The Spring Offensive: Germany's Final Gamble To Win WW1 | History Of Warfare | War Stories

at precisely 4 40 am on the 21st of March 1918. a single white rocket soared into the night sky above the town of San Quentin it was a signal for over 10 000 German guns and mortars to thunder into action more than a million German soldiers were concentrated in the trenches behind ready to follow in the wake of their Thundurus bombardment this was the kaiserschlight the emperor's battle it would prove to be the turning point of the first World War the attack itself was on a scale never witnessed before in the annals of War by Nightfall The casualty toll would be greater than on any other single day of World War One [Music] foreign the brainchild of German general ludendorff the kaiserschlacht or Kaiser's attack was designed to finally defeat the Allies by ending the deadlock and stalemate of four years of static trench warfare using surprise shock and speed the Germans hoped to smash through the junction where the British and French lines met before rolling up the British army back to the channel this could well be the last card in the dwindling German deck by the end of 1917 ludendorff had certainly convinced himself that Germany faced the certainty of defeat unless it was willing and able to concentrate its its full might on a decisive Battlefield to win a decisive Victory anything short of that would risk the dissolution of Germany's allies and the inevitable submission of Germany to the increasing Manpower and material superiority of the allies by 1918 it was clear that the German Nation could not stand another year of the defensive Warfare which had been draining the lifeblood from the country since the terrible Battle of Verdun in the spring of 1916. the kaiserslacht was a final All or Nothing gamble which would either win the war or use up Germany's last reserves of strength there's no doubt in my mind that this was a Gamble and throughout the war the German High command had shown a willingness to gamble they'd gambled at the violation of Belgian neutrality would not bring Britain into the war they'd gambled that they could win the war in the west through the Schlieffen Plan in 39 days knocking out one of the greatest armies in the world they gambled at unrestricted submarine warfare would knock the British out before the Americans came in and the final gamble is the gamble that the war can be worn in the West in 1918 by achieving a knockout blow in trench warfare which the British and French had signally failed to do in three years of fighting this was a Gamble the previous three and a half years of warfare had extracted a terrible price from all the participants involved in the Great War from the human mincing machine of verdang to the horrors of the Somme and passchendale any vestiges of the martial arrogance displayed in 1914 had long since been lost despite the strains of four years of war as 1918 dawned there were some reasons for optimism on the German side the Russians had toppled over into bolshevism and Revolution and had completely withdrawn from the war this unexpected respite freed the German Army from the logistical and material strains of a war fought on two fronts further relief appeared in October 1917 when the Italians were routed at cabareto essentially ending their contribution to the Great War the French army holding the southern half of the Western Front was still battered after Verdun its fighting capacity remained questionable and after the mutant is that it affected up to 50 percent of French divisions in summer 1917. the men of the army refused to wage further offensive campaigns the British themselves had taken the offensive in 1917 resulting in the third battle of Eep known to most simply as passchendale the appalling horror of this campaign is legendary Ford in desperate and muddy conditions for over three months gains were negligible casualty lists enormous as the year Drew to a close there was a further blow to morale which came when initial successes made at the Battle of Canberra in November were completely reversed by Swift German counter-attacks for all the human sacrifice in 1917 the opposing forces remained in basically the same positions they had been since the Germans retreated to the Hindenburg line a year earlier however of more significance had been to other developments the introduction of convoys for Atlantic Shipping had broken the U-Boat threat which had so seriously threatened Britain's survival and more importantly provoked by U-Boat attacked on its own Merchant Fleet the United States finally lost its patience and had declared war on Germany this was a critical development history hit is an award-winning streaming platform built by history fans for history fans by subscribing to history hit you can access hundreds of hours of military history documentaries On Demand follow in the footsteps of the Essex dogs with Dan Jones will discover the history of archery with Ramirez we've built up an extensive library of history programs hundreds of hours of documentaries exclusive original films interviews and ad-free podcasts made for proper history fans sign up now for a free trial and War Stories fans get 50 of their first three months just be sure to use the code War Stories at checkout in a war based on attrition with each side grinding down the human and material resources of the other the introduction of America swung the balance firmly towards the allies ludendorff realized that the Only Hope of Victory would be to defeat the allies before the Americans had time to send a substantial quantity of men to France to this end the German staff worked feverishly over the winter to come up with a plan that could be sprung into action early in 1918. before the American forces armed in real numbers the decision was made to deliver a shattering blow to the British army severing the communications from their French allies whose resistance would surely collapse as the British were pushed North and destroyed tactics were fine-tuned and new intensive training planned for all participants thousands of soldiers would be moved from the now defunct Eastern Front to support the offensive German military thinking was deeply imbued with the spirit of the offensive they began the war with an attempt to win the war in the West in 39 days and in 1918 ludendorf in a center reverted to type by again attempting to strike a knockout blow in the West because of his Manpower the Manpower inadequacies of the Germans in relation to the Allies ludendorff felt that he would only have one shot on one Battlefield to do this so the choice of Battlefield was crucial it also meant that he had to choose very carefully his point of attack where he would seek to achieve local Manpower superiority and the Germans decided they could do this by attacking the Allied Forces the French and the British at their juncture this would split those two forces the French would fall back and protect Paris the British would move northwards and protect the channel ports the effect of this they thought would cause the French to sue for peace it had all the Hallmarks of a final roll of a dice but the German hike amount was convinced it would be a success on the 23rd of January Kaiser Wilhelm was presented with the plans for what was codenamed Operation Mikhail an operation soon named kaiserschlacht in his honor the commander-in-chief of the British forces upon whom the storm was about to burst was Field Marshal Sir Douglas Hague much maligned and at loggerheads with prime minister Lloyd George he was certainly a realist and in early December 1917 instructed his commanders to prepare the defenses against a strong and sustained attack expected to come in the spring much has been made of the difficulties in the relationship between Hagan Lou George but in my view the the actual impact of these and the conduct of the war was was relatively limited the Dilemma which Lloyd George faced when he became prime minister in December 1916 was that most of the major decisions of the war had already been taken the British decision to go to War the British decision to send the expeditionary Force to France and Flanders and to fight on the Left Flank of the French armies the decision to start and to stop the Gallipoli campaign the decision to start the campaign and salonica and in Mesopotamia and although Lloyd George sought to have a decisive in to shift the conduct of the war decisively in a different direction he didn't really have this effect at all hague's relationship with Lloyd George actually had very little effect upon the British army as a whole since the ordinary Soldier remains throughout the war rather ignorant of political military relations but that relationship did have an enormous impact upon the high command and particularly upon Hague himself by 1918 due in part to the humiliation that Hague had received from Lloyd George earlier in the war Hague had developed such a distrust that it took on the nature of an obsession and it could also be said that Lloyd George so hated Hague and so was so contemptuous of hague's lack of ability that it also took on the nature of an obsession the two commanders who would eventually face this attack were General Sir Hubert Gough whose Fifth Army held 42 miles of front on the British extreme right and General Sir Julian Bing whose third Army held 28 miles below Aris including the vulnerable fleskier salient the commanders Drew up preparations for what was described as an elastic defense in depth three zones were to be readied the front line was to be the forward Zone containing a few strongly garrisoned redoubts surrounded by smaller outposts this was intended only to cushion the initial impetus of an attack resisting for up to 48 hours before giving way with good reason the men in this Zone Grumble to themselves that they were serving in sacrifice units the main fighting was designed to take place in the Battle Zone here were placed more troops stronger defensive positions and most of the artillery further back was a rear Zone a third set of defenses in case the Battle Zone fell unfortunately the limitations of time and Manpower saw little work completed on this much-needed scheme in all sectors work on the rear Zone was barely begun furthermore goff's Fifth Army was in the process of taking over a long section of line from the hard-pressed French and found its defenses inadequate at best these problems were compounded by a major reorganization of the British army structure the supply of fresh troops for France was dwindling so Hague was forced to disband one battalion in four and allocate the men to the reinforcements this meant that three battalions now had to do the work designed for four Manpower was one of the few problems which the Germans did not possess ludendorff chose three armies to carry out the attack led by the cream of his officer Carter from Battle group ruprecht where the second Army under Fonda marvitz leader of the brilliant counter-attack at canberrai and to the north the 17th Army the latter were led by General fonvulo the hero of caporeto to the South where the 18th Army part of battle group crowned Prince Wilhelm and commanded by General von houtier would achieved glorious Riga against the Russians the main difference between those troops that fought in the East and those who had been fighting in the West Was psychological the troops who had fought in the East though they suffered terrible conditions and huge casualties still were able when attacking to achieve Victory and also when attacking to move forward that kind of mobility and that Prospect of Victory had never existed on the Western Front so the big difference between the troops from the East and the troops from the West is that the troops from the East came with a belief in the possibility of victory 74 divisions were concentrated behind the 50-mile front outnumbering the enemies by two to one training was intensive over eight hundred thousand men had undergone three weeks of instruction on the tactics of the coming battle they were led by special units given the very best training in Mobile Warfare the elite Stormtrooper formations divisions were divided into three categories mobile attack and Trench the mobile divisions were to spearhead the attack breaking through the weakest points and pressing forward rapidly until exhausted it was in these divisions that the new Stormtrooper units were to be found they were armed with the best weapons and were given extra rations the attack divisions were to follow close in support mopping up any pockets of resistance and were similarly equipped the trench divisions intended only to hold the line were stripped to the bow to ensure supplies for their comrades in the first two categories the day is immediately preceding the 21st saw thousands of German troops move up to their starting positions their morale high and convinced this would be the final push to Victory misinformation had deliberately been allowed to pass into Allied hands via carrier pigeon drifting balloons and other diversionary ruses which convinced the Allies that the French were about to be attacked the new German tactics were designed to promote Mobility the artillery therefore devised a very short but very devastating bombardment with heavy use of smoke and gas shells which were designed to disorientate The Defenders the Infantry was divided into two groups shock troops and regular trench troops the shock troops were really the most important they attacked in groups of about 50 men and were often young very fit and unmarried men who in other words didn't have a great deal to lose they also used weapons like very light machine guns which were designed to give them Firepower but not to slow their Mobility they were told to advance without any uh limits upon their objectives and also to bypass any strong points to keep pushing forward as quickly as possible in these 50-man groups the determination to press the attacking infantry deep into the enemy's position was new the British and the French had not done this so anything like the same degree the willingness to ignore points of resistance and allow them to be mopped up by the the forces following on was an attempt on the part of the Germans to maintain the momentum of attack created by their artillery and to have a destabilizing effect upon the perceptions of enemy commanders to feel that their Communications and their rear were being threatened by the Infantry advance and the pace of the Infantry advance in the early stages of the March offense it were greater than anything that had been achieved by anyone else to that date in trench warfare in less than five hours bombardment over 1.1 million shells were expended almost as many as the total fired by the British in the entire first week of the somber the use to which the artillery was put was essentially that of interrupting and disrupting the Allied command and control system rather than by killing individual pretty soldiers that of course it did that in larger numbers as well and their understanding of the most effective uses of artillery what was very sophisticated but in the end in my judgment the major difference is the scale on which it was attempted rather than the um the concept which lay behind it shell shock disorientation and confusion were the aim destroying resistance for the advancing troops to facilitate this eighty percent of the shells fired contained gas chemical warfare on an unprecedented scale the majority of this was Green Cross fasting gas which dispersed quickly thus causing the German attackers no distress as they followed up on the heels of the bombardment the lingering yellow cross mustard gas was used only on the fiskier Salient which the Germans were hoping to add flank rather than a sword head-on the Germans also made Innovative use of tear gas hoping the discomfort caused would make British soldiers remove their gas masks and fall prey to the deadly phosphere although soldiers on both sides were by now well used to wearing gas masks they were still uncomfortable and extremely disorienting restricting vision and communication the confusion spread by a gas attack was a particularly effective way of softening up the enemy before an attack at 9 40 am the first waves of the Infantry moved out advancing behind the creeping artillery barrage and aided by a thick swirling fog that covered the battlefield they made good progress infiltrating deep into the forward Zone within half an hour penetrating quickly passed the well-defended redoubts often unnoticed the second attack wave was only 100 yards behind and soon took these in flanking movements after only 90 minutes fighting very few of the British redoubts designed to last 48 hours were still holding out with the forward Zone secure the German troops quickly moved into the Battle Zone a creeping barrage moving forward 200 meters every four minutes fonbulo's troops were able to push part of the third Army to the rear of their battle zones and had made advances round the north of the fleskier salient however to the South two Fifth Army divisions had held magnificently maintaining the epihira doubt and stopping the Salient from being surrounded further south goff's 16th division had been pushed to the back of its Battle Zone but 18 Corps had held six miles in its entirety worst hit was the over-extended three-course South of San Quentin by 5 30 PM they were pushed out of their Battle Zone entirely Goff reacted swiftly to this desperate situation trying to organize French reinforcements and personally visiting his core commanders he threw in most of his reserves and gave three Corps permission to withdraw beyond the krozar canal foreign was a breast of developments and aware of German intentions to push the British toward the North felt the Fifth Army could be allowed to be pushed West where they lost little of strategic value but crucially kept in touch with the French by the end of the first day of kaiserschlight ludendorff had driven the British from 140 square miles of French soil at a cost of 40 000 German and 38 500 British casualties of whom 21 000 were prisoners schools were closed in celebration and bells rang out across Germany it was a remarkable Triumph the greatest gain in a single day's fighting in the whole War but the battle itself was far from over to succeed in their objectives Germany needed to keep up the progress of the advance indeed the subsequent two days saw further advances but these generally came in the South where goff's Fifth Army was struggling to retreat in order and was losing touch with both the French on its right and Bing's third Army on its left six promised divisions of French reinforcements began to arrive but they got caught up in the general disarray thrown straight into the dog at fighting until they were overwhelmed they soon started falling back with the British the situation facing the better resourced third Army seemed to stabilize fonbulo made little progress as the third Army Drew on reinforcements from the neighboring British armies to the north however Bing was forced to relinquish much of his right wing purely in order to retain contact with goff's army and maintain the Integrity of the British line first the poem then Albert were given up the soldiers reluctantly withdrawing over the devastated some battlefields they had gained at such cost in 1916. all this time the British rear had been a hive of activity with busy soldiers rapidly constructing fresh trenches and strongholds the Army was falling back into a rear well-stocked with supplies and increasingly reinforcements over ten thousand a day were pouring across the channel the Germans however were coming to the limits of their logistical abilities the artillery was unable to keep Pace with their infantry and they exhausted soldiers were rapidly running out of food this was a particular problem when the soldiers came across British supplies and they indulged themselves greatly biscuits corned beef and especially alcohol are remembered with great pleasure in many Diaries and recollections one German Soldier recalled a comrade getting so drunk after the first day's battle that he stripped naked and ran off into the night searching for Englishmen to kill and the Germans were undoubtedly suffering deprivations and with regard to food and so when German soldiers flying large amounts of food it's natural that they'll start eating it and start drinking and drink but I think there's a deeper Point here as well is that the German soldiers have been subjected to a barrage of propaganda about the efficacy of the German submarine blockade on Britain and how Britain was being starved into submission and there in these tremendous Food Supplies which they discovered in British rare areas was was the proof that the submarine blockade was not being anywhere near as effective as their superiors were telling them it was and I think the the destructive effect of that was considerable one of the great myths of this war was that when German troops broke through British lines they came across British stores with great luxuries in food and and lots of wine they apparently drank the wine and in addition to becoming drunk they also were despondent because of the apparent luxury that the British soldiers were still enjoying Which con conflicted with the stories they had been told that the British were on the verge of defeat this according to the myth destroyed their morale and they were never the same again actually there's no evidence for this it is one of those nice little neat stories that the public apparently likes and that has been repeated in history book after history book right up until the present time the truth is that the German armies were defeated and if their morale broke it was because of a military defeat not because of Any psychological Force such as this the strain of the battle began to test the nerve of General ludendorff undoubtedly this was not helped by the loss of his son on the first day of battle nor by the symptoms of his exophthalmic goiter he was facing a dilemma whether to continue his initial plan or exploit the opportunities of breakthrough presented in the South despite the lack of any clear strategic objective there believing the Fifth Army to be routed and hoping to take advantage of their perceived collapse ludendorff made the Fateful decision to divide the thrust of his attack the push against the third Army would continue as planned with Aris as its objective however hutier would also continue his assault to the Southwest exploiting his successes there rather than simply maintaining a supporting position as expressly intended the cohesion of the Kaiser schlacht plan was undone by the Temptations of opportunism lundorf's new attack formations were most successful in the first few days of the assault they succeeded brilliantly then what happened was that the defensive formations compressed and Consolidated and also the Germans faced enormous Supply problems because they had simply Advanced too far it then became futile to continue the attack and too costly in terms of lives and it was therefore natural for ludendorff in this sort of situation to go for the adrenaline rush of an a new attack elsewhere at the same time the French began to reinforce the beleaguered Fifth Army by the end of March they had relieved goff's men of most of their line the three thousand strong South African Brigade fought a magnificent eight-hour stand against two entire German divisions 18 000 strong less than a hundred South Africans survived to March into captivity regiment suffered 75 losses in a 12-hour defense of Bree Bridge air battles reached a new Peak at the beginning of the battles there's an attempt by the Royal flying Corps to blow up the bridges over over the psalm and it's notoriously difficult to to blow up Bridges from the air they're very they're very difficult targets to destroy effectively and in the end this is a abandoned after comparatively little success and the Royal flying Corps Finance discovers almost accidentally through experience that one of the most effective things it can do is to attack roads where you can see them quite easily from the air if you drop bombs on them it craters them it slows down the forces following on the reinforcements and the supplies if they have to stop in face of a pothole in the middle of the road you then get a traffic jam which can be attacked from the air as well by this stage in the war the Royal flying Corps had perfected techniques of artillery observation and therefore they were able to give warning to British gun units about attacking formations and ranges and aiming Etc but also of where the German batteries were located but beyond that the most important perhaps and at least the most dramatic aspect of the royal flying course contribution to this battle is the way in which for the first time in the war because we have Mobility restored we have German soldiers out in the open not protected by the trenches and therefore they were vulnerable in the way they had never been before to Aerial machine gunning for hague's surprise the town suggested that the two forces should split allowing the French to concentrate on defending Paris it seemed the town's resolve to carry on had simply crumbled he appeared to have a mental breakdown in order to combat this Hague dramatically proposed that the more Resolute General foch be made a generalissimo a unifying commander of all the Allied Forces one of the aims of the German attack in March was to separate the French from the British and in the first few days it did look as though this was coming to pass the French increasingly looked to their rear into the defense of Paris and the British looked to their rear in the defense of the channel ports and if both sides were going to fight separate battles against the Germans then this might open up a gap through which the German infantry could pour with disastrous consequences it appeared to Hague that the informal Arrangements he had with Peta for the for the defense of one another's fronts was breaking down and he himself decided and initiated the um appointment of a superior a generalissimo who had to be a Frenchman because the war was being fought in France and his preferred General was Far because fosh was a belligerent man he was not a defeatist uh and and he had the strength of personality in relation to subordinate commanders French and British and to politicians French and British to be a very effective ball walk and I think the appointment of flashes of generalissimo although it doesn't really affect the operational conduct of the war I mean Fosters sometimes portrayed not least in the war Memoirs of David Lloyd George he's a military genius who'd waved his Wand Over the battlefield and changed everything what the appointment of fosh recognized and confirmed was that the Allies were not going to be separated by the German attack and once that moment has arrived in a sense then the Germans have suffered a major defeat the importance that lay in making [ __ ] generally sumo was that it for the first time in the war created a truly Allied effort between the French and the British but beyond that it also sidelined Marshall petan who had been a very pessimistic force and very defeatist it also created the system by which reserves could be moved to the part of the front where they were most needed and we see this later in the German offensive when you get a strange mixing of French and British troops wherever they're needed but beyond that and I think perhaps the most important thing is the way it restores confidence on all sides obviously on the French side but also confidence which the British government felt in its own command particularly Lloyd George's support of Hague by the end of the 27th of March the German advances had slowed down considerably the strains of six days continuous fighting were now taking their toll despite this ludendorff chose to continue the series of attacks once again adapting his plans as opportunities presented themselves the original Grand strategy was now completely compromised in favor of far more limited tactical objectives still tempted by the southern sector of the front ludendorff ordered a frontal offensive on the city of am Young a vital Rail and Communication Center for the Allies am young would certainly be a glittering prize in reality it was a costly distraction in terms of both men and Munitions especially as the long-planned Mars offensive against the British Center at Aris was scheduled to start simultaneously the Battle of armyong in the summer of 1918 demonstrated that the British could do exactly what the Germans had done in terms of attacking enforce and able to advance for great distances in a single day ludendorff called it the black day for the German Army after the battle of the Marne the British immediately turned around and attacked on a front of 12 miles and were able in one quick thrust to advance six miles the German troops seeing that the British were able to do this began immediately to suffer from a drastic depletion of morale so much so that they began to fire on their own troops and to attack troops who were coming in reserves who were coming in as reinforcements the first day of the battle has become famous in the annals of the first world war because it was described by ludendorff as the black day of the German Army in this war and what convinced ludendorf to describe it in those terms was that he felt that the German infantry no longer showed the powers of resistance that it had showed in in the earlier battles particularly the battles of 1917 and that the Allies were attacking a force which no longer had the same fighting capacity that the German Army had had in previous years and therefore that it was an omen a bad Omen for the future the battle itself show the ability of the Allies to learn from the experiences of the war in many ways it's a very modern battle it shows things like deception on a very very sophisticated level including signals deception it's arguably the first battle in military history which signals deception plays a key role and particularly in disguising the move South of the Canadian core which was the spearhead of the attack on the 8th of August 1918. but the battle itself did not achieve any great strategic Victory it didn't mean that the German Army had been defeated in the field on that day it was indicative that the Allies had found an effective way of attacking the Germans and it seemed indicative to the Germans themselves that the power of the resistance of the German Army was on the Wane so the moral impact of the battle not least in ludendorff's own mind was very considerable ludendorff had tried and failed to drive the British from their Central battlefields instead they remain steadfast in fact the situation was considered secure enough for the king to visit Bing's Army late on the 29th elsewhere the battle continued and raged as hard as ever in front of amyong the situation facing the Fifth Army there remained desperate this was complicated further by the replacement of General Goff a political scapegoat for the retreat Goff was replaced by General Rawlinson at 4 30 pm on the 28th quite simply Goff was made the scapegoat because Hague refused to take the fall for his own failures in this battle up until the actual German attack Hague was perfectly satisfied with his own defenses and indeed with the way Goff had organized his defenses on his sector of the front Hague had been warned as early as December 1917 that the Germans would attack around golf sector in the early spring and Hague was so confident of his ability to hold back any German advance that he even approved of the leave of eighty thousand British soldiers on the eve of the offensive during the first few days of the German spring offensive in March and April the British Fifth Army undoubtedly suffered the major defeat of any British formation in the first World War it's very difficult in these circumstances for No One to be held responsible Goff was the commander-in-chief of that Army he wasn't the only one in Fifth Army who got the sack there were many other people lower down at core command and divisional Commander level they were also sacked um yeah the alternative was to say a Goff was not to blame and to sack Hague and for whatever reason um Lloyd George chose not to do this at the time it would have been a much more of a moral victory for the Germans for the British to sack their commander-in-chief than it would have been to Sacco man who was commanding at a lower level and who could be sacrificed politically much more easily than the commander-in-chief Rawlinson inherited only six divisions still in line with four on the move the French had taken over some of the old line and fog was busy organizing a reserve of both forces to come to their aid goth however had established the Villa's bretono line defenses 15 miles to the east of amyong this was chiefly held by a ragtag bunch known as Carey's Force under Major General George Carey this improvised attachment included American engineers and an entire signals company and was responsible for protecting the city on the 4th of April the city was saved from imminent capture only by a daring last-ditch counter-attack led by the Australian 36th battalion nonetheless the British artillery began to withdraw but a small force of Australian and British Reserve troops emerged from the positions inspired by the leadership of Colonel J Milne they successfully pushed back a far greater force of the ninth Bavarian division this gave fresh hope to the other Allied troops and further counter-attacks ensued ludendorff exhorted marvitz's exhausted second Army to one final push on the 5th of April supported by gas shelling and Stormtroopers the struggle was as Fierce as ever however once again the Allied line held much of the strain taken up by a variety of dominion forces by the evening it was clear that the offensive had failed and ludendorff ordered all attacks to cease Kaiser schlacht had ended on its 16th day as ludendorff himself said the enemy's resistance was beyond our powers but at what price had this resistance come the British alone had lost 178 000 casualties of which 72 000 were now prisoners of War the average daily loss had been three times that of the Somme The Fifth Army had been hit 50 harder than the third and three divisions had lost over seven thousand men the French had also been significantly involved suffering 77 000 casualties eighteen thousand of whom were held prisoner the Allies had given up 1 200 square miles of land they had also lost 1 300 artillery pieces two thousand machine guns 400 aircraft 200 tanks and countless armored cars and horses foreign however the Germans themselves had incurred 239 000 casualties for a nation stretched almost to a Breaking Point these men and all the Munitions expended were now impossible to replace the Germans during the kaiserslaut were enormously successful on certain isolated occasions for perhaps two or three days at a time the sum total of these attacks did seriously disrupt and frighten the Allied Powers who came quite close to separation and collapse now had the Germans actually achieved their original strategy had they had for instance more men and a more cohesive Attack Force had they been able then to separate the French and the British army it may have altered seriously the nature of the war would it have led to the defeat of the Allied Powers is anyone's speculation my own feeling is that the British had invested by this stage so much in the war that they would have continued to fight especially with the knowledge that all they really had to do was to hold out until 1919 when the American Army would come over and force and permanently alter the nature of the war the Americans rushed their Doughboy soldiers across the Atlantic even political leaders like Lloyd George reacted positively their resolve stiffened by circumstance in short the exigences of kaiserschlacht had pushed the Allies into a shape that would soon bring them victory for the Germans Kaiser schlacht had simply brought them a stage closer to defeat their gains were certainly tremendous but the territory contained nothing of strategic or industrial value ameon had held the Ally still controlled the two railway tracks that ran north south over 108 German divisions had been fought to a standstill ludendorff in in 1918 was essentially trying to win the war with a knockout blow in March April and May 1918 he threw at least three major punches but none of them achieved a victory and by the end of May with the failure on the Mark he's in the position of a heavyweight boxer with a big punch the blow does not knock out his enemy what does he do next and the answer is wait for The Bitter End but such is the fighting capacity of the German army of ordinary German soldiers of their combat experience of their willingness to to endure and their professional competence that they always remain difficult to defeat even in the pile of state to which the German Army had in effect been reduced by the summer of 1918. politically both ludendorff and hindenburg's positions within the Army were undermined and opposition within the high command became more outspoken not surprisingly morale was adversely affected for as Colonel fonteur noted every Battalion and Company leader and therefore every Rifleman and Gunner clearly understood that hope has been dashed the essence was just that the Germans had simply not been able to defeat the British before the arrival of The Americans this had been the sole purpose of Kaiser schlacht and it had failed it meant they could no longer win the war when the kaiserslaut was lanced in March 1918 there were still a million soldiers on the Eastern front by October 1918 when the war was over there was still a half million soldiers and one has to speculate what even five hundred thousand two hundred thousand of those soldiers might have meant in terms of the balance of forces had they been moved Westward is not as renowned as other battles of the first World War but The Bravery of the men who fought on all sides was as remarkable as at any other that ten men were awarded the Victoria Cross after the first day's fighting alone stand as Testament to this fact however Perhaps it is best to leave the last word to one who fought that day w w Francis 7th Kings Shropshire light Infantry for God's sake and common Humanity do not write about honor and Glory there was none War especially ours was a stinking ugly horrible business [Music]

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Keywords: Battle Analysis, Battle Tactics, Battlefield History, Combat Operations, First World War, Germany's Last Stand, Historical Battles, Historical Documents, Historical Insights, Historical Triumphs, Military Achievements, Military Analysis, Military Campaigns, Military Innovations, Spring Offensive, WW1 Tactics, War Archives, War Chronicles, War Efforts, World War I Battles

Id: pVD1HQQY5V8

Length: 47min 57sec (2877 seconds)

Published: Fri Jun 09 2023