LUDENDORFF VERSUS FOCH
1918 SAW TWO MASTER STRATEGISTS TRY To Find THE key To VICTORY
Generals Erich Ludendorff and Ferdinand Foch were two of the best commanders of the war. Both had extensive experience when they faced off in 1918. Ludendorff had learned modern tactics and battle planning on the Eastern Front, when he was chief of staff to General Paul von Hindenburg from 1914 to 1916.
When Hindenburg became Germany’s commander-in-chief in September 1916 Ludendorff assumed the new role of first quartermaster general, responsible for German strategy and military operations. Ludendorff found adapting to the material-intensive warfare of the Western Front difficult after fighting the Russians. His first decision was to assume a more defensive posture, since Germany’s armies were suffering heavily in the dual battles of attrition at Verdun and the Somme.
In spring 1917 he conducted a strategic retreat to newly built defencein-depth positions – the Hindenburg
Line – with a view to avoiding a further bloodletting like that of 1916. Foch had directed the Somme offensive, and from that experience he came to appreciate that the war would only be decided by a cumulative process of attrition carried out on such a scale and at such a rate that the enemy could not reconstitute their beaten formations. To that extent Foch saw the enemy’s manpower to be the principal target of strategy, although morale, material and logistics were other factors that had to be considered. He would not let his armies, whose own morale was shaky after 1917’s battles, bleed themselves white in long attritional battles in the future. To deliver this strategy, appropriate tactics and operational methods – which Foch dubbed ‘scientific battle’ – had been developed on the battlefield in 1915 and 1916.
By 1918 large battles could be organised quickly and with the expectation of success, at least in their initial stages. Foch therefore planned, when the opportunity presented itself, to use a sequence of powerful, coordinated offensives all along the Western Front to break Germany’s fighting power once and for all: “To embarrass the enemy in the utilising of his reserves and not allow him sufficient time to fill up his units” as Foch explained to the allied commanders-in-chief in July 1918. It was his understanding of the operational level of war – the use of battles to achieve pre-determined strategic ends – that gave Foch the advantage.
once he launched his ‘general battle’ in summer 1918 it was his intention that it would continue until one or the other side was exhausted. In contrast, Ludendorff’s methods lacked sophistication. “We talk too much about operations and too little about tactics”, Ludendorff stated when preparing his offensive. “all measures have to concentrate on how to defeat the enemy, how to penetrate his front positions.” once a breach was made, the battle would be improvised to exploit emerging enemy weaknesses, but there was no overriding strategic purpose in the German offensives.
While Foch’s individual battles would be limited in time and space, Ludendorff’s would continue until the attack’s energy had been contained. Foch had learned in 1916 that breaking through would not produce a decision: pushing back the enemy’s forces, systematically destroying them wherever they were encountered, was the way to end the war.