"The Second Battle of the Marne: The Turning Point of 1918" by Dr. Michael S. Neiberg

ladies no it is my pleasure to introduce dr. Michael Benson I'm a professor of history at the University of Southern Mississippi professor Nyberg is a professor of history and could record the Center for the Study of war in society at the University of Southern Mississippi and is the author or editor of nine books of numerous articles specializing them primarily in the World War one and the global dimensions of the history of warfare his most recent books include soldier's daily lives 19th century and also fighting the Great War a global history which has been called the greatest single volume history of the first school before coming to the University of Southern Mississippi dr. nightmare atop a demon United States Air Force Academy and thanks Thanks well let me start by thanking Michael and Jesse and Tommy shirt and everybody that made this possible it is a real honor to be here to do the perspectives lecture and to do it here in this room where I sat right by that light doing some of the research that that went into this book so it's a real pleasure to be here it is a real pleasure to be in my native state of Pennsylvania and in giving this talk here tonight I'm going to talk about the Second Battle of the Marne and I came to this subject through a rather odd way through a cup of coffee with a gentleman by the name dispenser Tucker who's at Virginia Military Institute and he was doing a series on 20th century battles and he asked me what battle in the 20th century did I think most needed to be included in the series and I answered somewhat you know foolishly that there was no real scholarly book on Second Battle of the Marne except for Colonel Johnson's which focused on the American side had swamp but that there was no book on the whole battle and Spence first of all talked me into writing the book and then he said well why do you think that is why do you think nobody's looked at this battle before and I gave an answer to him that in in looking looking back on I'm rather embarrassed that I said that this is a unique battle in that it's the only time in World War one that the Germans Americans French and British are on the same battlefield in large numbers at the same time and the answer I gave him was that I thought that nobody had thought about the battle in those terms and that it took kind of looking at four different armies to make that happen and I said that I just didn't think that anybody had thought to do that military historians tend by nature to be a little bit nationalist in the way they look at things the British and French historian certainly tend to be that way but the more I did this project and the more I did research on it it occurred to me that that wasn't the reason at all that nobody had particularly looked at this battle the reason I think that nobody's really particularly looked at this is that this is a battle that defies every stereotype you have a world war one there are no trenches at this battle this is a battle that goes more or less to plan at least for the Allies this is a battle that involves a lot of movement and involves a lot of fluidity and it has a decision at the end so in that regard it's unlike the Somme it's unlike they're done it's unlike Passchendaele it's unlike even the meuse-argonne these battles that we kind of look at and we say well what really came of this what really happened this is a battle that is decisive on the strategic sense it's a battle that literally changes the way that World War 1 happens so the more I worked on this project and the more I looked at sources the more I thought well the real reason why no one's looking at this is that it doesn't fit the way we think about World War one so what I want to do here with you tonight is introduce you to this battle and talk about some of the ways that this battle is very different if you go to the second war in battlefields as I know Colonel Johnson has and some others have they don't look like the battlefields at the Somme in Verdun there are no trenches to walk through there's no great reconstructed battlefield as there is at the Salomon and other places because this is a battle that's hard to fix in space it's a very big battle as I'll show you and it's also again a battle that doesn't affect the landscape in the way that some of these other battles do I put two images on this first slide both of which I hope make a point the top image is of French tanks fighting at the second Marne this is a battle that armor and advanced weaponry are very important in it is in that regard a battle that in my mind looks much more like something out of say 1939 or 1940 than it does something out of 1914 this is a way of showing how important this technology was modern technology modern methods of fighting war modern doctrine modern strategy all of that - to this battle the image on the bottom is of the small town of theme which is across the veil River in the Marne you can see some of the destruction that the battle caused there that's part of the reason I put this up theme is on the right hand side on the left hand side is the town of fee met which in French literally means small theme and across the Vale River you can see the bridge there that was destroyed if you go to phim today and you cross the Vale river into fee met you will walk over a bridge that has on it pictures of doughboys and it is dedicated to the 28th Infantry Division which is of course the keystone or the iron division of men from Pennsylvania it was Pennsylvania men who liberated this town in World War one so I chose that as the the second image here and we were talking at dinner about the great memorial at Varenne to the Pennsylvanians this is not very far from that okay the context for this battle exists in in what happens in 1918 when the Germans launched a massive assault on the Western Front that begins on March 21st 1918 in an effort to win the war before the United States can begin to send large numbers of men over to France and as most of you probably know they conquer everything that's in these kind of pink shades that are on this map right here in general they are attempting to go for the area right around the town of M en which is right there on the end is the break point between or the merge point I should say between the British and French armies north of omean it's all British South upon manats it's French the idea in theory is that you cause a break right here the thinking being that if the British panicked they'll do what the British do and they'll go towards sea ports and that if the French panic they'll do what they should do and they'll come south and they will try to cover Paris this is the theory at least in reality the Germans don't do quite so good a job they never put enough pressure on a man to make this happen what it does however is a couple of very important things these campaigns the Germans do take all of this territory here which is remarkable by First World War standards really really remarkable by First World War standards it creates two very important things for the Second Battle of the Marne the first thing that does is lead to a meeting in the town of zulan's which is up here somewhere right about there of all of the Allied commanders not the American Pershing's not at this meeting but at the do long meeting they all get together and what they do is they finally decide after months and months and months of arguing and wrangling about this question that the Western Front for the Allies needs one commander that the British can't run their war the French can't run their war the Americans can't run that their work there needs to be a single commander for the Western Front and they show up at Dulong which is close enough to the front line that they can hear the artillery shells that the Germans are firing in their general direction they meet in the town hall of duel on the room is still there there's a big mural on the wall to commemorate this occasion and they sit down and they think about who they're going to name to this very important job of overall commander-in-chief they all know it has to be a frenchman because so much of the front line is french and as you can see here the french have 100 infantry divisions in the field the british have 58 so it's going to go to a Frenchman the British at first are in favor of Omri Philippe 10 about whom you'll hear more later when they show up at Zoo long pay 10 is looking at maps and he's already talking about abandoning Paris he's already talking about the war maybe being over another Frenchman no man brother name was General Ferdinand foix a man the British knew well and trusted Foix walks into the room he slams his fist on the desk and he says Paris is a long way off we must fight right here one of the generals that was at the meeting says we'll give the job to Foix at least then we'll die with a sword in our hands perhaps not the imagery foe had in mind what comes out of this agreement is a deal that Foix will conduct what is called strategic direction of the Allied armies what that means in practice is that Foix will direct the British American armies and the French armies where they should go but it is up to those national commanders to actually do the commanding so Foix is put in a position of trying to design a campaign without actually having any authority to give an order to anybody and at this meeting the French Prime Minister Georges Clemenceau turns to Foix and he says now general you have it the supreme command you always wanted and Pho shoots back very quickly to Clemenceau he says it's a fine present you've made for me you give me a battle lost and now you expect me to win it what Foix does for the first time on the Western Front is he understands that this all has to be considered as one front and the only real power that he's given is something called the general reserve it's it is as the name implies it's a reserve of troops that has kept back around here that is some French some British eventually the Americans throw a division or two in there the only real as is where those troops go that's it and the interesting thing I find about foix is that at the very worst of this crisis when the Germans are approaching Paris this way they're approaching Paris this way it gets so bad that the French government leaves Paris and it goes to Bordeaux far away in the southwest of France Foshee is in communication with his wife who is living in Paris and I found a letter and a communication exchange between the two of them where his wife writes de Foix and she says to him the French government is leaving everybody else is leaving what should I do and Foix writes this letter back to her in which he says I have seen what there is to see I have done what there is to do stay there I will stop them so folks is gonna be a very very important player in this in this scenario however he does not command the French army commander the French army remains in the hands of Patton and as I'll show you they're two very very different people the big question becomes and it's a natural one where do you think the Germans are going to attack next if you're British what do you think they're afraid of where do the British think the Germans are going to attack next north or south obviously north and this is Hague's big concern he is worried about a drive through Flanders to cut off these channel ports through which most of British supplies come without those channel ports they can't supply his army if you're only Philippe ten the commander of the French army what are you afraid of where are they gonna go Paris and this is the real concern that Foix has to manage the British are right to be worried about the the Channel ports pay 10 is of course right to be worried about Paris the question for Foix becomes what do you do with these few divisions that are in that general reserve where do you send them do you send them north or do you send them south and the controversial thing that foix figures out and I'll show you why he figures it out in a minute is that the Germans are not going to go for Flanders and they're not gonna go for Paris both figures out the place they're gonna go is right there along the line of the Marne River right around here a terrain that folks knew very well because he fought in what known as the First Battle of the Marne in 1914 and it's arraigned that douglas haig the British commander also knew from having fought there in 1914 and as we'll find out the German commander the Crown Prince Wilhelm had fought there in 1914 Pocius figured out that this is where they're gonna go next woody has to do however is convinced his subordinate commanders that he's got it right because they don't believe him the Germans had attacked here along the aint River which is the one of the rivers that flows right here and they had created this little bulge this little pocket what in World War 1 terms is called a salient right along the Marne River and this is where this battle is going to kick off in mid-july of 1918 this is where how it looks up a little bit closer there's your salient or your bubble there this is what foix is figured out Paris is a hundred and three kilometers away it's pretty far away they're done the great French fortress city is a hundred and twenty kilometers the other direction there's FEMA and fee met those two towns that I was talking about there is your salient right there what Foix had figured out and it's not just him it's his staff officers who had figured it out as well what he's figured out is that this salient is absolutely untenable the Germans cannot hold it and the reason he has figured that out is because of the railroad lines the railroad lines in this sector are what are called lateral railroad lines meaning they run east to west or they run against the grain of the Saline or excuse me with the grain parallel to the salient what that means is that it's easy for the Germans to move supplies back and forth between rancid swaths all say but it's extremely difficult for them to move supplies into this salient from north to south which is what they're going to have to do so what Bose has figured out is that in order for this salient to be tenable the Germans have got to attack and capture the city of rats re ims but the french pronounced it with a real nasal Rance they're gonna have to capture this rail juncture if they capture this rail juncture then they can do things until that time however their army is just sitting there and he knows that there are two things the Germans are not going to do they're not gonna let that army sit their unsupplied and they're sure as heck not going to withdraw it out of that salient so what Bush has to do what he has to convince his subordinate commanders of is that the attack is not going to go west towards Paris it is in fact going to go east or away from Paris now this may be a prelude to an attack on Paris later but the initial concern is not Paris the initial concern is the town of Rance the city of rats now inside the salient as I'll explain it a little bit this is a part of the battlefield that really has not been fought over very much so again there are very few trenches in fact it has been fought over so little that most of the crops there are still growing and that's going to become important a lot of high wheat and a lot of high corn which is going to make fighting in here extremely difficult there are a couple of towns of note the most important for our purposes is a town of fair on tartan hua there are also a number of farms that are going to end up being kind of fortified little mini fortresses on the battlefield as the Germans and allies alternatively do that Bella wood is right here the forest that the Marines defended just a couple of weeks earlier the city of chateau-thierry another very important one for American military history is right there all of this sector in here is what has to be defended now what Foix has to do and it's a little bit complicated he not only has to convince his own staff officers that the Germans are gonna go east which seems counterintuitive to almost everybody he has to convince Haig and he has to convince pay 10 Hague still was worried about Flanders for obvious reasons pay tan is still worried about Paris for obvious reasons so folks has to somehow convince them that he's got this picture right the German commander there he is that is the Crown Prince Wilhelm the Kaiser son Wilhelm is an interesting guy because he's the Kaiser son he's made a colonel at age 7 he is head of the nationalist militarist Party in Germany and he is even more aggressive even more militarist even more expansionist than his famous father in his father was the one normally trying to calm his son down they didn't have the best of relationships if the crown prince wanted to talk to his father he had to set up an appointment through the royal calendar first but he's there he's the kaisers eldest son he's the future Emperor so they think of Germany and he has to be given an important role so they give him command of an army group which becomes known as Army Group Crown Prince Wilhelm there are two crown princes he's Crown Prince Wilhelm but what the German army has gotten in the habit of doing is bypassing him and working through his chief of staff a man with a name you couldn't make up oppression by the name of Schmidt von Nobles Dorf and he's the guy they're gonna work through the crown prince's reputation is that he's interested in chasing women and playing tennis not necessarily in that order the crown prince however is a very interesting man throughout 1914 and 1915 he takes increasing interest in his own army group takes over more and more of the responsibilities that his chief of staff had been doing he still plays a lot of tennis he still chases a lot of women but he's taking very seriously what he's seeing in 1916 about midway through the Battle of Verdun he becomes convinced that Germany can't win the war he becomes convinced that they're gonna lose he tries to convince his father of this - very little success in 1918 he gets to be a little more optimistic as the Germans conduct those offensives in the spring and he starts to think well maybe if things go right for us maybe if we catch a break here or there we might be able to get out of this okay he had been the commander of the army group that was supposed to take bear done in 1916 and as some of you probably know he never got there he sees taking rents as a way to make up for the fact that he never did get there done he understands full well the importance of rents it is a railroad Center and it is also the site of the coronation of French kings so this is an important symbol and it's an important military site and he thinks if he can get it maybe he can do something to help turn the war later on during this battle he again becomes convinced that Germany won't win he goes back to his pessimism and actually get an audience with his father and helps to convince his father that Germany is not going to win but that's in the future so hi - the British registered me how did the French figure out that this was going to be the attack how did they figure out what the Germans were up to there were a couple of signs there were there was a concentration of German forces that the crown prince did about 20 divisions and what became known as the Tartan plane and about 22 divisions on the other side of rants over here that seemed to indicate to Foix pretty clearly that they weren't gonna go west if they were gonna go west those 20 divisions probably would have been over here closer to us all and they certainly wouldn't have had 22 divisions over here so it seemed to suggest to foix that there was something else going on here the Germans also did a very poor job of what we in the United States now call OPSEC or operational security they did not change their codes the French had broken several of them there was an incident where a French excuse me a German officer had swum across the Marne River to scout positions he scouted the positions beautifully enough and found what he was looking for but the French found him and he was carrying a complete set of the operations orders for the attack on him in fact there were so many indications and so many signs Pocius headquarters began to believe they were being tricked because it usually wasn't this easy to figure out what the Germans were doing this was a little too easy nevertheless Foix is convinced by what he's seen that the German attack is going to go for either side of rents and meet somewhere around the town of epergne which is right here rents and epergne are the the two French capitals of champagne so they if you want to go to France and you want to really enjoy and taste some champagne these are the two places to do it folks believed they were gonna go for both of those cities not so much for the champagne though that's a really good reason in and of itself but because if they get ransom in epergne they also control this rail line so the thinking again is they're gonna want to take this entire rail system here now looking at the map already and I'll talk more about this and this is where Colonel Johnston's book is so so wonderful folks has figured out already - one the key to beating the Germans is gonna be stopping this offensive when it happens second however and very important for foix is thinking in the way that his mindset works if 20 divisions are gonna go that way and 22 divisions are gonna go that way there's nothing right here and what Foix is already thinking about is not just stopping the German offensive but stopping it and then caving in the entire western half of this salient because there's not going to be anything there to stop it and this is really really important to the overall story of the second Marne focus thinking from a very early stage we're not just gonna play defense which is what we've been doing since March 21st we're gonna look for the point where we can stop the Germans and then turn the entire momentum of this war and this is the place where we can do it if we play our cards right his problem is that he's got two commanders underneath him who don't quite share his sentiment the man on the right is by far the more famous this is on reef elite Patton a man who becomes much because famous in World War one and of course becomes even more famous for his actions in World War two pay tens an interesting guy he comes from the north of France from a peasant background he despises all politicians especially those that represent the French Republic and in 1914 he is very much out of favor with the French army the French Army's doctrine has been preaching offensive offensive offensive Payton has been preaching defensive defensive defensive and his famous maxim is the to fire power kills that almost gets him retired out in 1914 but the experiences of World War one seemed to suggest and then really do suggest that defense is in fact more important than the offense and pay 10 quickly Rises through the ranks in 1916 he takes over command and they're done where he performs spectacularly well becomes a household name in France and becomes a tremendous hero pay 10 and Foix don't get along foix is an ardent Catholic pay 10 is a little bit suspicious of Catholics and their relationship to the French government Fache is very much in favor of the offensive they tend very much in favor of the defensive they are two men that just don't quite see eye to eye on things and the command relationship as I mentioned before between these two guys is not quite clear foix is the overall commander of the Allied armies or the coordinator but pay 10 is the one who's supposed to give the orders to the french army so it's not quite clear even how these relationships are going to work the man on the left probably less well known this is on Rijo Rome a very important man in his own right let me just sneak back here one slide if I might zero is right here he's commanding the 4th army right around Rance so obviously he's in a very important position here Shiro is one of my favorite French characters to talk about a French generals to talk about he's got this long beard and wonderful facial hair that he has here he didn't look at the camera very often because he didn't like being photographed and neither does pay 10 this is about as smiling as pay 10 gets that's as happy as you'll ever see him the other famous picture of him he's literally growling at the camera really dislike all all attention in that regard Jero had served in the Argonne forest in 1914 when an artillery shell took off half of his arm and most of his leg he was then sent out to Gallipoli to serve as the French commander of that operation which later is very very important to this battle because he serves alongside a British general who had also been a khalipa Lee and the two men got to know each other quite well he's going to command the army that will later be over the American rainbow division the 42nd division so he got to know a lot of Americans extremely well after the war he became the honorary commander of the Rainbows a title that he kept until the day he died and I believe 1940 it didn't get off to a good start though Sheroes driver the first time he went to meet the 42nd division accidentally ran over one of the members of the rainbow division so it didn't get off to a good start but Shiro met an officer from the 42nd rainbow division a man by the name of Douglas MacArthur MacArthur a man who didn't particularly like idiots this is what MacArthur wrote about army Shero with one arm gone and half a leg missing with his red beard glittering in the Sun the jaunty rake of his cocked hat and the oratorical brilliance of his resonant voice his impact was overwhelming he seemed almost to be the reincarnation of that legendary figure of battle and romance Omri of Navarre and he was just as good as he looked I have known all of the modern French commanders and many were great when measured by any standard but he was the greatest of them all Jero was without a weakness so what was it that this man did that was so important to MacArthur this is what he did and let me walk it you walk it through this with you very quickly Jero was trained in the old French army system which means attack attack attack attack attack offensive a Lutron's offensive to the utmost when in doubt attack something sure Oh however figures out by 1915 maybe that artillery shell did it for him that that's not gonna work to win this war and sure Owen Payton together come up with a system that is going to become known as the defense in depth other armies had done this before but at zero and pay 10 that perfected and let me just explain to you what the system looks like this right here is my vain weak attempt to show trenches that's what those are they look like them come on these things right here are called communication trenches they are designed to move supplies forward and wounded men backward and these things out here are saps little listening posts out into no-man's land the way in defense-in-depth system works when it's done right is the men in the first line very very few for a division two regiments out there and very few heavy weapons a couple of machine guns and that's about it these guys are to sit and take on the brunt of the first wave of the enemy offensive sound like a good job very little heavy weaponry and very few men in fact it becomes known as the sacrificial trench now their job is a very interesting one they are not to sit and fight the Germans to the last man as would have been the case in 1915 their job by 1918 is to hold the Germans off long enough to break off the timing of their offensive and I'll explain why that's so important in a little bit break the timing of their offensive fire flares into the air to indicate where the main lines of the German attacker coming from and at the last minute spike your own weapons and get out of there the men in the sacrificial trenches were all volunteers nobody was forced to serve in the sacrificial trenches why did they do it excellent question I looked high and low for a single memoir letter diary from any man who had served in here couldn't find one my best guess is this is the equivalent of falling on a grenade to save your buddies okay their job is to fight as hard as you can slow the German offensive don't defeat it that's not your job spike your weapons and get out of it shorts Clemens so the French Prime Minister walked into one of these sacrificial trenches just a couple weeks before the battle and he wrote he who has not lived through such moments does not know what life can give the second plot line the combat zone these are the guys who are supposed to fight the enemy and to explain this I got explained a little bit about how a World War one battle typically functioned it functioned was something called a rolling barrage what this was was an artillery fire that the Germans would fire at the French trenches and the idea was that the artillery would precede the infantry by a measured pace and the idea was that as the artillery moved the infantry would move as well and that was the way you were going to get protection to the infantry so the goal here is for the men in the sacrificial trenches to break up that timing so that the artillery barrage rolls away from the infantry and therefore makes it less powerful makes it irrelevant then the German attack would have to fight through the sacrificial trenches without artillery support and then come to the second line the combat zone where you have your fresh troops and most of your machine guns and heavy weaponry now the theory is the Germans get to here without artillery support and already tired from having fought through one line now they got to fight the second line and if by chance they managed to make it through the second line there's the third line and if they make it through the third line in zeros district there's fourth line and in places there's a fifth line all without artillery support that's what Jareau has put in place what Jareau has done is try to create this situation whereby the German attack is gonna fail and again I think the thing that that men like gyro and Ferdinand Foix and others deserve great credit for is taking the system that they were trained under this offensive offensive offensive system and saying to themselves this doesn't work we need to do something else and then figuring out what that something else is gonna be so late on the night of July 14th the French have worked this out so well the whole German planned so well that late on the night of July 14th the French staff can send out the following coded message Francois sank set zepho which tells the Allied units that the enemy attack will begin at 10 minutes past midnight that's how well they've got it figured out then after that are the following two words bonne chance good luck okay so the next morning July 15 the Germans go on the attack they're expecting to capture all of this stuff here in this area called the montón de Rance what they get instead is what's in that red circle a small bridgehead around the town of dormouse that's it that's it what the Allies did the German attack was scheduled to begin ten minutes after midnight guess when the Allies began their attack midnight on the dot ok 10 minutes before where do they in the artillery fire the German front lines because that's what they know the German soldiers are going to be and the German supply areas and their communication trenches so what happens to the German artillery barrage he's gonna do nothing this is a German soldier Kurt Hessian I looked at my watch it was midnight was our artillery mistaken it was not supposed to commence its fire until 10 past I jumped out of my shell hole to look around shells were falling in front of us and in back of us but it was the enemy who had commenced can he leave on time out of his trenches he's gonna watch he actually describes it he's gonna stand there and watch the German artillery roll away is there time to set up a new artillery plan no is it in German nature to say well the artillery rolled away we better not attack no they're gonna have to go anyway without that support so what happens they attack here around rents they come here around door moans all they can do is get across the river and hold a very very small bridgehead Jareau can claim rightly so that his 4th army on this day did not have a single man lost P o w and did not lose a single artillery piece or machine gun that's how well the system works sure o writes this and I think it's just beautiful so I'm gonna read it real quick here this is euros order of the day at the end of the day on July 15th soldiers of the 4th army you broke the effort of 15 German divisions supported by 10 others their orders were to cross the Marne but you stopped them you have the right to be proud you have soldiers and machine gunners of the forward posts who signaled the attack by Sigma shooting those flares and broke it up in other words the men in the sacrificial trenches aviators who flew overhead battalions and batteries who destroyed it staff officers who so minutely prepared the battlefield this was a hard blow to the enemy this was a great day for France I count on you to act in the same way every time the enemy dares to attack and from my soldier's heart I thank you one more from that same German soldier Rudolf bending who wrote this in his diary at the end of the day I have lived through the most disheartening day of the war the French deliberately lured us they put up no resistance in front our guns bombarded empty trenches our gas shells gassed empty artillery positions we did not say a single dead Frenchman let alone a captured artillery gun or machine gun we have suffered heavy losses everything seems to go wrong today has been the most severe defeat of the war for Germany now it's Foix happy with that nope now comes what he's been waiting to do since he took the job in March he wants to cave in this entire Western Front there's push on the right Ferdinand Foix from down by Spain down in the Pyrenees very interesting guy in his own right but I don't have a whole lot of time to get into it the guy I want to talk about is the man on the Left charles mahjongg nicknamed the butcher the word to eat in French is mo J his nickname was the eater of men mou-chan okay if you got put in his army group you pretty much looked on it as a death sentence mo shan was a very interesting guy he got a lot of men killed he was famous statement as well whatever you do you lose a lot of men that was his offensive doctrine mo shan had served in senegal in the years before the war and it somehow developed the theory that africans didn't feel pain the way that Europeans did so motion developed something he called la force noir the dark force the black force and the idea was to create an army filled with senegalese soldiers and he does this and they fight extremely well in World War one the one thing I'll give Charles Mon Shen he is the only four-star general I know of in World War one and I'm happy to stand corrected who led charges by himself I'd personally led charges on the theory that he would not ask his soldiers to do anything that he wouldn't do now he's twice been kicked out of the French army not kicked out but reassigned because he's just his offensives are just too costly Foix brings him back Fache wants him because he wants somebody extremely offensive and aggressive to handle the next part of the offensive that Foix has in mind Moshe is a very very interesting guy there's a lot more to get into of him but maybe in the Q&A here what Bush wants to do he stopped that he wants this he wants a three pronged three army offensive he wants Mohan's army to go for swamp he wants to gutes army to come up here and he wants me trees army to meet somewhere around fair on hardened hua he wants to break this entire western part of the salient now the forces that he has in hand here are multinational the armies are French but the unit's underneath them are American therefore British divisions and there are two Italian divisions so what you have is this weird Tower of Babel situation that Foix is found where they're speaking English french-italian the people that are doing most of the transportation are from Vietnam so they're speaking Vietnamese as well and they've got African soldiers who are speaking no less than six African languages and Foix is trying to command all of this and what he's trying to do is get divisions in the right place at the right time so it's not uncommon for a British division say to think it's going over here to the fourth army and find out it's been rerouted to the sixth show up in the 6th army area and there's no one there to greet them there's no Maps there's no anything so what do you do run towards the sound of the guns so you read a lot of memoirs and diaries of guys especially in British units saying hey we showed up around door moans there's nobody to meet us there's no Maps there's no nothing what are they doing what Foix is trying to do is get as many men on the outside of this perimeter as he can knowing that this has failed and the Germans probably aren't gonna try it again what he's going to do is put several divisions the American first goes under the gute six the American 28th the Pennsylvanians go under me trees here in the ninth he's putting them all over here just putting them where ever he can put them the French 10th army alone is 16 infantry divisions 1,500 artillery pieces 346 tanks and 581 airplanes that's a serious combat formation the German seventh opposite them is 8 divisions most of whom are supposed to be resting from their experience recently in Russia 700 artillery pieces no tanks although they do have some air power underneath them the important thing that I do want to point out here because it's an issue that always comes up when talking about the Americans the Americans had said that they would not serve underneath foreign commanders Pershing says we'll do it at the divisional level at this battle that is a French army commander can give an order to an American division commander but the American division commander will say where and when our troops fight and he attaches a condition to this if this works and we do well you give me my own part of the Western Front you get us out of this situation once the Emergencies past and you give me my own section on the Western Front and that's the deal that they cut terrain here as I said there were no trenches are very few trenches Michael led me on a beautiful staff ride through Gettysburg today with the wonderful rolling hills of Pennsylvania not dissimilar terrain here except with very high tall crops a lot of ravines a lot of very steep deep ravines and a lot of high crops into which the Germans hide machine guns so if you think about Pickett's Charge but think about it going up against 30 caliber water-cooled machine guns that can fire 600 rounds a minute that's what you're getting here so the initial attack here in the West as you can see works well and after a couple of days bite the 27th of July the Allies have taken all of this territory in here it works very very well the Germans are caught flat-footed the Allies are able to cave this in then it starts getting difficult the German army is extremely good at moving around what is known as interior lines remember when I told you about those rail lines so it's easy to move units and assets from the east over to the West in order to kind of shore up a falling position so what you see here are a lot of small unit actions that ironically enough and almost everybody comments on this it looks like the war they were trained to fight before 1914 open warfare no trenches it's the war they thought they were supposed to fight in 1914 they just never got until now and you read especially British commanders saying hey we had to go back to our 1914 manuals all those things we were supposed to have thrown away we were scrambling to find copies of it how do you fight open warfare how do you fight leapfrog covering fire kinds of things like the French have been doing how do you do that so this works extraordinarily well to take this but going up through these towns going up through these farms especially quash farm so she trades hands something like seven times in a single day and marching up through these ravines gets extremely difficult and extremely bloody and this is where a lot especially of the American units make the mistakes that units that haven't been fighting for a long time make they overrun German positions too quickly which allows the Germans to plant machine guns actually behind them and fire into their backs a lot of lessons that the Americans have to the hard way by July 27th though they are moving up this way they are coming up around the town of Busan see which has a chateau there that becomes the scene of a battle between the Scots in the 15th Scottish division and a German unit if you go there today there's a beautiful little memorial that says in French there's a rose planted there sorry it's a it's a Heather this Scottish Heather that's planted there and it says here will always bloom a Scottish Heather amid the Roses of France very poetic very French but this is a multinational battle that is being orchestrated by foix very very carefully alright let's wrap it up just a little bit here so we can get on to Q&A here a couple of things that are very very important to note as we get closer and closer to August foix has decided that this battle has done what it was supposed to do it has achieved what foix calls the culminating point which means that it has stopped the German offensive and it has allowed the Allies to resume the offensive themselves it's done what it needed to do one other factor just to point out here this is the Ain River right here this is the river along which the French army had mutiny in 1917 there are big Hills right up in here I can talk more about it in the QA pay 10 had stepped in to stop those mutinies and get the French army back to fighting position he has no interest in going back up into the aim valley so by early August Foix invites quote unquote Douglas Haig to conduct his own offensive which is going to become the offensive at omean which kicks off on 8 August 1918 which leads the British in a very British kind of way they count August 8th 1918 to November 11th the signing of the armistice as the hundred days to victory one of the things I've been desperately trying to convince audiences of when I speak about this in Europe is we need to throw that idea out the window and start with second Marne and we should talk about the hundred and nineteen days to victory I have yet to find a brick who will agree I've got some French people convinced though no surprise look at the youth of the POWs here the Allies captured POWs that they think are as young as 14 or 15 there's no real way to prove that but it indicates that allied officers just how drained down the German army is becoming 35000 german pows anybody know what happens at on the end the famous phrase it's always linked to the Battle of ami n8 August 1918 the Germans take 20000 POWs that is 20,000 Germans surrender this news gets back to Erich Ludendorff the commander of the German army the quartermaster general and he says this is the black day of the German army and every book you will see written by a Brit Johnson shaking his head so I'm assuming I got this right if you can find me a book about 1918 written by a Brit that doesn't have that phrasing and I'll give you a buck okay the black day of the German army well twice as many German soldiers surrender at 2nd Marne then surrender it on the N and as I tell my British audiences I spoke on this in England this is not to denigrate the British there were four British divisions at this battle - it is just to say that the turning point of 1918 is second Marne it is not on the end 612 German artillery pieces how are they going to make new artillery pieces they aren't there at the limits of what they can do in dust really how about the Allies what if they lose in artillery piece we got American and French factories still firing him out so it's not a big deal 3,300 machine guns which are also pretty awful the Kaiser and the crown prince have a meeting crown prince has to tell his father that 20 German infantry divisions are off the order of battle they no longer exist they're gone okay it is that night that the Kaiser records actually one of the kaisers aides records in his diary that the Kaiser had a series of nightmares in which he was gonna have to face all of his royal cousins from around Europe and admit that he had caused all of this damage so the German system is beginning a little bit to unravel I want to make three conclusions on this before I get to your questions and answer this is a cartoon from the British satirical magazine punch there's the Kaiser with his ridiculous moustaches there that became so cartoonish this offensive as I told you happened in Champagne country so the caption reads a champagne counter-offensive very much up the bottle of champagne is getting the Kaiser right in the eye and the champagne bottle reads potion company on July twenty-fourth if I've got my memories serving me right here folks calls a meeting of the commanders of the Allied armies Pershing's their Potenza Hague's their this is what he tells them he says the Allied armies arrive at the turning point of the war engaged now in battle they have seized the initiative of operations from the enemy here's the important part oh it is 24th it's right on my slide way to go Mike the moment has come to abandon the general defensive attitude forced upon forced upon us until now by numerical inferiority and passed to the offensive what he's telling his subordinate commanders at this meeting is don't worry about being attacked by the Germans again they're not gonna do it it's our turn it's our turn he tells Pershing you're gonna get your sector that you wanted you're gonna clear the San Mejia salient and then it's going to be up to you to figure out where to go next that eventually becomes the meuse-argonne offensive after some debate in some trial and tribulation I want to make three quick points here if I may to conclude the first is is a notion of what the Allies and what the Germans are trying to do in 1918 in 1918 the Germans are attacking attacking attacking with no larger sense of what these attacks are supposed to do Ludendorff's famous phrase another one of his famous phrases we're gonna punch a hole after that we'll see on the other hand Foix decides very shortly after this meeting of the conditions that he will accept for a german armistice Foix says if I can get the terms I want nobody has any right to spill another drop of blood in other words the Allies led by foix are fighting this war to get the war over with on conditions favorable to them even if it means that the war ends on French and Belgian soil which of course it does the Germans on the other hand are continuing to fight with no real strategic goal in mind second another pet rock of mine you cannot cannot cannot write the French army out of this war after 1917 as far too many historians have done 100 divisions on the Western Front the largest army is French this battle the overall strategic coordination is French all of the army commanders are French the bulk of the soldiers are French the bulk of the equipment is French the tanks the Americans drive the airplanes they fly the machine guns they shoot are all French you can't write the French out of this war and that's something I'd be happy to talk about in QA it's very interesting when you read memoirs written right after the war the British cannot say enough nice things about the French in the 1930s when you read memoirs written by the same people they can't say enough bad things about the French but that comes later that comes in the 30s and Michael said he's got a great repertoire of French jokes if you need them third this battle stresses to me the diversity and the complexity of the First World War if you think about the first world war simply as trenches simply as over the top first guy to Berlin wins if your vision is only the Battle of the Somme only the Battle of Passchendaele you're missing the incredible diversity and complexity that this war could bring out this battle the Second Battle of the Marne in 1918 looks nothing like the First Battle of the Marne in 1914 it is as if they came from two different centuries and that has to be appreciated so to sum up I'm going to use a quotation I'm going to paraphrase a quotation from Winston Churchill who's always great for quotations who said something about El Alamein that I'm going to paraphrase for the first world war in 1918 before the second Marne there were no victories after the second Marne there were no defeats thank you very much and I'll be happy to take your questions 15 zeros first one in the sacrificial trenches I'm gonna actually say the expert the man who really knows that if I can pass that on to Colonel Johnson is sitting right there who wrote the part it is the sense of the French that the Americans are very good soldiers they just don't know what they're doing and the the famous phrase from the French soldier who one of the French at sachets who says this is magnificent but it's not war you know that kind of an attitude and there is a statement Charles Summerall makes it where he's asked if his unit can attack again and he says sir when my army only has two men left will be a challange and depth and headed towards Berlin and the French hear things like this and they just go you know you know but you know this this is kind of characteristic of the Americans and they do they put themselves quite well the Germans are a little baffled they can't they can't quite believe the Americans are attacking the way the Americans are attacking you know they're not doing things the way the French and British do and it's extremely costly but it works they're from Pennsylvania of course they follow yeah yeah that's absolutely right Fache is is a staff officer par excellence as I think Douglas Haig is I think you know people that describe Haig is a cavalry men don't really understand spag is a staff officer before is anything else Foix is the same way and fo certainly understands that that moving units on a on a board isn't quite the same as getting them in place where they need to be gotten to he's willing to take a lot of chances in this campaign pushing units to get there before their artilleries there before their machine guns are there because he has this intuitive sense that this is gonna change things and we can't miss it you know rather get 75% of our strength there now than 100% of our strength there in three days when the Germans react but I think to understand these senior officers in any war but I think world war one it's probably truer than most the ones that succeed at the senior level are the guys that understand that staff work and I think understanding them as sometimes see well foix is an artillery man and Hague's a cavalry man I think that misses the point you know these are people that know how to build the staff and as I've argued in another book they're the successful commanders in World War one all have excellent staff Chiefs of Staff underneath them and focus is a guy with a time a vaccine weight on who turns out to be a terrible commander in World War two but isn't excellent at taking like folks was just fond of saying well we're gonna move this army here and then it's way gone that sits down and says alright well how do we get an entire army from there to there right and the same thing is true of the successful British commanders I mean if you look at the great British commanders it's really the staff guys underneath them that have the great reputations and very often when those staff guys go somewhere else there goes the reputation of the senior general as well that's why these guys like you look at people like Tim Harrington and the British Army and weigh gan in the French George Marshall in the American they never get commands of their own because they're too valuable and the jobs that they're holding you know tell me I was wrong on her cheeks an interesting character I mean you stubborn as a mule as you all probably know Pershing goes to France with a letter from Woodrow Wilson and the letter says that Americans will only take commands from Americans so whenever Pershing is pressed he just takes out that letter and he says you know my commander-in-chief tells me this on the other hand when the crisis hits in March of 2014 19 18 I forget the exact date he goes to phocion is very bad French and he says Infantry what is it the Americans would consider it a great honor to be in this battle infantry artillery armor everything we had this yours and use it as you wish and so Pershing this is very kind of I think very hard to read kind of character on one day he's telling foix well if you have to abandon Paris fine but my Americans aren't going to serve under your French generals and the next day he's saying hey take everything I got you know when you need it you need it and and this this is the case of the second Mar I mean the Americans are commanded at the division level but all the staff work is done by French officers and and my sense of it and I you know Pershing never says this but my sense of it is that Pershing realized pretty quickly that his staff work was not up to 1918 standards and that putting American troops under French army commanders would save American lives and that's why he did it now once that was done he certainly wanted his own sector and his own staff in his own everything but it's my sense that at second Marne he fully well understood if he let the Americans do all the staff work it was gonna go very very badly and and you know say what you want about the French by 1918 they've got staff work down they may not have had other things down but they knew how to move things they knew their own rail system they knew their own logistics system there was simply no point asking Americans who didn't speak the language didn't know the culture didn't know the terrain and asking those guys to come in and do that kind of stuff so I think Pershing in that case deserves some credit for being a modicum of flexibility but as soon as this is over I mean he goes to phocion he says you know I did what I did I did what I said I would do now you got to create my army and fo sho fo sho actually says something to him along lines of today I'm gonna be more American than any of you you know we're gonna create an American first army very good friends I think that's right I think it's a factor its function of two things it's a factor of the German system breaking down and the crown prince is aware of this when they do the attack on Reince he writes in his orders I'm sorry in his diary he writes this is the last attack my army group is capable of because he's aware of just I mean those great German offensives as great German captures of all that allied territory are also the days when the German army suffers by far its highest casualties of the war so they're they're moving forward but at a terrible terrible human cost so on the one hand the German system is breaking down on the other hand foix is pushing the allied system really to the maximum of its envelope and he's that's why again these units show up with no Maps no guides no interpreters no heavy artillery no Medical Corps no no anything but because he pushes they're able to get that concentration of force at decisive points and then when the Germans do begin to react to it that's when it evens out and you see this kind of slower advance that you see in second March and that's when folks says all right it's time to spring the surprise on them somewhere else and that's what I mean happens but you're absolutely right and I think it's another one of my pet rocks when I teach this to undergraduates who somehow have this vision in their head that the German army never makes a mistake well they make a ton of them and they certainly are making more and more and more as 1918 goes on and that the interesting thing is they're aware of it and the crown prince especially is saying we're not the army that we once were this isn't what we were commanding even six months ago yeah it's actually unclear typical in the way that the Germans do things this obstruct tactic they never really lay out what it is they're attempting to do two theories one is that after capturing rants they were going to build up their supplies in that salient and then make their big push for Paris that's certainly what the French think the other one that's a little bit better supported by the evidence is they were gonna capture rents force the general reserve to come in that direction and then strike in Flanders a project that becomes known as Operation Hagen and Hoggins on the table until you know very late July I mean Ludendorff goes north Ludendorff's actually not in second Martin he's in the north overseeing Hagen and it takes him a lot just a long time to convince Ludendorff you can't do that we've just suffered this massive setback you can't do it but the the thinking the thinking among the Allies certainly was that they're gonna rebuild and go after Paris the evidence seems to me to suggest they were in fact going to hit Flanders as soon as they had gotten that general reserve pulled to the south and Hagen of course never happens but it's very unclear it's an excellent question because they're not sure themselves what it is they're trying to do right I think sooner or later the Germans we're gonna we're gonna make a mistake like the ones that they made here on the Marne what I think you have happening here is is number one the weakening of the German army and second the arrival of the Americans and I'm not one that's gonna stand up and say the Americans came in and won the war I don't believe that to be true but the arrival of the the equivalent of a division a day allows the French to take risks they might not otherwise have made and this is another point Foix realizes as long as the Americans are gonna land twenty to twenty three thousand men a day Paris is safe the Germans aren't gonna get to it right you may not be able to count on the Americans to do a very sophisticated combined-arms whatever but they can sit in garrison Paris and the fortresses in Paris no problem so and if you know the Paris is safe then you're free to go ahead and take some Gamble's in ways that maybe you wouldn't have otherwise and they're actually you've read some French memoirs where they're actually really angry that the Americans are coming because it means the Americans are gonna go into quiet sectors like the area around meuse-argonne and those French soldiers are gonna go into the active sectors so they see the Americans coming and they say oh there goes my period in the votes you know the nice quiet beautiful Vosges mountains that's over now I'm gonna get shifted up you know north I'm gonna get shipped in to fight somewhere somewhere else so I think it's I do think the German army is certainly weakening itself the difference between the the Allied armies and the German armies is this infusion of blood and it's an it's an imagery that everybody uses Pershing at one time notes he's not very happy with it but there is a transfusion of blood coming you know French blood is continuing to weak in British boats continue the weekend but here come these Americans and they may not quite know what they're doing but we'll teach him you know they'll figure it out and I think that that gives them both a little bit of hope it gives them a morale boost and it allows folks to do things he could never have done otherwise I think you know you read the stuff that the Germans are writing from the Chancellor on down they figure out pretty quickly second Martin is what's done it and I didn't bring the quotations with me but George found Hertling who was the German Chancellor before second Martin he writes this thing where he says in 90 days they're gonna come to us with peace terms and then right after second Martin he says the hope of the world ended like we're done we're gonna lose this and they realized pretty quickly and it's at this point this early point when Ludendorff's already thinking well how do I get us out of this and the way to get us out of this is to figure out somebody else that we can blame and Ludendorff's a big proponent of that so-called stab-in-the-back myth and how do we guarantee it so the Armistice is signed before they put a soldier on German soil those are the two things we need to do and then at the end of the war of course he gets the armistice he doesn't actually negotiate it he puts on a disguise and runs to Sweden and then develops his own weird Nordic religion to replace Christianity and then you know all the other weird things that come out of that so that starts early on I think second Marne is what convinces the Germans we're not going to get to Paris we're not going to get to the Channel ports and if we don't get to those two things quickly we're not going to win we got to think of some other way out of this because we're not going to win on the battlefield and they believed before a second one that they will they will do just that but they're that much better smarter faster whatever than the Allies but I think second martyr is what convinces them it's not going to happen we got to think of something else it comes Louise with the hard question mentioned in your army year the French mutinies are extraordinarily complicated essentially what the French soldiers say is we're not going to attack again under these stupid suicidal conditions we will defend France but we're not going to attack again until you figure out a better way and essentially what they say is we're willing to die but we're not willing to throw our lives away for nothing what you see in 1918 is to my mind fascinating you see these attacks on France leading to a tremendous upsurge in morale where the French soldiers are saying look they're doing it again to France they're despoiling more of our territory they're uprooting more refugees we're not doing anything to stop it the interesting thing this is the point again that I always make the students into my my friends who tell lots of French jokes like Michel wherever he ran off to remember France is completely irrelevant to the causes of World War one it's a shooting and the Balkans that leads to a crisis in the Balkans the French didn't want this war the French weren't supporting this war the French had actually ordered all French troops to back off ten kilometers from the front so that nothing would happen accidentally the way the French look at this they've been attacked they've been you know a third of their land most of it the key Agricola the key industrial parts of France had been destroyed for a cause it had nothing to do with them whatsoever and I think that leads to two things it leads to a certain demoralisation of you know what has happened to us and why but it also led to by 1918 a tremendous desire to say okay this is going to stop and it's going to stop here and I think that the renewal of the German offensives ironically enough leads to an uptick in French morale not a downturn and it doesn't sound like that should be the case but you can read virtually the only testimonial I found against that was one French peasant who told an American soldier why are you here you're only going to prolong the war and then the French the American soldier actually says I don't know what to make of this because you don't see this in the quote more intelligent French people and quote and I don't really know what to make of that almost any other member memoir diary including some of the ones I read over there people are saying that that the French French people and French soldiers are more committed to winning this than ever the mutinies are fascinating fascinating thing yeah I think Eisenhower's a perfect perfect eight let me let me explain a little bit about foix first there is a picture postcard that I found from 1914 which has a picture of all of the senior allied generals British and French from 1914 and Foix is hiding way in the background because he was commander of one of the armies at the Marne the it's just same thing I think about this postcard is that of all the men that are pictured on this postcard in 1914 folks is the only one still holding a command in 1918 so the question is why him I think there are two things about foix maybe three that make him kind of stand out the first of those is that foix had no interest whatsoever in the French Empire in the 1870s 80's 90's never served in the Empire never asked to serve in the Empire didn't care about the Empire all he cared about was Germany all he cared about was understanding the German Way of war the way the Germans thought the way they attacked the way they defended he's the only one of the senior French generals that never served in the empire so when this war comes he feels as though this is the moment he's been waiting for his entire life this is what he's prepared for and for the most part he reads the Germans uncannily well the second element of this Foix was like many senior French officers a very devout Catholic and of course the French government was very avowedly anti-clerical which puts him at odds with the politicians more than once in his career but I think it gave him a faith that he could pull on when he needed to and his letters are very interesting he he asked his wife not to keep most of their letters she burned most of them so we don't have those letters but you do hear people referring to Foix as the phrase they use as a fighting priest his headquarters more than once is described as the monastery and I don't think that's meant derogatory it's meant to show a sense of faith that he has that France will win this and that he'll play a part in it and the third thing that I think foix does that most other generals don't do Foix is very her way even before the war folks just figured out that if France is gonna beat Germany which is more populist more industrial and more geared toward war being in a dictatorship or monarchy then France could ever be in a republic if France is gonna win it's gonna need allies and folks way before the war even begins is courting the British tremendously and he becomes extremely close friends so close that it it worries people on both sides of the channel with a British General Henry Wilson they each go to the other daughter's wedding they get very very close in fact they used to run around the staff room together trading hats and you know people thought this was just kind of they shouldn't be this close and it's boast that that convinced the British Wilson asked him something like well if a war does start between us you know the Royal Navy will protect you and folks says I don't care about the Royal Navy I want one British soldier on the continent and what he meant by that was if one British soldier is committed the British nation will have to commit everything and so phocion this is where I think the Eisenhower parallel is very good Foix figures out pretty quickly if a multinational coalition is what you need the only way to make it work is to let the nations do what the nations do which is why phocion never gives a direct order to Haig never gives a direct order to Pershing it gives a few to pay 10 pay ten of them and then Clemenceau sits pay 10 down and says I have more faith in phocians judgment than I do in yours you're gonna listen to what he tells you and you know that's an interesting relationship too because clemenceau was was incredibly anti-clerical folks was a devout Catholic he and Clemenceau were as you know oil and water as two people could possibly be but I think Bush had that figured out from the start he understands Americans will fight better under an American flag an American officers however you can't put the Americans at risk by letting them go with the staff work but they do and in that regard I do think Eisenhower's command is a pretty good example what's that great quote someone else might have it from eisenhower when someone refers to a British son-of-a-bitch or British bastard in the and I somehow we're supposed to have said something like well yes there are a lot of bastards in my command but it's not because he's British or something like that you know called the mana bastard if you will but you know folks has that same kind of an attitude he doesn't have quite the elaborate Cossack system that not Cossack in the Russian sense but you know chief of staff of combined chief of staff whatever the acronym stands for folks doesn't do anything quite that sophisticated but the same spirit is there he's a fascinating fascinating guy and because he didn't leave a very detailed diary and he didn't write as memoirs he wrote but they're very they're very officious and he didn't leave letters behind it's it's kind of hard to get to know that man because he didn't let a lot of people get too close to him so he's interesting in that regard he hated politicians too it was asked many times to run for president of France and he gave some version of you know I'd sooner hang myself you know every time he was asked it's interesting they all did Pershing never ran for president Hayden never ran for Prime Minister I mean none of those guys won they could have had public office took it and pay ten in 1940 only took it under the most dire of circumstances they all loathe politicians and wanted nothing to do with the world of politics could you characterize a very good officer shake the regimental in experience certainly aggressive brave to a fault is a phrase that the British in French both use eager to learn I think this is something we also forget an excellent book by a friend of mine Robert Bruce of how anxious the American officers were to learn and the army they wanted to learn from was not the British it was the French and when they could from the australians with whom they got along extraordinarily well breaking the Hindenburg Line and some other operations that they worked on together they learned from the French they figured out pretty quickly and I think Beau's book makes this pretty clear that the British system was not the one that was going to teach them what they needed to do the French system was more sophisticated it used the weapons that they used it used the system that they understood this gets back to my pet peeve about all of this that the negative stuff about the French is is 1930s and after when you read these guys memoirs like the thing I read from MacArthur you know I mean they can't say enough good things about the French army about how wonderful it did I mean Churchill starts his memoirs of World War two by saying the rock we all built upon was the French army right now 1940 proves that that may not have been what you thought it was but that doesn't change the fact of what it actually was in the warriors and and this kind of knocking down the French has become you know a little cottage industry and it's just understanding what that country went through in a war that wasn't theirs to fight I know that doesn't answer your question but but you should talk to Colonel Johnson is right in front of you who knows so much more about this than idea can I just say one last thing I'd also like to thank Michael for a year and a half ago when he first invited me to do this having the forethought to understand that Bruce Springsteen would be in Hershey last night so I could go so thank you Michael very much for that as well Oh you

Channel: The USAHEC

Views: 11,369

Rating: 4.8157897 out of 5

Keywords: USAHEC, Perspectives in Military History Lecture Series, U.S. Army War College, U.S. Army, The Second Battle Of The Marne, Michael Neiberg, WWI, World War I

Id: 7HkBTe8c9WI

Length: 75min 46sec (4546 seconds)

Published: Tue Jul 22 2014