View over the battlefield of the Loretto Heights, France. Notre Dame de Lorette, a pilgrimage site, stood on the Heights, and was, with Vimy Ridge, part of the high ground seized by German troops in the Race to the Sea after the Battle of the Marne in 1914. French commander Joffre hoped to capture Loretto Heights and Carency, a village the Germans had fortified, in the First Battle of Artois in December, 1914. He tried to take the hill again in mid-February, 1915.

Westl. Kriegschauplatz: Kämpfe auf der Lorettohöhe.



Western theater of war: fighting on the Loretto Heights



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Kriegshilfe München N. W. 19.

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Sammel. u. Nachschlagewerk des Völkerkrieges



For Gloria Viktoria Album

Collection. and reference work of international war

War Fund Munich N. W. 19th

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Monday, February 15, 1915

"While all these events were taking place in the East, relief offensives for the Russians had been developed by strong forces of the English and the French in the Western theatre of the war.

In the middle of February immensely superior masses of the French attacked the German positions of the 3rd Army in Champagne, others, north of Arras (in the neighborhood of the Loretto Heights), the portions of the 6th Army there."

Quotation Context

In the Race to the Sea in 1914 German forces had seized the high ground of Loretto Heights and Vimy Ridge in Artois. From December 17 to 19, 1914 French Generals Joffre and Foch tried but failed to take the Heights in the First Battle of Artois. On February 7, 1915, German commanders Hindenburg and Ludendorff had launched the Second Battle of the Masurian Lakes on the Eastern Front, and were driving back the Russians along a 450 km. front. The February French offensives in Champagne and Artois were an attempt to draw German forces from the Eastern Front to the Western, in hopes of relieving the Russians.

A pilgrimage site in 1914, the church of Notre Dame de Lorette is on the crest of Loretto Heights. It is the location of the world's largest French military cemetery.

Source

General Headquarters and its Critical Decisions, 1914-1916 by Erich von Falkenhayn, page 71, copyright © 1920 by Dodd, Mead and Company, Inc., publisher: Dodd, Mead and Company, Inc., publication date: 1920

Tags

1915-02-15, 1915, February, Loretto Heights