1918 Spring Offensive: Part III
In July, Foch would surprise the Germans on the Marne – the prelude to their defeat by the end of the year
How Ferdinand Foch’s strategic gamble pushed the Germans back at the Marne
As summer passed on the Western Front, fortunes were to change. The blows that had been raining on the British and French fronts since March were weakening, while Allied resources were growing. Prompted to accelerate the dispatch of men to Europe as the military crisis escalated, American forces were now gathering in large numbers and starting to enter the battle. The numerical advantage the Germans had enjoyed in the spring after their peace with Bolshevik Russia had disappeared, and their troops were tiring after four months of hard fighting.
Although French and British troops were also tired, they had grown in confidence. They had held the enemy onslaught, and the active defence Foch conducted had shown them that they were quite capable of halting the Germans and striking strong blows in their turn. Foch always had in mind a bigger counterattack, one that would exploit the inherent weaknesses in Ludendorff’s flailing blows to reverse the fortunes of war. The Second Battle of the Marne in late July would prove there was more fight left in the enemy, which Ludendorff claimed was about to break.
The thrust and counter-thrust on the battlefields of the Western Front in 1918 masked a more fundamental issue. The home fronts of both sides had been gripped by weariness after three and a half years of war and, after the example furnished by Russia, there was concern whether they would hold while the armies fought things to a conclusion. French and British soldiers and civilians would respond positively to the crisis. Frenchmen had not defended their national soil since 1914 only to lose it at the end. Their premier, Georges Clemenceau, tapped into their patriotism: “My foreign policy and my home policy are the same. At home I wage war, abroad I wage war…i shall go on waging war.”
“THE SECOND BATTLE OF THE MARNE IN LATE JULY WOULD PROVE THERE WAS MORE FIGHT LEFT IN THE ENEMY, WHICH LUDENDORFF CLAIMED WAS ABOUT TO BREAK”
British workers happily sacrificed their holidays to manufacture the munitions needed by their hardpressed army. Even Italy, badly shocked by the Battle of Caporetto in autumn 1917, had largely recovered by mid-1918 and was able to send an army corps to reinforce the Western Front.
In Germany, however, the situation was more desperate, with an Allied blockade reducing the people to near-starvation and growing political unrest in the face of a strengthening military dictatorship on the home front. German politician Kurt Riezler recognised that “all depends on the offensive… should it not succeed there will come a severe moral crisis which probably none of the present government leaders has the talent to master effectively.”
In the spring, Ludendorff had staked the German Empire’s political future on a victory.
Yet when his hungry soldiers fell voraciously on well-stocked Allied supply depots, it became clear to them that the high command had misled them, and that the Allies were not starving too. When Foch’s counter-stroke on the Marne obliged Ludendorff, himself in an increasing state of nervous exhaustion, to announce to his troops in early August that his so-called ‘peace offensive’ had failed and that the army was resuming the defensive, he was effectively admitting that the
war was lost and that it was only a matter of time before Germany would be forced to make terms.
Ludendorff’s admission was the consequence of a fundamental shift in the strategic position at the end of July 1918. Previously on the defensive, the Allies had struck back with a sudden and overwhelming counterattack against the final German offensive, which tried to cross the River Marne and expand the salient created by their May offensive, ‘Operation Blücher’.
Foch appreciated that salients were inherently vulnerable, with flanks that could be broken and exposed lines of communication. If he could absorb the energy of the next German attack at the apex of the salient then he could catch the enemy off balance and strike at these vulnerabilities. He would use General Charles Mangin’s Tenth Army that had mounted the successful counterattack on the River Matz in June, reinforced by two large and fresh American divisions (First and Second) to attack the right (western) flank of the salient. This would be the first time US troops participated in a largescale offensive, and Mangin ensured that their inexperience would be offset by close support from veteran French formations, including the Moroccan Division and the Régiment de Marche of the Foreign Legion – the most decorated units in the French army.
As well as the usual powerful support from artillery and aircraft and over 200 medium tanks, the French would be using their new Renault FT17 light tanks en masse for the first time. Armed with either a 37mm gun or a machine gun in a revolving turret, and capable of matching the infantry’s speed of advance, this new weapon provided a means for rapid forward exploitation once the crust of the enemy’s defence had been pierced. As it was, the flanks of the salient were relatively thinly held and the German field defences were not as elaborate as those that had faced Allied offensives in previous years, so Mangin anticipated that once he attacked he could advance rapidly on the enemy’s railway communications centre at Soissons.
The ‘Marneschutz-reims’ offensive, which began on 15 July, had been going on for several days and had spent its early momentum when Mangin’s counterattack, the Battle of Soissons, was launched on 18 July. Elsewhere around the salient other Allied divisions – French, British, US and Italian – engaged the enemy to hold them while Mangin’s blow, supported by General Jean-marie Degoutte’s Sixth Army on its right, smashed in the salient’s right flank between the River Aisne and Belleau.
Mangin was able to concentrate his forces secretly in the extensive woods of Villerscotterêts: an overnight storm drowned out the sound of advancing tanks. The French achieved complete surprise by opening the bombardment at the same time as the infantry attack began. At 4.40am, masses of US and French infantry, supported by French tanks, surged forwards in a thick mist that shrouded their approach, and overwhelmed the thinly held German defences.
The first morning saw rapid progress as the enemy was caught off balance: at its deepest, the US Second Division advanced seven kilometres (4.3 miles). Once the attack had passed the frontline trenches, hundreds
“THE FIRST MORNING SAW RAPID PROGRESS AS THE ENEMY WAS CAUGHT OFF BALANCE: AT ITS DEEPEST THE US SECOND DIVISION ADVANCED SEVEN KILOMETRES”
of Renault FT17S, which had been held in reserve to exploit the initial break-in, were sent forwards to wreak havoc in the German rear areas during the long summer day. Only the fact that the German positions were dissected by deep ravines, in which the light tanks could not operate, gave the defenders spaces to regroup and organise resistance.
As with all offensives, by the afternoon the momentum of the assault was slowing, as attacking troops tired and German reserves were deployed. Attempts to follow up over the following days had more limited success. The tanks, now used in small units rather than en masse, suffered heavy losses as the enemy’s field artillery was deployed to engage them, and only localised gains were made.
Nevertheless, Mangin’s blow had achieved the desired result. The railway junction at Soissons came within range of French artillery fire, and Ludendorff ordered a general withdrawal from the salient, fearing his forces would be trapped and annihilated. He did so with reluctance, suggesting he was growing increasingly out of touch with the military situation. His subordinates pressed him to retreat, justifying their view with reports of collapsing morale and increasing rates of desertion among their troops.
Ludendorff himself still believed the army had the strength and motivation to counterattack. In the Battle of Tardenois from 20 July, Italian and British troops attached to French Fifth Army attempted to penetrate the left (eastern) flank of the salient along the valley of the River Ardre but were met with fierce resistance, as the Germans struggled to prevent the Allied noose closing around the troops withdrawing from their centre. In the last week of July the salient was pulled back as the Germans tried to establish a new line along the River Ourcq. Mangin’s army attacked again on 1 August. Although there was less success against a reinforced German line
than on 20 July, the attack put enough pressure on the enemy to make them shorten their line again. The front stabilised along the line of the rivers Aisne and Vesle. Soissons was liberated and Paris was no longer threatened.
Within three weeks, Allied troops had driven the Germans from the Marne salient, recovering much of the ground lost since
May and inflicting heavy casualties – around 168,000. In particular, the large number of prisoners taken – almost 30,000 – indicated that the fight was going out of the enemy’s troops. The Second Battle of the Marne was an Allied success without precedent and demonstrated that the tide had now turned. But it did not necessarily mean that the war would end quickly.
The German army that returned to the defensive was still powerful – it had demonstrated its defensive prowess for three years between 1915 and 1917 – although its fighting power had been seriously depleted in its own offensive operations. The Spanish flu pandemic, which reached France in the spring and was ravaging the German army come July, would also take a heavy toll on the weakened German soldiers.
In an attritional war, who could fill the ranks for the longest would ultimately determine the outcome, and by this point German reserves were in short supply. The new recruits of the
“GERMAN RESERVES WERE IN SHORT SUPPLY. THE NEW RECRUITS OF THE 1919 CLASS WERE ALREADY AT THE FRONT”
1919 class were already at the front and the only other source of reserves was recovered wounded men and ‘comb-outs’ from the rear areas – men previously classified as unfit for frontline service. Moreover, morale was weakening and there was a growing problem of desertion and shirking in the army’s rear areas.
The Allies were running short of men too. Facing manpower shortages, British divisions had been reorganised from 12 to nine infantry battalions over the winter of 1917–18 and, under pressure in the spring, the age of frontline service for conscripts had been reduced from 19 to 18 and a half. In a sign of political instability as the military crisis deepened in the spring, Prime Minster David Lloyd George had to face criticism in parliament that he’d deliberately starved the army of men to restrain Field Marshal Sir Douglas Haig’s attacking tendencies. For the Allies, however, American ‘Doughboys’ in ever growing numbers would redress manpower shortages if they could be made fighting efficient. The first formed divisions had fought on the Marne with enthusiasm if limited skill, but once properly trained and led they would become a huge asset.
The Allies’ other asset was Foch, who was awarded his marshal’s baton at the end of the Second Battle of the Marne, in which he had demonstrated his control of all Allied forces. Through the difficult spring and early summer the generalissimo had been awaiting the moment when he could strike back with effect. Now that he had regained the initiative he intended to press his advantage. In late summer and autumn 1918 Foch would rain his own series of blows all along the Western Front. His strategy was based on a careful assessment of the relative size and fighting capacity of the opposing armies. He knew that with American assistance his forces would increase in strength, while Ludendorff’s could only shrink.
Now that the counter-offensive was underway it had to continued almost without respite so that Ludendorff had no time to rest and refit his broken divisions. Even as the battle on the Marne was winding down, Foch had been preparing his next masterful blow, which would strike in front of Amiens on 8 August 1918, Ludendorff’s infamous ‘black day of the German army’, from which Foch’s general offensive rolled on to victory in three months.