The Entente Offensive, Autumn, 1916
as much in strategical and tactical as in political and economic questions. It is just as difficult to carry conviction. The symptoms are recognized, but the underlying causes are the subject of controversy. In such circumstances a cure is a difficult matter. The Army is a very conservative body. It was so in peace time, and war made no difference.
My mental picture of the fighting at Verdun and on the Somme had to be painted a shade darker in view of what I had just heard. The only relief in it was the heroism of our German men, who had suffered to the extreme limit of human endurance for the sake of the Fatherland. I cannot repeat all the moving stories of the battle which I heard. The finest description of the battle has been written by a young officer of the doughty Hamburg Regiment—it is an epic in prose.
I began to realize what a task the Field-Marshal and I had undertaken in our new spheres, and what a burden we should lay on the leaders and troops in the West, if we drew on them still further for our offensive in the south-east.
On the Somme the enemy's powerful artillery, assisted by excellent aeroplane observation and fed with enormous supplies of ammunition, had kept down our own fire and destroyed our artillery. The defence of our Infantry had become so flabby that the massed attacks of the enemy always succeeded. Not only did our moral suffer, but in addition to fearful wastage in killed and wounded, we lost a large number of prisoners and much material.
The most pressing demands of our officers were for an increase of artillery, ammunition, aircraft and balloons, as well as larger and more punctual allotments of fresh divisions and other troops to make possible a better system of reliefs. The breaking-off of the attack on Verdun made it easier to satisfy their wishes; but even there we had to reckon in the future with considerable wastage, if only on account of the local conditions. It was possible that the French would themselves make an attack from the fortress. Verdun remained an open, wasting sore.
It would have been better to withdraw our positions out
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