Resultado de búsqueda
The Third Battle of Ypres (German: Dritte Flandernschlacht; French: Troisième Bataille des Flandres; Dutch: Derde Slag om Ieper), also known as the Battle of Passchendaele (/ ˈ p æ ʃ ən d eɪ l /), was a campaign of the First World War, fought by the Allies against the German Empire.
- First Battle of Passchendaele
The First Battle of Passchendaele took place on 12 October...
- Second Battle of Passchendaele
The Second Battle of Passchendaele was the culminating...
- First Battle of Passchendaele
- Overview
- Preparation and the Battle of Messines
- The Third Battle of Ypres
- The ANZAC and Canadian Corps at Passchendaele
- Lions led by donkeys
- Victory and loss
Battle of Passchendaele, (July 31–November 6, 1917), World War I battle that served as a vivid symbol of the mud, madness, and senseless slaughter of the Western Front. The third and longest battle to take place at the Belgian city of Ypres, Passchendaele was ostensibly an Allied victory, but it was achieved at enormous cost for a piece of ground t...
By the spring of 1917, Germany had resumed the practice of unrestricted submarine warfare, sinking merchant ships in international waters. At about the same time, legions of weary French soldiers began to mutiny following the failure of a large French offensive on the Western Front. Because some French armies were temporarily unwilling or unable to fight, the commander of the British armies in Europe, Gen. Douglas Haig, decided that Britain must begin a new offensive of its own. Haig wanted to attack German forces in the Ypres salient, a long-held bulge in the Allied front lines in the Flanders region of Belgium. The salient had been an active battlefield since 1914.
World War I Events
Battle of the Frontiers
August 4, 1914 - September 6, 1914
Battle of Mons
August 23, 1914
The offensive from the Ypres salient was launched on July 31, 1917, after more than 3,000 guns had poured 4.5 million shells on the German defenses. They did not suffice to silence the hostile machine guns, many of which were ensconced in concrete pillboxes. British troops, supported by dozens of tanks and assisted by a French contingent, assaulted German trenches. Only on the left was the full objective reached with the capture of Bixschoote (Bikschote), Pilckem Ridge, and Saint-Julien; on the crucial right wing the attack was a failure. Yet Haig, in his report to the War Office on the first day’s fighting, stated that the results were “most satisfactory.” The explosion of millions of shells, accompanied by torrential rain, had turned the battlefield into an apocalyptic expanse—a swampy pulverized mire dotted with water-filled craters deep enough to drown a man, all made worse by the churned-up graves of soldiers killed in earlier fighting. On August 4 Charteris noted in his diary, “Every brook is swollen and the ground is a quagmire. If it were not that all the records of previous years had given us fair warning, it would seem as if Providence had declared against us.”
Hundreds of thousands of soldiers on opposing sides attacked and counterattacked across sodden, porridgelike mud, in an open gray landscape almost empty of buildings or natural cover, all under the relentless harrowing rain of exploding shells, flying shrapnel, and machine-gun fire. Few gains were made. The next major effort had to be postponed until August 16 and then proved a failure. Gough suggested that “the attack should be abandoned,” but Haig remained confident. On August 21 he told the British government that the end of the German reserves was in sight, though the struggle might still be severe “for some weeks.” By this point, nearly 70,000 men from some of Britain’s best assault divisions had been killed or wounded.
As the offensive ground to a halt, Haig ordered the 100,000-man Canadian Corps to launch a diversionary attack on the Germans occupying the French city of Lens, in the hopes that this would draw German resources away from the main battle in the Ypres salient. After surveying the German defenses, the Canadian commander, Lieut. Gen. Arthur Currie, opted instead to seize the high ground north of Lens at Hill 70. Currie’s operation was an unqualified success, and, although the Canadian Corps suffered some 9,000 casualties, the unit inflicted nearly three times that number on the Germans.
By early September, Haig had come under political pressure from London to halt the offensive, but he pressed on. That month, Australian and New Zealand (ANZAC) divisions were thrown into the fight alongside the worn-out British forces, but the result was the same: the Allies would bombard, assault, and occupy a section of enemy ground only to be thrown back by the counterattacking Germans.
In late September there was an improvement both in the weather and in the British situation. On September 20, on September 26, and again on October 4, successful strokes of a strictly limited nature were delivered. The farthest objective was less than 1 mile (1.6 km) deep on September 20 and was reduced still more on the subsequent strokes. An effective creeping artillery barrage won the ground; the infantry merely occupied it. Plumer had one gun to every 5 yards (4.6 metres) of front, and this huge concentration of fire crushed the enemy’s counterattacks. The result, together with the better organization of the attack, helped to revive the spirits of the attacking troops.
The effect, however, proved too intoxicating behind the front. At a conference on September 28, Haig expressed his belief that the enemy was on the point of collapse and that tanks and cavalry could be pushed through. Ten days later he told the government that the breakdown of the enemy’s resistance might come “at any moment.” He had already told them that the German losses exceeded the British “not improbably by a hundred per cent.” They were actually much less than the British. Haig’s assistants, both executive and advisory, became more and more dubious of his optimistic assurances as the weather deteriorated and the mud became worse, but, with military loyalty, they tried to make their thoughts become the children of his wishes. On October 5 Charteris admitted in a note, “Unless we get fine weather for all this month, there is no chance of clearing the coast….Most of those at the conference would welcome a stop.”
A fresh attack was nevertheless ordered for October 12 with still deeper objectives. Gough tried to secure a postponement, but without avail. This attack ended with the assaulting troops, save those who had perished in the mud, back on their starting line. Another futile attack was launched on October 22 with the same outcome. Haig, determined to carry on despite the depletion of his armies, now turned to the Canadians. In early October Haig had ordered Currie to bring his four divisions to Belgium to relieve the decimated ANZAC troops and take up the fight around Passchendaele. Currie objected to what he considered a reckless attack, arguing that it would cost about 16,000 Canadian casualties for no great strategic gain. Ultimately, however, Currie had little choice. After lodging his protest, he made careful plans for the Canadians’ assault. Over the next two weeks Currie ordered the building and repair of roads and tramlines to help in the movement of men and armaments and other supplies on the battlefield. Gun emplacements were improved, and troops and officers were allowed time to prepare for the attack, which opened on October 26, 1917.
For the next two weeks all four divisions of the Canadian Corps took turns assaulting the Passchendaele ridge, making only meagre gains with heavy losses. Conditions for the soldiers were horrifying. Under almost continuous rain and shellfire, troops huddled in waterlogged shell holes or became lost on the blasted mudscape, unable to locate the front line that separated Canadian positions from German ones. The mud gummed up rifle barrels and breeches, making them difficult to fire. It swallowed up soldiers as they slept. It slowed stretcher-bearers to a literal crawl as they tried to carry the wounded away from the fighting through waist-deep muck. Ironically, the mud also saved lives, cushioning many of the shells that landed and preventing their explosion.
Very little progress was made. On November 6, however, Canadian troops advanced the few hundred yards necessary to occupy the site of what had been the village of Passchendaele (northeast of Ypres, about 5 miles [8 km] from the nearest front on the salient when the offensive had begun on July 31). A final assault, which secured the remaining areas of high ground east of the Ypres salient, was carried out on November 10. Haig at last called a halt, his honour satisfied. He was, in a practical sense, no nearer reaching the ports that formed his goal than when the Third Battle of Ypres started. His dream of a decisive victory had faded. Some 61 Victoria Crosses, the British Empire’s highest decoration for military valour, were awarded after the fighting. More Victoria Crosses—14 in total—were awarded for actions on the opening day of the Battle of Passchendaele than for actions on any other single day of combat in World War I.
The armies under British command suffered some 275,000 casualties at Passchendaele, a figure that makes a mockery of Haig’s pledge that he would not commit the country to "heavy losses.” Among these were 38,000 Australians, 5,300 New Zealanders, and more than 15,600 Canadians; this final figure was almost exactly the total that had been predicted by Currie ahead of the battle. The Germans suffered 220,000 killed or wounded. At the end, the point of it all was unclear. In 1918 all the ground that had been gained there by the Allies was evacuated in the face of a looming German assault. Passchendaele would be remembered as a symbol of the worst horrors of the First World War, the sheer futility of much of the fighting, and the reckless disregard by some of the war’s senior leaders for the lives of the men under their command.
La Primera Batalla de Passchendaele se libró el 12 de octubre de 1917 en las cercanías de la localidad belga de Ypres, en donde se enfrentaron unidades británicas procedentes de la Tercera batalla de Ypres contra las tropas alemanas estacionadas en las crestas al sur y al este de Ypres como parte de una estrategia decidida por los Aliados en ...
- Victoria alemana
31 de jul. de 2017 · "Un infierno de barro": Passchendaele, la sangrienta batalla de la Primera Guerra Mundial en la que murieron 585.000 soldados para avanzar solo 8 kilómetros - BBC News Mundo. Redacción. BBC...
La Segunda Batalla de Passchendaele fue el ataque culminante de la Tercera Batalla de Ypres durante la Primera Guerra Mundial. La batalla tuvo lugar en las cercanías de Ypres, en el frente occidental, entre el 26 de octubre y el 10 de noviembre de 1917.
