The Defeat of Germany » The Ludendorff Spring Offensive, 1918

Why Germany gambled

By early 1918 General Erich Ludendorff was, in practice, running Germany's war. He believed Germany had a few months left in which it could still win. There were three reasons.

So Ludendorff gambled on one great attack. The plan was to hit the British hard, split them from the French and push them back to the Channel ports before the Americans could make a difference.

Key terms:

• Treaty of Brest-Litovsk: the peace treaty of March 1918 that took Russia out of the war
• Offensive: a large, planned attack
• Stormtroopers: picked German soldiers trained to break through quickly in small, fast groups
• Infiltration: slipping through the weak points in a defence instead of attacking all of it

Stormtrooper tactics

Most big attacks on the Western Front had begun with days of shelling, which warned the defenders. Ludendorff's army attacked in a new way.

This infiltration turned a line of trenches into a set of surrounded islands, and it broke the deadlock in the west.

Early success: March to July 1918

The first attack, called Operation Michael, began on 21 March 1918 near St Quentin. Germans also called it the Kaiserschlacht, the 'Kaiser's Battle'. More than 6,000 guns fired over a million shells in about five hours. Then the stormtroopers came forward through thick fog.

They struck the British Fifth Army under General Gough, which was spread thinly along a stretch of line it had only recently taken over. The Fifth Army fell back. About 21,000 British soldiers were taken prisoner on the first day. Within two weeks the Germans had advanced about 65 kilometres and taken back the whole Somme battlefield.

On 26 March the Allies agreed that a French general, Ferdinand Foch, should co-ordinate all their armies on the Western Front. Now one man could send reserves wherever they were needed.

The German advance was stopped just short of Amiens, a vital railway centre, and in early April Ludendorff ended Operation Michael. He then attacked somewhere else, again and again:

• April: an attack in Flanders towards the Channel ports. On 11 April Haig told his men they had their 'backs to the wall' and must 'fight on to the end'. The line held.
• 27 May: a surprise attack on the French along the River Aisne. Within days the Germans reached the River Marne at Château-Thierry, less than 100 kilometres from Paris. French and newly arrived American troops stopped them there.
• 15 July: a last attack on both sides of Reims. It was halted within three days.

Why the offensive failed

Germany had won a great deal of ground, but it had not won the war. There were five main reasons.

• No clear aim. Ludendorff kept pushing wherever the attack was going well, instead of sticking to one target. Neither Amiens nor the Channel ports were taken, and the British and French were never split.
• Supplies could not keep up. The stormtroopers outran their guns, food and ammunition, which had to cross ground wrecked by years of fighting. Hungry German soldiers stopped to loot British supply stores, and the advance lost speed.
• Losses that could not be replaced. Germany lost well over half a million men between March and July. The stormtroopers, its best soldiers, suffered most. The Allies lost heavily too, but fresh American troops were now pouring in.
• Allied resistance. The British and French retreated but did not break, and under Foch they moved reserves quickly by rail to block each attack.
• A worse position. The Germans had left their strong Hindenburg Line defences. They now held large bulges in the line, called salients, which were longer to guard, hard to supply and open to attack from three sides.

The gamble had failed. Germany's army was now smaller, more tired and worse placed than in March. What the Allies did next is in the lesson The Hundred Days and Why Germany Lost.

Exam-style question

Source A: From a Special Order of the Day by Field Marshal Sir Douglas Haig, commander of the British armies in France, sent to all his soldiers on 11 April 1918.

'Three weeks ago to-day the enemy began his terrific attacks against us on a fifty-mile front. His objects are to separate us from the French, to take the Channel Ports and destroy the British Army. In spite of throwing already 106 Divisions into the battle and enduring the most reckless sacrifice of human life, he has as yet made little progress towards his goals. We owe this to the determined fighting and self-sacrifice of our troops.'

Source B: From My War Memories, 1914-1918 by General Erich Ludendorff, published in 1919 (translated). He is writing about the first German attack, which began on 21 March 1918.

'The battle was over by the 4th April. It was a brilliant feat, and will ever be so regarded in history ... Strategically we had not achieved what the events of the 23rd, 24th and 25th had encouraged us to hope for. That we had also failed to take Amiens, which would have rendered communication between the enemy's forces astride the Somme exceedingly difficult, was specially disappointing ... However, our troops had beaten the French and English and proved themselves superior.'

(A division is a large army unit. Objects means aims. Astride the Somme means on both sides of the River Somme.)

Study Sources A and B. How far does Source A support the evidence of Source B about the success of the German offensive in spring 1918? Explain your answer. [8 marks]