If you wish to take upon yourself the difficult decision of making an attack, you must concentrate all the forces you possibly can collect at the point you consider the most favorable for the object.

This is of course a gamble. It is staking everything on a single card. Max von Hoffman.

Hello and welcome to the When Diplomacy Fails Special on World War I, episode 20.8, 1917.

Ladies and gentlemen, I know it's been a while. I have a perfectly good few reasons for why I had to take about

four weeks off from this, and if you're a fan of the Facebook page, you probably know them already.

I don't want to drag out the intro, though, so if you want to know why, stick around at the end,

but if you don't really care either way, you have my permission to switch off once the meat of this episode is done. Without further ado then, let's get down to it.

I will now take you to the year, 1917.

Leon Wolfe, in his book in Flanders Fields, the 1917 campaign,

sets the scene that greeted the Western Front on midnight,

when the new year officially came to pass.

Quote,

At the stroke of midnight, he said, fire!

The gun roared and a shell was lobbed somewhere into the German positions.

A few seconds later, there was a single, distinct, far-off explosion,

after which a period of strained silence hung in the air.

Then the enemy threw up anxious flares, ghastly green, but of great beauty.

These illuminated no man's land lingeringly, froze it briefly into the aspect of a charcoal sketch,

and then faded away. The British battery fired nine more rounds in erratic succession,

paused, and then another seven.

Thus, the new year, 1917, was advertised by 17 shells,

to which the Germans did not respond,

...