Jonathan Fryer
What were the effects of the Battle of Passchendaele?
The Battle of Passchendaele (Third Battle of Ypres) occurred throughout the summer
and autumn of 1917 (31 July – 6 November) and encompassed several smaller offensives.
British and Imperial soldiers fought their German opponents across a Belgian landscape
destroyed by shelling and rendered a swamp by persistent rains and the destruction of the
drainage systems. The effects of the battle ranged from the strategic and numerical to the
political and personal.
1. Strategic
The offensive’s immediate aim was to seize the high ground of the Ypres salient.
General Douglas Haig had further ambitions and hoped to break the German lines, advance to
the coast and seize and German submarine bases, thus striking at the campaign of unrestricted
warfare waged against British shipping. The offensive, whilst seizing the salient, only
advanced the front five miles. These hard-fought gains were seized in 1918 in three days by a
German offensive. The battle thus failed to break the stalemate on the Western Front and,
furthermore, depleted the British reserves. This in turn prevented the exploitation of the initial
successes at the Battle of Cambrai (1917).
2. Losses
The ferocity of the fighting, combined with the swamped landscape, produced an
enormous casualty rate for both sides. It is estimated that upwards of 240,000 British soldiers
were lost, killed, wounded, captured or missing, along with 85,000 Imperial soldiers.
Germany lost a further 200,000 men.1 In addition to the destruction of the landscape, the
village of Passchendaele was totally destroyed.
3. Domestic/Political
Haig’s failure to achieve anything more than a marginal victory by attrition,
combined with the failures at Cambrai, saw him lose credit with British politicians.
Lloyd-George, as a consequence, took over the strategic conduct of the war and there was
an increasing reluctance to replace losses for fear of them being wasted.
1
Michael Howard, The First World War (Oxford, 2007), p. 90.
Jonathan Fryer
4. Personal
The battle affected individuals. The conditions were amongst the worst experienced
during the war with exhausted soldiers battling to survive in persistently wet and muddy
uniforms, fighting from shell holes against a German defensive line fortified by pillboxes, and
often going without basic supplies such as clean water. Mustard gas, used in the war for the
first time in July 1917, blinded its victims. There were also the psychological effects which
often went untold, soldiers being left unable to talk about their experiences. The last survivor
of the battle, Harry Patch, recollects the ‘bewilderment and fear on the men’s faces’ as they
went into battle, and how he held the hand of a Cornishman who was dying from horrific
injuries.2 The battle created widows and fatherless children on both sides.
Passchendaele has often been viewed as a failure from a British perspective. Minimal
gains were made at an immense cost. It can be argued, however, that the losses sustained by
the Germans contributed to their declining morale and later collapse. Furthermore, the
offensive relieved pressure on the much-battered, and sometimes mutinous, French armies in
the time before the arrival of American forces, which was to give the Allies a decisive
advantage. What was a common effect for both sides, however, was the experience of the
horrors of warfare and the creation of wounds, both physical and psychological, which
remained with the survivors for the rest of their lives.
2
Max Arthur, Forgotten Voices of the Great War (London, 2002), p. 222.