German spring offensive 1918
Offensive map
| date | March 21 to July 17, 1918 |
|---|---|
| place | Northern France |
| output | Stop the German advance |
| consequences | Renewed transfer of the initiative to the Allies |
| Parties to the conflict | |
|---|---|
| Commander | |
| Troop strength | |
| 6 armies | 7 armies |
| losses | |
|
230,000 dead |
300,000–320,000 dead |
.svg){kind=small}
A spring offensive is a series of five offensives by the German army on the western front of the First World War in the spring of the last year of the war, 1918. The first began on March 21, 1918; the fifth in mid-July - a last German offensive attempt on the Marne . Starting with the operation Michael (also Great Battle in France or Kaiserschlacht called) was the spring offensive, the last attempt of the German Empire , on the western front one for the Central Powers to bring about favorable outcome of the war.
The offensive operations came as a surprise to the Entente Powers because they believed that the German army was about to collapse. After a serious crisis, Britain and France came to an agreement under the pressure of the situation to place the Western Front under the command of French Marshal Ferdinand Foch . Against the increased resistance of the two main Western powers, supported by the American Expeditionary Forces and a number of other allied nations, the power of the German offensives finally flagged after three months; from mid-July 1918 the initiative finally passed to the Entente. The German Supreme Army Command thus lost all room for maneuver on the Western Front. After months of heavy defensive fighting, the military leadership demanded an armistice at the end of September 1918.
Occasion and strategic goals
After three years of fruitless fighting and millions of deaths, a decision on the First World War was still pending. The situation for Germany seemed quite positive at the end of 1917, after Russia had been eliminated as an opponent of the war on the Eastern Front due to the revolution , as was the Kingdom of Romania . In addition, a great success - albeit not a breakthrough - had been achieved on the front against Italy together with Austria-Hungary . In early 1918, Germany signed a food treaty with Ukraine, known as the Peace of Bread . Nevertheless, the resources of the Central Powers inferior to the Entente were on the verge of exhaustion. The Western Front was by the Germans after heavy defensive battles throughout the year 1917 against the French and British are held and still remained in trench warfare . Now the relief on the eastern front promised a strengthening of the German western front and a transition to the offensive there.
The last time the German troops attacked on the western front was in early 1916 before Verdun . At the time by the German military leadership under Erich von Falkenhayn pursued strategy of Weißblutens had, however, proved to be a failure. In the longer term, the Central Powers were numerically inferior to the Western Powers , and therefore were themselves more threatened by the danger of exhaustion than the Entente and also cut off by the British naval blockade . The German offensive on Verdun had to be broken off as early as mid-1916, and since the beginning of the Battle of the Somme , heavy material battles had been pushed onto the defensive. Although the coordinated attacks by the Entente on the Western Front, Eastern Front and the new Romanian Front were unsuccessful, the Central Powers were close to a dangerous surge in their forces in the second half of 1916. Their material resources were threatened with exhaustion.
Falkenhayn was deposed in 1916, but the 3rd Supreme Army Command , consisting of Paul von Hindenburg and Erich Ludendorff , did not know a strategic way out of the muddled situation . In the years that followed, pressure from the Entente forced the Western Front more than ever to adopt a defensive stance. The result of this was, for example, the Alberich company at the beginning of 1917, a shortening of the western front by retreating to the Siegfried Line, and the general introduction of a more flexible defense system: the previously practiced rigid adherence to the front line was abandoned because this procedure was particularly due to the artillery superiority the Entente had cost too high personnel losses.
The Imperial Navy , which had always enjoyed special support from Kaiser Wilhelm II , had placed great emphasis on a decisive role in a future war before the war. These hopes had so far been disappointed, and the Skagerrak battle, which was tactically successful in terms of the number of losses on both sides, in mid-1916 brought no strategic improvement. Now the navy tried to make a decisive contribution to the victory through unrestricted submarine warfare by trying to cut off England and France from their important arms supplier, the USA . Even if the sinking successes were spectacular and brought Great Britain into severe distress, the German submarine offensive had an extremely disastrous effect: It was the main reason for the United States to enter the war on April 6, 1917 as an associated power on the Entente side. Thus the balance of power against Germany and its allies had shifted because the Americans were given enough time to mobilize their industrial potential and the army and deploy them in Europe. The fact that the Entente's material superiority would lead to the almost inevitable defeat of Germany on the Western Front was also recognized by the German Supreme Army Command .
The second half of 1917 on the Western Front was marked by the great British attacks in Flanders . The German front held out, but only at the cost of further heavy losses. It was questionable how long the resilience of the German army could be sustained in the permanently grueling defensive in view of the Entente's already existing, above all material, superiority.
As early as November 1917, under the leadership of General Erich Ludendorff, the planning for a final offensive by the German armed forces on the western front began. The ultimate aim of this offensive was the capture of the French capital Paris and the approach to the English Channel in order to cut off France from any supplies from overseas. This strong strategic position was seen by the German leadership as a possible negotiating position for a victory peace and thus the end of the war.
The offensive was possible despite the lack of material and people because Soviet Russia signed the Brest-Litovsk peace treaty and so many units that were previously deployed on the Eastern Front could be relocated to the Western Front.
Tactical innovations
Since General Falkenhayn's “attrition strategy” did not lead to a decision in the war and would sooner or later bring defeat to the empire due to the enormous losses and simultaneous inferiority of resources , it was decided to change the tactical paradigm .
Here, the general staff resorted to that of storm battalions developed and General Oskar von Hutier in the Battle of Riga and Cambrai successfully tested combat patrol process back. With this variant there was no clumsy attack on a broad front after a long artillery preparation , but small combat groups were supposed to "infiltrate" into the enemy trench system before the fire. An improved artillery method was also used , the colored shooting invented by Colonel Georg Bruchmüller , including aerial photography, for position reconnaissance. After a short artillery strike, which was effective through the use of gas, infantry troops were to move in and clear out remaining pockets of resistance. The coordination of the troops should be done less by the staff than at the front. If one troop got close to the other, it would advance further and vice versa. What was revolutionary about it was the exploitation of the element of surprise, the bypassing of positions of strong resistance by the advance guard troops and relatively autonomous action by the officers at company level (the so-called "operational independence"). This tactic thus already contained three essential elements of the Blitzkrieg in World War II .
course
Operation Michael
The operation Michael was the first of five offensives in the space between Bapaume and Saint-Simon , in the three armies with a total of 73 divisions were involved. Their main aim was to break through this hinge between French and British troops , drive a wedge between them, and roll up the Allies' front.
On March 21, the first day of the operation, the enemy's defense was broken and, on the following days, an incursion of around 65 kilometers into French territory was achieved over a width of 80 kilometers. While the 18th Army in the south under the command of General of Hutier two French armies downright hertrieb ago, it had the 2nd Army ( Marwitz ) and the 17th Army ( Below ) against two English armies under General Gough and General Byng further a lot harder north. Therefore, Ludendorff strengthened these two formations in contrast to Hutier's army. However, he left the initial plan unchanged and continued to instruct the three troops to proceed in divergent directions.
Operation Michael flagged already after six days, because from March 27th the German units could hardly record any gains in territory due to the relocation of French reserve units to the front near Amiens . In the end, the advances were abandoned after the failed attempt to capture Amiens and ended on April 6, 1918.
The German casualties are stated in the medical report on the German army as follows: The German 2nd, 17th and 18th armies were involved in the battle from March 21, 1918 to April 10, 1918. An average of 1,386,585 soldiers were deployed at the same time across around 90 divisions.
- Sick: 64,192
- Wounded: 181,694
- Liked: 35,163
- Missing: 22,701
- Total losses: 303,750, of which 239,558 were bloody losses
The losses on the Entente side amounted to around 254,700 dead, wounded and missing.
Four further offensives were carried out, with each attempt being made by shifting forces to create a local preponderance at the attack site.
Operation Georgette
The second offensive, Operation Georgette from April 9th to 29th with the aim of advancing onto the Canal, had hardly any effect - partly because the British had adjusted to the new tactics of the German army and adopted a more flexible defense. The losses on the German side amounted to 109,300 men in 28 divisions involved. The 25 British divisions involved lost 76,300 men and 8 French 35,000 men, including prisoners.
Operation Blücher-Yorck
The third offensive of the German 7th Army, Operation Blücher-Yorck from May 27th to June 6th, achieved a large gain in terrain along the Marne, in which one moved up to 92 kilometers from Paris. 29 German divisions were involved, 17 of them in the first attack wave. It was intended as a diversionary attack before a final blow against the British in Flanders. The commander of the French 6th Army , General Duchêne , had his reserves concentrated near the front line in accordance with antiquated tactics. They thus became an easy victim of the new German offensive process. In the first three days, the Germans advanced around 30 km to a width of almost 50 km and took 60,000 prisoners. The attacker lost around 130,000 soldiers in this offensive, the French 98,160, the British 28,703 and the Americans who were involved on a large scale for the first time around 11,000 men. During the offensive, the Germans used the Paris gun to bombard the French capital directly. This had no military benefit, but caused panic among the civilian population. A total of 256 civilians died and 620 were wounded.
Operation Gneisenau and Operation Marneschutz-Reims
Operation Gneisenau , also known as the Battle of the Matz , ran from June 9th to 13th in the Noyon - Montdidier area . 23 German divisions made little progress because they were stopped by a French counterattack on June 11th. The Germans lost 30,000 and the Allies 35,000 men. As the last German offensive, Operation Marneschutz-Reims from July 15 to 18 no longer had any noticeable effect and only gained a few kilometers of space. The allies were warned by defectors and aerial reconnaissance. 47 German divisions involved lost around 50,000 on the offensive, the Allied troops 45,000 men. The allied counter-offensive that began on July 18 on the Marne - 19 US divisions were now in France - finally forced the Germans to retreat behind the Aisne and the battle of Amiens also straightened the front arch created during Operation Michael.
Reasons for failure
Strategic mistakes by the German leadership
Ludendorff's decision to strengthen the troops that encountered the most stubborn resistance led to the improper use of forces. The findings of the subsequent World War showed that in order to maximize the shock effect, precisely those units should be reinforced which had already achieved the greatest success (in the sense of the deepest break-in). In general, reserve handling was problematic, as only the troops in the first front line were reinforced and no full new units were brought in during the offensive. This led to a rapid fatigue of the forces employed. The general staff's fixation on the military concept of breakthrough also had a negative impact. The offensive had been consistently planned methodically by the OHL, but only up to the supposedly decisive goal, the push through enemy lines. An orderly plan for exploiting the resulting gaps, let alone for a containment maneuver, was not made. The shock attack by shock troops was recognized as a tactically decisive factor in using this principle as a strategic moment, but was not taken into account.
Deciphering the German radio traffic
Before and during the spring offensive, the German military used the ADFGX method to encrypt their secret communications, which was used as a new manual encryption method on the Western Front from March 1, 1918. From June 1, 1918 ADFGX was replaced by the extended ADFGVX encryption . Despite the initial surprise effect, the French cryptanalyst and artillery officer Capitaine Georges Painvin managed to break the encryption process and decipher the German radio messages in April 1918 . This made it clear to the French in advance at which point the Germans were planning their main attack and they were able to adjust their own forces accordingly and thus prevent a decisive breakthrough which, according to several authors, would probably have led the German storm troops to Paris (see also: Quotes in the article on Painvin ).
Tactical weaknesses of the German leadership
The tactics of the infantry were revolutionized by Hutier, but the use of the artillery was only adjusted to a certain extent. The duration of the artillery strike was shortened, but their use was still regulated as at the beginning of the war. While minor movements had long been directed by officers at the front, the army's cannons were still firing according to a stubbornly worked out fire plan. Thus, the preparatory fire roller could run away from the attacking troops if they were moving too slowly. As a result, the power of the attack was inhibited at those points where the advance was slow from the start.
State of supply of the German army and flu
The army of the German Reich suffered from enormous supply difficulties in the last year of the war, and the average soldier was normally undernourished. The equipment often consisted of inferior “replacement goods”. The OHL committed a conscious propaganda lie. It was announced that the Entente was suffering from the same needs as a result of the unrestricted submarine war. Of course, when the advancing units found the exact opposite, this acted as an incentive to loot enemy supply stores rather than attack, which in turn tended to weaken the attack.
In April, the first wave of Spanish flu hit the French front, then the German. Three quarters of the French, half of the British armed forces and around 900,000 men in the German armed forces were temporarily incapacitated by the flu.
consequences
With the failure of the spring offensive, the military defeat of the empire was finally sealed. Morale among the emperor's soldiers sank significantly as the company was sold to them as the last effort before victory, even if discipline had not yet seriously crumbled. In the course of 1918, the German army was only capable of defensive action, but was able to avoid a total collapse of the front line despite the Meuse-Argonne offensive carried out by US troops until the Armistice of Compiègne on November 11, 1918. In the military field, the operation also had the further consequence that after the shock of the offensive the allies were finally able to agree on Marshal Foch as joint commander in chief. This led to a considerable tightening of the coordination among their units.
The General Staff was deprived of all further options due to the losses of the offensive and had thus lost any opportunity for initiative on the Western Front. At that moment, the Supreme Army Command sought to shift responsibility to the politicians (who were actually marginalized by them). General Ludendorff called on the political leadership of the empire to negotiate peace with the Entente. In the political sphere, the spring offensives served as a reason for the spread of the stab in the back legend , because they gave the impression that the German army had not lost its effectiveness during the war and had left the battlefield undefeated .
literature
- Reichsarchiv : Schlachten des Weltkrieges Volume 32: Deutsche Siege 1918. Stalling Verlag 1921. Full text on Archive.org .
- Reichsarchiv: The World War 1914 to 1918. Volume 14: The conduct of war on the Western Front in 1918 . Mittler, Berlin 1944.
- Jean-Jacques Becker / Gerd Krumeich : The Great War. Germany and France in the First World War 1914–1918 . Klartext Verlag , Essen 2010, ISBN 978-3-8375-0171-1 .
- Randal Gray: Imperial Battle of 1918. The Final German Offensive . Osprey, Oxford 1991, ISBN 1-85532-157-2 , ( Osprey military / Campaign 11).
- Gerhard Hirschfeld , Gerd Krumeich , Irina Renz: The Germans on the Somme 1914–1918. War, occupation, scorched earth . Klartext Verlag, Essen 2006, ISBN 978-3-89861-567-9 .
- John Keegan : The First World War. A European tragedy . Rowohlt , Reinbek near Hamburg 2001, ISBN 3-499-61194-5 .
- Martin Kitchen: The German Offensives of 1918 . Tempus, Stroud 2001, ISBN 0-7524-1799-1 .
- Charles Messenger: Blitzkrieg. A strategy makes history . Bechtermünz Verlag, Augsburg 2002, ISBN 3-8289-0366-5 .
- Martin Müller: Thought of Annihilation and Coalition Warfare. The German Reich and Austria-Hungary on the offensive 1917/1918 . Stocker , Graz 2003, ISBN 3-7020-1034-3 ( review ).
- Janusz Piekałkiewicz : The First World War . Econ Verlag, Düsseldorf u. a. 1988, ISBN 3-430-17481-3 .
- Michael Stedman: The German Spring Offensive . Leo Cooper, London 2001, ISBN 0-85052-787-2 .
- David T. Zabecki: The German 1918 Offensives. A Case Study in the Operational Level of War . Routledge, London 2006, ISBN 0-415-35600-8 .
- Christian Zentner : The First World War. Data, facts, comments . Moewig Verlag , Rastatt 2000, ISBN 3-8118-1652-7 .
Web links
Individual evidence
- ↑ Michael Salewski : The First World War. Schöningh, Paderborn 2003, ISBN 3-506-77403-4 , p. 308; and Wolfgang Venohr : Ludendorff. Legend and reality. Ullstein, Berlin 1993, ISBN 3-550-07191-4 , p. 334; and Volker Berghahn : The First World War. Beck, Munich 2003, ISBN 3-406-48012-8 , p. 96.
- ↑ a b Micheal Clodfelter: Warfare and Armed Conflicts. A Statistical Reference to Casualty and Other Figures, 1500-2000 . Second edition. Mc Farland & Company, Inc., Publishers, Jefferson NC and London, 2002. ISBN 0-7864-1204-6 , pp. 452f.
- ↑ Volker Berghahn: The First World War. Beck, Munich 2003, ISBN 3-406-48012-8 , p. 96.
- ^ Medical report on the German army in the world wars 1914/1918, III. Volume, Berlin 1934, p. 59.
- ^ Medical report on the German army in the world wars 1914/1918, III. Volume, Berlin 1934, p. 57 ff.
- ↑ Spencer Tucker (Ed.): The Encyclopedia of World War I. A Political, Social and Military History , Verlag ABC-Clio, Santa Barbara 2005, ISBN 1-85109-420-2 , p. 1041.
- ^ Rudolf Kippenhahn: Encrypted messages, secret writing, Enigma and chip card . Rowohlt, Reinbek bei Hamburg 1999, ISBN 3-499-60807-3 , p. 193.
- ↑ Simon Singh: Secret Messages . Carl Hanser Verlag, Munich 2000, ISBN 3-446-19873-3 , pp. 132ff.
- ^ Fred B. Wrixon: Codes, Ciphers & Other Secret Languages . Könemann Verlag, Cologne 2000, ISBN 3-8290-3888-7 , pp. 74f.
- ↑ Laura Spinney: 1918. The world in fever. Munich 2018, p. 49ff
