Welcome to today's deep dive. We know you are
someone who loves gaining thorough knowledge
without all the overwhelm. Right. You're looking
for this fascinating aha moment. Exactly. And
you want a narrative that balances those meticulous
details with big picture clarity. Today we have
a truly incredible story for you. We are looking
at a comprehensive historical breakdown of the
Battle of Eris. Which was a massive and just
highly pivotal clash on the Western Front in
the spring of 1917. Yeah. And our mission for
this deep dive is to explore a rather profound
concept hidden within the source material. We
want to see how extreme pressure breeds incredible
and sometimes truly terrifying innovation. Because
we are going to look way beyond the mud and the
static trenches that usually dominate our collective
memory of the First World War. We're going to
uncover secret underground cities, the literal
birth of modern squad tactics and just the sheer
human scale of a battle that completely redefined
warfare. OK, let's unpack this. early 1917 was
an absolute geopolitical pressure cooker. It
really was. The British and French politicians
were desperate for a breakthrough, and I mean,
they needed it yesterday. Yeah, to understand
that desperation, we really need to look at the
grim reality facing the Allies in the spring
of 1917. The Western Front was completely stalemated.
Just totally locked up. Right. You had this continuous
unbroken line of fortified trenches stretching
all the way from the Belgian coast down to the
Swiss border. And politicians in London and Paris
were facing mounting, almost unbearable public
pressure. Because they had just endured the unimaginable
bloodbaths of Gallipoli, the Somme and Verdun
the previous year. Exactly. We are talking about
hundreds of thousands of casualties. And for
what? Practically zero strategic gains on the
map. Yeah, the British Prime Minister H .H. Asquith
had actually resigned in December 1916. He was
replaced by David Lode George. And the French
government was navigating its own domestic crises,
too. And meanwhile, the United States has just
declared war on Germany on April 6th. Which sounds
like a massive victory for the allies on paper.
Right, on paper. But the reality on the ground
was far different. An American army was still
more than a year away from actually arriving
in France in any meaningful numbers. So the Allies
simply couldn't afford to sit on their hands
and wait for the Americans to cross the Atlantic?
No, they couldn't. So a new French commander
in chief, General Robert Nivelle, steps into
this void with remarkably bold claim. He assures
the politicians that he can win the war in 48
hours. Which is just wild. A 48 -hour victory
in the middle of the First World War sounds almost
delusional when we look back at it. It was incredibly
ambitious, borderline hubris. But his strategy
is to combine overwhelming artillery fire with
swift infantry assaults to shatter the German
lines on the Ains River. But for Nivelle's massive
offensive to have any chance of success, the
French needed the Germans looking in the opposite
direction. Exactly. The British attack at Arras
was, in its grand strategic conception, purely
a diversionary tactic. Just a distraction. Right.
The goal was to attack a week prior to the French,
capture the high ground of Vimy Ridge, advance
towards Cambrai, and basically force the German
high command to frantically draw their reserves
away from the French sector. But preparing for
a diversion of that scale requires an unprecedented
level of intelligence gathering. I mean, if you're
building up hundreds of thousands of men and
artillery pieces, how do you map the battlefield
without tipping your hand? And that brings us
to the horrifying reality of the air war. Yeah.
April 1917 goes down in aviation history as bloody
April. The Royal Flying Corps, the British RFC,
had to map the trench systems and spot German
artillery using observation planes. But to get
usable photographs, they had to fly low. And
they had to fly incredibly slow, right over the
teeth of the German defenses. What's fascinating
here is how that technological limitation forced
a brutally asymmetric conflict in the skies.
Yes. The British were flying technically inferior
aircraft compared to the German loose trade craft
at that time. Because the RFC had to fly these
slow, highly predictable flight paths for their
reconnaissance cameras to work, they were essentially
serving themselves up as targets for elite German
Fighter Squadron. And they weren't just going
up against average pilots. They were flying directly
into the hunting grounds of Manfred von Richthofen.
The Red Baron himself. The Red Baron and his
notorious Jasta 11 Squadron. The statistics from
the source material are chilling. The average
flying life of a British RSC pilot at Arras in
April of 1917 was just 18 hours. 18 hours. Imagine
being a young pilot knowing you have less than
a day of flight time before the odds catch up
with you. It's terrifying. And the German infantry
on the ground actually treated these one -sided
aerial battles as a grim spectacle. The source
includes a striking quote from a German officer,
Ernst Jünger, who described watching these encounters
from the relative safety of the trenches. What
did he say? He wrote about observing a whole
series of dogfights that almost invariably ended
in British defeat because they were up against
Rifthofen's highly organized units. Junger noted
that often five or six British planes in succession
would be chased away or shot down in flames.
Wow. But while the British were being battered
in the sky, they were simultaneously pulling
off something mind -blowing right beneath the
earth. deep underneath the city of Eris. Yes,
the subterranean preparations. We know you, the
listener, appreciate learning about massive logistical
undertakings, and this is one of the most remarkable
engineering feats of the entire war. It really
is a master class in covert infrastructure. Underneath
Eris were these ancient chalk caves and cellars,
alongside a vast underground network called the
Crenshon Sewer. So the British brought in tunneling
companies. Specifically, they relied heavily
on the New Zealand tunnelers to expand these
existing disparate structures into a secret,
interconnected underground city. And they managed
to create a subterranean space capable of hiding
24 ,500 troops right under the Germans' noses.
Completely safe from the artillery bombardment
thundering above. And the level of infrastructure
within this network was staggering. It wasn't
just a damp, dark cave system where men huddled
in the mud waiting for zero hours. No, not at
all. They wired the entire complex for electricity.
They put in piped water. They built a fully functioning
underground hospital to treat the wounded out
of the line of fire. They even installed a tram
system running from the sewer to the caves to
move supplies and men quickly through the network.
Put yourself in the boots of a soldier sitting
in that cave. You have telephone cables buzzing
with command exchanges, gas -proof doors protecting
the entrances, and light bulbs illuminating the
chalk walls. You are part of a hidden metropolis,
but you know that in a few days, you have to
walk up a set of stairs into a blizzard of machine
gun fire. It's a surreal contrast. And if we
connect this to the bigger picture of tactical
evolution, the British were diligently learning
hard lessons from the disasters of the zone.
Right. During the zone offensive in 1916, the
standard tactic was often to attack in massive,
slow -moving waves of infantry. Which was rigid,
inflexible, and ultimately deadly. Over the winter,
the British military digested those failures
and produced a revolutionary new training manual
known as SS -143. This document essentially represents
the birth of modern platoon tactics. Let's delve
into SS -143. Instead of just a broad line of
riflemen walking forward shoulder to shoulder,
the infantry platoon was divided into highly
specialized sections. Yes. You had your standard
riflemen, but you also had a section of trained
grenade throwers. You had a section operating
a Lewis machine gun. And you had a section equipped
with rifle grenade launchers. So how did they
actually deploy these different elements on the
battlefield? They deployed these specialists
in a highly coordinated diamond pattern. The
riflemen would advance at the front to probe
and engage, the Lewis machine gunners would provide
heavy suppressing fire from the rear of the diamond,
and the grenadiers and rifle grenadiers would
protect the flanks and lob explosives into fortified
positions. This specific formation meant a small
unit could independently maneuver, suppress a
German defensive strong point, and then flank
it. Exactly. They possessed the organic firepower
to fight their own localized battles without
needing to wait for permission or new orders
from a general a mile behind the lines. The devolution
of command, giving the power of tactical decision
-making to the men actually facing the bullets.
It was a massive shift. But the infantry didn't
do it alone. The artillery innovations at Eris
were just as revolutionary. They introduced the
No. 106 fuse. Right. Previously, artillery shells
would bury themselves deep in the soft mud before
exploding, effectively muffling the blast and
doing very little to clear out barbed wire. But
the No. 106 was an instantaneous impact fuse.
The millisecond it touched the wire or the ground,
it detonated. It expanded its destructive force
outward and vaporized the German defensive belts.
And building on that, they also implemented the
Kreting Barrage. Which wasn't a brand new concept.
but the British perfected its execution at Arras.
They created a literal moving curtain of high
explosives and shrapnel that walked across the
battlefield exactly 100 meters ahead of the advancing
British infantry. It forced the German defenders
to stay pinned deep in their underground dugouts
until the British troops were practically standing
on top of their trenches. But to ensure the German
artillery couldn't simply fire back and break
up the infantry advance, the British utilized
scientific techniques known as sound ranging.
and flash spotting. Royal Flying Corps observers
would mark the telltale flashes of German guns,
and specialized engineer units would use microphones
spread across the front to mathematically triangulate
the exact origin of the sound of a firing gun.
Because of this applied mathematics and careful
observation, The British neutralized over 80
% of the German heavy guns before the infantry
even stepped out of their trenches. 80%. That
is incredible. Now consider what the Germans
were doing on the other side of No Man's Land.
Right. The German High Command had recently introduced
a new defensive doctrine called Defense in Depth.
The foundational idea was to abandon the rigid,
packed defense of the very front line, which
usually just resulted in massive casualties from
enemy artillery. Instead, you hold the front
lightly. with scattered outposts. You let the
attacking enemy advance, let them stretch their
supply lines, let them exhaust themselves navigating
the craters, and then you hit them with an immediate,
overwhelming counter -attack. The source refers
to that counter -attack as the Gigenstoss. Correct.
The Gigenstoss was to be carried out by reserve
divisions held just behind the lines. The Germans
called these specific units Oblussumsdivision.
Essentially, elite, fresh divisions held in readiness
specifically to rush forward and crush a tired,
disorganized attacking force. So if the Germans
knew a massive British buildup was happening,
why did the Gegenstos fail so spectacularly on
the first day of Arras? The failure rests squarely
on the shoulders of the commander of the German
6th Army, General Ludwig von Falkenhausen. He
fundamentally botched the implementation of the
new doctrine. He really did. Falkenhausen was
so intensely terrified of the devastating power
of the British artillery, with good reason given
the preliminary bombardments, that he kept his
elite reserve divisions up to 15 miles away from
the front line. 15 miles. You cannot launch an
immediate counter -attack if your heavily armed
troops have to march 15 miles through a pulverized
war zone just to reach the battle. No, you can't.
Volkenhausen misunderstood the spatial and temporal
requirements of his own army's new doctrine.
That single logistical oversight was about to
cost the German army dearly. And that brings
us to Zero Hour. It is 530 a .m. on April 9th,
1917. The British unleash a hurricane bombardment
of 2 .6 million shells. They utilize poison gas
shells at the very end to specifically disrupt
the German horse transports and communication
lines in the rear. And as if the artillery wasn't
enough, nature decides to drastically alter the
battlefield. It is freezing cold and a westerly
wind is howling, blowing a severe squall of blinding
snow and sleet directly into the faces of the
German defenders. Despite the days of preliminary
bombardment, the sheer intensity of the final
hurricane barrage, combined with the whiteout
conditions of the sudden snowstorm, caught the
German troops completely off guard. The element
of surprise was near total. The source material
paints a visit picture of German soldiers being
taken prisoner, half dressed, clamoring out of
their deep dugouts in absolute shock as British
soldiers appeared out of the snow. Others were
captured without their boots on, stuck in knee
deep mud in the communication trenches, desperately
trying to fall back. The defense in depth simply
collapsed because the front line was overrun
instantly. And as we discussed, those vital reserves
were a 15 mile march away. This systemic collapse
was most vividly demonstrated at Vimy Ridge.
Yes. This crucial commanding sector was assigned
to the Canadian Corps, commanded by General Julian
Vang and his subordinate, Arthur Curry. The assault
on Bai Mi Ridge remains a historical masterclass
in meticulous preparation and decentralized command.
Here's where it gets really interesting. Bing
and Curry didn't just issue broad directives
to their senior officers. No, they gave every
single platoon an independent objective. They
built massive scale models of the ridge behind
the lines. They rehearsed the assault endlessly
with the actual men who would be making the climb.
Because of that rigorous, repetitive training,
the structural integrity of the Canadian assault
remained intact even when leadership broke down.
If an officer fell in combat, which happened
frequently in the chaos of the creeping barrage,
the privates knew exactly what the next objective
was. There was no stalling, no waiting for a
runner to bring new instructions. They advanced
relentlessly behind that moving wall of artillery,
utilizing their Lewis guns and grenades, just
as SS -143 instructed. the commanding crest of
the ridge by 1 .00 p .m. that very same day.
The sheer speed of the British and Canadian advance
on that first day shattered the records for positional
warfare that had been set during the Somme. They
drove miles deep into German territory. It looked
for a brief shining moment like the impossible
breakthrough had finally happened. But warfare
on this industrial scale is rarely that simple.
This raises an important question. Why didn't
the allies just maintain that momentum, keep
pushing forward and win the war right there?
And the answer lies in the sheer friction of
war, specifically the unforgiving nature of logistics.
Right. You have just blasted the earth with 2
.6 million shells. You have created a lunar landscape
of deep craters, bottomless mud and pulverized
wire. And now you have to seamlessly move an
entire modern army across it. The British simply
couldn't physically move their roads, their heavy
artillery pieces, and their massive food supplies
fast enough across that churned -up crater field
to keep pace with their advancing infantry. The
infantry eventually outran their own protective
artillery umbrella. And when you lose momentum
in positional warfare, you hand your enemy the
most valuable resource of all time. The Germans
desperately needed time to react. There is a
deeply cinematic anecdote from the German High
Command regarding this exact moment. General
Erich Ludendorff, essentially the mastermind
of the German war effort, was actually celebrating
his 52nd birthday at his headquarters when the
disastrous news from Eris finally arrived. Ludendorff
later wrote that he was deeply depressed by the
news, completely ruining his birthday celebrations.
He realized instantly that Volkenhausen had entirely
mismanaged the defense in -depth strategy. So
Ludendorff immediately fired Falkenhausen's chief
of staff and dispatched a man named Colonel Fritz
von Lohsberg to stabilize the collapsing front.
And Lohsberg isn't sent as a mere advisor. Ludendorff
gives him fullmacht, which translates to full
power. He has the absolute authority to issue
binding orders in the army commander's name.
Losberg was widely considered a defensive genius.
Within hours of arriving at the front, he began
completely restructuring the German defense,
frantically bringing up the DeLeon reserves and
plugging the bleeding gaps in the line. As Losberg's
reorganized German defense stiffened, the continued
British attempts to force momentum led to some
truly tragic encounters. The most heartbreaking
of these was the Australian assault at a heavily
fortified village called Bullecourt. The attack
at Bullecourt serves as the dark mirror to the
overwhelming success at Vimy Ridge. It perfectly
illustrates that friction of war we were talking
about. The plan called for a massive Dawn attack
spearheaded by this brand new terrifying technology
tanks. But the friction started immediately.
The tanks arrived late to their starting positions.
As they were rushing to the front in the predawn
darkness, their massive roaring engines were
easily heard by the German defenders, completely
ruining any element of surprise. When the delayed
tanks finally did attack, the execution was a
disaster. Some veered wildly off course in the
confusion. Some became irrevocably snagged in
the massive unbroken belts of barbed wire. Furthermore,
the Germans had already adapted to this new armored
threat. They utilized machine guns firing specialized
piercing ammunition known as K bullets which
easily tore right through the relatively thin
plating of these early tanks knocking them out
one by one the Australian infantry had dutifully
followed the surviving tanks into the German
trench system Suddenly, they found themselves
entirely cut off. The tanks were dead, the element
of surprise was gone, and the German artillery
cleverly dropped a curtain of high -explosive
fire directly behind the Australians, sealing
them off in no man's land. The Australians were
trapped within the German trenches. They couldn't
scavenge enough ammunition or grenades from the
dead to hold off the continuous, well -organized
German counterattacks. Eventually, recognizing
the hopelessness of the situation, they had absolutely
no choice but to retreat. That meant running
back across a bullet -swept no -man's land in
broad daylight. under intense machine gunfire.
It was a devastating heavy loss. The momentum
of April 9th had entirely evaporated. The battle
ground down into a series of brutal localized
attacks and fierce counter -attacks throughout
the rest of April and well into May. When the
battle was finally officially called off on May
16th, the human toll was staggering. In just
over a month of fighting, the British suffered
around 158 ,000 casualties. And the German losses
were estimated to be between 120 ,000 and 130
,000. Over a quarter of a million men killed,
wounded, or missing in just a few weeks. The
heroism on display was unimaginable. 25 Victoria
Crosses were awarded to Allied soldiers for their
actions during the battle. So what does this
all mean? Why are we digging so deeply into a
battle that happened over a century ago? Well,
for you, the listener, the Battle of Eris...
serves as the ultimate historical case study
in how massive organizations adapt to failure.
It proves that you can have brilliant planning.
You can literally carve a fully functioning city
for 25 ,000 people out of the chalk beneath the
earth. You can calculate the mathematics of the
creeping barrage. You can perfectly time your
infantry assault to a snowstorm and create incredible
historic initial success. But the friction of
reality the bottomless mud, the failing logistics,
the unpredictable weather, and a smart opponent
adapting to your moves in real time will always
test the absolute limits of that success. It
serves as a humbling reminder that in complex,
highly dynamic systems, whether we are discussing
global warfare or modern organizational logistics,
initial velocity does not guarantee reaching
the final destination. The environment always
pushes back. I want to leave you with a lingering
thought today, something that builds on the sheer
scale of the engineering we discussed earlier.
The source material notes a fascinating detail.
Those massive ancient caves under Eris were actually
rediscovered by accident in 1916 before the tunnelers
expanded them. Rediscovered entirely by accident.
Yes. Think about that for a second. If an underground
city capable of housing 25 ,000 people could
be forgotten and then accidentally stumbled upon
just decades after it was originally carved out.
What else is down there? It's a haunting prospect.
How many other vast subterranean worlds are lying
completely dormant and forgotten right now beneath
the quiet, modern suburbs of Europe, just holding
the ghosts of past eras, waiting for someone
to break through the right cellar wall? A fascinating
and sobering historical reality to consider.
Thanks for taking this deep dive with us. Keep
questioning, keep exploring, and we will see
you next time.