September 7, 1914 Most of Admiral Graf Maximilian von Spees German East Asiatic squadron arrives at Christmas Island, now part of Kiribati. His original objecting was to harass Australian and New Zealand shipping and to make contact with German colonies such as German Samoa and New Guinea, but he had to be wary of the Australian and Japanese fleets (the Australian battlecruiser HMAS Australia outgunned von Spees entire squadron all by itself), so he didnt seek out naval battles. Von Spee and his squadron had been given wide latitude by the German admiralty-- essentially they had been ordered to do something useful, but given no other limits. The squadrons goal was nominally to return to Germany, but von Spee and likely many of his crew realized from the outset that this was a forlorn hope, trapped as they were on the other side of the world, perpetually short of coal and with most of the worlds major navies hostile to them, so von Spees more realistic goal was basically to do as much damage as he could before he and his men went down fighting. At the French city of Maubeuge, straddling the Sambre River near the Belgian border (placing it out on the right flank of the German invasion and virtually in von Klucks southbound rear, German troops recapture the now burned-out wreck of a city, taking forty thousand French troops prisoner. Kluck makes a potentially lethal error-- he sends troops to reinforce von Bulows force to the southwest of his own army, opening a thirty mile wide gap between the two German forces, similar to the gaps the Germans themselves have been exploiting in the French defense. By this point the Schlieffen plan has come apart at the seams and the German commanders are improvising things on a moments notice, with little opportunity to work out detailed plans-- much was left to brigade and even battalion commanders to make up on the spot with what they had available. Too many troops have been siphoned off to the eastern front. Supply trains and the heavy artillery have not kept up as well as had been expected, in part because angry Belgian civilians and retreating troops have destroyed railways, German troops have been pushed close to their physical limits with long forced marches over hundreds of miles, The Schlieffen plan was ambitious to begin with, and too much had already gone wrong, right from the earliest days of the war. _____ The German East Asia Squadron in the harbor at Valparaiso, Chile, after the Battle of Coronel. The four warships nearest the shore are Chilean cruisers keeping watch for British or Japanese warships that might violate Chilean neutrality. the armored cruisers Scharnhorst and Gniesenau at at the left rear, under way, with the light cruiser Dresden immediately to their right.
Posted on: Mon, 08 Sep 2014 04:21:11 +0000