1918 The Last Act

by Barrie Pitt

  A decision must be forced in the west. On November 11th, 1917, Ludendorff presided at a conference held at Mons to discuss the manner in which this could be brought about. The Kaiser was not present although his headquarters were not far away, nor was the Crown Prince who commanded the group of armies astride the Somme, nor Prince Rupprecht of Bavaria who commanded the northern army group and in whose headquarters the conference took place. Prince Rupprecht did, however, have a short conversation with Ludendorff before the conference began, although upon what subject is not recorded.

  At the conference table with Ludendorff were Colonel von der Schulenberg (Chief-of-Staff to the group of armies of the Crown Prince) and General von Kuhl (Chief-of-Staff to the group of armies of Prince Rupprecht of Bavaria). There were also the heads of various sections of the General Staff, including a Lieutenant-Colonel Wetzell and an infantry captain. All points of view were listened to with respect and attention and there appears to have been little attempt by the junior ranks to curry favour of the more senior by subscribing to their opinions.

  The main, broad issue first to be decided was whether to launch an attack westwards against the British-held sector of the front, or southwards against the French. The disadvantage of the first was that in the event of the British retreating, they would do so across old battlefields and the desolation and waste intentionally created by the Germans when they retreated to the Siegfried Line (known to the Allies as the Hindenburg Line). This would undoubtedly hamper the attackers and aid the defenders, and the British were likely to prove difficult enough to dislodge from the first line of trenches without giving them the advantage of successive lines in which to fall as they went back.

  On the other hand, the French had an almost unlimited space behind them into which they could retreat, and memories of the vast sack which had contained the German armies in 1914 stirred many doubts: even with reinforcements from the Russian front, there was a limit to the length of line the Central Powers could hold, especially with, once again, ever-lengthening lines of communication. A successful onslaught on Verdun might dislodge the eastern hinge of the French Army with advantageous results – and undoubtedly with enormous effect upon French morale and Franco-American co-operation: but as Ludendorff presciently remarked, the British might not feel themselves compelled to send assistance to the French at Verdun, and he would then find himself faced with the necessity of mounting a second large-scale offensive in Flanders.

  He eventually summed up at the conclusion of the conference in the following words:

  ‘The situation in Russia and Italy will, as far as can be seen, make it possible to deliver a blow on the Western Front in the New Year. The strength of the two sides will be approximately equal. About thirty-five divisions and one thousand heavy guns can be made available for one offensive; a second great simultaneous offensive, say as a diversion, will not be possible.

  ‘Our general situation requires that we should strike at the earliest moment, if possible at the end of February or beginning of March, before the Americans can throw strong forces into the scale.

  ‘We must beat the British.

  ‘The operations must be based on these three conditions.’

  There were to be many more conferences, many alternative schemes to be discussed, but in the final analysis it always came back to the belief that as Britain had made herself the dominant partner in the alliance, it was the British Army which must be broken. If that happened, the French would capitulate – but there seemed no reason to believe that a French collapse would persuade the Anglo-Saxons to lay down their arms. Moreover, once the British line broke, their armies would have little room for manœuvre and none for escape: they would quickly find themselves penned against the sea, where they could be annihilated.

  So much for the broad strategic outline – its details would be decided upon by Ludendorff at the appropriate time, but none knew better than he that there is more to waging war than drawing large red arrows on maps. For months he had watched the British hurl themselves towards the German trenches, doubtless in attempts to translate into reality other red arrows on other maps. They had failed to burst through and defeat the German armies for a number of reasons, one being that they had been inadequately or wrongly trained, and another that their attacks had been organized and directed upon mistaken lines.

  Ludendorff saw no point in learning from his own errors when he could do so from other people’s, and he was also well aware of the fact that he had no inexhaustible reserve of manpower upon which to draw. His forces therefore must rely upon tactical skill instead of sheer weight, and brain must be used to defeat brawn. He issued decrees that all troops must undergo special offensive training, and sent for experts to direct it in accordance with a newly issued handbook entitled The Attack in Trench Warfare, conceived and written by an extremely able infantryman, Captain Geyer.

  The experts and instructors congregated in instructional centres set up behind each army’s front, and through them passed all divisions transferred from the east en route to their attack positions. Units already in the line were combed for their youngest, fittest and most experienced soldiers (or, more often, weaker elements were weeded out of existing battalions), and formed into Sturmabteilung – Storm Troops: a nomenclature which was to gather for itself a most sinister connotation twenty years later under Hitler.

  These Storm Troops were armed with light machine-guns, light trench-mortars and flame-throwers, and their duty was to cross the trench-lines, by-pass centres of hard resistance and machine-gun posts and if possible break through to attack the enemy artillery.

  The emphasis was placed on methods of infiltration. Not for Ludendorff’s troops the steady advance in line with each man conscious of those to right and left of him: touch with the enemy in front was the desideratum, and the fastest, not the slowest, must set the pace. Nothing must hold the infantry up – if the artillery barrage was ‘creeping’ too slowly for the leading Storm Troops, then signal methods must be worked out whereby they could be instructed by the infantry to lift forwards. This was in itself a radical innovation, for in previous offensives – especially by the British – the last people to issue orders to the rear support were the fighting troops.

  The Storm Troops would be followed by ‘battle units’ consisting of infantry, machine-gunners, trench-mortar teams, engineers, sections of field artillery and ammunition carriers – and all were to be ready to take over the duties of other sections in case of need. Above all they must be prepared and trained to attack defended positions and repulse counter-attacks with rifle and bayonet, always bearing in mind that no obstacle must hold them up too long: if a defended position would not fall to them as they were then constituted, it was to be left for heavier units behind to deal with. Even tanks were to be allowed virtually free passage through their ranks if any were encountered, although the accompanying infantry must be attacked and annihilated.

  Another revolutionary precept for the Western Front, was that reserves should be thrown into the battle where the attack was progressing, not where it was held up. They must flood along the channels already opened and either widen it by mopping up centres of resistance left behind by the advancing Storm Troops, or leapfrog over them if fatigue or wounds had brought them to a halt.

  With memories of their own tactics when they retired to the Hindenburg Line, all German troops were expressly warned against booby-traps, poisoned food and drink, and the possibility of suicidal snipers.

  All this training needed considerable organization, but having initiated it, the instructors found that the troops needed little pressure to keep them going. It seems that they felt instinctively that such War Games and night exercises as they were called upon to perform had a realism which much of their previous training had lacked – for the British had not held a lien on old-fashioned ideas and elderly instructors. After years of small raids, small offensives, and long periods of static misery, all welcomed an attempt at a decisive offensive.

>   While his troops were training, Ludendorff and his immediate advisers (among whom was the acute-minded Lieutenant-Colonel Wetzell in his capacity as Head of the Operations Section of the General Staff) had been adapting their ends to their means and coming to certain conclusions as a result.

  The first was that they would have more men for the offensive than they had originally thought. On February 9th was signed the Treaty of Brest-Litovsk, by which all hostile action by the Russians ceased, and as this development had been foreseen for some weeks, Ludendorff had already been able to milk away from the eastern front a considerable number of divisions and several thousand ancillary troops. All fit men under thirty-five years of age were rapidly transferred westwards, their places being either left vacant or filled by the elements combed from the Storm Troop battalions. No ranks were spared in this purge, for as an essential part of these preparations a general reserve of officers up to the rank of regimental commander was built up at each West Front Army Headquarters, to cover the anticipated wastage. Neither did rank excuse its bearer from the theory and exercise of the instructional centres.

  In addition, by virtue of the Hindenburg Industrial Scheme, Ludendorff recalled 123,000 men from industry to the colours. By the date of the first attack 136,618 officers and 3,438,288 other ranks had been wedged into position on the Western Front. They did so in a hundred and ninety-two divisions, of which sixty-nine were concentrated along the sixty-mile stretch of front between Arras and la Fère. Facing this concentration were thirty-three British divisions, of which ten were as much as fifteen miles from the front line, and two were twenty-five.

  This concentration of German troops had been carried out under the strictest possible conditions of secrecy that it had been possible to devise and execute. All important and large-scale troop movements were carried out at night, and the attack divisions had in fact, been kept back until the last possible moment – both in order to rest them and also to conceal the enormous accumulation of troops in the relatively small area. Especially were railheads kept free of daylight congestion, and no troop trains were allowed to draw in unless arrangements had been made for the immediate dispersal of the men.

  Special ‘Safety Officers’ were appointed to watch over and control all means of communication, including censorship of mail and use of the telephone. All officers given any specific details of the attack were required to take an express oath of secrecy – which in view of the terms of their commissions and allegiance to the King-Emperor must have infuriated some of the more stiff-necked – and all maps and papers were kept securely under lock and key unless in use. Special police planes and balloons flew or hovered over the concentration area to ensure that no new tracks were made across open spaces by marching feet, and that all instructions regarding camouflage were meticulously obeyed.

  And the military arm across whose activities was drawn the thickest curtain was that of the artillery, for the expert who had been brought across from the eastern front to stage-manage this aspect of the attack was a strong advocate of the tactical value of surprise.

  Colonel Bruchmüller had been in charge of the artillery during the attack by General von Hutier’s army upon the strongly fortified positions at Riga, and the General had been so impressed that he had earnestly recommended Ludendorff to listen to the advice of this artillery expert. At Riga, Bruchmüller had demonstrated the greater value of gas-shell over high explosive during the hours immediately preceding an infantry attack: for one thing, gas shell left the ground surface virtually intact, for another it poisoned whole areas and in favourable weather conditions would affect reserve gunners brought up almost as much as those originally present when the shells burst.

  Above all Bruchmüller insisted upon the value of the short, intense bombardment. The British had bombarded German positions for five days before the Somme battle had opened and for thirteen days before the first assaults of the Passchendaele offensive, with results that were afterwards only too obvious. The ground was impassable and attempts by the troops to cross it gave the German machine-gunners ample time to move into position to mow them down. These bombardments had also given the army commanders full warning of where the blows would fall, and time to concentrate reserves – out of danger but ready for counter-attack.

  Before the bombardment could commence, however, Bruchmüller was faced with the problems of getting his guns into position – and this was in many ways more difficult than that of troop movement. Guns have all the blind obstinacy of inanimate matter, as any artilleryman who has manhandled them into position at night will agree, and even when apparently co-operating with their sweating servitors, they still move on wheels which unavoidably leave tracks.

  In the end the deployment of the guns was divided into three time-classes, and they were detailed under direction of reconnoitring staff who had carried out all their ground inspection only during the hours of early dawn. Firstly there were the emplacements in which guns would be completely concealed; these were occupied as soon as possible, and either the wheel tracks were obliterated before daylight or some form of camouflage was erected until the traces had disappeared. The second class were those which could be kept in concealment in the neighbourhood of their firing positions, and these too, were brought up at night as soon as possible, and camouflaged in their temporary positions. During the night preceding the attack they would be manhandled into position, each one moving to an exact time schedule as the area was likely to be congested with the traffic of the third class. This was the remainder of the artillery, for which no concealed positions could be found, and they were to be brought up from the rear into pre-surveyed positions and go into action within minutes of arrival.

  They would fire, moreover, without the benefit of ‘registration’ shoots, by which fire upon a target was observed and corrected until it was accurate – thus revealing to the enemy exactly where the fire would fall when the bombardment opened. A system of mathematical prediction of range and bearing had been devised by a Captain Pulkowsky which had already given satisfactory results, although as is usual the world over, there were several men, old and experienced in their profession, to shake their heads dubiously over attractive-sounding theories. The spirits of all troops would be much uplifted if only they could realize that the enemy army has to cope with much the same degree of narrow-mindedness and dull-witted obstinacy as their own. In the end, it all comes down to the mentality of the directing chief.

  Ludendorff gave final decisions regarding the direction and scope of the offensive on January 21st, after a tour of the Western Front in company with General von Kuhl and Colonel von der Schulenberg.

  He would greatly have liked to attack the Allied line along its northernmost fifty miles – from just south of Armentières up to the coast – in converging attacks on each side of the Ypres Salient which would meet near Hazebrouck and cut the vital north-south railway which fed the armies, then turn north and drive the British into the sea. Two schemes, St. George 1 and St. George 2, had been drawn up by which this might be accomplished, but reluctantly Ludendorff came to the conclusion that they would be too dependent upon the weather. He had no desire to engulf his armies in virtually the same mud as that which had absorbed the force of the British attacks of 1917.

  South of this area – along the thirty-mile front covering Béthune and Arras – the British held the heights of the Vimy Ridge in strength, and although the plans Valkyrie and Mars which Ludendorff’s indefatigable Staff had produced were very attractive, there was too great a risk that their promise would be thwarted by the sheer tenacity of the British infantry.

  But from Arras down past St. Quentin to la Fère ran a long stretch of his own immensely strong and capaciously excavated Hindenburg Line – surely the best place in which to concentrate his force and from which to launch his attack – and he had great hopes that the British might rely upon the devastated nature of the ground for its defence, and thus not man it too strongly. In any case, his troops were trained for infi
ltration, and the maze of trenches, ditches and craters might aid them more than the defenders.

  © CASSELL & co. LTD. 1962

  For attacks upon this area, the Staff had produced an overall plan under the code name St. Michael, which was sub-divided into three sections, numbered downwards from the north.

  The left flank of the St. Michael 3 attack lay therefore on the banks of the Oise where it flowed through la Fère. As that river flowed on across the lines, it could conveniently continue as the left flank of the attack in that area, and furthermore, four miles on behind the British lines was the Crozat Canal, which bent away north-westwards to connect the Oise with the Somme. This canal would act very conveniently as a line upon which one southern attack group could rest and guard its flank, while the remainder of von Hutier’s Eighteenth Army broke the British front on each side of St. Quentin, and flooded forwards until they reached the concave line of the Somme between Ham and Péronne. This would be the flank of the whole offensive, and von Hutier’s duty would be to see that no counterattacks broke through to upset the balance of the main weight of the attack, to be borne by General von der Marwitz’s Second Army (St. Michael 2) and General von Below’s Seventeenth Army (St, Michael 1).

  These two armies would drive forwards until they had reached, respectively, Albert and Bapaume, and on that line they would swing north and obtain the decision. They would be aided first by an attack named Mars South by retained right-wing units of von Below’s Army against Arras (south of the Scarpe, which would protect its northern flank) and then early in April, by which time the weather should be settled enough to provide the essential firm ‘going’, by the St. George 1 and St. George 2 attacks in the north.

  As Ludendorff knew only too well the vanity of man’s proposals and the myriad accidents which can overset them, he also instructed his Staff to draw up plans for offensives along all the rest of the front, from la Fère south and east as far as the eastern flank of the Verdun Salient, naming them, with an odd mixture of religious and classical fervour, Archangel, Achilles, Roland, Hector, Castor and Pollux, from west to east.