Hundred Days Offensive
The Hundred Days Offensive began on 8 August 1918 with the Battle of Amiens — what Ludendorff called "the black day of the German army." Using surprise, tanks, aircraft, and all-arms coordination, British and Dominion forces advanced eight miles on the first day, capturing 17,000 prisoners. Under Supreme Allied Commander Ferdinand Foch, the Allied armies then launched a series of coordinated offensives — the Second Battle of the Marne, the Meuse-Argonne Offensive (the largest US operation of the war), and the Advance to Victory — that compressed the German front relentlessly. German forces, exhausted after the failed Spring Offensive, short of replacements, and facing the growing American presence, could no longer mount effective counter-attacks. The scale of retreats, surrenders, and desertions convinced the German High Command by late September that military victory was impossible. Ludendorff and Hindenburg pressed the German government to seek an armistice. The offensive ended with the Armistice on 11 November 1918, having advanced the Allied line over 100 kilometres in 96 days.
- Year: 1918 CE
- Category: Military
