14Even in 1932, Generalleutnant Gerhard Tappen, former head of the operations section of the OHL, stated in an interview conducted by members of the Reichsarchiv that the French soldiers had been ‘morally inferior’ to the Germans; see Besprechung mit dem Generalleutnant a.D. Tappen im Reichsarchiv am 6. IX. 1932, BA-MA, RH 61/1674.
15Paul Greenwood, The Second Battle of the Marne 1918 (Shrewsbury: Airlife, 1998).
16Erich Ludendorff, My War Memories 1914–1918, vol. II, (London: Hutchinson, 1920), p. 679.
17History of the Great War Based on Official Documents by Direction of the Historical Section of the Committee of Imperial Defence. Military Operations: France and Belgium, 1918, vol. III: May-July: The German Diversion Offensives and the First Allied Counter-Offensive, compiled by James E. Edmonds (London: Macmillan, 1939). Between March and September 1918 the German Army lost 536,000 killed and missing and 808,300 wounded; see David Stone, The Kaiser’s Army: The German Army in World War One (London: Bloomsbury, 2015), p. 134.
18Holger Herwig, The First World War: Germany and Austria-Hungary 1914-1918 (London: Bloomsbury, second edition 2014), p. 407.
19Quoted in Klaus-Jürgen Müller, Generaloberst Ludwig Beck: Eine Biographie (Paderborn: Schöningh, 2008), p. 57.
20Bundesarchiv- Militärarchiv BA-MA PH3/3, Chef des Generalstabes II Nr. 10162, 4 September 1918. Also see Wilhelm Solger, Vorarbeit u Band XIV: Die Oberste Heeresleitung in der Abwehr (ab dem 15. Juli 1918), BA-MA W10/51844, p. 109.
21A good case study of this can be found in Jonathan Boff, Winning and Losing on the Western Front: The British Third Army and the Defeat of Germany in 1918 (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2012). See also Chapter 4 in this book.
22Bayerisches Hauptstaatsarchiv, Abteilung IV, Kriegsarchiv, HKR Band 99/11, OHL Nr. 10552, 30 September 1918.
23Carl Groos and Werner von Rudolf, Infanterie Regiment Herwarth von Bittenfeld (1. Westfälisches) Nr. 13 im Weltkriege 1914–1918 (Oldenburg: Stalling, 1927), pp. 330–331.
24Adolf Hitler, Mein Kampf. Zwei Bände in einem Band. Ungekürzte Ausgabe, 395th–399th edition (Munich: Zentralverlag der NSDAP, 1939), pp. 223–225.
25For this, see Thomas Weber, Hitler’s First War: Adolf Hitler, the Men of the List Regiment, and the First World War (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2010); and idem, Hitler: The Making of a Nazi (New York: Basic Books, 2017).
26For a short overview of this, see Hagen Schulze, ‘Versailles’, in Etienne François and Hagen Schulze (eds), Deutsche Erinnerungsorte, vol. I, (Munich: C.H. Beck, 2003), pp. 407–421.
27Eberhard Kolb, Der Frieden von Versailles, 2nd Edition (Munich: C.H. Beck, 2011), p. 76.
28For the discussion of the stab-in-the back myth, see Friedrich Freiherr Hiller von Gaetringen, ‘“Dolchstoß”-Diskussion und “Dolchstoß-Legende” im Wandel von vier Jahrzehnten’, in Waldemar Besson (ed.), Geschichte und Gegenwartsbewußtsein: Festschrift für Hans Rothfels zum 70. Geburtstag (Göttingen: Vandenhoek und Ruprecht, 1963).
29Gesundheitsamt, Schädigung der deutschen Volkskraft durch die feindliche Blockade. Denkschrift des Reichsgesundheitsamtes, Dezember 1918.
30Leo Grebler, The Cost of the World War to Germany and Austria-Hungary (Yale: Yale University Press, 1940), p. 78. For a discussion of the blockade and its impact see C. Paul Vincent, The Politics of Hunger: the Allied Blockade of Germany, 1915–1919 (Athens, OH and London: Ohio University Press, 1985); and Avner Offer, ‘The Blockade of Germany and the Strategy of Starvation, 1914–1918. An Agency Perspective’, in: Roger Chickering and Stig Förster (eds), Great War, Total War: Combat and Mobilization on the Western Front, 1914–1918 (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2000), pp. 169–188.
31For the issues surrounding the US decision, see Ralph A. Stone, The Irreconcilables: The Fight Against the League of Nations (Lexington: University Press of Kentucky, 1970).
32Niall Ferguson, Civilization: The Six Killer Apps of Western Power (London: Penguin, 2012), p. 309.
33Michel Hubert, La Population de la France pendant la Guerre. Avec une appendice sur les revenus avant er après la guerre (Paris: Les Presses U. de France, 1931), p. 420.
34On this topic see Robert Gerwarth, The Vanquished: Why the First World War Failed to End, 1917–1923 (London: Allan Lane, 2016). Also see Timothy Snyder, Bloodlands: Europe Between Hitler and Stalin (London: Penguin, 2010).
35Ernst Jünger, Der Krieg als inneres Erlebnis, edited by Helmuth Kiesel (Stuttgart: Klett-Cotta, 2016), pp. 35–36.
Chapter 2
1Douglas Haig, Dispatches: General Douglas Haig’s Official Reports to the British Government (New York: J. M. Dent & Sons, 1919), p. 320.
2For an in-depth study of the 1918 Ludendorff Offensives see David T. Zabecki, The German 1918 Offensives: A Case Study in the Operational Level of War (London: Routledge, 2006).
3 War Office General Staff Great Britain, Handbook of the German Army in the War, April 1918 (reprint) (London: Arms & Armour Press, 1977), pp. 36–9.
4David T. Zabecki, Chief of Staff: The Principal Officers Behind History’s Great Commanders, vol. I, Napoleonic Wars to World War I (Annapolis: US Naval Institute Press, 2008), pp. 5–9.
5General Erich Ludendorff, My War Memories, 1914–1918 (London: Hutchinson, 1920), vol. 1, p. 239.
6Christian O. E. Millotat, Understanding the Prussian-German General Staff System (Carlisle, PA: US Army War College, 1992), pp. 23–4.
7Bruce I. Gudmundsson, Stormtroop Tactics: Innovation in the German Army, 1914–1918 (New York: Praeger, 1989), pp. 151–2.
8Oberkommando des Heeres, Der Weltkrieg 1914 bis 1918, vol. 12, Die Kriegsführung im Frühjahr 1917 (Berlin: Mittler und Sohn, 1939), pp. 53–4.
9 William Balck, Development of Tactics: World War (Ft. Leavenworth: General Service Schools Press, 1922), pp. 153–60.
10General Erich Ludendorff, ‘Der Angriff im Stellungskrieg’, in Urkunden der Obersten Heeresleitung über ihre Tätigkeit 1916/18 (Berlin: Mittler und Sohn, 1921), pp. 641–66.
11Balck, Development of Tactics, p. 266.
12Ibid., pp. 62, 81, 91.
13Max Hoffmann, The War of Lost Opportunities (Nashville: The Battery Press, 1995), p. 135.
14Ludendorff, War Memories, vol. 2, p. 606.
15For a comprehensive examination of Bruchmüller and his tactical innovations see David T. Zabecki, Steel Wind: Colonel Georg Bruchmüller and the Birth of Modern Artillery (Westport: Praeger, 1994).
16Georg Bruchmüller, Die Deutsche Artillerie in den Durchbruchschlachten des Weltkriegs, 2nd ed. (Berlin: Mittler und Sohn, 1922), p. 80.
17Zabecki, Steel Wind, pp. 48–50
18Gerhard Gross, The Myth and Reality of German Warfare: Operational Thinking from Moltke the Elder to Heusinger (Lexington: University Press of Kentucky, 2016), p. 131.
19A. M. Henniker, Transportation on the Western Front, 1914–1918 (London: Macmillan & Co. Ltd., 1937), pp. 398–411.
20David T. Zabecki and Dieter Biedekarken (eds and trans.), Lossberg’s War: The Memoirs of a World War I German Chief of Staff (Lexington: University Press of Kentucky, 2017), p. 312.
21Oberkommando des Heeres, Der Weltkrieg 1914 bis 1918, vol. 13, Die Kriegsführung im Sommer und Herbst 1917 (Berlin: Mittler und Sohn, 1942), pp. 323–6.
22Oberkommando des Heeres, Der Weltkrieg 1914 bis 1918, vol. 14, Die Kriegsführung an der Westfront im Jahre 1918 (Berlin: Mittler und Sohn, 1944), pp. 51–5.
23Ibid., pp. 68–9.
24Ibid., pp. 76–7.
25Quoted in Kronprinz Rupprecht von Bayern, In Treue Fest: Mein Kriegstagebuch, vol. 2 (Munich: Deutscher National Verlag, 1929), p. 372.
26Oberkommando des Heeres, Der Weltkrieg, vol. 14, p. 278.
27Zabecki, 1918 Offensives, pp. 280–310.
28Oberkommando des Heeres, Der Weltkrieg, vol. 14, pp. 393–8.
29Ludendorff, War Memories, vol. 2, pp. 638–40.
30Hermann von Kuhl, Personal War Diary of General von Kuhl, in Bundesarchiv/Militärarchiv, File: W-10/50652, entry o
f 18 July 1918.
31Zabecki and Biedekarken, Lossberg’s War, pp. 345–9.
32Ibid., p. 350.
33‘General Foch Memorandum from the Commanders-in-Chief Conference No. 2,375’, 24 July 1918, in United Kingdom National Archives, Kew, Great Britain. Record Group WO 158/105 358219.
34Hew Strachan, The First World War (London: Simon & Schuster, 2014), p. 178. Henniker, Transportation, p. 438.
35Elizabeth Greenhalgh, Foch in Command: The Forging of a First World War General (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2014), p. 443.
36Colonel T. Bentley Mott (trans.), The Memoirs of Marshall Foch (Garden City: Doubleday, 1931), pp. 408–9.
37Richard Holmes, Tommy: The British Soldier on the Western Front 1914–1918 (London: Harper Collins, 2004), p. 69.
38David Stevenson, With Our Backs to the Wall: Victory and Defeat in 1918 (London: Allen Lane, 2011), pp. 160–1.
39Wilhelm II, The Kaiser’s Memoirs 1888–1918 (London: Harper Brothers, 1922), pp. 273–4.
40Rupprecht, Mein Kriegstagebuch, vol. 2, p. 178.
41Walter Görlitz, History of the German General Staff, 1657–1945 (New York: Praeger, 1953), p. 183.
42Ludendorff, War Memories, p. 550.
43Gerald D. Feldman, Army, Industry, and Labor in Germany, 1914–1918 (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1966), pp. 154, 301.
44Görlitz, German General Staff, p. 184.
45Feldman, Army, Industry, and Labor, pp. 190–6.
46John W. Wheeler-Bennett, Hindenburg: The Wooden Titan (New York: St. Martin’s Press, 1967), pp. 190–5.
47Wheeler-Bennett, Hindenburg, p. 205.
48Ibid., p. 200.
Chapter 3
1For a comprehensive history of the French Army during World War I, see Elizabeth Greenhalgh, The French Army and the First World War (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2014). See also Robert Doughty, Pyrrhic Victory: French Strategy and Operations in the Great War (Harvard: Harvard University Press, 2005).
2David Murphy, Breaking Point of the French Army: the Nivelle Offensive of 1917 (Pen & Sword, 2015), p. 139.
3Doughty, Pyrrhic Victory, pp. 416–417.
4Grand Quartier Général, ‘Note sur l’entretien des armées françaises, 14 décembre 1917’, Les Armées Françaises dans la Grande Guerre, 611-183, pp. 307–308.
5Anthony Clayton, Paths of Glory: The French Army, 1914–18 (London: Cassell, 2003), pp. 180–181. See also Doughty, Pyrrhic Victory, pp. 416–417.
6The best modern study of Foch is Elizabeth Greenhalgh’s Foch in Command: The Forging of a First World War General (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2011).
7See Doughty, Pyrrhic Victory. See also Charles Williams, Pétain (London: Little, Brown, 2005).
8See Greenhalgh, Foch in Command.
9David Murphy, Breaking Point of the French Army: The Nivelle Offensive of 1917 (Barnsley: Pen & Sword, 2015), p. 159.
10Jean de Pierrefeu, French headquarters, 1915–1918 (Paris, n.d.[1923?], General Books reprint, London)
11Douglas Porch, The French Intelligence Services: a History of French Intelligence From the Dreyfus Affair to the Gulf War (New York: Farrar, Straus & Giroux, 1995), pp. 78–114.
12Doughty, Pyrrhic Victory, p. 407.
13Ibid., p. 405.
14Ibid., p. 408.
15Robin Neilland’s The Great War Generals on the Western Front, 1914–1918 (London: Robinson, 1999) is an excellent account of the interplay between the Allied generals.
16Ian Sumner, They Shall Not Pass: The French Army on the Western Front, 1914–1918 (Barnsley: Pen & Sword, 2012), pp. 184–185.
17Clayton, Paths of Glory, pp. 182–187.
18See Steven Zaloga, French Tanks of World War I (Oxford: Osprey, 2010). See also Bruno Jurkiewicz, Les Chars Français Au Combat, 1917–1918 (Louviers: Ysec, 2008).
19Zaloga, French Tanks of World War I, pp. 20–40.
20Elizabeth Greenhalgh, ‘Myth and Memory: Sir Douglas Haig and the Imposition of Allied Unified Command in March 1918’ in The Journal of Military History, 63 (July, 2004), pp. 771–820.
21Doughty, Pyrrhic Victory, p. 429.
22Clayton, Paths of Glory, p. 166.
23Jean Hallade, ‘Big Bertha bombards Paris’, in Bernard Fitzsimmons (ed.), Tanks & Weapons of World War 1 (London: Smith, 1973), pp. 141–147.
24René Fonck, Mes Combats (Paris: Flammarion, 1920), quoted in Sumner, They Shall Not Pass, p. 190.
25Greenhalgh, The French Army and the First World War, pp. 283–287. The nearby ossuary contains over 5,000 French dead, denoting the intense fighting that took place here.
26David Bonk, Château-Thierry & Belleau Wood 1918: America’s baptism of fire on the Marne (Oxford: Osprey, 2007).
27See Douglas Porch, The French Secret Services: a History of French Intelligence From the Dreyfus Affair to the Gulf War (New York: Ferrar, Straus & Giroux, 1995)
28For Mangin’s own thoughts on his career during World War I, see Charles Mangin, Lettres de guerre, 1914–1918 (Paris: Fayard, 1950).
29See Randal Gray, Kaiserschlacht 1918: The final German offensive (Oxford: Osprey, 1991).
30For a comprehensive account of this series of actions, see Paul Greenwood, The Second Battle of the Marne 1918 (Shrewsbury: Airlife, 1998). See also Greenhalgh, The French Army and the First World War, pp. 312–344.
31Alastair McCluskey, Amiens 1918: The Black Day of the German Army (Oxford: Osprey, 2008).
32David Bonk, St Mihiel 1918: The American Expeditionary Forces’ trial by fire (Oxford: Osprey, 2011).
33Bullitt Lowry, Armistice 1918 (Kent, OH: Kent State University Press, 1996).
34Joseph E. Persico, Eleventh Month, Eleventh Day, Eleventh Hour: Armistice Day – World War I and its Violent Climax (New York: Random House, 2005).
35David Murphy, Breaking Point of the French Army, p. 161.
36Greenhalgh, Foch in Command, pp. 508–521.
Chapter 4
1The ‘British Army’ here includes forces from the dominions and colonies of the Empire, including Australia, Canada, India, New Zealand, and South Africa, amongst others.
2 War Office, Statistics of the Military Effort of the British Empire during the Great War, 1914–1920 (London: HMSO, 1922), pp. 260–5.
3Bryn Hammond, Cambrai 1917: The Myth of the First Great Tank Battle (London: Weidenfeld & Nicolson, 2008).
4The account here closely follows that of Jim Beach, Haig’s Intelligence: GHQ and the German Army, 1916–1918 (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2013), pp. 273–88.
5Martin Samuels estimates 84 per cent: Samuels, Command or Control? Command, Training and Tactics in the British and German Armies, 1888–1918 (London: Frank Cass, 1995), p. 217.
6Ingo Wolfgang Trauschweizer, ‘Learning with an Ally: The U.S. Army and the Bundeswehr in the Cold War’, Journal of Military History 72:2 (April 2008), pp. 477–508.
7Matthias Strohn, The German Army and the Defence of the Reich: Military Doctrine and the Conduct of the Defensive Battle 1918–1939 (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2011).
8Jim Beach, ‘Issued by the General Staff: Doctrine Writing at British GHQ, 1917–1918’, War in History 19:4 (November 2012), pp. 464–91, p. 473.
9‘Fighting troops’ includes all personnel in France and Flanders who were not employed on the lines of communication. On 31 January 1918 they numbered 1,584,100: GHQ Adjutant-General War Diary, The National Archives (TNA) WO 95/26; ‘Statistical Abstract of Information Regarding the Armies at Home and Abroad’, No. 25, 1 October 1918, TNA WO 394/10; War Office, Statistics, pp. 253–71.
10General Erich Ludendorff, My War Memories, 1914–1918 (London: Hutchinson, 1920), vol. 1, pp. 679, 683–4.
11Ian Beckett, Timothy Bowman and Mark Connelly, The British Army and the First World War (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2017), p. 369.
12David Fraser (ed.), In Good Company: The First World War Letters and Diaries of the Hon. William Fraser, Gordon Highlanders (Salisbury: Micha
el Russell, 1990), p. 306.
13David Jordan, ‘The Royal Air Force and Air/Land Integration in the 100 Days, August–November 1918’, Air Power Review 11:2 (Summer 2008), pp. 12–29.
14See Aimée Fox, Learning to Fight: Military Innovation and Change in the British Army, 1914–1918 (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2017).
15Alexander Watson, Enduring the Great War: Combat, Morale and Collapse in the German and British Armies, 1914–1918 (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2008), chapters 5 and 6.
16Albrecht von Thaer, Generalstabsdienst an der Front und in der O.H.L., edited by Siegfried A. Kaehler (Göttingen: Vandenhoeck & Ruprecht, 1958), pp. 187–8.
17Nick Lloyd, Hundred Days: The End of the Great War (London: Viking, 2013), pp. 242–3.
18J. F. C. Fuller, Tanks in the Great War: 1914–1918 (London: John Murray, 1920); B. H. Liddell Hart, The Remaking of Modern Armies (London: John Murray, 1927); J. E. Edmonds and R. Maxwell-Hyslop, Military Operations France and Belgium 1918, vol. V, 26th September–11th November The Advance to Victory (London: HMSO, 1947), p. 609; J. P. Harris, Men, Ideas and Tanks: British Military Thought and Armoured Forces, 1903–1939 (Manchester: Manchester University Press, 1995), p. 178.
19J. P. Harris with Niall Barr, Amiens to the Armistice: The BEF in the Hundred Days’ Campaign 8 August–11 November 1918 (London: Brassey’s, 1998), p. 296.
20Robin Prior and Trevor Wilson, Command on the Western Front: The Military Career of Sir Henry Rawlinson 1914–18 (Oxford: Blackwell, 1992), pp. 300, 342, 397.
21Andy Simpson, Directing Operations: British Corps Command on the Western Front 1914–18 (Stroud: Spellmount, 2006), pp. xvi, 161–75.
22Mark Connelly, Steady the Buffs! A Regiment, a Region, and the Great War (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2006), pp. 225–6; David French, ‘Doctrine and Organization in the British Army, 1919–1932’, Historical Journal 44:2 (June 2001), pp. 497–515: p. 514.
23The author is deeply indebted to Dr John Bourne for the biographical detail on the officers and men involved in 46th Division’s attack and to Dr John Lee for the loan of his notes on the battle. This section could not have been written without their help. The account here also draws heavily on R. E. Priestley, Breaking the Hindenburg Line: The Story of the 46th (North Midland) Division (London: T. Fisher Unwin, 1919).
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