Ludendorff offensive (1918), Germany's final bid for victory on the western front between 21 March and 15 July; officially code-named MICHAEL. In fact, the offensive was divided into a series of smaller operations: Army Group Crown Prince Rupprecht opened the campaign with an advance on both sides of the Scarpe river (MARS) ; Gen Otto von Below's Seventeenth Army pushed toward Bapaume (MICHAEL I) ; Gen Georg von der Marwitz's Second Army advanced south-west from Cambrai (MICHAEL II) ; and Gen Oskar von Hutier's Eighteenth Army drove forward on both sides of St Quentin (MICHAEL III). Gen Hans von Boehn's Seventh Army was held in reserve south of the Oise river. It was primarily an infantry operation as the Germans were outnumbered in aircraft (4, 500 to 3, 670), guns (18, 500 to 14, 000), trucks (100, 000 to 23, 000), and especially tanks (800 to 10).
Ludendorff, holding the post of 1st QMG and effectively in charge of the whole German war effort, was convinced that unrestricted submarine warfare had failed to defeat Great Britain and that Germany had used up its last manpower reserves. On 11 November 1917 he decided to play his ‘last card’, that is, ‘to deliver an annihilating blow to the British before American aid can become effective’. He selected 44 full-strength ‘mobile’ divisions for MICHAEL, and equipped them with the best available machine guns, trench mortars, and flame-throwers; he also shifted more than 40 largely reserve divisions from Russia to France. The assault forces were trained in infiltration tactics according to Capt Hermann Geyer's manual, The Attack in Position Warfare, and patterned on Capt Willy Rohr's storm troops. No deep strategic/operational design lay behind MICHAEL. Instead, Ludendorff opted simply to ‘punch a hole’ into the Allied line. ‘For the rest, we shall see.’
The western front erupted in a hurricane of thunder and fire at 04.00 on 21 March as 6, 608 guns and 3, 534 trench mortars announced the opening of MICHAEL. Five hours later, 76 German divisions assaulted the Allied lines between Arras and La Fère. By the third day, they had opened a 50 mile (80 km) gap in the Allied lines and were heading into open fields. In the process they sent Gough's Fifth Army reeling and drove the British 40 miles (64 km) behind the Somme. During the next three days, the Germans advanced another 20 miles (32 km). Haig's armies were pushed back behind the Somme battlefield of 1916 and special ‘Paris guns’ with a range of 75 miles (121 km) shelled the French capital. But Ludendorff failed to sever the British from the French and on 28 March Gen John J. Pershing reluctantly agreed to release American formations to plug the holes in the Allied lines.
Ludendorff had asked too much of his troops and MICHAEL degenerated into position warfare north of the Somme. Starving German troops all too often had stopped the advance to raid rich Allied supply depots. They became demoralized as victory receded from view. Nonetheless, Ludendorff mounted five more assaults: against Arras (29 March), the Lys river (9 April), the Chemin des Dames (27 May), the Oise river (9 June), and Rheims (15 July). In the meantime, the Allies had appointed Foch C-in-C of the Allied armies in France. On 18 July Foch launched a counter-attack near Villers-Cotterêts that caught the Germans unprepared. Allied forces quickly ruptured the German front and penetrated deep behind the lines, while Allied aircraft mercilessly strafed the retreating Germans.
This second battle of the Marne formally ended the German advance in France. Step by step, they fell back upon the Hindenburg Line. Cases of desertion skyrocketed. Some soldiers openly refused to obey orders; entire units lost any sense of discipline; others wildly fired their weapons out of moving trains; countless thousands simply surrendered to the Allies. The German army had given its all for MICHAEL. Skeletal divisions manned by badly clothed and undernourished soldiers and powered by emaciated horses had driven the best-equipped and best-fed armies of Britain and the empire, France, and the USA back to the very gates of Paris. Yet all they had achieved, in the words of the German official history of the war, were ‘ordinary victories’. Nowhere had they possessed sufficient manpower to turn it into the extraordinary breakthrough that Germany required.
Bibliography
- Herwig, Holger H., The First World War: Germany and Austria-Hungary 1914-1918 (London, 1997)
— Holger H. Herwig
