The German army has launched a series of offensives this spring that have radically changed the
battle lines of the Western Front, and they launch yet another one this week.
And it has an immediate result that puts a real scare into the Allies, for the Germans
are only 50 miles from Paris.
I’m Indy Neidell; welcome to the Great War.
Last week there was yet another mutiny in the Austrian Army, such events were by now
almost commonplace.
There was action in the skies over Western Europe and on the road to Tiflis far to the
southeast.
The Germans were making plans to somehow take the Baku oil reserves before the Ottomans
could get them, and were also finalizing plans for the next wave of their spring offensives
to explode on the Western Front.
That explosion came this week.
German Quartermaster General Erich Ludendorff’s immediate plan was to threaten Philippe Petain’s
troops, so that French and British reserves would have to be brought south, so that Ludendorff
could then deliver a deathblow up in Flanders.
On the 27th, Ludendorff’s troops launched the Third Battle of the Aisne.
The artillery bombardment began at two AM, and was pretty much artillery wizard Georg
Bruchmuller’s masterpiece.
Using the Pulkowski method of gun calibration, which allowed the Germans to pre calibrate
their guns behind the lines without active firing on the lines, there was no need of
observation and all the firing could be carried out even in total in darkness.
(Spring offensives) “The German gunners missed hardly a single forward position, communications
trench, command post, or battery...
The super heavy groups damaged the tracks behind the French railway guns.
Unable to withdraw, 14 were captured...”
The preliminary barrage lasted under three hours, but during the first day of the attack,
German artillery fired three million shells, with 50% being gas shells, which was actually
the highest percentage of gas rounds for any attack of the whole war.
At twenty minutes to five- and twenty minutes to dawn - the German 7th Army infantry went
over the top as Operation Blucher kicked off.
An hour later, the 1st Army on the left began Operation Goerz.
By 0900, advance troops had reached the Aisne River, moving so fast that the French could
not evacuate their artillery; the Germans captured 650 big guns.
By 1100, German troops had crossed the Aisne and the Aisne-Marne Canal, by late afternoon
the 7th and 1st armies had linked up, and by midnight they had crossed the Vesle at
Courlandon.
That day the German infantry advanced 22 kilometers, which was the biggest single day advance of
any attack by any army in the entire war (Spring offensives).
They were admittedly helped along in this by French General Denis Duchêne, commanding
the French 6th Army.
He did not believe in “defense in depth” doctrine as advocated by Philippe Petain,
and had concentrated his troops in the front lines, where four whole divisions were basically
annihilated.
He also waited until too late to order the bridges over the Aisne destroyed.
In fact, his entire defensive position, including the artillery, was at maximum eight kilometers
deep, and he was positioned so he had the Aisne River at his back.
It was a total recipe for disaster.
On the 26th, the day before the attack, when the British - he had three British divisions
in his command in addition to his French ones - reported that things looked like they were
about to get ugly, he said (World Undone), “There is no indication that the enemy has
made preparations which would enable him to attack the Chemin des Dames tomorrow” and
then went to Paris to meet his mistress.
Lions led by donkeys was sometimes actually the case.
By the end of the second day (Gilbert), a 65km wedge had been plowed through the allied
lines.
But still, the Germans weren’t successful everywhere, and some new Allied troops were
making their mark.
At Cantigny, the first real American offensive of the war took the village and held it over
three days of withering German counterattacks and continuous shelling.
Martin Gilbert writes of Cantigny, “The impact of its capture was threefold; it deprived
the Germans of an important observation point, it gave (General) Pershing a further argument
for an independent United States command, and it provided, according to one American
military historian, “the first cold foreboding to the German that this was not, as he had
hoped, a rabble of amateurs approaching.””
But the Germans still had the problem of lack of cavalry and armored cars or tanks, and
they could not overtake the fleeing enemy.
Also, on the left, near Reims, the attacks had failed.
This left the advancing troops exposed on their flanks.
To support the advance southward, they really needed to take Soissons and Reims, the railway
hubs at the western and eastern ends of the new salient Ludendorff’s armies were creating.
On the 29th, the Germans entered Soissons.
They had by then taken 50,000 French soldiers prisoner.
On the 30th, they reached the River Marne and they were still on the move as the week
ended, though Reims was out of reach for the time being.
Still, for the first time in three and a half years, German soldiers stood on the banks
of the River Marne, 50 miles from Paris.
There was other action in the field this week too, on a front that’s been quiet for months.
The Battle of Skra di Legen was fought May 29th and 30th on the Macedonian Front.
This was noteworthy for being the first major action of the war fought by Greek troops.
It was troops from three Greek Divisions under Lieutenant-General Zymvrakakis, together with
a French brigade, attacking strongly fortified Bulgarian positions Northwest of Thessaloniki.
After a Greek artillery barrage the 29th, the Allies - who seriously outnumbered the
Bulgarian defenders - captured Skra the morning of the 30th.
Bulgarian counterattacks were unable to retake the position.
The Allies took just over 2,800 casualties, the Bulgarians slightly more, with the Allies
capturing a dozen artillery pieces and over 30 machine guns.
And further to the east in the Caucasus there was both action in the field, and political
scheming.
The Battle of Karakilise took place the 26th-28th, the heaviest fighting so far of the Ottoman
offensive against the Transcaucasian Federation.
The Ottoman forces were split between those advancing on Yerevan and those on Karakilise.
There are sources that call this battle an Armenian victory, and even write of Tovmas
Nazarbekian and the Armenian Rifles pushing back the Ottoman 3rd Army, however, “Caucasian
Battlefields” describes in pretty good detail the Ottoman capture of Bezobdal from the Armenian
right the 27th, the capbture of Vartanli from the Armenian left the 28th, and the Armenians
having retreated to cover Delijan by the 29th.
By then, Nazarbekian’s force was down to around 5,000 men.
West of Yerevan, General Movses Silikian had meanwhile defeated the Ottomans and stopped
them in their tracks at the Battle of Sardarabad, which raged all week.
I’d like to point out that Sardarabad was not only instrumental in stopping the Ottoman
advance into Armenia, but British historian Christopher Walker says that if the Armenians
had lost the battle, “it is perfectly possible that the word Armenia would have henceforth
denoted only an antique geographic term.”
But if the Ottoman plans for the Caucasus had been delayed in the field, they were also
being delayed politically by the leaders of Georgia.
Now, last week I mentioned that German General Kress von Kressenstein was maneuvering to
eventually secure the Baku oil fields for Germany before the Ottomans could reach them.
So while the Transcaucasian Diet had delayed answering the Ottoman ultimatum to give them
the Batum-Tiflis- Baku railway line, Kressenstein had organized the following: on the 27th,
the Georgians in the Tra nscaucasian Diet declared Georgia a republic that was independent
from the Transcaucasian Federation.
The new republic was a German protectorate.
And as the week ended, German and Georgian flags were flying all along the railway line,
two German battalions were en route from the Crimea, and Vehip and Halil Pasha, the commanders
of the Ottoman forces, were absolutely furious, but at a total loss for what to do.
Armenia also declared its own independence as the Armenian National Council takes charge
of affairs, and the Tatar National Council proclaims “the Republic of Azerbaijan”.
And one more note to wrap things up from even further east: by the end of this week the
Czechoslovak legion occupied Chelyabinsk, Petropavlovsk, and Tomsk.
They were now openly fighting the Bolsheviks in Siberia.
So the week ends, with heavy fighting in the Caucasus as new nations emerge, renewed fighting
in the Balkans but by a new belligerent, and yet another huge offensive by the Germans
in the west.
That has brought them to within 50 miles of Paris, after a few days of advancing as many
as 15 miles in a day.
And if Paris should fall, think of all the food and material supplies and the infrastructure
that will fall into the hands of the Germans - who desperately need it all.
And a seemingly unstoppable army will grow even stronger... if Paris should fall.
If you want to learn more about the Czechoslovak legion and their exploits in World War 1 and
the Russian Civil War, you can click right here for part 1 of our two part special.
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