Under the Sea: Submarines in the Great War

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The Sinking of the Linda BlancheThe outbreak of World War One delivered an astonishing blow to the collective psyche of political and military leadership in Europe, as the carnage of the war’s opening months shattered illusions about industrial war and lifted the proverbial veil from their eyes. It was not merely the collapse of the “short war” illusion which so famously pervaded, but also the unprecedented and unexpected casualty levels, which rapidly surpassed anything that the armies of the old continent had ever experienced. This was particularly the case because, notwithstanding the infamous carnage of the war’s later great sieges - Verdun, the Somme, and so forth - the war’s opening months were among its very bloodiest. This was because it was in the opening months that the war was still fought in a somewhat mobile and attacking manner, with forces fighting largely in the open. The French, for example, lost just over 300,000 men killed in action in 1914 (despite the war beginning in August), at a loss rate of some 2,200 killed per day. It was only the following year, once the armies had properly dug themselves in, that loss rates stabilized, and in 1915 French casualties were “only” 1,200 killed on a daily basis. These loss patterns reveal, among other things, that the role of trench warfare is frequently misunderstood. Trenches and fortified belts did not lead to the failure of attacking operations; rather, they were dug in response to the astonishingly high casualties suffered in the war’s mobile phase in 1914. Trenches and positional warfare were a reaction to an u…