Game of the Week, July 20-26

From July 20 through July 26, this week’s Game of the Week is First World War Campaigns: France ’14, available at 25% off. The title follows the dramatic opening campaign of the Great War in the west: the German advance through Belgium and northern France, the hard fighting of the Battle of the Frontiers, the Allied retreat, and the counterstroke at the Marne that stopped the invasion short of Paris.

France ’14 covers the months in which every army still hoped that movement, resolve, and one decisive operation could settle the war. Instead, rapid marches, exhaustion, command friction, and the growing power of artillery and machine guns produced a campaign of astonishing reversals. Relive the hard choices, rapid marches, and command friction that turned a war of movement into the trenches of Flanders.

The Campaign of 1914: From the Frontiers to Flanders

When war came to Europe in August 1914, the opposing plans in the west rested on the same dangerous assumption: a short campaign of movement could bring a decision before continental war made itself felt. Germany faced France in the west and Russia in the east. Its answer was a right-wing sweep through neutral Belgium and northern France, intended to pass around the French armies, defeat them quickly, and then shift forces eastward. France entered the war with Plan XVII, an offensive-minded deployment meant to recover Alsace and Lorraine. Neither plan would survive contact with the war that followed.

The German invasion of Belgium transformed a continental crisis into a wider conflict. Belgium refused German demands for passage, and German forces crossed the frontier on 4 August. The forts around Liège delayed the advance; their reduction demonstrated the effect of modern heavy artillery against fixed defenses. Germany’s violation of Belgian neutrality also helped bring Britain into the war. The small but professional British Expeditionary Force crossed to France and took its place on the Allied left, while Belgian resistance, damaged railways, and marching armies complicated the German timetable.

The first great encounters came in the Battle of the Frontiers. French forces attacked into Alsace-Lorraine and the Ardennes in August, seeking the offensive victory their doctrine had promised. They met prepared German formations, concentrated artillery, and a firepower few pre-war expectations had absorbed. Across the Ardennes and on the Sambre, French armies suffered severe losses and were forced back. Farther north, the British Expeditionary Force fought its first major action at Mons on 23 August. Its disciplined rifle fire imposed a real cost on the Germans, but the wider Allied position was already giving way. The subsequent action at Le Cateau showed both the skill of the BEF and the pressure of a campaign in which holding ground could mean encirclement.

„Meine Herren! Wir sind jetzt in der Notwehr, und Not kennt kein Gebot!“

“We are now acting in self-defense, and necessity knows no law!”

Chancellor Theobald von Bethmann Hollweg,
in front of the Reichstag, 4 August 1914

By the end of August, the Allies were in retreat across northern France. Yet the retreat was not simply a collapse. French commander-in-chief Joseph Joffre removed unsuccessful commanders, shifted formations by rail, and rebuilt a coherent line behind the moving front. The German advance was also paying for its early success. Infantry had marched enormous distances in summer heat, supply columns struggled, and the German right wing was spreading across a widening front. Losses, fatigue, resistance in Belgium, and the changing situation in both theaters made the strain decisive.

The decisive opportunity came on the Marne in early September. General Alexander von Kluck’s German First Army had turned inward, to the southeast of Paris, instead of passing to the city’s west. This exposed its flank to the newly formed French Sixth Army under General Michel-Joseph Maunoury and opened a gap between the German First and Second Armies. Joffre and the military governor of Paris, General Joseph Gallieni, seized the moment. Maunoury attacked from the Paris area, while the French Fifth Army and the British Expeditionary Force moved into the gap. The greater achievement was the rapid concentration of entire armies after weeks of retreat.

German infantry on the battlefield, August 7, 1914 (Public Domain)

The First Battle of the Marne was a chain of linked battles along a long front, fought by exhausted armies under imperfect command. On the Allied side, the struggle around the marshes of Saint-Gond, where General Ferdinand Foch’s Ninth Army held under heavy attack, was as important as the advance north of the Marne. By 9–10 September, the danger of a widening break between the German armies and the failure to achieve a quick decision prompted a withdrawal to the Aisne. Paris had been saved, and the German offensive checked, but neither side had been destroyed.

The Aisne revealed a defensive line that could resist frontal attack. German troops withdrew to favorable heights north of the river, dug in, and repelled Allied efforts to force the crossings. Artillery, machine guns, and field fortifications increasingly favored the defender. Still, the campaign did not stop. In the so-called Race to the Sea, both sides moved forces northward in repeated attempts to turn the other’s open flank. Each attempt at outflanking produced another extension of the front.

«Le moment n’est plus de regarder en arrière ; tous les efforts doivent être employés à attaquer et à refouler l’ennemi.»

“The time for looking back is past; every effort must be concentrated on attacking and throwing the enemy back.”

General Joseph Joffre, order to the French armies,
drafted 5 September and issued 6 September 1914

The struggle culminated in Belgium and Flanders. The Belgian Army’s sorties from Antwerp, the fighting along the Yser, and the First Battle of Ypres drew British, French, Belgian, and German forces into a final series of desperate engagements. At Ypres, German attacks failed to break through to the Channel ports, while the outnumbered Allied defenders held a salient that would remain one of the Western Front’s most contested places. By November, the line had hardened from the Swiss frontier to the North Sea. The war of rapid movement had created the conditions for years of trench warfare instead.

“The name of the place meant nothing, only in later history. You lived the history of the time, but you don’t know it.”

Sergeant Vernon Matthews, 5th Dragoon Guards,
later recollection of the retreat from Mons

That transformation is what makes the 1914 campaign so compelling. France ’14 is a study in the relationship between plans and reality: the pressure to maintain momentum, the difficulty of controlling armies over great distances, the necessity of choosing when to stand or withdraw, and the narrow opportunities that could change the course of a war.

What's in the game

• France '14 includes 33 Scenarios, 6 Campaigns and 3 Grand Campaigns – covering all sizes and situations, including a solo tutorial scenario. All can be played head-to-head and vs. the computer AI.
• The master map (151,512 hexes) covers North-East France, Belgium, Luxembourg, Holland, and Germany.
• The order of battle file covers the German, French, Belgian, British, Commonwealth, and Austro-Hungarian forces that participated in the campaign
• Parameter Data and Scenario Editors, which allow players to customize the game.
• The Sub-map feature allows the main map to be subdivided into smaller segments for custom scenario creation.
  
• Design notes, which cover the production of the game, campaign notes, and a bibliography that includes the sources used by the First World War Campaigns team to produce this simulation game.
• France '14 provides multiple play options, including play against the computer AI, Play by E-mail (PBEM), LAN & Internet "live" play, as well as two-player hot seat.

Books and Videos

Below you find a list of books and videos to give a deeper understanding of the historical background of the game. Clicking a book cover brings you to Amazon.

Hastings, Max. Catastrophe 1914: Europe Goes to War. New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 2013.

Herwig, Holger H. The Marne, 1914: The Opening of World War I and the Battle That Changed the World. New York: Random House, 2009.

Strachan, Hew. The First World War. Vol. 1, To Arms. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2001.

Tuchman, Barbara W. The Guns of August. New York: Macmillan, 1962.

Zuber, Terence. Inventing the Schlieffen Plan: German War Planning, 1871–1914. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2002.

Screenshots

Below are screenshots from France '14 to give you a feel for the 2D and 3D views and the scale of the engagements. Clicking a screenshot opens it in full resolution.

We hope you enjoy this week’s Game of the Week: First World War Campaigns: France '14  Like all WDS titles, it provides countless hours of rich historical gameplay at a very attractive price.