ICM 1:35 “Miracle on the Marne”

[Fran]

1:35

“Miracle on the Marne”

 

 

ICM

Catalogue number DS3520

Price: around 45€

 

“The ICM "Miracle on the Marne" is a 1:35 scale diorama set released in 2025 (kit reference DS3530), focusing on the iconic events of the First Battle of the Marne.

And what was the Miracle all about? The miracle of Paris not falling to German hands in WWI

 

“Of the continental European powers who went to war in 1914, France probably carried the smallest share of the blame for its outbreak. In the rapidly escalating crisis of that summer, the republic played a largely defensive role. Yet its stake in the ensuing conflict was at least as great as that of any other participant. For France, this was a struggle to liberate its own territory and to recover Alsace-Lorraine, the provinces lost to the hated German occupiers a generation before in the Franco-Prussian War.

With approximately 2 million men, the French army dwarfed the British Expeditionary Force (BEF) that was rapidly dispatched to offer support. The British troops were well-trained and equipped – their Lee-Enfield rifles were superior to the standard French issue 1886 Lebel model. British khaki uniforms were also better adapted to modern warfare than the bright blue and red outfits that made the French so conspicuous in battle. But the BEF fielded barely 100,000 men in August 1914.

Against the Franco-British coalition were pitched some 1.7 millionGerman troops. The invaders possessed advantages in terms of equipment. German units were issued with effective Mauser Gewehr 98 rifles and had the edge over their opponents when it came to machine-guns, light mortars, and field artillery. Their 105mm and 150mm howitzers would prove deadly killing machines.

The decisive encounter – remembered in France as the ‘miracle on the Marne’ – took place along an extended front running eastward from Paris along the River Marne. Here the German war plan stalled, ending its commanders’ hopes of a swift resolution to the war. Yet it also fell short of a conclusive allied victory, and led to the prolonged blood-letting that scarred the Western Front over the next four years. How are we to explain what happened on the Marne?

Contrasting commanders

The opposing sides’ commanders could scarcely have been less alike. Joseph Joffre, chief of the French general staff since 1911, cut an avuncular figure with his stout physique, white hair, and moustache. Known as ‘Papa Joffre’, the 62-year-old exuded stolidity and reassurance rather than dash and dynamism. His insistence on a regular routine of eating and sleeping reinforced his imperturbable image.

Yet appearances were deceptive. Joffre was a master of detail, who always weighed alternatives up carefully, but who knew his own mind. During the war, he monitored his subordinates closely, bombarding them with missives and driving great distances, often at considerable personal risk, to visit them at the front. Here was a key difference with his principal antagonist, Helmuth von Moltke the Younger, chief of the German general staff since 1906. As the invasion got under way, Moltke based himself in Koblenz and then in Luxembourg, 150 miles away from the action in France, and allowed his junior commanders too much latitude.

Joffre was capable of great ruthlessness too, sacking commanders whom he judged to be lacking in loyalty or competence, or both, in the wake of the German invasion. As he stated in his memoirs, ‘you can wage war only with men who have faith in their success, who by their mastery of themselves know how to impose their will on their subordinates and dominate events’.

Joseph Joffre, chief of the French general staff (above), and Helmuth von Moltke the Younger, chief of the German general staff (below). The two commanders could scarcely have been less alike.

By contrast, Moltke exhibited a fatal lack of self-confidence. He owed his promotion to a personal connection with Kaiser Wilhelm II and was unable to live up to the legend of his famous uncle and namesake, the Elder Moltke, victor of the German wars of unification in 1864-1871. Under pressure, he would soon suffer a career-ending nervous breakdown.

Sir John French, commander of the BEF, divided professional opinion both in his lifetime and after. Undoubtedly brave and popular with his men, he was also emotional, inattentive to detail, and without clear and consistent strategic vision. A cavalry commander of genius, he lacked many of the key qualities required of a senior leader at a time of grave crisis. His touchiness, combined with perhaps excessive caution, made him a difficult partner for Joffre. In addition, the BEF remained organisationally independent, with instructions to cooperate with the French but to consult London before embarking on offensive action.

Reality bites

How did the belligerent parties converge on the Marne? Germany followed the broad outlines of the Schlieffen Plan as soon as war broke out, but with critical modifications. Schlieffen’s blueprint may well have been incapable of delivering victory right from its conception, as it expected German forces to maintain momentum on dangerously extended supply lines. Late changes made failure a near-certainty. The advance through France was weakened by the transfer of some troops eastwards to meet the Russians, who were mobilising more rapidly than anticipated.

The German right wing, which was meant to sweep along the Channel coast to encircle Paris, was also denuded of troops to deal with unexpectedly strong Belgian resistance. In the first month of the war, the German army lost 265,000 men killed, wounded, and missing. The survivors were approaching exhaustion after their rapid advance through the summer heat. These setbacks gave time for the BEF to deploy.

If German plans did not work out as anticipated, neither did the preparations of the Entente. French military thinking was based on Plan XVII, devised by Joffre. It embodied the concept of the offensive, to which most French generals subscribed in 1914. They were convinced that, notwithstanding improvements in artillery and other weapons of defence, the key to victory was the bravery, commitment, and élan of troops in a frontal assault.

By taking the initiative in the west, the French hoped as well to aid their Russian allies, whose superior numbers were expected to prove decisive once brought to bear on eastern Prussia. Plan XVII anticipated a German attack through both Belgium and Alsace-Lorraine, but assumed that the invaders could not succeed in both theatres. A determined French counter-attack into Lorraine would cause the Germans to take troops from their forces further north, critically weakening their offensive.

There followed a series of French assaults along the country’s eastern border, known as the ‘Battle of the Frontiers’. The French government refused to allow a pre-emptive movement into Belgium, probably because it would antagonise Britain. It also mistakenly believed that the great Belgian fortresses of Liège and Namur would be proof against a German advance west of the Meuse. In the battles of August 1914, first against well-prepared German positions in Lorraine and then in the wooded, hilly terrain of the Ardennes, French forces were exposed to devastating German fire, taking some 260,000 casualties.

Retrieving the situation

Meanwhile, the BEF was retreating from the Belgian frontier after a clash with General von Kluck’s First Army at Mons. En route, at great cost, British forces conducted a holding action at Le Cateau in late August. Shortly afterwards, the French Fifth Army, also heading southwards, checked the onward march of General von Bülow’s Second Army at Guise.

Responding to changing events, Joffre abandoned the failed Plan XVII, and from 24 August moved troops westwards from Lorraine. A well-developed rail network enabled the French to make the most of their numerical advantage. Joffre formed a new army, the Sixth, under General Michel-Joseph Maunoury, whose task was to cover the capital city and outflank the German right wing. Older accounts suggested that the initiative came from the military governor of Paris, General Joseph Simon Gallieni, but it seems that he and Joffre reached the same conclusion independently of each other.

The invaders now made a fatal miscalculation. On 30 August, Kluck decided not to move west of Paris, but to cut eastwards to support Bülow and cut off the main body of the French armies from the capital. But as they wheeled east of Paris, the Germans exposed their right flank to attack.

Sir John French had decided to rest his troops, but Joffre – backed up by the findings of aerial reconnaissance – realised that this was the moment for the counter-stroke. The BEF commander found himself overruled on 1 September, following a direct appeal from the French leadership to Britain’s War Secretary, the legendary Lord Kitchener.

To his chagrin, French was obliged to cooperate with Joffre’s new strategy. It was no doubt through gritted teeth that Joffre cabled Kitchener to offer thanks for Sir John’s ‘constant’, ‘precious’, and ‘energetic’ support of the allied effort. As a precaution, the French commander recommended that the government leave Paris for Bordeaux, as its embattled predecessor had done in the Franco-Prussian War.

Rendezvous on the Marne

When battle was joined on 6 September, 56 allied infantry divisions and nine-and-a-half cavalry divisions confronted 44 German infantry and seven cavalry divisions. What followed was a series of engagements along a front 100 miles long, with both sides taking the offensive at different times. Initially, the battle went largely in the Germans’ favour. In the centre, in the St Gond marshes, the German Second Army pushed back France’s Ninth Army, led by Ferdinand Foch, towards the Seine. In the west, too, the Germans repelled French assaults.

The sheer determination of the French infantry, however, proved critical. They were supported by the withering fire of their 75mm guns – known by the Germans as ‘black butchers’ – whose flat trajectory made them ideal for the task. In the process, they expended most of their ammunition, but the Germans also struggled to supply their field artillery.

One of the best-known stories of the battle is that of the Paris taxicabs, commandeered by the Paris police on General Gallieni’s instructions, to ferry reinforcements to the front. In fact, many of the French infantry travelled by lorry during the night of 7-8 September, rather than by taxi. Lots of the vehicles missed their way in the dark and suffered from accidents and flat tyres. Returning for a second load of passengers, the first wave often encountered slower oncoming taxis, which were still making their first journey and now clogged the roads.

The turning point came on 9 September, when the allied leadership saw a chance to exploit a 30-mile gap that had opened up between Germany’s First and Second Armies as the former moved eastwards. Into this opening the BEF and the French Fifth Army, headed by a dynamic new commander, General Louis Franchet d’Espèrey, now moved, with decisive results. Shortly afterwards, the Germans withdrew rather than risk the encirclement and destruction of their forces.

Could the Germans have won? Some historians have criticised them for prematurely breaking off the action. Communication between the First and Second Armies was poor and the mood at Moltke’s distant headquarters was pessimistic. He dispatched an emissary, Lieutenant Colonel Richard Hentsch, with discretionary powers to order a retreat if the situation on the ground required it. By the time Hentsch arrived, aerial reconnaissance reports of the BEF crossing the Marne had made Bülow’s mind up for him. He and Hentsch had a similarly negative temperament. With Second Army starting to retreat, Kluck was obliged to follow suit. The Battle of the Marne was over, leaving the French and Germans with roughly a quarter of a million casualties each, and the British with losses of approximately 12,700.

Missed opportunity?

It is far from certain whether the Germans could have precipitated a French collapse if they had stood firm. The most likely outcome would have been a stalemate, closer to Paris and thus more dangerous for the French. It seems clear that a failure of nerve was the main reason for the German withdrawal. The First World War veteran and military historian Basil Liddell Hart described the Marne as a ‘psychological rather than a physical victory… the issue of battles is usually decided in the minds of the opposing commanders, not in the bodies of their men.’

The war of movement would almost certainly have ended at some point, even without the Marne. Trenches had started to appear in the eastern sector by the beginning of September. But the outcome of the battle determined the timing and nature of the ensuing stalemate. The Germans withdrew to the north bank of the River Aisne, where on steeply rising ground they entrenched – a form of warfare for which they were more prepared than their opponents. Although apparently at breaking point just a few days before, they now rallied to take up an advantageous position.

Critics of the allied performance on the Marne have argued that they should have pushed forward more decisively through the gap between the German armies. But the French and British soldiers, no less than their opponents, were exhausted. This is not surprising. On the 13 days of the retreat from Mons, the BEF’s infantry had snatched an average of four hours’ rest in every 24 hours.

Nonetheless the Marne was a strategically decisive battle. Germany’s failure to win a quick victory meant that it was now committed to a protracted war. In the long run, the imbalance of resources between Germany and its opponents would doom it to defeat.

More than any other individual, Joffre deserves credit for the outcome. He had found himself in a position of supreme responsibility in his country’s greatest crisis since 1870. Public opinion was febrile, and another reverse could easily have caused a collapse of morale akin to that of June 1940.

For all the heroism and skill displayed in the BEF’s retreat, it was numerically small and no one could tell, at the start of the battle, what contribution it would make. It was Joffre who took the key decisions on which the fate of Paris, and of France itself – and thus of the allied cause in the west – depended. As he put it, with his characteristic grim humour, ‘I don’t know who won the Battle of the Marne, but if it had been lost, I know who would have lost it.’

History on  - https://the-past.com/feature/miracle-on-the-marne/

 

This kit is a multi-subject diorama package with several older releases from ICM that combines World War I figure ranges from ICM catalogue.

 

Opening the box, you get a set of German infantry figures, a German machine gun 08 team of figures operating the machine gun, French infantry  and British Infantry  and a Vickers machine gun crew figures also operating the machine gun.

It’s a lot of figures and accessories, all from 1914-era range, so all are early-war uniforms.

 

 

 Besides the figures sets, there`s also WWI British infantry weapon and equipament set with a lot of equipament like Byonet, grenade , shovel, lewis machine gun, rattle etc.

 

 

Also, there is another set of WWI German Infantry Weapon and Equipament full with with German equipment, like MG08, Mauser carb, kugelhandgranate grenade, Luger pistol, etc

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

And if that was enough, also a full set of WWI French Infantry weapons and equipment, with Hotchkiss Ml1 1909 machine gun, Lebel Berhier, OF-15 grenade, chauchat magazine etc.

 

 

 

 

If thus figures weren’t enough there also these 3 sets that will make you have a lots of equipment for this diorama and probably for a few others that you may want to use these.

 

 

 

Finally, an extra set of the Bristish Vicekrs Machine gun , with a full and single sprue for it.

 

 

 

 

All figures set have instructions with the parts and colors. As for the equipment a single sheet with small instructions and the label nam,e of all the equipment available on the sets.

 

As for the figures, as I once said, thes ICMfiguress are one of the in injection plastic.

So besides the very good and sharp detail (as the molding is very good with minimal flash), they have excellent anatomy, natural poses, fine uniform details (buttons, straps, kepis), and very good facial expressions (AS the faces are quite good, you can have some other expressions and higher face quality with some aftermarket face like Hornet heads).

Infortunaly, and I`m sorry but my pictures don’t make these figures the justice they deserved.

All the sets can be combined between so you can make or replicate some part of the battle, but the ground and scenario is all up to you.

This set only gives the modeler the figures and equipment.

  

Conclusion

This is a fantastis set with tons of figures and equipment that allows you to replicate the Miracle of Marne or a single part of it and having leftover for a lot of others WWI project that you might have.

It’s a set very useful and much cheaper then buying every single set separately and essential for anyone interested in World War I modeling.

And you can also use this set with the ICM's Renault Taxi de la Marne (kit 35660), as it is a perfect match to a fantastic history of an historical battle.

 

VERY Highly recommend this to intermediate/expert modeler

 

 

My thanks to ICM for making this fantastic set.