German Order of Battle, Western Front, 6.7.18, showing front line and German formations in red, Divisions in green; Divisions of poor quality in red outlined in green. The situation at the turning point of the war, as the Allied counter-offensives were beginning. Scale of original: 1:1 million.
German Order of Battle, Western Front, 11.11.18. 11.00, at the moment
of the Armistice. Scale: 1:1 million.
Battle of
Château-Thierry
French counter-attacks developed rapidly. On 18 July, the
Battle of Château-Thierry opened when the French Tenth and Sixth Armies and
American infantry were launched out of the Villers-Cotterêts Forest on a
twenty-five-mile front between Fontenoy and Château-Thierry. Their objective
was to hack into the flank of the Marne salient, and they were supported by
predicted artillery fire and 750 Renault light tanks and protected by smoke.
The Germans were forced to withdraw, and by 7 August had pulled out of the
salient, back to the river Aisne. The Allies were now strengthened in numbers
and morale by the infusion of American blood. German morale was correspondingly
lowered.
Ludendorff cancelled his intended Flanders operation, and
German soldiers, and those of their allies, were only too aware that the war
was now lost. The French were now exhausted, and most of their tanks were
destroyed, damaged or unserviceable. So Foch insisted that the task of carrying
out the next blow should fall to the British, who had recovered from their
setbacks earlier in the year and were benefiting from a massive increase in
their war production.
Battle of Hamel
On the British sector of the front, counter-offensives were
in any case being organized. On 4 July the Australians, supported by an
American infantry company, captured Hamel and Vaire Wood, east of Amiens, in an
imaginative and spirited set-piece attack involving the cooperation of predicted
artillery fire, infantry, tanks and air support.
To minimize casualties, Monash, the Australian Corps
Commander, insisted that his men should be well covered by the artillery. There
was a massive concentration of British and French batteries for this small
operation, amounting to about 600 guns and howitzers, with an emphasis on
counter-battery fire as well as bombardments in the days before the attack. For
the attack itself, surprise was achieved by the barrage opening with a crash.
This successful little attack became the model for a much larger offensive, the
Battle of Amiens. This in turn opened a series of Allied offensives, in which
the British, French and Americans all played a major part, known as the Battles
of the Hundred Days. This succession of offensives only ended with the
Armistice on 11 November.
Battles of Amiens and
Montdidier
Benefitting from the experience of the Hamel attack, the
Amiens offensive, launched on 8 August on a fourteen-mile front, was made by
Rawlinson’s Fourth Army, and spearheaded by the Canadian Corps. The aim was to
disengage Amiens, which until now was within the range of German guns, and to
free the Paris-Amiens railway. A deception plan was put into operation,
involving a Canadian wireless station, two casualty clearing stations and two
infantry battallions, to make it appear that the Canadian Corps was now in the
Kemmel area in Flanders. The operations on the French sector of the attack
frontage were known as the Battle of Montdidier.
Rawlinson’s Fourth Army pushed forward rapidly on a
nine-mile front, supported by the French on the right, and then the Canadians
and Australians, with the British 3rd Corps on the left. They were under
accurate predicted bombardment and creeping barrage fired by over 2,000 guns
and howitzers, and supported by 456 tanks, including many of the new Mark V
models. Following the precedent set by the Germans in March, all supports and
reserves began to move forward simultaneously at zero. The artillery had done
very well at counter-battery work, aided in particular by the sound-rangers who
could locate moving German batteries in haze and mist, unlike the
flash-spotters and the air force.
British offensive tactics, after the slogging of 1915–18,
were now more mobile and efficient. An advance of eight miles was made on the
first day, but many tanks, still slow and vulnerable to mechanical breakdown,
were lost to direct artillery fire. On the second day of the battle, the
British only had 145 tanks still ready for action. Armoured cars and relatively
fast Whippet tanks exploited in the rear areas, and cavalry helped to gain and
hold some positions until the infantry arrived.
German resistance stiffened, the attack soon lost impetus,
and there were no new reserves to feed the battle. But a new attack doctrine
had by now evolved. As soon as one attack lost momentum, artillery and reserves
were switched to another front and the blow repeated. Predicted fire, based on
accurate survey and mapping, maintained the element of surprise, keeping the
Germans off-balance. Wherever possible, tanks were also used to strengthen the
attack. Rawlinson’s Army captured 400 guns and inflicted 27,000 casualties on
the Germans, including 12,000 prisoners, for the loss of 9,000 men.
Battles of Albert,
Bapaume and the Drocourt–Quéant Line
Following the Amiens operations, which lasted until 12
August, the weight of the British offensive was switched, at Haig’s insistence,
to the northern sector of the Somme battlefield. Foch’s preference had been for
a continuation of the Amiens battle. The Battles of Albert and Bapaume, from
21–31 August, turned the flank of the German position on the Somme and forced
the Germans to pull back to the east bank. This series of blows continued when
the new German position was then turned from the north from 26 August to 3
September in the Battles of Arras and the Drocourt–Quéant Line. That position
being ruptured in an attack in which the Canadians and Americans took a major
role, the Germans were forced to fall back to the outer defences of the
Hindenburg Line. As the direct result of these battles, the Lys Salient further
north was evacuated by the Germans, and the British captured Lens, and
recaptured Merville, Bailleul and Mount Kemmel, and freed Hazebrouck and its
vital railway junctions, which had been under German artillery bombardment.
Battle of St Mihiel
It had always been the aim of General Pershing, the
Commander-in-Chief of the American Expeditionary Force, to concentrate American
forces in a field army under his command, rather than see them scattered
piecemeal to reinforce other Allied armies. At St Mihiel, and then more
particularly in the Meuse–Argonne battle, he achieved this. Between 12–16
September the Americans, led by Pershing, with a French corps and 267 light
tanks also under his command, fought the Battle of St Mihiel to eliminate the
German-held St Mihiel Salient, south of Verdun. Pershing planned to break
through the German lines and capture the fortress of Metz, and as his attack
caught the enemy withdrawing from the Salient, with their artillery also
pulling back and most batteries therefore out of action, it proved more
successful than expected. In a day and a half Pershing’s army, at the cost of
7,000 casualties, captured 15,000 prisoners and 450 guns.
While the success of the American attack impressed the
French and British, the operations demonstrated the difficulty of supplying
large armies in a war of movement. The attack ground to a halt as artillery and
ration trucks bogged down on the muddy roads. The US air service played a
significant part in this battle, although American fliers had been serving with
the Escadrille Lafayette since 1916. The intended attack on Metz did not in the
end take place, as the Germans took up a strong rear position and the Americans
turned their efforts further north, to the Verdun and Argonne Forest regions.
Battle of Epéhy and
the Meuse–Argonne Offensive
In the Battle of Epéhy on 18 and 19 September, British
forces broke through the outer Hindenburg defences and established jumping-off
positions for the attack on the main Hindenburg position. Foch’s grand
offensive now gathered pace along the whole Allied front. On 26 September,
Pershing’s American First and Gouraud’s French Fourth Armies began the Meuse–Argonne
offensive, on the front from Verdun to the Argonne Forest, with Pershing’s
right flank on the river Meuse and the French attacking on his left. Twenty-two
French and fifteen American divisions were involved. This, the largest American
operation of the war, lasted from 26 September to the Armistice on 11 November.
In the difficult Argonne Forest terrain of tangled woods, gullies and ridges,
it was almost impossible for tanks to operate, and the Americans found
themselves engaging in a bloody slog through a succession of strongly held
German positions.
Breaking the
Hindenburg Line
In their operations from 8 August to 26 September (the eve
of the great attack on the main Hindenburg Position), the BEF suffered 190,000
casualties. Between 26–29 September, one Belgian, five British, and two French
armies attacked the Hindenburg Line and German positions extending north to
beyond Ypres. Attacks were made by fifty British and twelve Belgian divisions,
as well as the French and Americans further south. On the whole of the Western
Front, 217 Allied divisions faced 197 German.
The attack on the Hindenburg Position, whose defences were
up to three miles in depth and included the St Quentin Canal which made a
superb anti-tank ditch, was made in the Battles of Cambrai and St Quentin, from
27 September until 10 October. The French First Army attacked on the right of
the British Fourth Army (Rawlinson). In view of the strength of this well-sited
and long-prepared position, Rawlinson and his artillery commander Budworth decided
on an intense fifty-six hour preliminary bombardment in addition to the
now-usual predicted crash and creeping barrage starting at zero hour on 29
September. Over 1,630 guns were used on a 10,000-yard front, firing an
extremely effective counter-battery and destructive programme beforehand, with
a high proportion of high-explosive shell, and neutralizing fire during the
attack. Operational and artillery planning was helped by a set of captured
enemy defence maps, showing all the trenches, pill-boxes, dugouts, machine gun
emplacements, battery positions, etc. The German defenders were stunned by the
artillery, and overwhelmed by the attack.
In ten days of heavy fighting in the crucial sector from St
Quentin to Epéhy, and especially north of this on a four-mile frontage between
Bellicourt and Vendhuille, where the St Quentin Canal ran in a tunnel, the
British and Americans eventually broke through the last and strongest of the
Germans’ fully prepared positions. A critical situation initially developed in
the tunnel sector when the American 2nd Corps’ two divisions (27th and 30th),
supported by three Australian divisions, were delayed by the strength of the
German defences and lost the barrage. Tanks became ditched in the deep
trenches, and as the inexperienced Americans neglected the vital task of
‘mopping up’ German pockets as they went forward, the Australians had to fight
through this ground again as they in turn moved up. Further south, at
Bellenglise, the British 46th Division managed to cross the canal, using rafts
and lifebelts, protected by a pulverizing barrage, punching a three-mile gap in
the German defence and turning the enemy flank to the north in the sector
facing the Australians and Americans. Advances were also made further north, on
27 September, between Péronne and Lens, on the fronts of the British Third and
First Armies, and by 5 October the attacking Allied armies had broken through
the whole Hindenburg Position. This opened the way for a war of movement and an
advance towards the vital main German communications routes.
This group of assaults was undertaken in three phases. First
came the storming of the Canal-du-Nord position on the left in the Battle of
the St Quentin Canal, and the advance on Cambrai. Following this came the
shattering blow which, after a stupendous artillery bombardment and with the
help of hundred of tanks, broke through the Hindenburg Line and turned the
defences of St Quentin. Lastly came the exploitation of these successes by a
general attack on the whole front which broke through the last of the enemy
defences and captured the Beaurevoir Line, to the rear of the Hindenburg Line,
and the high ground above it, by 10 October. The Germans were forced to
evacuate Cambrai and St Quentin and pull back to the river Selle. These three
battles created a huge salient in the German position.
Fifth Battle of Ypres
and Battles of Courtrai, Selle and Maubeuge
Meanwhile, further north, in the Fifth Battle of Ypres on 28
and 29 September, King Albert of Belgium’s Army Group of twelve Belgian
divisions, Plumer’s Second Army (ten British divisions), and Degoutte’s Sixth
Army (six French divisions) forced the Germans back from Ypres and drove yet
another salient into their lines, endangering the German position on the
Belgian coast. In one day these armies swept over the ground that had taken two
British armies, assisted by a French army, three months to capture the previous
year.
Meanwhile Ludendorff, receiving news on 28 September of the
Bulgarian request for an armistice, and after the Allied attack in Flanders had
begun, suffered a temporary mental and physical collapse, a crisis of nerve in
which he crashed to the floor and even foamed at the mouth. The succession of
gloomy reports from the Western Front can hardly have helped. At 6 p.m. he told
Hindenburg that an armistice was imperative. On the twenty-ninth, an armistice
on the Macedonian front was signed with the defeated Bulgarians and the way was
now open for an Allied attack from the south into Austria. Hindenburg, at a war
council meeting, told the German leaders that, to prevent a catastrophe (this
was the day the Hindenburg Line was broken), peace must be sought using
Wilson’s ‘fourteen points’ as a basis. Ludendorff now realized the game was up
and, while he found six divisions to putty up the Serbian front, started to
prepare the ground for peace proposals. On 3 October the Germans asked
President Wilson for an immediate armistice.
Meanwhile the success at Ypres was extended by the Battle of
Courtrai, from 14–31 October, which widened and deepened this wedge and
resulted in the capture of Halluin, Menin and Courtrai. This series of great
battles had, as their immediate result, in the south the evacuation of Laon and
the German retirement to the river Aisne; in the centre the withdrawal to the
river Scheldt, which liberated Lille and the great industrial district of
northern France around Roubaix and Tourcoing; and in the north the clearing of
the Belgian coast, including the submarine bases of Ostend, Zeebrugge and
Bruges. The Germans were now back on the line of the Scheldt and Selle rivers.
The Battle of the Selle, from 17–25 October, forced the Germans from the latter
and drove yet another wedge into their defences. Germany’s remaining allies
were now falling away; Turkey signed an armistice on 30 October, and
Austria–Hungary did the same on 4 November, after which Germany was isolated.
The Battle of the Selle was followed by the final blow, the
Battle of Maubeuge, from 1–11 November, which struck at and broke the Germans’
last important lateral communications, turned their positions on the Scheldt
and forced them to retreat rapidly from Courtrai. At the same time, the
Americans attacked again, the French armies were cautiously moving forward
(Foch was naturally unwilling for too much French blood to be spilled at this
stage), and the British had not halted in their series of successful
operations. This victory completed the achievement of the great strategic aim
of the whole series of battles, by effectively dividing the German forces into
two, one part on each side of the natural barrier of the Ardennes forest. The
German fleet had mutinied on 29 October, while the German army, while it had
been experiencing increasing indiscipline and desertion in the latter part of
1918, had been comprehensively defeated in the field. Revolution broke out in
Berlin. The pursuit of the beaten enemy all along the line was only halted by
the Armistice at 11 a.m. on 11 November. The Kaiser abdicated on 9 November,
and the following day the desperate German authorities told their armistice
delegation to accept any terms put in front of them. Fittingly, the Canadians
entered Mons, where the BEF had fought its first battle in 1914, on the morning
of the eleventh.
