by Lloyd, Nick
What was Foch thinking of? His decision to limit the Saint-Mihiel operation and mount a new Franco-American attack in the Argonne was puzzling. It jeopardized American plans and gave too little time for them to redeploy further north. Yet Foch felt it was the right thing to do. After being impressed by the success of Allied operations at Amiens, the Generalissimo was coming to the conclusion that perhaps more could be achieved from the remainder of 1918 than he had previously anticipated. He was also concerned that should the Saint-Mihiel operation prove successful, the American Army would ‘get carried too far in an offensive of its own’, and head in, what he believed, was the wrong direction.13 He knew that the focus of operations remained on the Franco-British front, but wanted to find some way of bringing the Americans into a converging attack from the south, pushing through the Argonne in a gigantic pincer movement across France, cutting deeply into the German rear lines and destabilizing their entire front. It was certainly ambitious, but could it be done? Although Pershing remained deeply concerned about moving the bulk of his First Army from Saint-Mihiel to the Argonne in little over a week, he was confident that only his troops – with their inherent aggression and initiative – could advance across the difficult ground west of the Meuse and through the German defences.
With American operations now settled, Foch could determine how the other forces would operate. With help from the staff at Haig’s headquarters, a four-stage concentric offensive was planned to take place in the last days of September, with the hardest task – that of breaching the Hindenburg Line at its most critical sector – falling to Haig’s armies. Because of logistical constraints it was not possible to launch all of Foch’s offensives on the same day, which were, in any case, designed to draw off enemy reserves so that significant gains could be made at the most important points. Foch initially hoped to begin the attacks with the Franco-American offensive west of the Meuse on 20 September, but that proved to be over-optimistic and it was eventually settled for 26 September. The following day the First and Third British Armies would attack in the direction of Douai and Cambrai. A northern offensive, with British, French and Belgian troops, would begin on 28 September, before the final push opened a day later. This was be undertaken by Rawlinson and Debeney’s armies against the Saint-Quentin canal, possibly the most difficult sector of the front.
There was a sense that the war was approaching its climax. The question of whether the Allies would be able to get through the Hindenburg Line was frequently asked. If the Western Front had been a series of hard lessons for the British and French, then breaking the final German defensive position would be the ultimate goal. On 21 September Haig had lunch with Alfred Milner, the Secretary of State for War. Milner was in a depressed mood, telling Haig that recruitment was drying up at home and, if the British Army was used up, ‘there will not be one for next year’. Haig tried to dispel his gloom. ‘I pointed out the situation was most satisfactory and that every available man should be put into the battle at once,’ he told Milner. ‘In my opinion it is possible to get a decision this year: but if we do not, every blow that we deliver now will make the task next year much easier.’14 Haig’s belief that a decision could be made before the end of the year was, at this time, almost unique among his senior colleagues. By late September, with the Allies still to cross the foreboding Hindenburg Line, many observers were sceptical of the war ending any time soon. Most felt that 1919 or even 1920 would see the end of the war, only after the bulk of American military strength had been deployed. Commanders speculated that the German Army would retreat as far as the Rhine, and there, with its lines of communication secure and its front shortened considerably, would be almost impossible to dislodge. Stalemate seemed the only likely outcome.
The day after Foch’s meeting with the three Allied commanders at Bombon the British Government had circulated a memorandum, ‘British Military Policy, 1918–1919’, which stated that the war would probably continue until the following summer. It estimated that by 1 July 1919 the Allies would have a superiority on the Western Front of approximately 400,000 men, meaning that the ‘supreme military effort’ should be made no later than this date.15 Haig’s French counterpart, Philippe Pétain, took a similar view. He remained deeply concerned about the state of the French Army and knew that it needed careful shepherding in its operations, making limited advances and trusting in the power of its heavy artillery. In a letter dated 8 September, Pétain stressed that the war would probably continue into the following year. By using the winter as an opportunity to withdraw its front line and re-form its shattered divisions, Pétain stressed that the German Army could still offer continued resistance well into 1919. He believed that the Allies would need to mount a series of preliminary operations designed to fix the enemy’s reserves, before a decisive battle took place sometime in the summer.16 For his part, Haig was unimpressed with such dire predictions (scribbling on his copy of the memorandum, ‘Words, words, words!’) and he remained bullishly confident that, this time, the Germans really were breaking. The only problem Haig had was convincing the British Government. He had been telling them consistently for almost two years that the Kaiser’s empire was about to crumble and that the German Army was running out of men. Over-optimism and confidence, bordering on arrogance, had been Haig’s chief character flaw in earlier years. He had been wrong before, and during 1917 it had nearly cost him his job. But this time there was a difference: he was right.
The day that Haig lunched with Milner, Foch was out looking over the old American sector with Weygand and Pershing. They drove out to the town of Saint-Mihiel and were pleasantly surprised to see that it had not suffered as much damage as they had feared. As he always tended to do, Foch – a devout Catholic – visited the cathedral. ‘When we entered,’ remembered Pershing, ‘he reverently knelt, and following his example all of us did likewise, remaining some minutes at our devotions.’ For Foch, there was no doubt that they would be victorious. His faith gave him a certainty and a calmness that amazed those who came into contact with him and who knew of the great responsibility on his shoulders. After a few moments deep in prayer, Foch got up, crossed himself, and then returned to his car, confident that all was well again.17 His directive had been issued; the plans had been made. The Allies would mount a series of massive attacks beginning on 26 September that would usher in the final crisis of the war. ‘Tout le monde à la bataille!’ as Foch was fond of saying – everyone to the battle. Now the time had come.
By mid-September Dr Hochheimer seemed to have worked a minor miracle at Spa. Hindenburg personally thanked him for the ‘transformation’ in Ludendorff’s demeanour, which had been improved by less work in the afternoon and more sleep, which the doctor carefully observed. ‘My patient is doing better each day; today, breathing deeply, he literally fell asleep under my hands,’ Hochheimer wrote on 11 September. ‘The calming effect of my work and my words has made me quite happy. I am opening the door for him to worlds he has never seen before.’ Ludendorff read a short chapter from Rhapsodies of Joy by Paul Steinmüller, but found it ‘hard to understand’ and ‘incomprehensible’. Nevertheless, Hochheimer concentrated on Ludendorff the ‘human being’; trying to move him out of his habitual moods and temper his cold ferocity. ‘The man really has become a quite different, fresher, freer and happier person,’ he wrote. ‘His stiffness is softening, he became relaxed and personal, asking me about my background and my family . . . When I tell him about our children, he stares at me like a child being told about India – I steer clear of anything official or military.’18
Hochheimer may have been able to lighten Ludendorff’s mood, but old habits died hard. In sharp contrast to the serenity and calmness of Bombon, OHL was a hive of activity. ‘I hear from other people how he is working and giving orders again,’ Hochheimer admitted. The Quartermaster-General usually worked late into the night, discussing military matters with his staff officers, often bent double over maps of the front for hours at a time. ‘His sleep at night is geare
d to events at the front, to which he is always listening with half an ear; he sleeps from 12 midnight to 5 a.m., sometimes even less! Then the thoughts – strategic, tactical, political, economic – start to order themselves again . . . The man is completely alone, he is married to his work.’ When day broke he was up to his usual tricks, telephoning his commanders and inquiring what units were available and what orders they had been given. Ludendorff’s impatience and inability to delegate responsibility were to blame, and it irritated many commanders across the front, but, as Crown Prince Rupprecht admitted, it was ‘understandable given the present situation’ and did at least give the impression that the military situation was being tackled energetically.19 His staff were less keen. On 15 September, when Ludendorff was away, Colonel Heye, Chief of Operations at OHL, spoke to Hochheimer about this constant ‘pent-up energy’. Although he was glad about Ludendorff’s improvement, he asked the doctor, if possible, ‘to keep detaching him from the telephone and let him work even less in the afternoons’. Hochheimer agreed to do what he could, but the situation at the front was darkening with each passing day, which put yet more pressure on the embattled Quartermaster-General and strained his already tired nerves to breaking point.
Despite the loss of Saint-Mihiel, which had been written off as a freakish accident, the Western Front seemed to be holding. News from other parts of the Central Powers was deeply worrying, however. On 15 September, a major Entente offensive began at Salonika, on the front against Bulgaria. This front had been opened in 1915, when the British and French, allied with the Greeks, had landed on the northern coast of Greece and tried to push through to Serbia. It had been a campaign composed in optimism and naivety; instead of finding the ‘soft underbelly’ of the Central Powers, the British and French ran into tough resistance in awful, broken country, full of hills, defiles and mountains. The ground was perfect for defence and gaining offensive momentum there was almost impossible. The war at Salonika had been deadlocked ever since, but with the weakening of the Austro-Hungarians and Ottoman Turks, combined with mutiny at home, the Bulgarian war effort began to break apart. Although the news from Bulgaria had been of concern for some time – there had been strikes, food shortages and political unrest – it was felt that the Bulgarian Army would be able to hold firm. Yet the cancer of disobedience had spread throughout its ranks with devastating effect, and in the face of a renewed Allied offensive troops began slipping away.
The news of the collapse of two Bulgarian divisions hit both Hindenburg and Ludendorff hard. Local German reserves were immediately despatched to the front, but they could do little. The Bulgarian Army simply went home. Hindenburg lamented that ‘a great gap was torn in our common front’, while the Quartermaster-General collapsed into hysterical wails of betrayal and surrender. ‘The Bulgarian Government did nothing whatever to keep up the morale of the troops and the population or to maintain discipline,’ complained Ludendorff. ‘They gave free rein to enemy influences, and took no steps against any of the anti-German agitations.’20 Even worse, the situation in the Middle East was now becoming desperate. Since 1914 the Ottoman Empire had been Germany’s staunch and dependable ally in the region, but it had been tottering for some time. In December 1917 the British had captured Jerusalem – what Lloyd George called ‘a Christmas present for the empire’ – and then moved north, chasing the retreating Turkish forces out of Palestine and Mesopotamia. By the last months of 1918, they were closing in on Damascus, and ripping up what was left of the Ottoman Empire. In the light of these sudden developments, Ludendorff had come to the conclusion that he must act. On 26 September – the day that a massive Franco-American offensive opened in the Argonne – he sent a telegram to the Secretary of State, Paul von Hintze, urging him to come to Spa immediately.21
Much now depended on whether the German front in the west would hold; whether the Hindenburg Line would stem the Allied attacks and restore confidence to the Army. German newspapers proudly proclaimed the impregnability of the position. The Frankfurter Zeitung reported in late September that ‘The excellent line of the SIEGFRIED position will afford first-rate support for our Armies; by their aid our troops will be able to defend all the assaults of the enemy, and will force them to recognize in the inexhaustible fighting power of the Germans the same limits to success which we encountered during the great German campaign in the west.’22 These defences, which now seemed Germany’s only hope of holding on in France, were not, in truth, a line at all, but a series of four main defensive positions that ran across the Western Front from Armentières in Flanders down to Pont-à-Mousson on the Moselle. In the late summer of 1916 – as the German Army was being pounded at the Battle of the Somme – Hindenburg and Ludendorff began to plan the construction of a new series of defences behind the line, specially built to be difficult to shell and to allow the German Army to conserve its manpower. During the last months of 1916 and the spring of the following year, a vast system was built. The first, the Wotan Line (which included the Drocourt–Quéant switch), ran from Armentières southwards to Arras, where the main Siegfried Line was to be constructed. This went from Arras, in front of Saint-Quentin, and along the Aisne River. A third line, Hunding, ran from the Dutch border to a section of the front northeast of Verdun, where it linked up with the Michel Line, which had been constructed along the northern side of the Saint-Mihiel salient and then further on to the south. In order to avoid, as far as possible, enemy artillery fire – which was becoming increasingly difficult to combat – the defences were built on the reverse slope of hills; in other words, out of sight of the Allies. Two main trench systems would be dug with the bulk of the defending forces holding the second position and protected by acres of barbed wire, dug-outs, and pill-boxes wherever possible.23
There were flaws in its design, however. The necessity for siting trenches on the reverse slope to escape artillery fire could not be followed in all sectors. Along the British front, it had been decided to take advantage of a number of canals that lay parallel to the British line by incorporating them into the defensive belt, most notably the Saint-Quentin canal and the Canal du Nord. As well as being an obvious point of resistance, the canals provided a partial solution to the increasing menace of tanks, which were threatening to make Germany’s barbed wire defences useless. Tanks may have been able to go over shelled ground and crush wire, but they could not cross canals. The only problem was that in many areas canals were not sited on the reverse slopes; they were, on the contrary, excavated in low-lying ground, meaning that the German line would be overlooked on both banks – ideal for artillery observation. Therefore, German commanders had often been forced to build a whole new line to the west of any canal, thus shielding this main line of resistance from observation.
One of the toughest sectors ran from Saint-Quentin northwards to Cambrai – the area that Rawlinson and Debeney would strike. Here the Saint-Quentin canal was deep, somewhere between fifty and sixty feet, and ringed with support trenches and barbed wire. It passed through a series of tunnels, most notably at Bellicourt, where a 6,000-yard tunnel had been converted by the Germans into an invulnerable, if somewhat gloomy, place to store equipment and house troops. Because the tunnel would be the obvious, and perhaps easiest, way of crossing the canal, the Germans had built extra defences to protect it, meaning that here the Hindenburg system was about five miles in depth. It was no wonder that Sir John Monash described it as ‘an excellent military obstacle’. Furthermore:
Deep communication trenches led back to the canal banks, in the sides of which tier upon tier of comfortable living quarters for the troops had been tunnelled out. Here support and reserve troops could live in safety and defy our heaviest bombardments. They could be secretly hurried to the front trenches whenever danger threatened. There was, indeed, a perfect tangle of underground shelters and passages. Roomy dug-outs were provided with tunnelled ways which led to cunningly hidden machine-gun posts, and the best of care was taken to provide numerous exits, so that our occupants should
not be imprisoned by the blocking of one or other of them by our bombardment. But it was the barbed wire which formed the groundwork of the defence. It was everywhere, and ran in all directions, cleverly disposed so as to herd the attackers into the very jaws of the machine-guns.24
Some German commanders would later claim that the defensive prowess of the Hindenburg Line had been overestimated, while whining about the need for a full refurbishment. Although in certain sectors this may have been true, the Hindenburg Line was still a formidable series of prepared positions that presented any attacker, however strong, with an enormous array of challenges. Five miles of labyrinthine dug-outs, underground shelters and trenches, with fields full of rusty barbed wire; five miles of concrete machine-gun and mortar emplacements; five miles of murderous defensive fire that would make even the staunchest commander blanch; five miles of the most formidable defensive position in the history of warfare. The problem was not that the Hindenburg Line was not strong enough; the problem was that the Army that would garrison it was a shadow of its former self.
The German Army in the west was divided into five Army Groups that ran from the North Sea to the Swiss border.25 Split between them was a total of 197 divisions, although many were considerably under-strength and urgently required rest and reinforcement. By late September the bulk of German strength lay in the north, in the critical sector between the sea and the Oise River. The Army Groups of Crown Prince Rupprecht and General von Boehn commanded approximately ninety-five divisions, including forty-three in reserve. The largest Army Group belonged to Crown Prince Wilhelm in the centre of the front against the French Tenth and Fifth Armies. As had been the case since early on in the war, the further south and eastwards you went the fewer units were in the line and the poorer their quality. The Army Groups of Max von Gallwitz and Duke Albrecht could muster only forty-two divisions, again many of them being of poor quality.26 By this point German divisions were much weaker in manpower than their Allied counterparts (particularly the Americans who stuffed their divisions with 28,000 men, the equivalent of a British or French corps). Officially each battalion had a strength of 880 men, giving each division approximately 8,000 infantrymen, but this was rarely seen in the final months of the war, and by the end of September the average field strength of a German battalion barely reached 600 men (and this had only been achieved by dismantling fifteen divisions).27