German Spring Offensive
Germany attacked in the west on 21 March 1918 with everything it had left and came closer to winning than at any time since 1914. The circumstances were arithmetical. Russia had left the war, releasing some fifty divisions for the west; the Americans were arriving at 250,000 a month and would be decisive by summer; and the blockade was starving Germany. Ludendorff therefore had a window of a few months. Operation Michael opened against the British Fifth Army on a front of some eighty kilometres with 6,600 guns firing a five-hour hurricane bombardment of gas and high explosive on surveyed targets, followed by storm troops trained to bypass strongpoints and drive deep, leaving the mopping up to those behind. It worked. The Fifth Army broke, the Germans advanced sixty kilometres in eight days — more ground than either side had taken in three years — and shelled Paris with a railway gun from 120 kilometres away. Four more offensives followed through the spring on the Lys, the Aisne, the Matz and the Marne. None of them had a strategic object beyond breaking through. Ludendorff said explicitly that he would punch a hole and see what happened, and what happened was that his armies advanced into devastated ground they could not supply, past dumps of food and drink that starving troops stopped to loot, and lost their best men. Germany took some 800,000 casualties by July and had no reserves left. The Allied counterattack began on 18 July and did not stop.
- Year: 1918 CE
- Category: Military
