The First World War

by John Keegan

  Day one of Operation Michael had undoubtedly been a German victory, although the total of German dead, over 10,000, exceeded that of the British, and the number of wounded—nearly 29,000 German against 10,000 British—greatly so. Even though some British battalions had given their all, an example being the 7th Sherwood Foresters, which lost 171 killed, including the commanding officer, they were the exception. The loss of ten infantry lieutenant colonels killed testifies to the desperate fight put up by some units; but it is also evidence of the degree of disorganisation that it required commanding officers to place themselves in the front line and, by setting an example to their stricken soldiers, pay the supreme sacrifice. Well-prepared units do not lose senior officers in such numbers, even in the circumstances of a whirlwind enemy offensive, unless there has been a collapse of morale at the lower level or a failure to provide support by higher authority. Both conditions were present in Fifth Army on 21 March. Many of the units, worn down by the attrition battles of 1917, were not in a fit state to defend their fronts, which were in any case patchily fortified, while Fifth Army’s headquarters had no proper plan prepared to deal with a collapse should it begin to develop. “I must confess,” wrote an experienced infantryman in a retrospect of the aftermath, “that the German breakthrough of 21 March 1918 should never have occurred. There was no cohesion of command, no determination, no will to fight, and no unity of companies or battalions.” The question must be whether the collapse, for collapse it was, belongs to the same psychological order of events as the collapse of the French army in the spring of 1917, the collapse of the Russian army after the Kerensky offensive and the collapse of the Italian army during Caporetto. All four armies, if the British are included, had by then suffered over a hundred per cent casualties in their infantry complement, measured against the numbers with which they had gone to war, and may simply have passed beyond the point of what was bearable by flesh and blood.

  If there is a difference to be perceived, it is in the extent of the psychological trauma and in its containment. The French army exhibited signs of breakdown in over half its fighting formations and took a year to recover. The Italian army, though it was chiefly the divisions on the Isonzo front that gave way, suffered a general crisis, never really recovered and had to be reinforced by large numbers of British and French troops. The Russian army, under the strain of successive defeats, two revolutions and the disintegration of the state system, broke down altogether and eventually dissolved. The crisis of the British Fifth Army was of a different and lesser order. Its defeat was undoubtedly moral rather than material in character, and in that sense resembled the defeat of Caporetto, but its malaise did not infect the three other British armies, Third, Second or First; indeed, it was quite swiftly contained within the Fifth Army itself which, only a week after the German offensive’s opening, had begun to recover and was fighting back. It had lost much ground and had been heavily re-inforced, by other British, by French and by some American troops, yet it had never ceased to function as an organisation, while many of its units had sustained the will to resist, to hold ground and even to counter-attack.

  The worst days of the German offensive for the British, but also for the Allies as a whole, were the third, fourth and fifth, 24–26 March, days in which the danger grew of a separation of the British from the French armies and of a progressive displacement of the whole British line north-westward towards the channel ports, precisely that “rolling up” which Ludendorff had laid down as Operation Michael’s object. The spectre of a breaking of the front infected the French high command, just as it had done during the Marne campaign; but, while in 1914 Joffre had used every measure at his disposal to keep in touch with the BEF, now Pétain, commanding the French armies of the north, took counsel of his fears. At eleven in the morning of 24 March, he visited Haig at his headquarters to warn that he expected to be attacked himself north of Verdun, could offer no more reinforcements and now had as his principal concern the defence of Paris. When Haig asked if he understood and accepted that the likely outcome of his refusal to send further help was a separation of their two armies, Pétain merely nodded his head.71 Haig instantly realised that he had an inter-Allied crisis on his hands. Whereas, however, in similar circumstances in 1914, it was the British War Office which had taken steps to stiffen Sir John French’s resolve, now Haig telephoned the War Office to ask for help in stiffening Pétain’s. Two days later, at Doullens, near Amiens, directly in the line of the German axis of advance, an extempore Anglo-French conference was convened, chaired by the French President, Poincaré, and including Clemenceau, the Prime Minister, and Lord Milner, the British War Minister, as well as Pétain, Haig and Foch, as French Chief of Staff.

  The meeting did not begin well. Haig outlined what had happened to the Fifth Army, explained that he had now put the portion of it south of the Somme under Pétain’s control, as he had, but expressed his inability to do anything more in that sector. Pétain objected that the Fifth Army was “broken” and untactfully compared Gough’s troops to the Italians at Caporetto. There was an altercation between him and Henry Wilson, the Chief of the Imperial General Staff, ended by Pétain protesting that he had sent all the help he could and that the aim must now be to defend Amiens. Amiens was twenty miles beyond the furthest point yet reached by the Germans. At its mention, Foch, fireating as ever, burst out, “we must fight in front of Amiens, we must fight where we are now … we must not now retire a single inch.” His intervention retrieved the situation. There were some hasty conversations in corners, after which it was suddenly agreed that Haig would serve under the command of Foch, who would be “charged … with the co-ordination of the action of the British and French armies.”72 The formula satisfied all parties, even Haig, who had resisted any dilution of his absolute independence of command ever since appointed to lead the BEF in December 1915. Foch’s authority would be extended, on 3 April, to comprehend “the direction of strategic operations,” making him in effect Allied generalissimo.

  His appointment came only just in time. The Germans by 5 April had advanced twenty miles on a front of fifty miles and stood within five miles of Amiens, which was defended by a screen of makeshift units, including engineers and railway troops, some American, fighting as infantry. The appointment of a single commander with absolute authority to allot reserves, French and British alike, wherever they were most needed, was essential in such a crisis. Nevertheless, the Germans were by this stage of their offensive in crisis also. Not only had the pace of their advance slowed, the advance itself had taken the wrong direction.

  Yet sense of crisis was absent. The Kaiser was so delighted with the progress of the advance that on 23 March he had given German schoolchildren a “victory” holiday and conferred on Hindenburg the Grand Cross of the Iron Cross with Golden Rays, last awarded to Blücher for the defeat of Napoleon in 1815. The map, nevertheless, by then already showed evidence of a crisis in development, and it was to grow with every passing day. Because the greatest success had been won at the outset on the extreme right of the British line, where it joined the French south of the Somme, it was in that sector that the German high command now decided to make the decisive effort, with the Second and Eighteenth Armies. The object was to be the separation of the British and French armies, while the Seventeenth was to follow behind and on the two leading armies’ flank and the Sixth to prepare an advance north-westward towards the sea.73 The order marked an abandonment of the strategy of a single, massive thrust, and the adoption of a three-pronged advance in which none of the prongs would be strong enough to achieve a breakthrough. As in 1914, during the advance on Paris, the German army was reacting to events, following the line of least resistance, rather than dominating and determining the outcome.

  The accidents of military geography also began to work to the Germans’ disadvantage. The nearer they approached Amiens, the more deeply did they become entangled in the obstacles of the old Somme battlefield, a wilderness of abandoned trenches, broken road
s and shell-crater fields left behind by the movement of the front a year earlier. The Somme may not have won the war for the British in 1916 but the obstacle zone it left helped to ensure that in 1918 they did not lose it. Moreover, the British rear areas, stuffed with the luxuries enjoyed by the army of a nation which had escaped the years of blockade that in Germany had made the simplest necessities of life rare and expensive commodities, time and again tempted the advancing Germans to stop, plunder and satiate themselves. Colonel Albrecht von Thaer recorded that “entire divisions totally gorged themselves on food and liquor” and had failed “to press the vital attack forward.”74

  Desolation and the temptation to loot may have been enemies as deadly to the Germans as the resistance of the enemy itself. On 4 April, however, the British added to their difficulties by launching a counter-attack, mounted by the Australian Corps, outside Amiens, and next day the German high command recognised that Operation Michael had run its course. “OHL was forced to take the extremely hard decision to abandon the attack on Amiens for good … The enemy resistance was beyond our powers.” The Germans put their losses at a quarter of a million men, killed and wounded, about equal to those of the French and British combined, but the effect on the picked divisions assembled for the “war-winning” Kaiser Battle went far beyond any numerical calculation of cost. “More than ninety German divisions … were exhausted and demoralised … Many were down to 2,000 men.”75 While the Allied losses included men of all categories, from combat infantry to line-of-communication troops, the German casualties had been suffered among an irreplaceable élite. The cause of the failure, moreover, reflected Major Wilhelm von Leeb, who would command one of Hitler’s army groups in the Second World War, was that “OHL has changed direction. It has made its decisions according to the size of territorial gain, rather than operational goals.”

  Ludendorff’s young staff officers, of whom Leeb was one and Thaer another, reproached him, as the fellowship of the Great General Staff allowed them to do, with Operation Michael’s mismanagement. “What is the purpose of your croaking?” he riposted. “What do you want from me? Am I now to conclude peace at any price?”76 That time of reckoning was not far distant, but, as Michael drew to its close, Ludendorff, refusing to admit a setback, immediately inaugurated the subordinate scheme, Operation George, against the British in Flanders. The objective, the channel coast behind Ypres, should have been easier to achieve than that of Operation Michael, for the sea lay only sixty miles beyond the point of assault; but the front before Ypres, on whose defences the BEF had laboured since October 1914, was perhaps stronger than any part of the Western Front, and the British were familiar with every nook and cranny of its trenches.

  Mist again helped the Germans on 9 April by cloaking their preliminary moves and they also enjoyed a superiority in heavy artillery, the Bruchmüller battering train having been brought northward from the Somme for the preliminary bombardment. Weight of fire won an opening advantage. It frightened Haig enough for him to issue a message to Second and First Armies on 11 April which became famous as the “Backs to the Wall” order. “With our backs to the wall,” it read, “and believing in the justice of our cause, each one of us must fight on to the end … Every position must be held to the last man. There must be no retirement.” Retirement there was nonetheless, in part because Foch, now exerting to the full his power to allocate reserves, took the harsh but correct view that the British could survive without French help and must fight the battle out with their own reserves. The valiant little Belgian army took over a portion of the British line, the Royal Flying Corps operated energetically in close support, despite bad flying weather, and British machine gunners found plentiful targets as the German infantry pressed home their attacks almost in 1914 style. On 24 April, south of Ypres, the Germans succeeded in mounting one of their rare tank attacks of the war, but it was checked by the appearance of British tanks, superior both in number and in quality, and repulsed. On 25 April the Germans succeeded in capturing one of the Flemish high points, Mount Kemmel, and on 29 April, another, the Scherpenberg, but those achievements marked the limit of their advance. On 29 April, Ludendorff accepted that, as on the Somme the month before, he had shot his bolt and must stop. The German official history recorded, “The attack had not penetrated to the decisive heights of Cassel and the Mont des Cats, the possession of which would have compelled the [British] evacuation of the Ypres salient and the Yser position. No great strategic movement had become possible, and the Channel ports had not been reached. The second great offensive had not brought about the hoped-for decision.”77

  The most noted event of the second German offensive had been the death in action on 21 April of the “Red Baron,” Manfred von Richthofen, leader of the Flying Circus and, with eighty victories in aerial combat, the highest ranking pilot ace in any of the war’s air forces. Air operations were, however, marginal to the issue of defeat or victory even in 1918, when investment in air forces had begun to figure significantly among the allocation of national military resources. The true human significance of the “Kaiser Battles” was thus far better represented by the balance sheet struck by the German army’s medical reports in April. They established that between 21 March and 10 April, the three main assaulting armies “had lost one-fifth of their original strength, or 303,450 men.” Worse was to come. The April offensive against the British in Flanders was eventually computed to have cost 120,000 men, out of a total strength of 800,000 in Fourth and Sixth Armies. A report from Sixth Army warned in mid-April that “the troops will not attack, despite orders. The offensive has come to a halt.”78

  Frustrated on the northern front, Ludendorff now decided to shift his effort against the French. From the nose of the salient created by the great advance of March, he might either have swung north-westward, as his original plan anticipated, or south-westward. Military logic was for the former option, which threatened the British rear area and the Channel ports. The second, however, was favoured by the grain of the country, which offered an axis of advance down the valley of the Oise, and by the temptation of Paris, only seventy miles distant. Between it and the German armies stood the Chemin des Dames ridge, on which Nivelle’s offensive had broken the previous May; but Nivelle had attacked in the old style, with wave after wave of infantry following the opening bombardment. Ludendorff trusted to his new style of attack to crack the French defences. He hoped, moreover, that a success would create the opportunity to renew the offensive in the north should he manage to draw enough of his enemies’ reserves to the front outside Paris, which he had now brought directly under attack by the deployment of a long-range gun, known to the Allies as “Big Bertha,” which dropped shells into the city, psychologically if not objectively to considerable effect, from a range of seventy-five miles.

  For this third offensive the largest concentration of artillery yet assembled was brought to the front, 6,000 guns supplied from an ammunition stock of two million shells.79 All were fired off in a little over four hours on the morning of 27 May, against sixteen Allied divisions; three were British, exhausted in the battles of March and April, and brought down to the Chemin des Dames to rest. Immediately after the bombardment ceased, fifteen divisions of the German Sixth Army, with twenty-five more following, crossed a succession of water lines to reach the summit of the ridge, roll over it and continue down the reverse slope to the level ground beyond. The plan required them to halt, when open country was reached, as a preliminary to renewing the attack in the north, but the opportunity created was too attractive to relinquish. Ludendorff decided to exploit the gains of the first two days and during the next five days pressed his divisions forward as far as Soissons and Château-Thierry, until his outposts stood only fifty-six miles from the French capital. The Allies committed their reserves as slowly as they could, seeking to deny the Germans the satisfaction of a battle to the death, but even so were forced to engage three divisions on 28 May, five on 29 May, eight on 30 May, four on 31 May, five on 1 June and two
more by 3 June. They included the 3rd and 2nd American Divisions, the latter including a brigade of the U.S. Marine Corps, the most professional element of the doughboy army, and at Belleau Wood on 4 June and the days following the Marines added to their reputation for tenacity by steadfastly denying the Germans access to the road towards Rheims, the capture of which would have more than doubled the railway capacity on which they depended to feed their offensive. At an early stage of the battle in their sector it was suggested to a Marine officer by French troops retreating through their positions that he and his men should retreat also. “Retreat?” answered Captain Lloyd Williams, in words which were to enter the mythology of the Corps, “Hell, we just got here.”80

  The Marine counter-attack at Belleau Wood was but one contribution, however, to a general response by French and British, as well as American troops, to the threat to Paris. Unknown to the Allies, the Germans had already decided to halt the third offensive on 3 June, in the face of mounting resistance, though also because once again the leading troops had overrun the supply columns which lagged far behind the advancing infantry and their supporting artillery. They had also lost another hundred thousand men and more, and, while French, British and American losses equalled theirs, the Allies retained the ability to replace casualties while they did not. The French, after a year of effective inactivity, were able to draw on a new annual class of conscripts and, though the strength of the British infantry, worn down by continuous fighting, was in absolute decline (it fell from 754,000 in July 1917 to 543,000 in June 1918) the Americans were now receiving 250,000 men a month in France and had twenty-five organised divisions in or behind the battle zone.81 Fifty-five more were under organisation in the United States.