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  A second consequence of the manpower shortage was that no thought was given to any kind of pre-emptive attack to disrupt the German offensives planned for the spring. Allied intelligence knew that the German Oberste Heeresleitung (OHL) under General Ludendorff and Generalfeldmarschall Hindenburg were shifting divisions from the Eastern Front to France in the wake of the October Revolution in Russia almost at once, although GHQ was still underestimating overall German strength well into 1918.4 By mid-February 1918, analysis was pointing to an attack in March, possibly against the right centre of the British line in the sector held by the Third and Fifth armies between Arras and St Quentin. By 19 March, the BEF correctly expected an imminent attack against its right, stretching all the way down to La Fère. The British had only recently taken over this area from the French, leaving them holding 30 per cent more of the line and so being more thinly spread than before. In these conditions, no one seems to have considered any attempt at a spoiling attack, as the Germans had launched along the Belgian coast in July 1917 and as would become common practice in the next world war. Nor did Haig concentrate his reserves in the threatened area. Instead he parcelled them out equally all along the line, probably because he was more concerned about protecting the Channel ports than he was about his right flank, where there was more strategic depth to retreat into and the French might be able more easily to help.

  The manpower shortage had a third consequence: it undermined the British attempt to establish a solid defence. The BEF had little experience of fighting defensively. Since the end of 1914 the British had largely been on the offensive, at least operationally speaking. Such defence plans as had been worked up in 1915–17 tended to be local tactical schemes designed to frustrate German raids and local assaults rather than to withstand large-scale onslaughts. Cambrai highlighted the fragility of British defences and, together with the possibility of the Germans seizing the initiative in the spring, concentrated BEF minds on how to fight defensively. On 14 December 1917 GHQ issued instructions on organizing the defence, apparently based on German tactics and built around three zones. A ‘forward zone’ would be relatively lightly held in dispersed but mutually supporting outposts rather than a single continuous line of trenches. The garrison here would disrupt any attack, identify the enemy’s main thrust, and buy time to alert the main defences. If enemy pressure dictated, the defenders of the forward zone would pull back into the ‘battle zone’, a mile or two back, where the main fighting would take place on carefully prepared ground at least 2,000–3,000 yards deep. Counter-attacks would win back any ground lost. A further four to eight miles to the rear another position would constitute the ‘rear zone’, a backstop to which the defenders could retreat if circumstances dictated. One problem with this scheme was that the labour to build all these defensive positions was not available. Combat soldiers were set to digging, at the inevitable cost of fatigue and foregone training. Even so, the extent to which all these fortifications had been completed by March varied wildly. North of the Scarpe River and Arras, much had been accomplished, but, while Fifth Army’s forward zone was well developed, its battle zone still lacked dugouts and it had barely begun construction of a rear zone. Inevitably, commanders tended to concentrate their troops where they could best be protected, in the forward zone: a tendency reinforced by the pressure to cover wide fronts with insufficient strength. In theory, no more than a third of the defenders’ strength should be deployed in the forward zone, although the proportion may well have been much higher in practice.5 Concentrating forward exposed more of the garrison to suppression or worse by enemy artillery. It also meant there were few or no reserves to counter-attack and relieve outposts isolated in the forward zone, with inevitable consequences for the morale of those holding out.

  In addition to lack of manpower, at least two further problems undermined the British defence-in-depth. First, and most obviously, the unfamiliarity of the approach left many uncomfortable. This not only contributed to the tendency to unbalance the defence as noted above, but was also exacerbated by a lack of practice in command, communications, and counter-attacks, all essential elements of a successful elastic defence. A second and even more fundamental problem existed too, however: one which concerned not merely the implementation in practice of defence-in-depth, but the very concept. The German official histories written between the wars exalted defence-in-depth and contributed to a narrative which argues that by 1917 years of experience had taught the German Army that defence-in-depth was best. Modern military historians see a straight line from the Western Front, through the resilience of German defensive tactics in 1943–45, to NATO’s reliance on variants thereof as the only conventional hope of stopping a Soviet drive on the Rhine during the Cold War.6 They thus assume that the concept of defence-in-depth was the answer in 1918. Any defensive failures, therefore, must have been the result of a failure either to understand the concept, or to apply it properly. In their view, the BEF just got it wrong in March 1918. Their assumption, however, is flawed. The German official histories were not a dispassionate historical record but composed by ex-members of the General Staff as a resource for officer training during the 1920s and 1930s, during most of which period the army’s most urgent task was how to defend the Reich with a tiny professional force.7 To them, mobility and defence-in-depth seemed the obvious answer to the problems they faced, so that is what they focused on in their history. By doing so, they flattened out a much more complex process which saw vociferous debate within the German command about the merits of elastic defence right to the end of World War I. Much of the apparent success of defence-in-depth during World War II and NATO exercises depended on much greater battlefield mobility, better communications, lower force-to-space ratios, and more favourable terrain. It was thus highly contingent, and not the result of such tactics being inherently superior at all. Indeed, without the benefit of hindsight, the German or British officer of early 1918 thought defence-in-depth was far less obviously the solution than it seems to us today. It could not have saved Vimy Ridge in April 1917 or Messines in June. It had proved incapable of halting the ‘bite and hold’ advances of the BEF at Ypres during the autumn and had provoked a panic about defensive doctrine in late September. It was rain, terrain, and logistics which ultimately stopped the British push in Flanders, not German tactics. Even the highest expression of defence-in-depth, the Hindenburg Line, had buckled at Cambrai. It was not surprising, then, that many British commanders did not wholeheartedly embrace the new GHQ doctrine. Only after months of debate was consensus achieved and a comprehensive doctrinal document published. Stationery Service (SS) pamphlet 210, ‘The Division in Defence’, which enshrined the new approach, did not come out until May 1918.8 The British Army was, therefore, a long way from being ideally prepared to withstand the offensive Erich Ludendorff launched on 21 March 1918.

  Defence

  The battles of spring 1918 exerted intense pressure on the British Army. It was forced to give up most of the ground it had spent 1916 and 1917 capturing and suffered heavy casualties in the process. Between March and May the BEF lost 366,937 men, or one in four of the front-line fighting troops. Over 150,000 of those were confirmed dead or went missing. In the infantry, who bore the brunt of combat, losses were inevitably higher. In 16 sample infantry divisions, 55 per cent of men became casualties. The British Army took a beating: 55 of its 60 divisions were heavily engaged, 29 of them twice; and six divisions found themselves in full-scale action three times that spring. Among the last, unfortunate group was 21st Division which suffered 110 per cent casualties in just three months.9

  The first blow the Germans struck, on 21 March, was the strongest. In three waves, Ludendorff deployed some 68 divisions, or about a third of his troops on the Western Front, against the 18 British divisions holding the front. About 10,000 guns and trench mortars fired 3.2 million shells on the first day alone. This bombardment destroyed British communications, unstringing efforts at combined arms cooperation and leaving guns blind. Res
istance, even where stout, was disjointed. Many units, left isolated with little chance of relief, faced little choice but to surrender. Initial results were impressive by Western Front standards; the Germans captured more territory on 21 March than the Entente did in 140 days on the Somme. By 23 March the pace of the German advance was picking up amidst growing reports of confusion in the BEF’s rear. The Germans cleared the British out of all three of their defence lines, seized bridgeheads across the Somme River, and drove a wedge between the Third and Fifth armies. More British soldiers became prisoners of war in three days than in the previous three and a half years: some 40,000 men.

  By 26 March, however, the balance of advantage had begun to swing away from the Germans and back to the British and French. Four factors played a part in this. First, the British had received a severe knock but were not out of the game yet. They were still offering resistance, especially up toward Arras where German progress had so far been minimal and a full-scale attack on 28 March (Operation Mars) was easily repelled. This contributed to the second factor: the attackers were becoming exhausted. The railheads had been left far behind and transport was scarce, so food, ammunition, and even water were in short supply. Ludendorff had lost 90,000 men in five days and fresh reserves were running out: eight of the 37 German divisions in action had already been thrown back into battle for the second time in a week. Thirdly, Ludendorff grew overconfident and dispersed his forces in an attempt to finish off the British while simultaneously defeating the French. Lastly, and perhaps most significant in the long run, a solution was found to the mutual mistrust which had characterized relations between Haig and the French Commander-in-Chief, Pétain. The appointment of Ferdinand Foch to unified supreme command enabled the dispatch of French reinforcements to protect the crucial rail junction at Amiens. This maintained contact between the allies and prevented the battle from disintegrating into two separate fights. French units soon began to make their presence felt and the German push had completely stalled by 30 March. Attempts to get it moving again achieved little and on 5 April Operation Michael was suspended for good. Both sides had suffered heavily. The BEF lost 177,000 men and the French another 77,000, for 254,000 in all. German casualties were nearly as bad, however: 239,000. In all, 90 German divisions had been used up, including nearly all those trained and outfitted to lead an assault.

  The next major German attack on the BEF, Operation Georgette, began on 9 April, with some 29 divisions committed to an attack in the valley of the Lys River, close to the border between Belgium and France. Once more, the early days saw considerable success. Haig had to evacuate Armentières and give up the ground won so painfully around Ypres the previous autumn. Worried that he risked losing the important railway junction at Hazebrouck, he issued a melodramatic order of the day insisting that, ‘with our backs to the wall’, every position must be held ‘to the last man’ and each soldier should ‘fight on to the end’. Again, however, German success gave way to frustration after a few days as tired troops reached the limits of their endurance and logistics broke down. Even the capture of Mount Kemmel, high ground dominating the roads and railways leading into Ypres, could not be exploited. Georgette was finally suspended on 29 April, by which time a last attempt to renew the push south of the Somme at Villers-Bretonneux had also collapsed. British casualties in Georgette were 82,000, German 86,000, and French 30,000. Apart from a few unlucky British divisions which, after being sent to the French sector for a rest, found themselves in the path of other German attacks, by the end of April the worst of the German offensives was over for most of the BEF.

  There is a deceptive apparent symmetry to these battles which ignores the many real differences between them and entrenches an over-simple narrative among military historians. According to the consensus, the operations of spring 1918 all adhere to a common pattern of brilliant German tactics outthinking and outfighting brave but weak British defenders. The mobility and aggression of ‘stormtroop’ tactics, where command was decentralized, momentum was key, and enemy strongpoints were bypassed and mopped up by follow-on forces, overran a system of defence the British had cribbed from the Germans and failed either to grasp or apply properly. British command and control were paralysed while the soldiers of the BEF, often cut off in small units, fought bravely but in vain and seemed unable to stem the field-grey tide. British commanders, beset by communications breakdowns, failed to coordinate effective counter-attacks. Instead, they too often fell back to avoid encirclement, leaving gaps in the line for stormtroops to exploit with glee. Eventually, despite their excellent tactics, the Germans were only let down by their logistic frailty and by Ludendorff’s operational and strategic errors.

  This narrative is primarily one about the German Army. It assumes that the Germans would have succeeded had they not made certain mistakes. It underpins a view that the attack tactics employed in spring 1918 served as forerunners of Blitzkrieg and established the template for attack tactics in modern manoeuvre warfare. The problem with this narrative is twofold. First, the reality was considerably more nuanced. Further, German failure was the result, not only of things the Germans did wrong, but also of things the British and French did right. Even on 21 March, tactical success had been far from uniform: the German left wing had, it was true, stormed eight miles into the British lines. The right, however, had fared much less impressively, struggling to make 5,000 yards and falling five miles short of their objectives. Nor were all the German assault troops capable of operating at the highest level. Operation Mars on 28 March was badly botched: the bombardment was less thorough than it had been the previous week; counter-battery fire was less effective; the barrage rolled forwards too quickly. Not all the troops had been trained in stormtroop tactics, and in any case the enemy positions in this sector around Arras were well established and complex, so that many units reverted to traditional close order tactics rather than small-group manoeuvre and infiltration. With little fog to mask the assaulting troops, British forward crust defence methods worked well: defenders in the front line had little trouble repelling the attack without needing to give ground at all. By early afternoon the operation had clearly failed and was suspended. On 9 April, however, with a slower barrage, fog aiding infiltration, and some of the defending units still recovering from fighting Michael, once again the Germans quickly overran the British defences. Throughout March and April, even where the new tactics were employed, troops repeatedly seemed unable to shake the habits of trench warfare and keep up with the tempo of mobile operations. Although some units used the so-called Pulkowski method of firing artillery by the map with little or no prior registration in an effort to enhance surprise, others again did not and no common doctrine was applied until the end of May. Finally, far from leaving subordinates free to use their initiative within a decentralized model of command, corps and army headquarters, and indeed Ludendorff himself, had been trying to exercise too much control, micromanaging far down the hierarchy. In other words, whatever the shortcomings of German logistics and strategic decision-making, any initial success depended at least as much on other contingent factors, such as terrain, weather, and the strength or weakness of the Entente defence, as it did on German tactical excellence.

  With the benefit of a hundred years of hindsight, we now know that the BEF had survived the worst by the end of April, that Ludendorff’s attempts to break the French over the early summer would come to nothing, and that, at the Second Battle of the Marne, the initiative shifted for the last time from the Germans to the Allies. To Haig, Pétain, and Foch at the time, of course, none of this was evident. All they could see was that the tempo of enemy offensives was declining, but that the German Army remained poised within 40 miles of three key objectives: Paris, Abbeville, and Calais. One good victory might see the German Army at any of these, with possibly disastrous consequences for the Allies. Loss of the Channel ports might force the BEF to evacuate the continent. The fall of Paris might drive France out of the war. And German troops in Abbeville wou
ld, as in 1940, cut the British and French forces in two. At late as mid-June, Allied intelligence estimated the Germans still had some 25–30 divisions in reserve, the majority opposite the British sector. The threat still seemed both real and imminent and the BEF remained on a defensive footing through May and June, replacing the losses in its ranks, rebuilding lines of communication and networks of supply, and organizing new defences. By late June, however, Haig and Foch began planning counter-offensives against a German army which was beginning to suffer from the first wave of the famous Spanish flu pandemic.

  Offence

  The first sign of renewed British aggression came on 4 July with a small but perfectly designed attack by Australian and American troops to mark Independence Day. Tanks, infantry, artillery, and aircraft all worked together to excellent effect. They captured the village of Hamel and over 1,000 German prisoners within 93 minutes. Further small-scale operations followed, for example at Méteren later in the month, but the next large-scale attack came on 8 August at Amiens, in a battle which marked the beginning of the campaign soon known in Britain, with a nod to the Waterloo campaign, as the ‘Hundred Days’.