt himself swindled by his

propaganda’. Hitler had learnt one of his great lessons from the war. He had

already begun reflecting on the ‘importance of the form of propaganda’.

If Ypres was the key to the Channel ports, then Gheluvelt was the key to Ypres.

In his Order of the Day for 30 October, the corps commander described this

village’s capture as the chance to ‘settle for ever the centuries-long struggle, end

the war, and strike the decisive blow against our most-detested enemy. We will finish

the British, Indians, Canadians, Moroccans, and other trash, feeble adversaries,

who surrender in great numbers if they are attacked with vigour.’ By the time the List

Regiment received this contemptuous evaluation of its ‘most-detested enemy’, it

had already lost a third of its numbers in battle. Survivors were beginning to realize

that the BEF, far from being ‘feeble’, was an adversary of the highest order.

In full kit, the List Regiment covered the 25 miles from Lille to the German

positions near Becalaere on foot. After they crossed the old Belgian frontier,

Hitler spent the night of 27 October in a dugout with a decomposing horse. Shells

whistled overhead followed by dull thuds in the distance. ‘We had never heard

anything like it before’, he wrote Hepp. ‘And while we lay pressed one against

the other [the] distant noise drew closer and closer, and the individual thuds came

faster and faster until finally they merged into one continuous roar.’ Another

day’s marching was followed by a night in a ‘wretched farmhouse’. On the morning

of 29 October the troops moved into the forward trenches. ‘At last came the order

to advance. We fanned out and raced across a field towards a small farm. To

either side of us, shells kept bursting and English bullets kept whistling by. But

we paid no heed.’

On we went again. I leapt and ran as best I could across meadows and

turnip fields, jumped across ditches, negotiated wire-entanglements and

hedges. And then I heard a shout right in front: ‘All of you, in here!’

A long trench stretched out before; a moment later I had jumped in and

countless men all round me were doing likewise. By my side were

Wurtemburgers, beneath me dead and wounded Englishmen. The

Wurtemburgers had taken the trench by storm.

German artillery, which had hardly fired a shell so far, suddenly burst into life.

‘Again and again, one of our shells landed in the English trench. They poured out

like ants from an ant heap.’ After many ‘bloody hand-to-hand skirmishes we

cleared the lot of them out of their trenches. Many came out with their hands up.

Those who did not were mowed down.’

WEST FLANDERS 1914

Hitler’s description of that first morning accords with other sources. Mend,

who had become Colonel List’s personal messenger, described the dawn of the

battle as a ‘last awakening [for] many of my comrades’. All around, the skies

‘were flaming red from the burning villages’. When the command to march was

given, Mend ‘rode at the head of the regiment in order to find Colonel List’, and

once more noticed Adolf Hitler, ‘marching a little to the Front, bent and with

a smile on his lips’. He wondered how ‘this slightly built man would manage if

he had to carry a full field pack’, but would subsequently learn ‘there were few in

the regiment as healthy or so full of stamina as Hitler. With unbelievable

toughness he endured the greatest strains and never showed any weakness.’ Not

only was he tough but he would prove himself brave.

[The] battle-ordinance, to which Hitler also belonged, was far more

exposed to enemy fire than the companies themselves, for while the

latter could always find cover in the terrain, the ordinance staff were

constantly on the move with messages and I am amazed even today,

how Adolf Hitler came through [the war] so fortunately.

Although Mend added little to descriptions of that first morning’s experience, his

explanation for many of the losses accords with that of Hitler and Rubenhauer.

We reached Becalaere, were immediately in action and already this first

day endured enormous losses. Since the troops of the List Regiment had

received as headgear with their equipment militia caps [

Landsturmmützen

the Württemburgers, in the belief that they were English, had fired

violently on them, through this error many had to lose their lives.

The Germans had helped bring misfortune upon themselves. Propaganda had

lulled them into a sense of complacency, even contempt, about the enemy facing

them. Told by newspapers and officers to expect a pushover, the attacking troops

greeted the first appearance of the foe on 29 October with hilarity. The regimental

history describes all order being ‘lost in the forward rush. Everybody wanted to

lead, to be on hand to harvest seemingly easy-to-win laurels.’ And then the

Bavarians sighted the ‘tall bare-legged highlanders, their blue-green-red striped

knee-length skirts flattened wide in the wind, and as the kilted soldiers sprang out

from the furrowed field, a fresh round of merriment broke loose. “There, that

shows it Captain, they’ve got women with ’em!” one cried – “Calm down,

they’re Scotsmen! . . .” Everybody laughed.’

The

élan

of this initial Bavarian rush brought some success. Due to inexperi-

ence, however, ‘not once’ were the ‘English positions in the forward drive

thoroughly searched’. Unscathed and unobserved, the Tommies were free to

fire on the Bavarians from behind. With British riflemen firing at them from

fore and aft, Württemburgers confusing them with the enemy and British artil-

lery fire plunging pell-mell into their mass, their ‘fighting strength was melting

WEST FLANDERS 1914

away with frightful speed’. Towards midday, ‘the last reserve units had to be

committed’.

The wounded lay everywhere behind the thickets. . . Confronted by the

formidable firepower of the opponents [a] successful breakthrough

could no longer be reckoned upon...It was not possible for orders to get

through, many of the junior commanders had already fallen, the first-aid

equipment was completely mixed-up and the use of dispatch runners

unthinkable.

By now Hitler and Schmidt must have been among those (temporarily unemployable)

dispatch runners. Hitler had already delivered his first messages. According to

Mend, Hitler, having ‘lined up fearlessly for the most difficult messages’, was

already beginning to earn the reputation of being ‘one of the best and most

reliable battle-ordinance men’. ‘That’s for sure’, Mend quotes an ordinance

staffer as saying, ‘but I still can’t understand how he can put his life at such risk,

when he owns not a single German stone; he is certainly a strange one and lives

in his own world; otherwise he’s a capable fellow’. At that moment Hitler

marched past, his ‘headgear crooked on his head, his face quite yellow, but in his

eyes as always a lively expression’.

At 4 p.m. the attack recommenced, and ‘a few hundred metres of land was won

in short leaps’. Through ‘brilliant observation and communication work’ the British

now brought to bear ‘such violent and sharply well-directed shrapnel fire’, that

the shot, pelting ‘down in a thick hail over the forward assault detachments

caused them to fall like ripe sheaves under the scythe of the harvester’. The

divisional commander finally recognized that ‘because of strong enemy opposition

and the approaching darkness, no more attacking aims could be achieved that day

without exceptionally great sacrifice’. Under the cover of approaching darkness

the ‘remnants of the companies [were] drawn out of the battle and assembled

near the regimental command post so that they might be reused in the course of

the night’. This sector of the Front had been ‘advanced almost 1 kilometre,

400 prisoners and 5 machine guns were brought in’.

The night that fell over the battlefield covered 349 dead comrades. The

regimental commander Colonel List advised the battalions on the tactical

success of the day: ‘Enemy thrown out of all his positions, several

hundred prisoners. Infantry holds the positions won and is digging in

there. Reinforcements from the 6. Res. Inf.-Division are expected

soon.’

Another ‘tactical success’ of this kind and the regiment would disappear. With

a loss of 349 dead plus more than double that number wounded on the first day,

the List Regiment faced its second day of battle with less than two-thirds combat

strength. Doubtless the experience was, as Meyer claimed, ‘unforgettable’ for

WEST FLANDERS 1914

those who ‘survived the first assault across the wide turnip field before Becalaere’.

Still the events of 29 October were ‘only the start of a great battle for us [since]

Gheluvelt still had to be taken’.

From a casualty standpoint, 30 October was not as bad as the 29th, but it still

‘brought severe losses in [our] position south-east of the village’. The regiment

was being decimated, if not quite to the extent claimed by Hitler in a letter to

Munich: ‘On the very first day, we lost nearly all our officers and our company

was only left with vice-sergeant-majors. On the fourth day our regiment had been

reduced from 3,600 to 611 men.’ List was no longer alive by the fourth day. As

early as the second he had been ‘greatly upset at this loss of officers’. In the

official account he is described as ‘pale and crestfallen’, pleading ‘How shall

I alone take responsibility as commander for the lives of all the young men, of

whom so many of their own comrades have been shot, if it goes on I shall soon be

quite alone.’ Compounding his problems was the inadequacy of artillery support.

He called a staff meeting to discuss the situation: ‘Gentlemen, we have before us

a difficult task!’ he began. ‘Just before the break of day the assault on Gheluvelt

must be made. Tomorrow the area must be in our hands! What do you think of

that?’

‘If it must be done will it be done’, replied [a] battalion commander.

‘But I must be permitted to advise that our strength is exceptionally

weak, scarcely a third of the battalion’s. We have no more support

behind the Front. The men are exhausted. I am convinced, that in a pure

infantry attack on the strong English position scarcely one man will

come out alive.’

List concurred. He had ‘emphatically stated the same view’ at divisional HQ,

‘but was unable to convince them’. While agreeing to try ‘once more to achieve

a postponement until the artillery has made more effective preparation’, he

doubted ‘this will be successful’. At divisional HQ, he argued ‘that a pure infantry

attack against such a cunning, intelligent and strongly fortified opponent must

lead, if not to failure, then to an extreme blood sacrifice’. His request that heavy

artillery be used ‘during the night to prepare the positions thoroughly before we

send the infantry out’ was ignored. Again, List met the remaining officers. ‘You

have heard, gentlemen, what our task is tomorrow! The business must be done –

orders are orders! God grant that it succeeds!’ It was now that he learnt that the

artillery was to play an even lesser role. In the belief that the enemy would ‘not

be driven out of his position by artillery’, the infantry alone must ‘lead the attack

until single artillery columns can be drawn forward into the defensive lines’.

Artillery could play little part in an attack that was meant to ‘bring about the

principal decision of the campaign’.

Gheluvelt would share the honour, with the Fromelles battles of May 1915 and

July 1916, of being one of the regiment’s most celebrated engagements.

Although portrayed as a glorious victory it was at best a temporary success. The

WEST FLANDERS 1914

official regimental history describes, in a breathless, present-tense rush, how,

towards eight o’clock on the morning of 31 October, troops ‘from three regiments

move out resolutely, their souls filled with the firm and absolute desire that today

they will win the decisive success’. A ‘furious’ artillery barrage immediately

confronted them.

The losses grow under the violent fire that the enemy hurls towards the

attackers from cannons and machine-guns. They lean and fall down on

their knees among the hedges, mown down by burst of fire – but the

yawning gaps are always filled again by fresh fighters. Our artillery’s

lack of ammunition is clearly noticeable; it can offer the attack no

effective support.

Morning passes in tough, bloody stand-up fights. A horrifying battle-

music, a true concert from Hell fills the battlefield. The howls, hisses,

crashes of the heavy shells of English naval cannons constantly bursting

between the lines, the rolls of machine-gun salvos and the clatter of

infantry weapons – the fire rises from violent storm to raging assault, to

eerie hurricane. Whole rows drop while pushing forward – crash

back again, break in on themselves – is it not mad to advance in this

fire? – and new waves push in – repeated hour after hour. The excitement is

unproductive; all reserves are already used up. At last at 3 o’clock in

the afternoon the enemy’s key-point, the windmill on the south-slope of

the area from where so much [havoc] has been created, is brought under

heavy fire by our artillery, caught cleanly and shattered with a few

direct hits.

The destruction of the windmill represented ‘the turning-point’. Now ‘the way is

free! Blow after blow of heavy calibre falls. With this the signal for a general

assault is given. On to the trenches! Out with the enemy! In thick waves the

Württemburgers and Saxons break through the hedges with our IIIrd Battalion,

storming the windmill in an assault right up to the edge of the battlefield.’

For a moment enemy fire falls silent – it is like a deep, eerie breathing

space – then it breaks with strengthened force – a single fire-spitting

maw – but on must go on – forwards! Then at the critical moment, the

assault signal of the buglers is heard over the whole fighting front!

Knapsacks are discarded – everyone pulls himself up – Bavarians, Saxons,

Swabians all closed together – there are no more stops – only forwards! –

A thousand-voiced Hurrah roars across the battlefield, a single violent

victory cry – and like a wild surf the storm waves throw themselves at the

village! – Gheluvelt is ours!

But not for long. In the words of Sir James Edmonds, the ‘Germans actually

broke through at Gheluvelt, but at this very critical moment of the war, when all

WEST FLANDERS 1914

seemed lost, were driven out by local counter-attacks’. The British counter-

offensive took the raw Bavarian troops and their few remaining officers completely

by surprise. When a British regular company (of Worcesters) entered the village,

now in German hands, they found Bavarians ‘enjoying the repose of victory,

searching for water and looting, and in no expectation of such an onslaught. They

offered no organized resistance, and were soon fleeing back in confusion through

the village.’ Given this display of complacency and ill discipline, it is scarcely

surprising that the List Regiment’s official history should gloss over the British

recapture of Gheluvelt. By this time, however, the regiment was virtually

leaderless; List himself having become a fatal casualty.

Throughout the German attack, List had been ‘in the middle of thick fire in the

advanced assault line’. When his officers remonstrated with him not to put

himself in danger, he replied, ‘Don’t worry about me! As long as I have such

officers, I won’t be missed!’ List lost his life, not leading his troops in a charge,

but while setting up headquarters in Gheluvelt chateau. On his way to see the

colonel, Mend saw ‘three heavy English shells [smash] into the building. I could

see nothing any more, and could no longer breathe for dust.’ From the chateau

Mend heard cries for help. A shot had ploughed into a group of Saxons and

a ‘few telegraph operators sprang immediately to the aid of the wounded. At once

one cried out: “The Bavarian colonel is also dead!” In my horror I left my horse

unattended and sprang to the side of Colonel List, now covered by a tent flap.

I lifted this away and saw that blood welled from his mouth. [Our] brave

commander, who was a true leader of his troops, was no more.’

Mein Kampf

Hitler romanticized his first experience of battle, describing the

‘iron greeting that came whizzing at us from over our heads’ and glossing over the

death, mayhem and destruction. He ‘remembered’, however, the ‘hurrah’ ‘from two

hundred throats’, which rose to meet this ‘first dispatch runner of death’.

Then a crackling and a roaring, a singing and a howling began, and with

feverish eyes each one of us was drawn forward, faster and faster, until

suddenly past turnip fields and hedges the fight began, the fight of man

against man. And from the distance the strains of a song reached our

ears, coming closer and closer, and just as Death plunged a busy hand

into our ranks, the song reached us too and we passed it along:

‘

Deutschland, Deutschland über Alles, über Alles in der Welt

!’

The official regimental history dismisses Hitler’s battlefield recollection as ‘an

historical error’. In fact they had sung ‘The Watch on the Rhine’, not storming

into battle but during the ‘most difficult fighting, as regulations prescribed, as

a means of giving recognition to fellow Germans’! With Gheluvelt Hitler’s brief

career as a front-line infantryman was already over. Schmidt told how, during the

first day’s fighting, they were sheltering behind a hedge when approached by

an officer who told them to take a verbal report to the regimental staff. In

WEST FLANDERS 1914

successfully completing this assignment, they showed that the regiment had

found two dispatch runners; men reliable and intelligent enough to bring a message

from the Front and transmit it verbally and mistake-free.

Nine years after the battle, the Bavarian official history summed up the List Regiment’s

participation in the Gheluvelt battle as being in ‘unfavourable circumstances and

with heavy losses’. The official German communiqué of 30 October merely reported,

‘Our attacks to the south of Nieuport and to the East of Ypres were completed

successfully. Eight machine-guns were captured along with eight-hundred English-

men.’ On 31 October, comment was even briefer. ‘The attack on Ypres continues.’

Hitler later wrote that after the List Regiment’s fourth day of fighting, ‘Even

our step had changed. Seventeen-year-old boys now looked like men.’ After four

days, the List Regiment had lost more than two-thirds of its combat troops, killed,

wounded and taken prisoner, and almost all its senior officers, who, for the most

part, had been killed. In just four days, Hitler had been transferred from an infantry

company to become a regimental dispatch runner, promoted to corporal and

nominated for an Iron Cross. He was one of the fortunate ones, and already on his

way to earning the nickname ‘Lucky Linzer’. So heavy had the fighting been that

the regiment’s Third Battalion ‘had to be disbanded on 3 November. Survivors

were shared among the remaining two, drastically thinned-out battalions. Only at

Christmas 1914 was it possible, with the arrival of new 9th and 10th companies,

to reconstitute the battalion.’ With remarkable frankness in a regimental history

of its kind, Rubenhauer dared question the point of those losses.

Our troops had fought brilliantly; the losses however, were enormous, in

particular among the Württemburg Regiment 247, which had lost most

of its officers and all its assault leaders.

Can the violent nature of this attack, before the extremely strong

position of the opponents was reduced, shaken, made ready for attack by

a lengthier artillery preparation, be excused? Did the tactical victory

justify the huge sacrifices? . . .

A tactical Phyrric victory he could have added. Yet in its defence, the regiment

that had first helped capture Gheluvelt before fleeing the village was barely of

battalion strength. Still, this group of almost leaderless survivors could not be

spared, and was sent into action briefly at Messines (where Hitler was first

nominated, unsuccessfully, for an Iron Cross) and then at Bethlehem Farm, near

Wytschaete. The losses incurred here were such that the List Regiment could no

longer be treated as a fully functional unit. Even so, it was still not relieved,

being sent instead to a supposedly quiet sector of the line for a week. Meanwhile,

a ‘permanent’ replacement had been found for Colonel List, one Lieutenant

Colonel Engelhardt also of the reserve. Otherwise, the few remaining subalterns

were promoted a rank or two and senior NCOs left to carry on as temporary officers.

Some Infanterists were, like Hitler, promoted after a battle experience best