1918

by Matthias Strohn

  The first response of the Germans was to rush air units to the threatened sector to contest the Allied air superiority. The elite Jagdgeschwader 1 (von Richthofen’s old unit) arrived the first afternoon of the battle and began attacking the RAF fighters. During the next three days the Germans sent in hundreds of aircraft, but still could not match Allied numbers. They took a heavy toll of British and French planes, though.38 The German armoured ground attack planes also played a notable role in slowing the British advance on the third day of the Amiens offensive.39 As the German records indicate, the RAF’s support work in attacking the German troops had generally been very effective and had caused considerable casualties and disorder in the German rear. But the low-level attacks had also been costly. The RAF on 8 August lost 45 planes and another 52 were so badly damaged as to be written off – almost 13 per cent of the RAF planes engaged that day with 23 per cent of the bombers lost or damaged.40 One reason for the heavy losses was the effectiveness of the German anti-aircraft force. The Germans had put more emphasis on developing anti-aircraft guns than the Allies and by 1918 the Luftstreitkräfte fielded a force of 2,558 anti-aircraft guns, ranging from 37mm automatic cannon to motorized 77mm and 88mm heavy guns. Major improvements in mechanical time fuses in 1918 greatly increased the lethality of the German Flak and the Allied air forces would lose 748 aircraft to German Flak gunners in 1918, mostly in the last four months of the war.41

  The Amiens offensive stopped after four days and had been remarkably effective. Ground, air, tank, and artillery had worked as an efficient team and the German front had been quickly cracked open. Over three days the Germans lost more than 48,000 men, with 30,000 taken prisoner.42 The Amiens breakthrough, which convinced the German High Command that its only option was to make peace soon, was followed by further British attacks in late August. On 12 September the American First Army made its debut in the first major American operation of the war. A set-piece attack to take the St Mihiel salient saw most of its objectives fall to the American and supporting French divisions by the second day of the attack. The attack was supported by more than 1,400 aircraft and included the French 1st Air Division (600 aircraft) and 700 aircraft of the American Air Service. By 13 September the Americans had captured 16,000 Germans and killed or wounded as many while also capturing 450 German guns. American losses were 7,000 men.43

  The final three months of the war saw the British, French, and American armies striking hard, simultaneous blows against the German lines. On 26 September the Americans began their second major offensive of the war with a massive attack in the Meuse–Argonne region. The American attack quickly bogged down and the American Air Service was largely ineffective in the early stages of a campaign that lasted to November. The problem was the state of American training. A few squadrons of the American Air Service had been flying since April and were experienced, but most of the squadrons going into battle were newly formed and had not had time to train with the infantry divisions and artillery units they were assigned to support.44 At the start of the offensive communications largely broke down. Confusion reigned when the ground units repeatedly failed to display the correct ground panels and signals for the air contact patrols. The inexperienced American artillery observers also dropped messages to the wrong headquarters. Coupled with a lack of training was the poor weather which kept the artillery spotting planes on the ground for much of the battle.45 After a poor start the Americans finally broke through the German defences in November, but only after heavy casualties.

  The Meuse–Argonne campaign shows the complexity of conducting effective air/ground operations in 1918. The French, British, and German armies had only mastered joint operations techniques with a considerable training effort. The staff planning for each offensive in 1918 was very extensive and was beyond the competence of most of the inexperienced American division and corps staffs in the Meuse–Argonne. A German Air Service report from the period gives their view of the air war over St Mihiel and the Meuse–Argonne battles. The Germans rated the Americans as being aggressive and well-trained pilots on the individual level (the Americans had been well trained by the French). They also rated the French-supplied American aircraft as being very capable. However, the American Air Service had not had time to conduct training as larger units – a strength of the Germans – and this clearly showed in combat. Although outnumbered, German units such as the elite Jagdgeschwader 1 inflicted heavy losses on the American fliers, because they could coordinate the operations of three or four squadrons against the Americans, who barely understood squadron tactics.46

  The final weeks of the war saw the Luftstreitkräfte fighting a losing battle but still able to inflict heavy casualties on the Allied air forces. In the last months of the war the outnumbered Germans shot down their Allied opponents at a two or three to one ratio. In August 1918 the Germans shot down 487 Allied aircraft for a loss of 150 of their own planes.47 Jagdgeschwader Nr II, one of Germany’s top fighter wings, shot down 81 Allied aircraft in September 1918, with only two losses of their own.48 The Luftstreitkräfte inflicted an especially high toll upon the inexperienced American air units. For example, the 80th US Aero Squadron averaged a 75 per cent monthly loss of their aircrew from March to November 1918.49 The Allied air doctrine of relentless offensive action paid off very well in gains on the ground and the incalculable advantage gained of being able to observe the enemy and use artillery effectively. But the Allied air doctrine was also very costly.

  Effective air/ground operations was the key to the early German successes of 1918 and one of the main reasons for the final Allied victory in November. The tactical revolution in the use of artillery that broke the trench deadlock was only possible through aerial reconnaissance and artillery spotting. The use of aircraft to support ground attacks was a major part of the breakthrough concepts of both the Germans and the Allies and has been largely overlooked in World War I literature. The documents of the ground and air operations of 1918 show highly sophisticated armies and air forces whose senior leaders managed these forces in an effective manner to bring operational success. Indeed, the role of aircraft in ground operations was also just as vital in the defence as in the offence. When the Germans broke the British lines on 21 March the first effective counter-attacks came from the Royal Flying Corps and the Aéronautique Militaire, which threw themselves at the attacking German columns. In the critical first days the Allied aviators played an important role in slowing the German advance and preventing the loss of Amiens. In a similar manner the German Air Service counter-attacked the British breakthrough at Amiens and their actions at least allowed some of the German units to retreat in good order.

  CHAPTER 10

  LEARNING FROM 1918 ON THE WESTERN FRONT

  Major General (Ret’d) Mungo Melvin CB OBE

  Introduction*

  Over the last two decades, the current generation of NATO’s serving sailors, soldiers, and airmen has gained much hard-won experience in countering insurgencies (formerly known as ‘Small Wars’), fighting cunning, resolute, and at times very deadly opponents. Yet no one in uniform today, let alone civilian politicians or policy-makers, has any memory of ‘Big Wars’ against equally well-equipped and well-led ‘peer’ enemies, in which the margin of success over failure is often paper-thin. Indeed, so slim that prolonged and costly campaigns in multiple theatres may occur, as in the two world wars of the 20th century.

  As described in the preceding chapters, 1918 saw the German Army coming tantalizingly close to victory on the Western Front in the early summer, only then to be decisively defeated by the Allies in under four months, ultimately leading to the Armistice of 11 November. While nations continue to honour the sacrifice of their fallen in the Great War, other than in specialist historical teaching and writing, far less attention is given as to how this rapid, if not remarkable, change in military fortunes came about. Curiously, perhaps for fear of offending present-day allies, the words ‘defeat’ and ‘victory’ have been exorcized from the British com
memorations of World War I, notwithstanding the official histories and a wealth of more recent academic work that incorporates such terminology.1

  The learning experiences of the four principal armies fighting in Belgium and France – German, French, British, and United States – during the final year of World War I are highly instructive on a number of counts, whether in campaign design, tactical development, or in coalition command.2 Most strikingly, static trench warfare turned into a war of movement. Thus operational manoeuvre returned to the battlefield. Perhaps as significantly, how the armies concerned applied their battlefield experience thereafter in the inter-war years tells us much about military force development process. Such vicarious understanding remains evermore important when memories lengthen and resources shorten.

  This chapter seeks not only to explore how armies learned at the time, but also attempts to show how we might draw appropriate lessons from the Western Front of 1918 today. As the political, economic, social, and technological contexts are vastly different a century on, it would be futile to draw directly applicable ‘hard lessons’ in terms of doctrine or organization. Therefore a ‘softer’ approach, which identifies a number of enduring aspects of learning from 1918 and its aftermath, has been adopted.

  One important caveat must be added. National biases and historical distortions have bedevilled the historiography of World War I, not least accounts of 1918 on the Western Front. Large doses of selective hindsight have also been administered, such as asserting that the German Army had absolutely no chance of winning on the Western Front in 1918. That was not how the Allied leaders felt or saw it at the time. Ludendorff may have gambled for the highest stakes, but in the short term the odds were not all against him. Some British authors have also tended to underestimate the pivotal French contribution in halting the German offensives of that year, often fighting alongside hard-pressed British troops or taking up the main strain of battle while the BEF recuperated following Operations Michael and Georgette in March and April respectively. Furthermore, while a reinvigorated BEF assumed a leading role in the series of Allied counter-offensives that led to the Armistice, the war could not have been concluded without the French Army, together with the two-million-strong American Expeditionary Forces (AEF), by 11 November 1918. It was thus an Allied victory par excellence.

  Interdependence

  Interdependence – unlike interoperability – is a term rarely seen in military lexicons. Yet an understanding of the multiple interdependencies in war is essential in differentiating between cause and effect, in considering the linkages between first- and second-order effects, and in appreciating the impact of unintended or unforeseen consequences of political and military actions. Whereas in the realm of strategy, interdependences can be geographical, industrial, or multinational in character, at the lower operational and tactical levels they can be found in the cooperation of armed services (now termed joint business) and of combined arms on the battlefield.

  All armies are critically dependent on both direction and support from the domestic base, the latter not only in terms of the supply of men and materiel, but also in the moral sphere. Mutual understanding and trust between home and battle fronts is essential to success, not least in political–military relations. Where these break down, the consequences can be dire. Such a situation affected the BEF in early 1918, which laboured under a severe manpower crisis, largely political in origin. Apart from absorbing the losses incurred at Third Ypres (31 July–20 November 1917) and Cambrai (20 November–6 December 1917), the BEF had to dispatch valuable forces to Italy in order to bolster up the Italian Army in the wake of its crushing defeat at Caporetto (24 October–19 November 1917). In early November, Allied leaders, including British Prime Minister Lloyd George, had agreed to send 12 divisions to Italy’s aid. In the event, six French and five British divisions were deployed, together with significant air, artillery, and engineer support.3 General Sir Herbert Plumer assumed overall command of British forces in Italy. As a result, Haig had lost not only one of his most talented commanders on the Western Front, but also a considerable part of his ability to form a general reserve in France.4 The British Army’s presence in Italy, which peaked at 113,759 men in January 1918, was subsequently reduced when two divisions were returned to France, along with four French, in February and March.5

  In January 1918, the British GHQ on the Western Front, backed by the War Office, had requested 650,000 men in order to sustain the BEF in France and Belgium, but had received from the War Cabinet only a promise of 100,000 replacements. Nominally, the rationale for this decision rested on higher priorities for manpower being allocated elsewhere. Apart from the mines and munitions production, men were required for: shipbuilding; the Royal Navy; air units to defend London from air attack (one of the reasons for the creation of the RAF on 1 April 1918); and agriculture and forestry (in an effort to boost home production so reducing imports, still vulnerable to German U-Boat attack).6 Yet behind this official reasoning also lay Lloyd George’s lack of trust in Haig’s ability to win future battles economically, based on the disappointments on the Western Front in 1917, and his preference for seeking decisive results elsewhere. In so doing, according to the British Official History, the Prime Minister ‘placed the Allied cause in jeopardy in 1918’.7

  In consequence of this lack of fresh manpower, excepting the ten Australian, Canadian, and New Zealand Divisions, the remaining 46 British infantry divisions in the BEF were restructured from 12 to nine battalions, with each brigade losing one of its four battalions. This turmoil of reorganization involved the disbandment of 141 battalions. In an operational emergency, however, the necessary reinforcements could, and would, be found to bolster the ranks. Between 21 March and 31 August 1918, no fewer than 544,005 men were shipped to France from the United Kingdom, with a further 100,000 redeployed from Italy, Salonika, and Palestine.8 Yet the loss of fighting power and flexibility at both divisional and brigade levels was to be sorely felt during the course of 1918 in both defensive and offensive operations. As the bitter battles of 1918 proceeded, with the supply of replacements struggling to match mounting losses, there were never sufficient men available to restore the former formation structure. The Dominion divisions, however, retained 12 battalions to the war’s end.

  Following the collapse of the Russian Empire in the wake of the two revolutions of 1917 and the cessation of major operations, as many German divisions as possible – some 40 – were transferred from East to West over the winter of 1917/18. Although the Germans now held the strategic initiative in early 1918, by 21 March the OHL could only muster a limited advantage in forces over the Allies on the Western Front: 191 to 175 divisions. As each month passed, however, increasing numbers of American divisions (of about 28,000 men apiece and hence double the size of an equivalent Allied or German formation) would augment exhausted British and French forces. The Eastern Front, however, could not remain unguarded as the new Bolshevik regime in Russia had yet to sign a peace. Thus while OHL prepared to attack in the West, German forces in the East launched on 18 February 1918 a major offensive called Operation Faustschlag (Punch). Its ostensible purpose was to ‘topple the Bolshevik government’ and to support that of the newly independent Ukraine.9 There was a further justification: as a result of the unrelenting Allied blockade, the populations of both Germany and Austria-Hungary were going increasingly hungry. As Ludendorff recorded in his memoirs, ‘The Ukraine had asked [for] our help. We ourselves, and Austria and her army even more so, needed corn; the country could not therefore be allowed to become a prey, and a source of strength, to Bolshevism.’10 Within three weeks, the German campaign, in which Austro-Hungarian forces also took part, achieved its first political goal. As Kiev was being occupied, on 3 March 1918 the Bolshevik government was forced to sign the harsh and humiliating Treaty of Brest-Litovsk.

  Strategic mission creep then occurred in the East: the German Army was drawn ever eastwards into the Donbas industrial region and southwards into the Crimean
peninsula until the main base of the Russian Black Sea Fleet at Sevastopol fell unopposed on 1 May 1918.11 Although the forces employed in the East (47 divisions) were about a quarter of those employed in the West, and many, but by no means all, comprised lower-grade Landwehr (i.e. reserve) formations of older age classes, the considerable effort in occupying Ukraine might have been better expended in supporting the campaign to achieve decisive victory on the Western Front. Political, economic, and coalition considerations, however, had made it imperative to act offensively in the East. Whereas Austria was saved from starvation, Germany did not obtain the large quantities of foodstuffs it expected. It did receive, however, ‘horses in great numbers’. Without them, as Ludendorff declared, continuation of the war ‘would have been altogether impossible, for if Germany had been obliged to raise these horses our own agriculture would have been hard hit’.12 While all armies on the Western Front relied on horsepower to move field guns and to bring up supplies, the most heavily dependent was the German Army, which lacked the increasing numbers of motor vehicles employed by the Allies. This scarcity of motorized support would impair Germany’s ability to sustain her offensive operations in the West in 1918. Thus, as in Britain, Germany was forced to distribute its manpower in order to sustain its war economy, to support its allies, and to conduct campaigns on several fronts. Such were the demands of a modern, industrial, and global war.

  Meanwhile, as Ludendorff prepared to launch Operation Michael, Haig’s problems were far from over. Following War Cabinet direction, he had agreed that the BEF would take over the French front as far as the Oise River near Barisis-aux-Bois. This involved a southwards extension of the British line by some 25 miles, with no additional troops forthcoming either to man, let alone improve, the neglected former French positions. In return, in the event of a major German attack, Pétain had promised French reinforcements (five infantry divisions and a cavalry corps) under command of Général de Division Georges Louis Humbert’s Third Army. Compounding the BEF’s difficulties of simultaneous restructuring while absorbing a new stretch of front was the self-imposed imposition of a new concept for the defensive battle, as explained by Jonathan Boff in Chapter 4. These factors compounded the challenge in meeting the coming German offensive. It all made for a perfect storm that would be experienced by the Third and Fifth British armies between Arras and St Quentin on Thursday, 21 March 1918.