World War I: The Belfort Ruse

Finally, it was all over. Bundy, the signal units, and the overworked staff officers realized a ruse was afoot. At this stage, it was not even certain that the most gullible of the Americans was deceived. An undoubtedly dejected Colonel Conger returned again to Chaumont for the St. Mihiel offensive.

If the definition of battlefield surprise is that one’s enemy is unprepared for one’s action, Pershing certainly obtained surprise at St. Mihiel. The American preparatory barrages began at 1 a.m. on September 12, and U.S. infantry units launched their assault at 5 a.m. In some places, the Germans fought well; in others, they hardly fought at all. Despite Army Detachment C’s orders issued nearly two weeks before, demanding repair and reinforcement of all defensive obstacles, the U.S. foot soldiers easily breached long-rusted German wire entanglements and quickly overpowered many of the defenders. Within forty-eight hours, Pershing’s men had taken 443 artillery pieces and 752 enemy machine guns at the cost of seven thousand U.S. casualties. On the German side, the problem seemed to be determining what would signal a light push and what comprised a heavy attack. The order to withdraw from the salient did not come until noon, seven hours after the American assault began. As a result, sixteen thousand of Fuchs’ troops became Pershing’s prisoners.

If, upon hearing the news of the initial American success at St. Mihiel, Conger was pleased with his handiwork, he was probably delirious when he read the messages he was handed the next day. The French intelligence service passed on to its American counterpart a report from the French military mission in Berne, Switzerland. The officers had informed their superiors in Paris of a report from one of their agents that evacuation plans were being implemented for German inhabitants of the left bank portions of the upper Rhine River. German railroad authorities had been instructed as to their duties in the event of an attack, and in some places, rail lines had been taken up in anticipation of capture. The Mulhausen municipal court and bank archives had been evacuated and hurried to the east, deeper in Germany, for safekeeping. The Germans had moved artillery to the threatened region. French intelligence authorities were told that additional enemy trenches and defensive positions were being dug on the right bank of the Rhine. The agent reported on construction efforts that were underway north of Mulhausen for a new defense line between the Ill and Rhine Rivers, and he went on to reveal that normal civilian traffic in the region had been restricted so as to limit public knowledge of the new lines and positions. The report further stated that German ammunition depots were being stocked, Austrian artillery units were being moved in, and general opinion had it that Morhange, a town well to the southeast of Metz, might be in jeopardy. However crude in conception and amateurish in execution, Conger’s Belfort Ruse might appear to have been a rousing success.

Yet the only purpose for the deception had been to mask the American attack at St. Mihiel, and to some European military critics, that entire operation was inconsequential. Shortly after the battle had ended, prisoner interrogations revealed that German units were under a withdrawal contingency at St. Mihiel. Supposedly, the Germans were going to leave in any event. This bit of news prompted one British wag to describe Pershing’s first Western Front offensive as The show where the Americans relieved the Germans. That immediate and cynical description, however, ignored the fact that permission for withdrawal only applied to a heavy-attack situation and that many of the German troops not only did not withdraw, they fought hard to retain the salient.

It was only well after the war that the most important results of the Belfort Ruse and the military expertise of the American high command were realized. The AEF inner circle for the operations of September 1918–Pershing, McAndrew, Conger, and Conner–could then be said to have done rather well, both as professional soldiers and as practitioners of military deception. Even the operation’s dupe, Maj. Gen. Omar Bundy, who undoubtedly became aware of his own rather dubious role, succeeded. The steadfast old Indian fighter held a number of suitable post commands after World War I: Camp Lee, Virginia; Fort Crook, Nebraska; and Fort Hayes, Ohio. He witnessed many an evening’s bugle call, secure in the knowledge that his post was well ordered at the sound of Taps. Certainly, John Pershing triumphed. While most other World War I Allied military leaders were heavily criticized in postwar assessments, Black Jack basked in near universal acclaim. The American leader took a special delight in briefly mentioning the Belfort Ruse in his Pulitzer Prize-winning memoirs. His wartime chief of staff, General McAndrew, drew prestigious postwar positions, eventually becoming president of the U.S. Army War College.

As for the prime implementer of the scheme, Colonel Arthur Conger found himself in the intelligence field after the Great War, successively serving as a military attaché in Berne, Oslo, and Berlin. During the last assignment, in 1926, he came into contact with one of his former adversaries, a German officer who was particularly knowledgeable about the events around Belfort and Mulhausen in September 1918. The secretive Conger preserved the anonymity of this source, referring to the informant as Colonel X. He told Conger that he had written Ludendorff after analyzing the telltale signs of U.S. activity during the early days of September. He recalled advocating the immediate dispatch of three divisions to the south. The former adversary then repeated to Conger his 1918 comment to Ludendorff: I recognize quite fully that all these preparations being made for attack may perfectly well turn out to be a ruse de guerre, however, there is nothing to indicate that it is not the real point of attack and our danger there is so great that I deem it imperative to have three divisions.

Thus in 1926 for the first time, Conger knew what the Belfort Ruse had accomplished. Surprise was in fact obtained at St. Mihiel to such an extent that many German units did not have the time to execute their withdrawal plans and thus abandoned their weapons and fled, became prisoners, or both. Moreover, the ruse resulted in the deployment of three vital German divisions. These had been sent to the wrong place at a critical time in the war. True, the deception had not been perfect from a purely American standpoint. The German troops in those three divisions had not come from the St. Mihiel salient. But, from an Allied perspective, these enemy divisions were at the wrong place at just the right time, and unavailable to defend against the great Allied fall offensives of 1918. The Belfort Ruse had worked.

That leaves the last of the four American ruse plotters, Fox Conner. Reputedly the smartest officer in the U.S. Army, Conner was promoted to major general and held an array of important postwar positions–many of them futile assignments in the nation’s capital, where his boundless energy and intellect were pitted against the enormous forces of disarmament. He lost that battle as Congress ruthlessly reduced the U.S. Army to little better than a corporal’s guard. Conner was finally released from his frustrating Washington duties and sent to a sunny, lush, and well-manicured army post in Panama.

Conner, however, was too much the energetic planner to relax and take his leisure. Unable to do much about peacetime military neglect, and convinced another war was coming, he set about training one promising young officer for the next conflict. Conner had never commanded in combat, having the misfortune to miss the action during the war with Spain and the ill luck to be the indispensable staff officer during World War I. It is therefore understandable why he took a young man of similar experience under his wing in the Canal Zone during the 1920s. This officer, who became Conner’s protégé and student, had suffered through the onerous duty of training troops in the United States while his contemporaries were earning fame and promotion on the battlefields of France. It would most certainly not be too far-fetched to assume that General Conner told his pupil of the deception operation for St. Mihiel. And it is quite possible the story of the Belfort Ruse may have been of some use twenty-six years later in a much grander scheme of deception, a plot to once again confuse, deceive, and mystify a German opponent. Conner’s description may have inspired some facets of Operation Bodyguard, a plan to deceive the enemy as to when the D-Day invasion would take place, that would be under the command of Conner’s eager and attentive student, Dwight D. Eisenhower.

This article was written by Rod Paschall and originally published in Autumn 2002 edition of MHQ: The Quarterly Journal of Military History.

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