1918 The Spring Offensive: Part II
Between April and July 1918 two skilled commanders, Ludendorff and Foch, traded blows along the Western Front. Could Germany have won the war in spring 1918?
General Ferdinand Foch takes control of Allied forces in a bid to halt the Germans
After ‘Operation Michael’ was halted in front of Amiens in early April 1918, General Erich Ludendorff would continue to rain blows on the Allied lines – four in all between April and mid-july. The first of these, ‘Operation Georgette’, struck against the British Second and First Armies to the south of the Ypres salient on 9 April, pushing back but not breaking the line around that symbolic town. ‘Operation Blücher’, which commenced on 27 May, overwhelmed Allied forces on the Chemin des Dames and saw German troops reaching the River Marne, which they had last crossed in 1914, before they were halted on its banks. ‘Operation Gneisenau’, from 9-15 June, pushed back French forces between Montdidier and Noyon but was soon successfully counterattacked. The final offensive, ‘Marneschutz-reims’, launched on 15 July and attempted to break out of the Marne salient. The Germans were lured into a carefully set Allied trap. Ludendorff’s blows were powerful but ill-coordinated, like the thrashing convulsions of a dying beast. His adversary, General Ferdinand Foch, understood how to contain them and how to catch his enemy off guard and strike back.
When Foch had been confirmed as Allied General-in-chief in early April, British Prime Minister David Lloyd George had asked him, “Mon Général, who should I bet on, you or Ludendorff?” and Foch had replied, “Me, because Ludendorff’s task is much more difficult than mine. He has to beat me, and that he cannot manage.” Foch’s confidence in himself was not misplaced. He was the Allies’ most experienced commander and would come to gain the trust of his fellow generals as he managed the defensive battle. Equally important, he was an offensively minded general, always on the lookout for the chance to strike back at the enemy while they were off balance. Foch carefully managed Allied reserves: “You know my methods; I stick a wafer here, another there, a third at the side… The Germans make scarcely any further progress. A fourth wafer and they will stop altogether,” he once explained to Louis Loucher, the French minister of munitions. He combined this with a proper understanding of the dynamics of industrial battle, which ensured he had contained the German threat by summer.
Foch’s first test came in the Battle of the Lys. On 9 April the German Sixth Army, supported by 30 captured Allied tanks, launched another surprise attack south of Ypres. The main blow fell on the Portuguese Expeditionary Force, whose front collapsed. By the end of the day the Germans had penetrated 9.5 kilometres
(six miles) and crossed the River Lys, although British units on the Portuguese flanks fought hard and confined the breakthrough.
The next day German Fourth Army struck a second blow against the southern flank of the Ypres salient, storming the high ground of the Messines-wytschaete Ridge, south of Ypres. Because the attacks fell in the British sector, moving French reserves to the threatened point would be more difficult. Moreover, Foch initially judged the attack to be a feint and expected Ludendorff to renew the offensive against Amiens with a more powerful blow further south at Arras. Therefore for some days he refused British commander-in-chief Sir Douglas Haig’s entreaties for French reinforcements.
Haig’s famous order of the day of 11 April reflected his anxieties. It stated, “Every position must be held to the last man: there must be no retirement. With our backs to the wall and
“LUDENDORFF’S TASK IS MUCH MORE DIFFICULT THAN MINE. HE HAS TO BEAT ME, AND THAT HE CANNOT MANAGE” – Allied General-in-chief Ferdinand Foch
believing in the justice of our cause each one of us must fight on to the end.” Haig’s and Foch’s difference of opinion reflected their different responsibilities and viewpoints. Haig had to ensure the security of his front and the Channel ports behind it: Foch had to consider the situation along the whole Western Front. On reflection, Foch accepted the growing danger in the north. By 12 April French reserve divisions were on the move. 14 infantry and three cavalry divisions would be sent, but they would not enter the fight until 16 April.
Foch would keep other reserve divisions in hand for when the Germans struck at Villersbretonneux in front of Amiens on 24 April. To gain the time needed to deploy the French reinforcements, it was decided to withdraw the British line in front of Ypres (handing back the ground won at great cost during the Third Battle of Ypres the previous autumn), although that town, which had been defended since 1914, would not be surrendered. The Germans tried to advance south of Ypres towards the rail junction at Hazebrouck. Foch’s counter-plan was to form solid flanks to the north and south of the German penetration and deploy fresh reserves on a succession of defensive lines to slow and eventually halt the German advance.
As with Operational Michael, the German offensive ran out of steam quickly. Thereafter fighting came to focus on the high ground of
“AT TIMES THE FIGHTING WAS FURIOUS AND THE ROAR AND DIN THROUGHOUT THE DAY IS BEYOND DESCRIPTION. THEY CAME OVER IN FOUR OR FIVE WAVES WITH FIXED BAYONETS. VERY FEW GOT BACK”
Mount Kemmel, south of Ypres. A renewed attack on 25 April, covered by an intensive bombardment of high-explosive and gas shells, blasted French troops off the hill, but the dogged resistance of French and British reserves effectively blunted the German thrust, and the offensive petered out by the end of April.
The sophisticated tactics of the first phase of an attack were increasingly abandoned as second-line divisions were thrown into the fight in an attempt to force a decision. Battles resumed the intensity and bloodiness of those of earlier years. On 29 April one British gunner officer recorded, “Throughout the whole of the northern battlefield they continued to hurl great masses of men against our line till evening. Not in a single spot did they succeed and are smashed right down the line. At times the fighting was furious and the roar and din throughout the day is beyond description.
They came over in four or five waves with fixed bayonets. Very few got back.” It was a human sacrifice that the German army could not afford at this late stage of the war.
Ludendorff’s next blow fell against the Chemin des Dames ridge above the River
Aisne, recaptured by the French army in autumn 1917. Here French Sixth Army commander General Denis Duchêne had refused to adopt the most recent defence-in-depth methods,
not wishing to give up the strategic high ground that it had cost so many lives to capture. Not expecting an attack in that sector, French commander-in-chief Philippe Pétain had not pressed his subordinate.
The German hurricane bombardment, which opened on 27 May, fell on densely held front lines, some of which were held by depleted British divisions that had been moved to the sector to recuperate after facing the earlier German blows. “What a dreadful… bombardment,” one French survivor wrote home, “The poor division… there’s nothing left. As for the regiment, while we’ve been in the line 2,000 men have been reduced to just over 200.” Pockets of shell-shocked survivors could not hope to stem the German advance, and there was no intensive resistance behind the front to match that of March and April because local reserves were destroyed in the early phase of the battle. Duchêne, who was quickly relieved of his command, had not taken the precaution to prepare the bridges over the River Aisne for demolition or to defend them with reserve formations, so once through the Allied front positions the German troops could advance quickly and relatively unopposed.
Foch now faced his greatest challenge – where and how could he stop the German advance, and with what? The decision was taken to strip the French front of reserve divisions and to redeploy the French forces supporting the British in Flanders and Picardy. British and Belgian forces would take over more of the defensive line at Ypres to free French reserves. Newly formed American divisions would also be sent into the line. Once again this would take time, but Foch appreciated that the momentum of the German advance would slow.
“FOCH NOW FACED HIS GREATEST CHALLENGE – WHERE AND HOW COULD HE STOP THE GERMAN ADVANCE, AND WITH WHAT?”
The line of the River Marne through Châteauthierry was a natural obstacle that could be held. Here French and American forces consolidated a new defensive line, which checked the German advance. Meeting the Blücher Offensive had been a real test of
Foch’s authority over the other Allied generals, but he had held his nerve and used his powers of persuasion to organise a coalition defence. From that point on he had effective control of all Allied reserves, not just those of France.
The next German blow, to the west of the new Marne salient, was considerably weaker than the earlier ones: Ludendorff’s own reserves were being used up in a series of increasingly attritional battles. German forces were drawn over the River Matz by General Georges Humbert’s Third Army, which gave ground rather than lose men, and were then counterattacked in strength on their right flank by General Charles Mangin’s Tenth Army on
“WHEN LUDENDORFF LAUNCHED HIS FINAL OFFENSIVE IN THE MARNE ON 15 JULY, COMMITTING THREE ARMIES WITH 48 DIVISIONS AND 6,353 GUNS IN AN ATTEMPT TO FORCE A DECISION, FOCH WAS WELL PREPARED TO MEET IT”
11 June, after the Germans had spent their strength in the offensive. Mangin surprised the Germans with a new offensive method. There was no French preliminary bombardment, but instead his attacking infantry were supported by a creeping barrage and large numbers of medium tanks and ground-support aircraft. A second German blow from the western flank of the Marne salient on 12 June stalled, its momentum absorbed by French defencein-depth. The offensive was effectively over within a week and was a clear Allied victory.
When Ludendorff launched his final offensive in the Marne on 15 July, committing three armies with 48 divisions and 6,353 guns in an attempt to force a decision, Foch was well prepared to meet it. East of Reims the momentum of the attack across the bleak Champagne battlefields of 1915 was easily absorbed by a well organised defence-in-depth. Rudolf Binding endured a hellish day in extreme
heat: “No shade, no paths, not even roads; just crumbling white streaks on a flat plain… Into this the French deliberately lured us. They put up no resistance in front; they had neither infantry nor artillery in this forward battlezone… Our guns bombarded empty trenches; our gas-shells gassed empty artillery positions; only in little hidden folds of the ground, sparsely distributed, lay machine-gun posts, like lice in the seams and folds of a garment, to give the attacking force a warm reception. After uninterrupted fighting from five o’clock in the morning until the night… we only succeed in advancing about three kilometres [1.8 miles]… We did not see a single dead Frenchman, let alone a captured gun or machine-gun, and we had suffered heavy losses.”
West of Reims the initial attack fared better, with six German divisions establishing a bridgehead across the River Marne at Dormans. But the bridgehead, overlooked by Allied artillery positions, proved a death trap. French and American troops on the heights overlooking the Marne valley held the blow long enough for Foch to strike back with a pre-planned counterattack on the western flank of the Marne salient. A battle that had been promoted to the German troops as the ‘victory offensive’ – the final decisive thrust – ended in a general withdrawal back to the River Vesle as Foch’s forces caved in the Marne salient.
“WE DID NOT SEE A SINGLE DEAD FRENCHMAN, LET ALONE A CAPTURED GUN OR MACHINE-GUN, AND WE HAD SUFFERED HEAVY LOSSES”
These were large and costly battles, on a scale not seen on the Western Front since 1914. Between April and July the Germans had lost 326,000 and the Allies 386,000 troops, as well as vast amounts of equipment. Foch had won the first round of the campaign because his defensive methods were appropriate and adaptable while Ludendorff’s offensive tactics were repetitive and predictable. Foch had lived up to his boast to Lloyd George, although, as he remarked at the time, it was one thing to stop the Germans and quite another to beat them. On the efforts of the spring and early summer, however,
Allied victory would be founded and achieved before the year was out. Once allowed free reign to take the offensive himself, Foch would demonstrate that his armies were just as effective as Ludendorff’s and that his superior understanding of operations would give him the edge.