Over the winter of 1917 and 1918, the mood among the Allied High Command was dark as
night.
The Battle of Passchendaele had produced nothing but hundreds of thousands of casualties, and
the euphoria of the beginning of the Battle of Cambrai had been overwhelmed by the German
counterattack.
For the first time in two years, the Germans had the operational initiative, and the Allies
would need a new defense.
I’m Indy Neidell; welcome to a Great War special episode about the Allied Western Front
defenses in the spring of 1918.
Under the leadership of Philippe Petain, the French army had rallied in the second half
of 1917 after the mutinies of the early summer.
It was a real force with which to be reckoned, though morale was still low, and high command
could see that it was going to face a manpower crisis, so they were in no position to make
new offensives as 1918 began.
As for the British, Commander Sir Douglas Haig agreed to London’s demand to postpone
any plans for a Flanders offensive and play defense.
We’ve mentioned in our regular episodes his manpower shortage - British PM David Lloyd
George was withholding hundreds of thousands of ready-for-action troops in Britain since
he was appalled by the slaughter of 1917 and thought Britain could win the war elsewhere
and at less of a cost in men.
So defense it would be, but that defense would be something new.
They had carefully studied the German defense in depth system of the Hindenburg Line and
set out to build a copy.
When I say a copy, I’m not kidding.
British pioneers, together with German POWs and the Chinese Labor Corps, embarked on a
colossal construction project to copy the German system down to the last detail, even
down to the anti-tank ditches, though they’d never faced a single German tank.
Like the Hindenburg Line, the British system would have a forward zone - the Red Zone,
which was only lightly manned and was to delay and break up the enemy attack.
The Blue Zone, a mile or two deep, would be the actual battle zone.
The Green Zone at the rear was the artillery and the counter attack troops, ready to strike
at the Germans trapped in the Blue Zone.
Thing is, just copying the system on paper led to some serious problems that Haig couldn’t
really see.
The manpower shortage meant that regular troops had to work with the pioneers.
This was not only not so good for morale, it also meant that they didn’t have time
for training in how to actually fight in the new system.
Soldiers felt unsafe in isolated strong points, officers didn’t have experience in conducting
the counter attacks, and the already thin reserves were now spread out even further.
Haig thought the Germans would launch a slow burning offensive, much like the Western Front
offensives of the past few years, and he told London that the new system could hold out
for 18 days before he needed reinforcements.
However, a slow burning offensive was the last thing German Quartermaster General Erich
Ludendorff wanted.
British High Command knew he was building up for a big offensive all winter after the
Eastern Front went quiet, but they underestimated the force behind it and the German shock tactics.
However, when those attacks began in late March, where the British defense in depth
system was properly constructed and tactically implemented, it absorbed the brunt of them,
preventing a complete breakthrough in the northern sector of the British lines.
It was in the south, in Hubert Gough’s sector, where the construction of the system was incomplete
and where it was poorly understood, that the German breakthrough happened.
The British infantry was packed in the forward zone, where it was annihilated by artillery
and then infiltrated by German storm troops who circumvented and isolated strong points.
Bernhard: Exactly!
Indy: Oh, hey, I didn’t you see you there.
Well, actually I still can’t technically see you but you know what I mean.
Bernhard: Right, right.
What a coincidence again, you are talking about the Kaiserschlacht and I am talking
about Stormtroopers on my channel.
Indy: Yes, such a coincidence.
You know, I never get tired learning about stormtroopers, I will definitely check out
our your video and I am sure our viewers will do the same.
Bernhard: Thanks Indy, see you around.
The British were also using tanks as defensive strong points, which turned out to be pretty
useless, and many tanks and tank crews were lost, while others preferred to bail out and
fight on foot with their Lewis Guns.
Anyhow, the British bore the brunt of that first wave of attacks.
The French reacted quickly; even before Haig asked for assistance, Petain had sent reserves
northward, but German raiding parties and diversion bombardments were hitting the French
all over Champagne, and Petain figured he was gonna get hit with a major attack as well.
He correctly surmised that Ludendorff had a lot of reserve divisions, but he couldn’t
figure out where the attack would come, so he couldn’t commit a large amount of French
troops to aid the British.
Like Haig, he advocated a defense in depth system, as well as modernizing the French
army with things like automatic weapons and mortars, but his system was less developed
than the British, because of skeptics like Ferdinand Foch, who didn’t believe in its
effectiveness.
So Ludendorff hit not only a blind, but an underprepared enemy.
Petain had remarked that, when Operation Michael hit the British March 21st, they had run like
the Italians at Caporetto, but his commanders, who didn’t believe in defense in depth,
would make the same mistakes as the British and Italians had when it was their turn to
be attacked.
That attack was a sudden violent artillery bombardment by pre-registered guns, followed
by storm troop infiltration and a lightning fast, continued advance into open country.
The German army by that time was pretty exhausted though, and the Allies wavered but did not
fall as the spring went on.
The German army could deliver a punch, but it did not have the strategic oversight or
the stamina to exploit a reeling opponent.
They didn’t have an operative goal, and they also didn’t have cavalry or armored
vehicles to chase down the enemy.
They could only advance on foot and their supply system could not keep up with them
either, and as the offensives stalled and the Germans grew weaker, the Allies grew stronger.
And the Germans lost the battle in the air.
No matter how vicious the Red Baron’s flying circus was, the Germans could not match the
Allied material superiority in planes, and this cured the Allied blindness.
The German shock attack was no longer a shock once the German lines had been meticulously
photographed from the air, and their radio codes cracked.
The Allies soon had a full picture of the German plans.
Morale was also a factor.
The Germans were certainly enthusiastic about the first few victorious days of the offensives,
but when they came across all of the material the British and French left behind in their
retreat, the seeds of doubt were sown.
The Allies had so much more stuff than the Germans did.
And the morale of the British and French actually rose during open warfare, as they escaped
the drudgery of the trenches.
And the French had their internal supply line.
They had maximized the effect of their rail system.
The Germans had to carry supplies over bombed out ground; the often double-tracked French
railways could easily move men and material from front to front.
Same problem with airfields.
The Germans couldn’t just build new ones on bombed out or contested ground.
So the French and the British had the chance to establish new defensive structures and
rob the Germans of their shock advantage.
Defense in depth was often improvised over fields and villages, but the German inability
to disrupt the Allied supply system allowed Allied material supremacy to stem the tide.
By July, and the German offensive toward Reims, the allies knew when, where, and in what strength
the Germans would attack.
The German attack began as planned, but the storm troops smashed into only thinly manned
French forward lines.
The further the storm troops advanced, the more they were hit by machine gun fire from
hidden nests or defensive artillery.
Exhausted and bloodied, they emerged from the other side of the battle zone, and were
stunned by what they saw: there, just beyond the range of the German artillery, stood the
French Army in full force, guns ready.
The German offense had been beaten once and for all.
Definitely check out Military History Visualised and his video about German stormtroopers on
his channel.
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