THE WESTERN FRONT    

THE LUDENDORFF OFFENSIVE:  MARCH TO JULY 1918

(also known as the GERMAN SPRING OFFENSIVE, OPERATION BLÜCHER and THE KAISER’S BATTLE.)

THE AMERICANS IN ACTION – BATTLE OF CANTIGNY:  MAY/JUNE

    It was on November 11th, 1917, (exactly one year before the end of the war), that the German High Command, led by General Erich Ludendorff, met at Mons, in Belgium, to plan for a decisive offensive on the Western Front in the Spring of 1918. The Americans were beginning to arrive in ever increasing numbers. There was a pressing need to defeat the French and the British before the U.S troops were powerful and competent enough to swing the war in favour of the Allies. Indeed, Ludendorff let it be known that he was prepared to accept a million German casualties to achieve victory and bring the war to a successful end. At this stage, it can be said, the Germans did have some crucial points in their favour. Following the capitulation of the Russians, over 500,000 troops had been transferred from the Eastern to the Western Front, together with more than 1,000 artillery pieces (increasing their strength on the Western Front from 150 divisions to close on 192); the British were in the costly throes of completing the Palestine and Mesopotamian campaigns, and could give no further assistance; the French army was depleted following the brutal battles in defence of Verdun, and, forced to retreat in haste, might well bring about a return to mutiny in their midst. Furthermore, the German high command had at their disposal a large number of divisions which were highly trained in storm troop tactics, a method of attack first put to good use in the German attack on Riga earlier that year. These troops, equipped with light machine guns and hand grenades, would punch through weak areas within the enemy’s line, allowing large numbers to follow and force a general retreat. And to assist in this break through, this attack would be proceeded by a new tactic called “fire-waltz”, a bombardment that contained a mixture of high explosives, tear gas, smoke and poison gas shells. Ludendorff was confident of success and, more to the point, recognised the need to achieve it: “We must strike at the earliest moment before the Americans can throw strong forces into the scale”.


     It can be said that this operation came very close to turning a static war – endured for close on four years – into a war of mobility. As such, it held out the promise of a swift and decisive advance, followed by a swift and decisive capitulation on the part of the Allied powers. Indeed, at this point, the Germans came as close to victory as they had ever been. However, as we shall see, the knock-out blow that was needed to counter the American entry into the war was not achieved. The French and British armies remained intact, despite the ferocity of the attack, and the United States continued to amass their forces along the WesternxFront.

Acknowledgements

Yanks are coming: audiobookstore.com Map of Offensive: twcenter.net Operation Michael: webmatters.net Operation Georgette: shiny7.uk  Ludendorff Offensive: mhhv.org.au – oakham-rutland.libguides.com – military-art,com Belleau Wood: almostchosenpeople.wordpress.com Backs to Wall: townand countryimage.com Ludendorff: history.com Foch: forces-war-records.co.uk Operation Blücher-Yorck: roadstothegreatwar-ww1.blogspot.com

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     The Allies were clearly aware that an attack was on its way. To co-ordinate their efforts against this German onslaught, on the 29th March the French and British appointed General Ferdinand Foch as the Allied Supreme Commander on the Western Front. Up until that time the British and French had commanded their own units, and this had led to occasional difficulties.

 

     The German army launched its massive spring offensive on the 21st March, 1918. The aim was to drive a wedge between the British and French armies at Amiens, via a series of all-out offensives or “operations” (see map above). The British could then be driven back to the sea and knocked out of the war, and the French, badly mauled, be forced to make a hasty retreat. Paris could then be captured and peace terms agreed. It proved easier said than done, but the Germans gained an unprecedented amount of territory and, at one point, reached the River Marne, just northeast of the French capital. However, as we shall see, the heavy casualties suffered, the lack of supplies for the forward troops, and a successful round of counter-attacks brought the offensive to a halt by late June.

 

Operation Michael (The Somme Offensive): 21st March – 5th April


    Operation Michael was the biggest of the four operations, and covered a fifty mile section from Arras to La Frère. Initially, it was aimed at the British Fifth Army, a weak sector, where 12 divisions were strung over 42 miles. The attack, 62 divisions strong, was opened by a five hour bombardment, and such was the devastation caused by over 3,500,000 shells, that by the end of the day the Germans had made the biggest breakthrough for three years; taken 21,000 prisoners; and killed or wounded over 17,000 enemy troops. Such was the extent of their success, that Kaiser Wilhelm declared the next day a national holiday! Over the following two weeks, the Germans were successful in reaching the outskirts of Amiens in the east and coming close to taking Arras in the north, both important transport centres. But the swiftness of the German advance (over 40 miles in eight days!), contained the germs of defeat. To speed their progress, their specialised infantry had only carried light weapons, and their supply lines for food and munitions proved too distant and too open to attack. After aborted attempts to capture Amiens and Arras, Ludendorff was forced to call off Operation Michael on the 5th of April. Over the two week offensive, the British had lost a vast amount of ground; 70,000 of their men had been taken prisoner; 1,300 guns had been captured, and casualties amounted to 200,000. However, by a dogged show of resistance, the British had not been forced back to the sea, and they were still in contact with the French. Meanwhile, some 250,000 American troops had reached the Western Front, substantially adding to the Allied strength.


Operation Georgette (The Lys Offensive): 9th – 29th April


    The second phase, Operation Georgette, fought over the month of April, was again directly aimed at the British Expeditionary Force, this time between Ypres (further north on the map) and La Bassée in Belgium. Once again the Germans attempted to drive a wedge between the two Allied powers and, by seizing the Channel ports of Calais, Boulogne and Dunkirk (just 15 miles distant), deal a knockout blow upon the British. This would then enable them to push the French forces further to the east and seize Paris, a priceless possession, and the key to certain victory. A German attack at Armentiers, on the River Lys (the 9th April), did recapture the Messines ridge and drive a three mile wedge into the British front, but it did not make the depth of breakthrough necessary to put the enemy to flight. Reserve forces, including Anzac and French elements, were brought forward to plug the gap. This, plus logistical problems encountered by the Germans, brought a halt to the attack by the end of April.


     Incidentally, and as noted earlier, at the Battle of Lys a Portuguese force, heavily outnumbered and out-manoeuvred by the battle-hardened Germans, was forced back along a three-mile front and suffered enormous losses. Portugal entered the war in support of the Allies in 1916 and, at the invitation of the British government, began sending troops to the Western Front in February 1917.


Operation Blücher–Yorck (The Aisne Offensive): 27th May – 9th June


     In the third named Operation, Blücher-Yorck, Ludendorff turned his attention to the French in the south. It was meant as a diversion to clear the way for another attempt to reach the Channel, but matters went so well that he decided to make a direct attack upon Paris. Overrunning the Chemin des Dames ridge, the Germans (composed of 23 divisions and 6,000 guns) advanced down the Aisne salient, between the towns of Soissons and Reims, in a bid to reach the French capital. The Allied front line was quickly overwhelmed, and by the end of the day frontline troops had advanced 12 miles. Fearing a total breakthrough, British and American troops were rushed in to assist the French in closing the gap. This they managed to do, but not before the Germans had reached the River Marne, taken the town of Chateau-Thierry, and advanced to within 35 miles of Paris. There was widespread panic in the streets of the capital. The city had been bombarded by long-range guns since the 21st March, and now there was a real danger of a full scale invasion. The Germans seemed to have victory within their grasp. By then, however, German casualties were increasing at an alarming rate; there was a serious lack of food and munitions; the troops were suffering from fatigue; and there was no possibility of receiving any ground support. Ludendorff decided to suspend the operation, and capitalize on the gains made by mounting a second attack on the capital further north (code-named Gneisenau). In twelve days of fierce fighting, both sides suffered around 250,000 casualties, killed, wounded, missing, or taken prisoner.


Operation Gneisenau (The Battle of the Matz): 9th – 13th June


     Operation Gneisenau, an extension of Operation Blücher–Yorck, was launched on the north -eastern edge of the Aisne salient along the Matz River. The French had learnt of the coming attack via a German prisoner but, initially, could not hold the line. On day one a force of 21 divisions advanced some ten miles on a 23 mile front, despite fierce French and American opposition. But on the second day the French made a surprise counter-attack at Compiègne (see map above), four divisions strong and supported by 150 tanks. The Germans gave way, and the operation was called off the next day. Those four days cost the German army 30,000 dead or wounded, and the Allies 35,000.

THE AMERICANS IN ACTION: MAY/JUNE


     The Battle of Cantigny was the first major battle fought by the American Expeditionay Force on the Western Front. Tasked with retaking the village of Cantigny on the River Somme (some seventy miles north of Paris), and assisted by French air cover and the provision of heavy guns, tanks and flame throwers, the Americans launched their attack on the morning of the 28th May, at the opening of Operation Blücher-Yorck. After a 90 minute artillery barrage, 4,000 men of the U.S. First Division, advancing at a pre-arranged speed, took the village in less than an hour and, over the next two days, repulsed six powerful German counter-attacks, often in savage hand-to-hand fighting. It was an impressive start and proved, as one commander put it, that the Americans “would both fight and stick”.


    And,xmuch to the concern of the German high command, this fighting spirit was even more in evidence the following month. It was during the Aisne offensive that, in the south of the region, the Americans took part in an even more ferocious encounter with German forces. On the 4th June, a contingent of German infantry, 2,000 strong and possessing around thirty machine guns, had occupied Belleau Wood and the nearby village of Boureschez as part of a overall plan to advance on Paris, some fifty miles distant (see map above). The United States 2nd Infantry Division, including a brigade of U.S. marines, was sent to the area to stop their advance. There, despite their lack of artillery support and little if any cover, they carried out a series of attacks – much of it involving vicious close quarter combat – and by the end of the month they had taken the village and occupied the wood. It was a courageous enterprise, remembered to this day, but it came at a tremendous cost. Out of the 9,500 men of the Marine Brigade, 1,000 were killed, and 4,000 were wounded, gassed or reported missing, and overall casualties amounted to 7,900, including 1,800 deaths. But, casualtiesxapart, this left no doubt as to the fighting ability of the American forces and the valuable contribution they were clearly going to make to the Allied cause. Under their supreme commander, General John Joseph Pershing, they were to play an increasing role in the fighting, and in September, as we shall see, launch their own operations at the Battles of Mihiel and Argonne. By then the American Expeditionary Force was over a million strong and increasing by 25,000 troops a month.


     Incidentally, after the battle, the French renamed Belleau Wood “Bois de la Brigade de Marine”. It remains to this day as a pilgrimage destination for members of the U.S. Marine Corps.


THExFAILURE OF THE LUDENDORFF OFFENSIVE


    Initially, the Ludendorff Offensive was a success, with each operation making substantial breakthroughs. In the space of three months this German Spring Offensive had taken more ground than the Allies had taken in three years. By early June, Paris was being bombed and bombarded regularly, and both the French and British governments had become alarmed at the strength of the German onslaught. Indeed, as early as the 11th April, General Haig had felt it necessary to issue a “Special Order of the Day” to the British Expeditionary Force. The conclusion stressed the urgency of the matter as he saw it:

     The German onslaught was indeed impressive. In Operation Michael, for example, 62 divisions had advanced forty miles in eight days, inflicting 200,000 Allied casualties and capturing 70,000 prisoners. And in Operation Blücher-Yorck, 23 divisions had burst through a 25 mile gap in the front line, and swiftly advanced towards the French capital. But the operations were launched quite independently of each other, and this tended to reduce Germany’s decided advantage in the number of combat troops. They were launched individually and, by means of reserves from other sectors, repulsed individually. And so swift was the German advance, that the frontline troops quickly ran out of food and supplies, and the new salients they had created lacked the required strength in depth, making them an easy target once the Allies went on the offensive. A united attack on all fronts, or a powerful, combined attack upon Paris, might well have had a greater chance of success than a series of isolated operations, effective though they were in the short term.



     Erich vonxLudendorff (1865-1937) was born near Poznań in Prussia and enlisted in the army at the age of 18. In 1894 he joined the German general staff, and, working with Helmuth von Moltke, helped revise the Schlieffen Plan. In 1914, he joined the German Eighth Army, then served in Prussia. And it was there, as chief-of-staff to Paul von Hindenburg, that he played a major part in the decisive victories over the Russians at Tannenberg and the Musurian Lakes. In 1916, he and Hindenburg were given supreme control over the country’s military affairs, and set about mobilizing the entire nation for the waging of total war. In 1917 he supported the resumption of unrestricted submarine warfare, and when Russia withdrew from the war he played a major role in drawing up the Treaty of Brest-Litovsk.


  As we have seen, in March 1918 he masterminded his huge but unsuccessful offensive on the Western Front, and, as we shall see, he completed this offensive in July with Operation Friedensturm, a likewise failure. When the armistice came in November, he refused to accept the terms and resigned as a consequence. His insistence that the German army had not been defeated in battle, but had been “stabbed in the back” by left-wing politicians in Berlin, did much to assist Hitler in his rise to power. He supported the Nazi movement, and took part in both the Kapp Putsch of March 1920 and the Beer Hall Putsch of November 1923. In 1925 he ran for president against his one-time friend Hindenburg, but came a poor second. From 1924 to 1928 he was a member of the Reichstag, but then became disillusioned with the Nazi party, and retired from politics. He died in December, 1937.


    FerdinandxFoch (1851-1929) was born in Tarbes in the Hautes Pyrénées and joined the army in 1870. After fighting in the Franco-Prussian war, he joined the French General Staff as a artillery specialist and from 1907 to 1911 was commandant of the École de Guerre in Paris. When the First World War broke out, he employed a section of the French Second Army to block the German advance on Nancy and then, as commander of the Ninth Army, he gained fame for his part in the counter-attack at the Battle of the Marne. On the strength of this, he was put in charge of the Northern Army and presided over the Battle of the Somme in the summer of 1916.


     His most important appointment came during the Ludendorff Offensive when, as we have seen, he was made Allied Supreme Commander on the Western Front. Despite some disagreement with General Pershing over the deployment of American troops, he handled this difficult appointment quite tactfully, and his skill as a military theorist contributed greatly to the eventual Allied victory. As we shall see, he was made a Marshal of France in August 1918 and, the following month, planned the Hundred Days Offensive, the operation which led to the final defeat of Germany. He then headed the Armistice negotiations, and played a prominent part in the Paris Peace Conference.


    The failure of the Ludendorff Offensive, a powerful and wide-reaching onslaught, was a serious blow to Hindenburg and Ludendorff. They had hoped to snatch a late victory – the coup de grâce – before the arrival of American forces tipped the balance in favour the the Allies. There was really no other way out. The impact of the u-boat campaign, so promising in early 1917, had been severely reduced by the introduction of the convoy system; the substantial increase in troop numbers following the surrender of Russia had been virtually eroded by the recent operations; there was growing unrest in the armed forces over the deteriorating military situation; and mounting anger and revolt on the home front over the lack of food. As we shall see, in July there was a last desperate attempt by the Germans to go on the offensive via the fifth and final attack, named Operation Friedensturm or the Second Battle of the Marne. It did not succeed in its objective, and this failure was followed by the Allies’ Hundred Days’ Offensive, their final and successful campaign on the Western Front. Germany was facing defeat on the battlefield.

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