1918 Read online

  The Germans organized their deep defensive positions into three zones. The Vorfeldzone (outpost zone) was usually 500 to 1,000 yards in depth (although German doctrine said that this could extend in extremis to up to 8,000 yards), and held with sparsely positioned early-warning listening and observation posts. The Kampffeld (battle zone), was up to 2,000 yards deep, consisting of three or more successive trench lines reinforced with strongpoints and machine-gun positions. The leading edge of the forward zone was the Hauptwiderstandslinie (main line of resistance). The reserves and the counter-attack units manned the Hinterzone (rearward zone), typically sheltered in deep, reinforced bunkers. An intermediate position of multiple trench lines between the battle zone and the rearward zone formed the protective line for the artillery. Through the latter half of 1917 the French typically put two-thirds of their combat strength into their forward-most lines, while the Germans held their leading lines with only 20 per cent. During an artillery bombardment prior to an Allied attack, the German forces in the rear positions typically moved into their deep, reinforced Stollen (dugouts) to ride out the storm. The troops in the thinly held outpost line slipped out of their trenches and took cover in nearby shell-holes – while the Allied artillery pounded the empty trenches.9

  By 1918 the German defensive system on the Western Front consisted of three deeply echeloned belts, with each belt further organized into outpost, battle, and rearward zones. The Allies called the leading belt the Hindenburg Line, but the Germans called it the Siegfriedstellung (Siegfried Position). The Siegfried Position was only the central sector of that first echelon belt. The various sectors of the belts were named after Wagnerian gods and heroes taken from the German national epos, the Nibelungenlied. The Siegfried Position, which ran from Arras to Laffaux, near Soissons on the Aisne, was the strongest. It was constructed well behind the German line during the winter of 1916–17. Then in March of 1917 the Germans pulled back to that strong position during Operation Alberich. The Siegfried Position subsequently was extended from Arras north to the coast, designated the Wotan Position. The Alberich Position extended the Siegfried to the Aisne River, south of Laon; and the Hagen Position extended it to the east and then south to Metz and Strasbourg.

  The second echelon Hunding Position was some 15 miles behind the Siegfried. The Hunding made excellent use of the terrain, especially between the Aisne and Oise rivers, but overall it was not as strong as the Siegfried. The Hermann Position extended the Hunding north to Douai on the Scarpe River; and from there the Ghent Extension ran toward the coast north of Ghent. The Brunhilde Position extended the Hunding south-east to Grand Pre, on the northern end of the Argonne Forest; and from there the Kriemhilde Position ran east behind the Hagen. At that point, however, the first and second echelon belts were only about six miles apart.

  The third belt was the Freya Position, which only ran primarily behind the Hunding, Brunhilde, and part of the Kriemhilde Positions. Starting from the vicinity of Le Cateau, it ran south-east to the Meuse River, just south of Stenay. The Freya, however, had not been completed by the time of the Armistice. Behind that third belt the notional Antwerp–Meuse Position was planned to run from the Scheldt Estuary to the Meuse, just north of Verdun. Had it been built and occupied, the much-shortened Antwerp–Meuse Position would have allowed the Germans to concentrate their forces for a much stronger defence. One of Allied Supreme Commander Général de Division Ferdinand Foch’s constant worries during the latter half of 1918 was that the Germans would make just such a withdrawal in a timely and orderly manner, which most likely would have dragged the war out well into 1919. Fortunately for the Allies, by the time the Germans started falling back to the Siegfried Position, they were woefully short of the necessary manpower required to establish that final fallback line on the Meuse.

  The attack on the Siegfried Position, 1918

  Following a 13-month study of offensive doctrine, the OHL on 1 January 1918 issued The Attack in Position Warfare (Der Angriff im Stellungskrieg).10

  The new doctrine issued in January 1918 organized the attack into two main phases. The first, a systematic assault against the enemy’s leading fixed positions, required detailed preparation and centralized control. The second phase would be an aggressive extension of the attack to disrupt the enemy to the point where he could not reorganize and respond. The second phase relied upon decentralized execution and the individual initiative of the subordinate commanders on the spot. The second phase started from the enemy’s intermediate zone, at which point the attackers would be beyond the range of most of their own supporting artillery. As opposed to defensive operations, the higher echelons of command maintained tighter control of the follow-on forces in the attack.11

  The initial objective of any attack was to penetrate fast and deep enough to reach and overrun the defender’s artillery positions on the first day. The intent was to disrupt the enemy’s communications, and bypass and isolate his strongpoints, which later would be reduced by follow-on forces. The new doctrine marked a key conceptual shift from destruction to large-scale disruption – which is one of the basic principles of modern operational art. While the Allies attacked in successive waves, in order to relieve the pressure on their lead units, the Germans continued to press the attack with the lead units in order to maintain momentum. This, of course, burned out the lead units quickly, and within the framework of sequential operations it was counterproductive and had serious consequences for the Germans after March 1918.12

  The new doctrine stressed infantry–artillery coordination and the need to move artillery forward to sustain the attack. Artillery was the biggest killer on the World War I battlefield, and once static trench warfare set in, artillery almost by default became the primary means of prosecuting the war. Destruction became the tactical mission of artillery – destroy the enemy’s defences and defenders before one’s own attacking infantry reached the objective; destroy the enemy’s attacking infantry before they could reach your defensive positions. As the war progressed, the preparation and counter-preparation fires consumed hundreds of thousands and then millions of rounds of ammunition, and by 1917 lasted up to two weeks before the start of the infantry attack. But destruction proved impossible to achieve, no matter how many shells were fired. The long preparatory fires also compromised the element of surprise by telling the defender exactly where the attack would be coming. Worse still, the massive fires tore up the intervening ground over which the attacking infantry had to advance, reducing mobility and thereby increasing the attacker’s vulnerability to the defender’s fires.

  By late 1917 some artillery commanders had begun to understand that properly planned and coordinated neutralization fires could be far more effective than destruction fires. One of those gunners was Oberst Georg Bruchmüller, arguably the most influential artillery tactician of the war, and perhaps of the 20th century. In 1914 Bruchmüller was an obscure, medically retired officer recalled to active duty for the war. General Max Hoffmann called Bruchmüller, ‘an artillery genius’;13 and Ludendorff called him, ‘one of the most prominent soldiers of the war’.14 Starting on the Eastern Front as early as 1915 and culminating at the 1917 battle of Riga, Bruchmüller experimented with various fire support methods based on neutralization. At the battle of Lake Naroch in April 1916, Bruchmüller became the first artillery officer in the German Army to plan and coordinate fires above the divisional level.15

  Bruchmüller recognized the counterproductive nature of the long, destruction-oriented preparations. Thus, while the artillery preparations in the West were lasting weeks, Bruchmüller planned and executed preparations in the East lasting only a few hours, yet achieving better effect. His preparation fires were not long, but they were incredibly violent – designed not to obliterate a defending enemy, but to stun him senseless. The British in 1918 came to call such preparations ‘Hurricane Bombardments’. In Bruchmüller’s own words, ‘We desired only to break the morale of the enemy, pin him to his position, and then overcome him with an overw
helming assault.’16

  Shortly after arriving on the Western Front in November 1917, Bruchmüller quickly became the principal champion of a newly developed technique to ‘predict’ artillery registration corrections based on the careful measurement of local weather conditions and the muzzle velocity characteristics of each gun tube in a battery. The system developed by Hauptmann (Captain) Erich Pulkowski is essentially the same as that used by all the NATO armies today, although the calculations are now all done by computer. Bruchmüller was not the only artillery innovator of the war, of course, nor did he personally develop all of the techniques he used so effectively. He did, however, perfect many of them on the battlefield, and he was the first to make them all work in a comprehensive system, tightly integrated with the scheme of manoeuvre.17

  Operational ineptitude

  The force with the best tactical doctrine, organization, and leadership may win all or most of the battles, but that is no guarantee it will win the campaign or the war. The German Army in 1918 is an example of this conundrum. Although the Germans were the tactical masters of the World War I battlefields, they had some serious blind spots at the operational level. This is particularly ironic, considering that prior to 1914 the Germans devoted more time and effort to operational thinking than virtually any other army. Ludendorff, however, consistently discounted the operational art in favour of tactics.

  The key distinction between the tactical and operational levels is depth, not only in space, but also in time. Extended depth in time almost always means sequential operations, where the results of one battle or campaign form the basis for the next, and the effects of each battle become cumulative. But the Germans misinterpreted sequential operations as being synonymous with attrition warfare, which was anathema to a country with limited resources and population, and with potential enemies on both its eastern and western borders. Rather than prolonged operations, German thinking focused on winning any war through a single, massive, and decisive battle – a rapid knock-out blow. German doctrine called it the Battle of Annihilation (Vernichtungsschlacht). This is precisely what they tried to achieve in 1914 with the Schlieffen Plan. But when it failed, they had no planned sequel ready to go, and they spent most of the next three years groping for a solution on the Western Front. The Germans again made the same basic mistake during the first half of 1918, except this time with significantly advanced tactics. The five great Ludendorff Offensives were not the components of a sequenced and coordinated campaign; they were five separate battles, each a reaction to the failure of the one previous.

  During both world wars logistics was the German Army’s Achilles heel. As operations extend into both space and time, the importance of logistical sustainment increases as the key operational enabler. But with German operational thinking focused on the conduct of quick and decisive battles conducted relatively close to the nation’s borders, their logistics system was always a minimalist structure, and supply work was one of the lowest prestige assignments for a staff officer. Ironically, the Germans were the undisputed masters of using their rail networks for force deployments and troop movements – which came under the realm of operations rather than logistics. Nonetheless, they habitually underemphasized supply and sustainment.18 They also made the same mistakes when looking at their enemies. The Germans in 1918 most likely did not have the manpower superiority to prevail against the Allies in a direct force-on-force clash – especially with thousands of fresh American troops pouring into the continent every month. But the Allies, especially the British, had a significant vulnerability that might have yielded better results if it, rather than the main British forces, had been the objective. The British logistics system was extremely vulnerable and very fragile. Almost all British supplies entered the continent through six ports, three in the north of their sector and three in the south. Almost everything from the ports moved by rail, and the rail network in the British sector was very shallow and overburdened. There were two key choke points in the rail network: the rail centre at Amiens in the south and the one at Hazebrouck in the north. Almost all British supplies had to travel through those two centres, and there were very few work-arounds. The British themselves were only too well aware of these vulnerabilities and had multiple contingency plans to withdraw from the continent in the event that either or both rail centres fell.19

  The Germans apparently never seemed to grasp the significance of these two critical logistics nodes. Neither Amiens nor Hazebrouck were primary attack objectives in March and April 1918, although the Germans came within a few miles of taking both. In May and through to July 1918 German inattention to their own lines of communications led them into an operational trap of their own making north of the Marne. And finally, when the Allies went on the offensive from 18 July onwards, they focused not directly on the main forces of the German Army, but rather on its key rail lines and centres. In the end, the German Army in the field died from logistical strangulation more than anything else.

  Once the German victory at Riga in September 1917 effectively knocked Russia out of the war, the Germans started transferring forces to the Western Front. By the beginning of 1918 they had transferred 35 divisions with their organic artillery, plus more than 1,000 heavy guns. That put 194 German divisions on the Western Front, giving them roughly an 18-division superiority over the Allies. But the window of slight superiority was closing rapidly. Time was running out for the Germans as more American forces, albeit ill-equipped and poorly trained, continued to arrive.

  Senior German military leaders in the West were divided on the question as to how to continue the war in 1918. The two principal army group commanders, Kronprinzen Wilhelm and Rupprecht, were convinced that Germany could no longer win a military victory. They wanted to make peace at almost any cost. Ludendorff, however, was unwilling to make any concessions for a negotiated peace, especially if this meant giving up control of the Belgian coast. Belgian neutrality, however, was a non-negotiable strategic imperative for Britain. Others took the opposite approach. Rupprecht’s own chief of staff, Generalleutnant Hermann von Kuhl; the chief of staff of the Fourth Army, defensive expert Colonel Fritz von Loßberg; and Generalmajor Max Hoffmann, who had succeeded Ludendorff as chief of staff on the Eastern Front, all saw no alternative but to attack. As Loßberg wrote to Ludendorff at the time, ‘The war can be decided in our favour only through an offensive’.20

  While the OHL continued to debate whether or not to attack, and if so where, none of Germany’s political leaders had any say in the decision. On 19 September 1917 Ludendorff told the army group and army chiefs of staff that a major attack in the West was out of the question. But on October 23 the chief of the OHL Operations Section, Oberstleutnant Georg Wetzell, issued a strategic estimate of the situation which argued that the only viable strategy was ‘to deliver an annihilating blow to the British before American aid can become effective’. Wetzell estimated that the offensive would require 30 divisions. (The plan eventually expanded to 67 divisions.) Ludendorff approved the concept almost immediately.21

  On 25 October Rupprecht sent Ludendorff an estimate of the situation that argued against a major offensive and recommended only limited counter-attacks, possibly in the Armentières area. Ludendorff, however, had decided already that the Germans must attack in force, but he still had not decided where, how, or when. His key advisors were even more divided on those questions than on the primary question of whether to attack or not. On 11 November Ludendorff met at Rupprecht’s headquarters in Mons with Wetzell, Kuhl, and Kronprinz Wilhelm’s chief of staff, Generalmajor Friedrich von der Schulenberg. Typically, no commanders were present, only chiefs of staff and their operations officers. They failed to reach a decision on where and how to attack, and Ludendorff then ordered the respective army group planning staffs to develop a set of preliminary courses of action for later decision.22

  Ludendorff held his second major planning conference with the army group chiefs of staff at Kreuznach on 27 December 1917. Again, no final decis
ion was made, but Ludendorff said that the balance of forces in the West would be in Germany’s favour by the end of February, making it possible to attack in March. At the conclusion of the conference, the OHL issued a directive to the army groups to plan in detail and start preparing a complete array of operations spanning almost the entire Western Front. The completed plans were due on 10 March 1918.23

  As the planning progressed, two basic sets of options emerged as the most viable. An attack in the north directly against the British main strength was designated Operation Georg. An attack farther to the south, along the general line of the Somme River, was designated Operation Michael. The objective of Michael was to attack the southern wing of the British Army, separate the British and the French, and then pivot to the north and roll up the BEF from the right flank.

  Ludendorff announced his final decision on 21 January 1918 during a conference at Avesnes. Summarizing the various options, Ludendorff ruled out Operation Georg as too dependent on the weather because of the condition of the ground in Flanders. A late spring in the area might delay the start of the attack until May, which was far too late for Ludendorff. Operation Michael on both sides of St Quentin was the decision.24

  Ludendorff clearly intended to win the war with one decisive Vernichtungsschlacht. During the planning for Operation Michael, Ludendorff specifically rejected any notion of sequential operations and cumulative effects. On the tactical level, the Germans brought to bear the full weight of their new offensive doctrine. Entire divisions (designated mobile Divisionen) were trained as stormtroopers, and the artillery support was based on Bruchmüller’s concepts. But Ludendorff continued to focus on tactical details to the point of micromanagement. When during one planning session Kronprinz Rupprecht prodded Ludendorff about the operational objective of a certain manoeuvre, the Erster Generalquartiermeister exploded: ‘I can’t abide the word operations! We’ll just blow a hole in the middle and the rest will follow of its own accord.’25