German attack

“ A German attack, therefore, my boy, means that you will have to suffer a succession of driving blows directed at two or three points of the main line, reënforced by a concentration of artillery far greater than is possessed by any other army, coupled with wide flanking movements by huge bodies of troops supported by cavalry and a very mobile field artillery. ”

“ The quickest, the best, the surest means for Americans to defend themselves against a German invasion is to conclude with France and England a permanent alliance, offensive and defensive, having for its aim the maintenance of the freedom of the seas for the Allies, and resistance to any maritime attack. ”

“ April 26—Allies rally and check the German drive near Ypres, fresh German assaults north and northeast of the city being beaten off; Berlin says that the Germans retain the west bank of the Yser, while London reports that the Allies have retaken it; Germans still hold Lizerne, on the west bank of the canal; Germans take from the French the summit of Hartmanns-Weilerkopf, capturing 750 men and four machine guns; French repulse German attack at Notre Dame de Lorette; fighting is in progress on the heights of the Meuse; German attack on Les Eparges fails. ”

“ With the powerful engine into which we are transforming the German army one does not make an attack. If I were to come before you today, on the assumption that conditions were different from what I believe they are, and said, "We are considerably menaced by France and Russia; it is to be expected that we shall be attacked, and as a diplomat, believing my military information in these matters to be correct, I am convinced that it is better for us to have our defense consist of a bold attack, and to strike the first blow now;" ”

“ Even the best weapon is worthless in the hands of a coward.
While you, my soldiers of the eastern front, paid a heavy toll in blood, and with you all the men and women deployed by the organizations helping you, who were so often forced to take up a rifle or machine gun themselves, the German soldier along all fronts has done his duty to the utmost.
From northern Norway to the Spanish border, the German divisions await our enemies’ attack. We can only guess whether they will come and when they will come. However, we know that they will be beaten no matter when or how they will come. ”

“ ENEMY TROOPS PASS BURNING U. S. EQUIPMENT. The initial German attacks, following a heavy artillery preparation, were launched all along the front, roughly from Monschau to Echternach. The first objective was to secure the high ground of the Hohe Venn but the drive by the enemy met with stiff resistance and he was forced to commit his armor before noon on 16 December. ”

“ If the Germans concentrated to move against their front the French reserve armies could assemble west of the Seine, move forward and attack the German invading columns in flank. If in their effort to continue the great turning movement the Germans pushed forward across the Seine and attempted by encircling Paris to gain the rear of the allied armies, the French could mass their reserve corps behind their center at Reims, push forward against the weakened German center in an attack that if successful would cut off the German invading columns and expose them to annihilation. ”

“ According to an eyewitness of this attack, the first wave of German soldiers advancing to attack was thrown in disorder by the intense gunfire from the British positions. A second wave of men started—swept a little farther over the shell-torn terrain than the others had done, then faltered, broke apart, and fell back, having failed to get through the British artillery fire or even to approach their trenches. ”

“ The fact that Germany began the slaughter of babies and women in defiance of the rules of war, and has kept it up in frequent raids by warships, Zeppelins, and aeroplanes, whereas the Allies have very seldom attacked open towns, and then only as occasional reprisals following peculiarly barbarous German attacks, has won for Germany the condemnation, and for the Allies the commendation of the civilised world. ”

“ This is the earliest official record of an attack upon civilians—and it came from the German side! The crew of Z6 were the recipients of a tremendous ovation on their return, while the news of this dastardly murder was received with jubilation throughout the German Empire. In Lunéville fifteen civilians were killed by airship bombs two days earlier; shortly afterwards followed the attack by airship on civilians in Antwerp. ”

“ Namur defenses strengthened; battles at Diest, Haelen, and Eghezee; Germans shoot woman accused of attempt to blow up Alsatian tunnel; British, French, and Belgians charge cruelties by German troops; report that Germans hold Diest; German guns reported wrecked by fire from Liége forts; French report severe defeat of Germans by counter-attack at Pont-a-Mousson; Swiss report that Germans lost 10,000 in Alsace; Swiss disarm German troops; Italy's troops guard Alpine passes.
Aug. 14—Germans mass to attack Allies and move toward Brussels; bombardment of Liége renewed ”

“ Upon refusal by Poland to yield, they caused German armed forces to invade Poland on 1st September, 1939, thus precipitating war also with the United Kingdom and France.
5. Expansion of the war into a general war of aggression: planning and execution of attacks on Denmark, Norway, Belgium, The Netherlands, Luxembourg, Yugoslavia, and Greece: 1939 to April, 1941
Thus the aggressive war prepared for by the Nazi conspirators through their attacks on Austria and Czechoslovakia was actively launched by their attack on Poland, in violation of the terms of the Briand-Kellogg Pact, 1928. ”

“ Since the exposé was drawn up, the French and English on the Western front have carried out the predicted great offensive on a wide front, ruthlessly sacrificing masses of men and an enormous quantity of war material. The German army checked the advance of the numerically superior enemy; further attacks, as we have every reason to believe, will also be shattered by the heroism of the men and the iron will of their leaders. ”

“ A moment later, all helmets, German and French alike, disappeared behind the trenches. Silence rested on No Man's Land, and events went on as before. But for France the world will never be the same again. German crimes have lighted a flame of sacred anger that will never burn out until German cruelty has been utterly consumed. That is why the fire sparkles in the eyes of the Allied soldiers whenever you suggest peace by negotiation, or a peace without victory. ”

“ Until this date the documents in our possession disclose preparations for war against Poland, England, and France purporting at least to be defensive measures to ward off attacks which might result from the intervention of those powers in the preparatory aggression of Germany in Central Europe. Hitherto aggressive war against Poland, England, and France has been contemplated only as a distant objective. Now, for the first time, we find a war of conquest by Germany against France and England openly recognized as the future aim, at least of the German Navy. ”

“ Take my word for it: the solution of Germany's deliverance is not to be found in the simple antidote of political assassination, for only men bound up in the success of the German arms, or their terrorized creatures of our own sex, are near enough to throw the bomb. ”

“ But must we not, we whose throat the enemy is seeking to cut, we whose defeat by hunger and by lack of war material nearly every one would witness complacently as an unavoidable fate, must we not defend ourselves from this dreadful danger, which still threatens us, with all our might and with all the means that the German spirit can invent and which the honor of the German people recognizes as legitimate weapons? ”

“ A man may, to his own entire satisfaction, come to the conclusion that given the Spring and sufficient munitions that the German resistance will crumble. The [Pg 232] German resistance will never crumble; it will fight as fine a defensive campaign as it has fought a series of offensive campaigns. To under-rate an enemy is to undermine your own chances of victory. ”

“ If it had been simple war, shell and machine gun, probably fifty per cent or more of the devastation would have been saved. But the German makes war against an entire country, inanimate as well as animate. ”

“ From the Balcony of the Palace, Berlin, July 31, 1914.
A fateful hour has fallen for Germany.
Envious peoples everywhere are compelling us to our just defense.
The sword is being forced into our hand. I hope that if my efforts at the last hour do not succeed in bringing our opponents to see eye to eye with us and in maintaining peace we shall with God's help so wield the sword that we shall restore it to its sheath again with honor.
War would demand enormous sacrifices of blood and property from the German people, but we should show our enemies what it means to provoke Germany. ”

“ As infantry troops march through a town, an old woman looks at a demolished building (bottom) . During the advance into Germany many towns surrendered to the Allied troops and the buildings remained undamaged. However, in some towns enemy troops offered resistance and fighting and shelling ensued. In one week five Allied armies were on the east bank of the Rhine and twenty-four bridges had been constructed to replace those which were knocked out. During this period the Allied casualties were much lighter than had been expected. The last German line of defense had been shattered. ”

“ At home there are strikes and rumours of strikes, instigated, no doubt, by German emissaries, but none the less shameful for that; and one and all, as the men come down from that "hell with the lid off," where, inch by inch, the Germans are regaining that for which so many lives were sacrificed, their cry is for ammunition. ”

“ The enemy at first came on in masses, and suffered severely in consequence. It was their first experience of the British "fifteen rounds a minute," and it told. They went down in bundles--our men delighting in a form of musketry never contemplated in the Regulations. To men accustomed to hitting bobbing heads at eight hundred yards there was something monstrous and incredible in the German advance. They could scarcely believe their eyes; such targets had never appeared to them even in their dreams. Nor were our machine-guns idle. ”

“ We shall bomb Germany by day as well as by night in ever-increasing measure, casting upon them month by month a heavier discharge of bombs and making the German people taste and gulp each month a sharper dose of the miseries they have showered upon mankind. ”

“ For the most part, however, we found the German trenches obliterated, the little village a smoking heap of ruins, and those Germans who survived, dazed and frightened, amid piles of torn corpses. If this enormous concentration of guns was required to blast a path of 1,400 yards with a thirty-five-minute bombardment, what a gigantic concentration of artillery, what a colossal expenditure of ammunition, will be required to drive a wedge several miles deep through positions which the Germans have spent three seasons in strengthening and consolidating! ”

“ We know that the Prussian military Government, in its approved handbooks, teaches its officers the use of brutality and terror as military weapons. The German philosophy of war, of which this is a part, is not really a philosophy of war; it is a philosophy of victory. For a long time now the Germans have been accustomed to victory, and have studied the arts of breaking the spirit and torturing the mind of the peoples whom they invade. Their philosophy of war will have to be rewritten when the time comes for them to accommodate their doctrine to their own defeat. ”

“ No, they proceeded to prosecute the war to the utmost and tried to drive the invader off the soil of France. And even if in this war a succession of defeats should overthrow the German Kaiser and his Government, do you think the Germans would submit forthwith, and throw themselves on the mercy of the Allies? No, they will fight to the last man, woman and child to prevent the Rhine being crossed. So we should realise that, for our own safety's sake, we must reduce the German military forces to a position of helplessness—in fact, utterly destroy them, if we are to have any settlement. ”

“ Germany certainly has not the right to speak of a war of defense, but France and England have little more justification. They too, are protecting, not their national, but their world-political existence, their old imperialistic possessions, from the attacks of the German upstart. ”

“ On November 30 last, the Svenska Dagbladet—this was during the first stage of our raids on Berlin—said: ‘Through their gigantic air raids the British have achieved what Hitler failed to achieve by means of decrees and regulations; they have put the majority of the German people on a war footing.’ On January 9 of this year, the Sydsvenska Dagbladet said: ‘The relative German strength on the home front is undoubtedly based on desperation, which increases and gets worse the longer the mass bombing lasts. ”

“ God calls us to murderous battles, even if worlds should thereby fall to ruins," so wrote one of Germany's poets. "Whoever cannot prevail upon himself to approve from the bottom of his heart the sinking of the Lusitania, whoever cannot conquer his sense of the gigantic cruelty to unnumbered perfectly innocent victims—and give himself up to honest delight at this victorious exploit of German defensive power—him we judge to be no true German," so wrote one of her pastors. ”