Terrible toll of the end of 1918
The most extensive fighting on the Western Front took place in the final year of World War I
‘WE WILL punch a hole… For the rest, we shall see,” was the military directive from the German commander General Erich Ludendorff in the hope of a final breakthrough on the Western Front during World War I.
One hundred years later, it is significant to remember the terrible carnage and loss of human life in the last months of the war.
At the beginning of 1918 the situation for the central powers of Germany, Austro-Hungary and Turkey seemed advantageous, as Russia was ousted from the war by revolution in 1917, whereas the British and French forces had been bogged down by a stalemate in the trenches of the Western Front.
As for the soldiers, the three-and-ahalf years of constant war had left them war-weary and exhausted. But Ludendorff demanded that Germany take the offensive initiative “before America can throw strong forces into the scale”.
In comparison with the unlimited reinforcements of arms and munitions from the US, which entered the war in April 1917, the Germans were faced with starvation and impoverishment due to the Allied blockade.
For that matter, Ludendorff planned to launch an offensive in the spring of 1918, named “Kaiserschlacht”, or the Kaiser’s battle, against the weaker defences of the British First and Third Armies between Arras and St Quentin. Thus, on the morning of March21, 1918, the German offensive began with the “greatest bombardment the world has ever seen”.
British Private AH Flindt recounted that because of the use of poison gas in the foggy weather, “it was impossible to see beyond the cascade of screaming shells, explosions and vivid flashes”. Thereafter the surprise assault of the German storm troopers began. Emerging from their trenches, they passed through gaps in their own wire, crossed no-man’s land and began to penetrate the positions of the dazed defenders opposite them.
Although the storm troopers hastily broke through the British lines and advanced 64km to the railway junction of Amiens, the rudimentary British defences held firm. Between March21 and April10 the assaulting armies had won 3100km2, but were close to exhaustion and had lost one-fifth of their original strength, or 303450 men. The continued offensive in April against the British amounted to a further 120 000 men killed.
The loss of many of Ludendorff ’s finest storm troopers by direct frontal attack resulted in defiant attitudes on the part of the troops, “who will not attack, despite orders”. Filled with frustration, Ludendorff now turned against the French. On the morning of May27, a German artillery bombardment of 6000 guns fired off a staggering 2 million shells in little more than four hours. The French were stunned when the Germans advanced, Paris in sight. After a re-established French defence was constructed, they succeeded in fending off the German onslaught.
With aid from the American Expeditionary Forces under General Pershing, the Germans were halted, leaving Ludendorff outstretched in the poorly defended salient on the front line. With their backs to the wall, the Allied counter-offensive on the Marne on July18, including 750 tanks, forced the Germans to withdraw.
The tide of the war had now clearly turned against the Germans, they being outnumbered three to one, with many rated as second-class divisions. Above all, Ludendorff sensed the “looming defeat” of his armies because of the “sheer number of Americans arriving daily at the front”.
On the Allied side, French General Ferdinand Foch, now commanding all the Allied forces, instructed “everyone to battle”. The major Allied counter-offensive of September 26, with supporting Commonwealth forces and the entire British Tank Corps of 604 tanks, struck the Germans at Amiens.
Allied infantry and tank formations lumbered forward, overwhelming German resistance. It proved too much and left Ludendorff speechless. On August8, 1918, six German divisions were destroyed. Historian Barrie Pitt wrote that never in German military legend were the Germans so rapidly defeated – “companies had surrendered to single tanks, platoons to single infantrymen”. It was a humiliating defeat that became known as the “Black Day of the German Army”, in which nearly 50 000 prisoners were taken.
In the days thereafter, the Germans were outfought all along the Western Front. Between September26 and 29, 50 Allied divisions advanced during the Meuse-Argonne offensive, breaking though the Hindenburg trench defences. This heralded a major German catastrophe with the effect of stirring revolutionary upheaval and appeal to end the war.
Facing imminent defeat, Ludendorff resigned. Afterwards, he sat in his hotel chair and predicted to his wife: “In a fortnight we shall have no (German) empire and no emperor left, you will see.”
In retrospect, the raging offensives during 1918, which ultimately led to the Allied victory over Germany with the signing of the armistice in November 1918, were tremendous. Warfare had changed forever, involving a combination of artillery, tank and aerial warfare never seen in previous wars. Robin Prior and Trevor Wilson, renowned military historians, rightfully emphasised that “the year 1918 witnessed on the Western Front the most extensive fighting of the war”.