Why the Battle of the Marne (according to me) was the most important event of the 20th Century
Slight disclosure, I love history. Outside of football and Formula One (and increasingly cricket), it is my number one passion. I can sit down and talk about certain historical eras and events for days if given a chance and not get bored. Although my Substack has started as a political sort of blog, I feel I could also provide through history which is what I am hoping to start with today.
As I am sure we all know, in 1914 what became known as the First World War broke out. As a conflict there are many things labelled and attributed to it whether it be trench warfare, shell shock, poison gas, “lions led by donkeys” etc. One though that stands out is “it’ll be over by Christmas”, usually a sign of the arrogant and overconfident frame of mind that political and military leaders all over Europe went into the conflict with. However, there was a plausible chance that it might have been over by Christmas 1914, but with a German victory. As I suspect some of you may know, the German plan was to invade France through Belgium, defeat France within a matter of weeks in a quick offensive and swiftly turn its troops east to then defeat the Russians. This ambitious scheme became known to history as the Schlieffen Plan, and it almost worked. However, almost is not enough and it failed, leaving Germany condemned to fight a four year long war against the Entente which it could not hope to win from then on. However (and with no thanks to its allies), Germany did beat Russia in the war and so was victorious on the Eastern Front and this helps demonstrate as to how crucial the Battle of the Marne was.
During that brutal and bloody summer of 1914 after the great powers of Europe declared war on each other, things were looking very precarious on the Western Front. The German Army had invaded Belgium, sweeping the Belgian Army and occupying its cities while pushing the relatively modest British Expeditionary Force (BEF) back at Mons and Le Cateau, albeit after receiving a bloody nose. The attempted French invasion of Germany known as Plan XVII had been an unmitigated disaster with assaults on entrenched and elevated German positions causing nearly 330,000 French casualties in around a month’s worth of fighting. It genuinely looked like defeat was staring the Entente in the face. However, the French rallied on the Marne and received timely reinforcements, while the Germans had outmarched their supply lines and didn’t communicate with each other. Had the Germans arrived at the battle fresh, with clear purpose and direction and if their French foes did not receive reinforcements, what may have happened then?
If Paris had fallen, it is highly plausible that the French would have had to abandon the struggle. The BEF would have had to evacuate the continent and leave the fighting to the Royal Navy. With an incompetently (mostly, but not entirely in fairness) led Tsarist Russia suffering a significant defeat at German hands at Tannenberg (and numerous times later on), there is little reason to doubt Germany’s inevitable triumph and the First World War being a much shorter conflict. If you take but a moment to think about it, this changes history completely. Nazism would not emerge in Germany, the Bolsheviks probably wouldn’t take control of Russia, America would likely confine itself to its own hemisphere, the Habsburgs would still rule Austria-Hungary and the Ottoman Empire would have survived for at least a while longer to name a few. The implications of a world with no fascism, possibly no WWII (at least one we would recognise), no Cold War and maybe even no decolonisation of Africa and Asia is a scenario far too large to envision in this article, but it is something I do find fascinating as a topic. In fact, if you do find this alternative scenario interesting and play the grand strategy game, Hearts of Iron IV, I fully recommend installing the Kaiserreich Mod which envisions the period 1936-1948 during an alternative world where Germany wins the First World War in 1919.
I must stress that this is my own opinion and other scholars will likely state I am exaggerating the impact of the Marne and that a German victory may have been utterly impossible in any case. I do believe however that far stranger and unlikelier things have happened in history and I do see the Marne as a backs to the wall type battle. One thing I think we can all agree is that a German victory in the First World War would have resulted in a very different world from the one we have today, and I believe that had things gone just a little bit differently on the banks of the Marne, we’d be living it.
I hope you found that interesting and I look forward to writing more historical articles soon, especially around the First World War as well as the preceding and following years of the conflict. In my view it is an extremely interesting and oft overlooked part of our history, particularly that of Britain’s history as well
.