German postcard map of the Western Front in Flanders, looking south and including Lille, Arras, Calais, and Ostend. In the Battle of the Yser in October, 1914, the Belgian Army held the territory south of the Yser Canal, visible between Nieuport, Dixmude, and Ypres (Ypern). Further north is Passchendaele, which British forces took at great cost in 1917.
Der KanalStraße von CalaisThe English Channel and the Strait of CalaisReverse:Panorama des westlichen Kriegsschauplatzes 1914/15 Von Arras bis Ostende.Die Panorama-Postkartenreihe umfaßt mit ihren 9 Abschnitten Nr. 400 bis 408 den gesamten westlichen Kriegsschauplatz von der Schweizer Grenze bis zur Nordseeküste.Panorama of the western theater of operations 1914/15 from Arras to Ostend. The panoramic postcard series includes nine sections, with their No. 400-408 the entire western battlefield from the Swiss border to the North Sea coast.Nr. 408Wenau-Postkarte Patentamtl. gesch.
"Haig and his staff devised a three-stage offensive; the first attack would strike south of Ypres near Wytschaete; the second would advance between Dixmuiden and Ypres; and the third would crash against Passchendaele. Haig, who sought nothing less than to 'smash up the whole of the Bosche [sic] Army', blithely ignored Foch's warning not to undertake a 'duck's march through the inundations to Ostend and Zeebrugge', which Foch considered to be 'futile, fantastic, and dangerous'. . . .On 21 July more than 2300 British guns subjected General Friedrich Sixt von Arnim's Fourth Army, part of Army Group Crown Prince Rupprecht, to a 10-day artillery bombardment that claimed 30 000 casualties, including 9000 missing."
The French army mutinies of May, June, and July, 1917, that followed the failure of French Commander Robert Nivelle's spring offensive, the Second Battle of the Aisne, left Douglas Haig, commander of British forces in France, free to pursue his own offensive independent of the French. As our author makes clear, Haig's primary aim was victory and an end to the war. A secondary aim was ending that part of the threat of Germany's submarine warfare based in the occupied Belgian ports. The inundations that French general Ferdinand Foch referred to were the floods unleashed on their own land by the Belgians at the end of the Battles of the Yser in 1914. Haig's bombardment began the Third Battle of Ypres, also known as the Battle of Passchendaele. Rupprecht was Crown Prince of Bavaria. Foch was correct in his assessment of Haig's plan.
The First World War: Germany and Austria Hungary 1914-1918 by Holger H. Herwig, pp. 330–331, copyright © 1997 Holger H. Herwig, publisher: Arnold, publication date: 1997
1917-07-21, 1917, July, Ypres, Haig, Foch, Douglas Haig, Ferdinand Foch, Third Battle of Ypres, Passchendaele,
