The politicians who heard Nivelle's proposals stood in no position to
control him closely. By now the war had gone on for two and a half years,
and both Britain and France had suffered millions of casualties. Yet no
political leader had the popular support or the military expertise to disregard
the advice of his country's military experts. The weak French government,
headed by the aged Alexandre Ribot, was one in a series of cabinets that
had let military leaders conduct the war more or less as they chose.
The British government was a new one. Its ambitious leader, David Lloyd
George, had just come to power pledging that the war would be conducted
more vigorously and decisively than it had been under his predecessor.
Douglas Haig was pushing for an attack in Flanders, but Lloyd George had
no enthusiasm for the British commander who had performed so badly at
the Somme in 1916. Stretching for an alternative to Haig's plan, the British
prime minister showed that he too was susceptible to Nivelle's optimism.
For his political audiences, Nivelle pointed to the map. The German front
in northeastern France, with all its strengths, had a conspicuous flaw: a bulge
stretching from Arras in Artois to Reims in Champagne. Let the British
strike the northern face of the bulge to distract and unsettle the Germans;
then the French would launch their war-winning offensive against the
southern face. Victory would come in the form of a breakthrough on the
River Aisne near Soissons, followed by a general offensive on much of the
western front.
World History
