The German Offensives of 1918: The Last Desperate Gamble

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Background: The Last Months of 1917

On 6 November 1917 the Canadian Corps of the BEF¹ took the remnants of the Belgian village of Passchendaele. The enormous and bloody effort in achieving this aim – in what is officially known as the Third Ypres Campaign – was and remains a source of great debate, controversy and often emotive falsehoods inspired by such retrospective literature as Siegfried Sassoon’s oft-quoted verse: ‘They died in Hell – They called it Passchendaele.’

Nevertheless, the campaign hurt both sides and both sides marked it as a low-point in their respective fortunes. Crown Prince Rupprecht of Bavaria, whose Group of Armies included Fourth Army, which had borne the brunt of the fighting, was convinced that the experience was much worse for his men than those of the BEF. His Chief of Staff, General Hermann von Kuhl, called the 1917 Flanders Campaign ‘The greatest martyrdom of the war’. The German soldier regarded this as an evil place, worse than their opponents, and one in which they believed that death or wounding was certain.

After tremendous courage and sacrifice on both sides, the BEF offensive officially ended on 10 November. The Allied and German casualties were approximately 250,000 on both sides, of which around one-third on each side were killed or posted as missing. The campaign had led to an advance of five miles, but the BEF had achieved few of its original major objectives and, despite the possession of the wasteland of Passchendaele, the northern sector of Passchendaele Ridge still lay in German hands.

For those who had fought in Flanders, little remained but to either consolidate gains or strengthen new defensive lines after the bloody loss of territory. Few imagined that another major attack, never mind an offensive, could be considered before the onset of winter. Battered and exhausted German regiments and a few divisions were sent south to Cambrai, which was known by a number of Germans as ‘The Flanders Sanatorium’, there to recuperate and regroup in a relatively quiet sector of the line. Not one man shed a tear for Flanders as he departed and few would dare to imagine they would return. Cambrai was, after all, a more peaceful place.

11 November 1917

By chance, the day after the Flanders Campaign closed proved to be a pivotal and strangely prophetic one in deciding the fate of the war itself. For on 11 November, one year to the day before the Armistice, the German High Command and Staff met at Mons. It marked the first of a series of crucial conferences that would determine the fate of Germany and guarantee final victory to the Allies ranged against her on the Western Front.

General Erich Ludendorff, the architect of what was to be Germany’s final effort to prevail in the main theatre of war since 1914, considered the situation. First, it had become clear that the 1917 strategy of seeking a victory with unrestricted submarine warfare against British maritime supply lines had failed, especially as the Royal Navy’s introduction of the convoy system had diminished the U-boat threat. Next, Russia was out of the war, so Ludendorff had the relative luxury of knowing that he could concentrate his resources in the West. The third external influence on the discussions was that of the USA.

With America’s potential resources, not least of which was a fresh source of manpower, Ludendorff and his General Staff knew that the German Army could not afford to wait, or become embroiled in a protracted campaign. As the titular Quartermaster General of the German Armed Forces, he knew only too well that the Fatherland’s resources were now finite, while, with America now included, Allied resources would be infinite.

Timing was crucial and Ludendorff believed that the spring of 1918 held the best opportunity for decisive action, as his Intelligence Staff convinced him that the British and French Armies were exhausted and divided as never before. So he and Field Marshal Paul von Hindenburg concluded that Germany now had but one chance to win the war. The main issue was whether to launch a major attack against the British or the French. Both reasoned that France was becoming increasingly dependent on her ally and that if the BEF was eradicated, France would be certain to sue for peace. With Russia out of the conflict, Ludendorff believed he would gather sufficient troops in the West to drive Field Marshal Sir Douglas Haig’s BEF out of France and Flanders. With this in mind, he planned to destroy the British Army in France and Belgium while simultaneously cutting off the French to prevent their reinforcement of the BEF.

Strategy or Tactics?

Ludendorff’s strategy, as it stood, was to be a fatal flaw. To him: ‘Tactics had to be considered before purely strategical [sic] objects, which it is futile to pursue unless tactical success is possible. A strategic plan, which ignores the tactical factor, is foredoomed to failure . . .’ Wiser heads than his suggested that this view was generally contrary to accepted military thinking, but they were given short shrift. When battle commenced in March, Crown Prince Rupprecht was to ask for clarification on the German Army’s strategic objective. Impatiently, Ludendorff retorted: ‘I forbid myself to use the word strategy. We chop a hole. The rest follows. We did it that way in Russia.’ Unfortunately, the terrain and defences of the Western Front were quite different to those in the East. Furthermore, the quality of men and matériel available to both the British and French armies was in a different league to that of the Russians.

‘We Must Beat the British’

Ludendorff’s lofty assumption in November 1917 was that by February or March 1918 the German force on the Western Front would be irresistible. Based on this assumption, he laid down three conditions for a triumphant offensive. First, although the strength of the two sides was likely to be more or less equal across the Western Front, it was essential to concentrate his forces for the offensive and achieve a breakthrough with one critical onslaught. Despite advice to the contrary, he was adamant that an alternative offensive, even as a diversion, was out of the question as it was impossible on any reasonable scale. The second condition was that the main blow must fall against the British ‘at the earliest possible moment’. Finally, he stated simply that: ‘We must beat the British.’

General Erich Ludendorff (1865 – 1937)

Erich Ludendorff was born in Kruszwenia, near Poznan (modern Poland) in 1865. He was the son of a landowner, but came from a relatively modest background compared with many of his military peers. He was educated at the military school at Gross-Lichterfelde, Berlin and commissioned into an unglamorous infantry regiment, but quickly established himself as a professional, intelligent and ambitious young officer.

Ludendorff’s determination and irrepressible energy marked him out from his contemporaries. General Helmuth von Moltke, the German Army Chief of Staff, who was to command the German Army in 1914, ensured that Ludendorff rose steadily through the ranks.

With the onset of war, Major General Ludendorff played a leading role in the capture of the seemingly impregnable Belgian fort at Lieèège during the German invasion of the West. For this, he was awarded the Pour le Meéérite, Prussia’s highest military honour. Later in August 1914 he became Chief of Staff to Field Marshal Paul von Hindenburg on the Eastern Front and assisted in forging the pivotal victories against the Russian army in 1914 and 1915.

In August 1916, as the battles of Verdun and the Somme raged on the Western Front, Ludendorff and Hindenburg became the joint heads of the whole German Army. The German casualties of almost a million men in these two battles were so large as to be almost insupportable. Ludendorff and Hindenburg swiftly decided that the only course open was to shorten the German line and give up some of the territory held since 1914. In March 1917, they withdrew their hard-pressed forces to the newly prepared defences of the Hindenburg Line, but not without controversy, as Ludendorff was the principal architect of the ‘Scorched earth’ policy that devastated much of the hitherto undamaged territory behind the then German lines.

Despite his undoubted moral courage, Ludendorff had become arrogant, inflexible and prone to panic when military operations did not go according to plan. After the failure of the German offensives in 1918, he became a broken man and following the further disaster of the Allied attack at Amiens on 8 August he knew that Germany’s only practical course was to sue for peace. He was removed from command in October 1918 and replaced by Walter Groener.

Disillusioned by the circumstances of Germany’s defeat and his own disgrace, Ludendorff gave his support to a former army corporal, believing that Adolf Hitler’s extreme nationalism represented the only way for Germany to regain its honour. Ludendorff took part in Hitler’s abortive Putsch in Munich in November 1923, and was tried for treason, but acquitted. Not until it was too late did he realize that Hitler was about to lead Germany once more into the abyss. Ludendorff died, fearful for his country’s future, in 1937.

Ludendorff’s Principal Operations Adviser Counsels Caution

Opposing this view, Oberstleutnant Georg Wetzell, the German Army’s chief of operational planning, warned him that ‘any prospect of success in the West depends upon other principles than those which hold good for the East or against Italy’ and subsequently produced a more practical plan for an attack in the West.

Wetzell warned Ludendorff that the successful modus operandi of military operations against the Russian Army in particular were not likely to guarantee victory against the French and British, and that a breakthrough was almost impossible to envisage in a single assault on either the French or British sectors. This would facilitate the Allied defence, for they could bring their resources to bear to foil the German thrust.

Wetzell recommended a strategy that would cause maximum disruption to the British or French response: attacks in two or three sectors in order to unhinge any enemy defensive strategy and deceive him into the premature use of any strategic reserve. In the first phase, the British reserves would be drawn to the St Quentin sector, where the offensive would be carried only as far as a line from Bapaume to La Feèère, north to south. The second phase would mask the movement of the ‘great battering train’ of heavy guns, mortars and aircraft of the High Command’s strategic reserve, alongside a massive concentration of infantry divisions, which would smash through the British defences on the Flanders front. Then the decisive phase would be an overwhelming onslaught through Flanders and the seizure of the critical town of Hazebrouck, thus cutting the bulk of the BEF off from its reinforcement and supply lines via the Channel ports.

Ludendorff’s Choice is to Throw Caution to the Wind

Erich Ludendorff would not be dissuaded. From the outset, he seemed certain that one massive offensive across the Somme sector would offer the best opportunity for a swift victory. However, a firm decision on this option and other main contenders, which included an assault across Flanders and a breakthrough against the well-defended Scarpe/ Arras sector, would have to wait until the latter part of January 1918. In any option, success would depend entirely on surprise, overwhelming strength in the chosen sector and an immediate paralysis of the British defensive spirit, overwhelmed by the German maelstrom as they stormed the BEF positions.

All the senior German commanders and Staff Officers knew that if the initial offensive failed to achieve a decisive breakthrough, the opportunity for victory would fade rapidly and could not be matched on quite the same scale again. Army group and army commanders already had their doubts and most agreed that the choice of attacking the BEF rather than the French in this ‘decisive’ offensive was a high-risk strategy, based on a gambler’s all-or-nothing stake.

It was to be Ludendorff’s last desperate gamble.

20 November 1917: Cambrai – The British ‘Mailed Fist’ leaves Ludendorff Punch-Drunk

Just over one week later, the German High Command and the soldiers of General von der Marwitz’s Second Army, defending the Cambrai sector, were themselves surprised and brought to the brink of humiliation by a bold British attack that was to prove an ominous sign of what was to come in 1918. At 0610 hours on 20 November, the silence of a misty morning was broken by the clanking sound of tanks and the drone of British aircraft flying low over the German lines. At 0620 hours, the tanks and assaulting infantry crossed the ‘Start Line’ and appeared, closing in on the German front line. German resistance was immediately broken by the thunder of a massive, sudden bombardment by over 1,000 guns, which raked the German defensive lines, artillery batteries and HQ positions in the Rear Zones.

A total of 378 Mark IV tanks, supported by six infantry assault divisions on a 6-mile front burst into the German Defensive Zone of Battlegroup (Gruppe) Caudry. German battalion and company commanders and their men were stunned by the sheer scale of the British armoured/infantry assault and the sudden, devastating ‘predicted’ artillery fire. At first, though some resourceful and fearless German resistance was put up, most of the survivors in the defensive Outpost Zone either surrendered or fled. Many of the retreating men were then killed by their own defensive artillery or mortar fire as they ran back to their second-line trenches. One Corporal (Obergefreiter) later recorded that:

There had not been any hint whatever of any preparation of an attack [. . .] nothing extraordinary on a seemingly thin, quiet front [...] [Then] only after the attack started did we realize what was going to happen. The British forces, strengthened by hundreds of tanks, could move freely and overthrew our thin defences.

In an almost futile gesture, some German artillery units responded with weak counter-battery fire, but the British advance was so swift that most of the German shells fell behind the tanks and assaulting infantry.

When the main defences of the Hindenburg Line in this sector were reached by the leading waves of British tanks and infantry, German resistance stiffened and some attacking infantry battalions were held up by machine-gun, trench mortar and rifle fire. But the massed tanks pushed on, crushing the thick belts of barbed wire and a number of German machine-gun crews in their wake. Ludendorff underlined the extent of the German surprise when he noted that:

In the West the crisis caused by the Battle of Flanders, the Battle of the Laffaux salient [in the French sector] and their after effects, passed away. We were expecting a continuation of the attacks in Flanders and on the French front, when on the 20th of November we were surprised by a fresh blow at Cambrai.

By the afternoon of 20 November, Ludendorff and Rupprecht had agreed that the desperate situation must be restored by a planned counterstroke. But that would take time and reinforcements that were not available to punch their way out of the corner that Gruppe Caudry was caught in. The crisis grew as each hour passed. The German 54th Division and its artillery lost most of its fighting strength and its defences were almost non-existent by the end of the day. A total of 5,785 officers and men were killed or missing and a further 5,000 men wounded or taken as prisoners. The 84th Regiment had its regimental commander and the COs of all three battalions killed and its strength reduced to around 30 per cent of its original force. The other front-line divisions suffered almost as badly as the 54th, although it had borne the brunt of the British attacks.

The situation became so grim that serious plans were made for a general withdrawal and the demolition of the canal bridges in front of Cambrai. The Camp Commandant of 54th Divisional HQ was sent with an ad hoc platoon of three officers and thirty men to defend the canal crossings at Marcoing and Masnières, and for several hours in the afternoon of the first day there was a totally undefended one-mile gap in the Masnières-Beaurevoir defence line between Masnieèères and Creèèvecoeur.

By pure chance, the British failed to identify this yawning gap before it was plugged and the extraordinary advance began to lose some of its steam as the day drew to a close. Twentieth November was nevertheless considered to be a British triumph and church bells rang throughout the country to celebrate a great victory. Sadly, the celebrations were a little premature . . .

Trust in God and von der Marwitz

By midnight on that same day, Gruppe Caudry was strengthened by the 107th Division and regiments pulled from both Gruppe Arras to the Cambrai sector’s north and Gruppe St Quentin to the south. Three more divisions (119th of Fourth Army, 30th of Seventh Army and 214th of Sixth Army) were rushed towards the Cambrai. All arrived within forty-eight hours.

From the German point of view, the possibility of utter disaster had been averted – just. Regardless of this, the situation remained perilous for some days. Desperate messages to divisional and regimental HQs came in thick and fast from the sorely pressed front-line units by telephone, runner, pigeon or messenger dogs.

As the days passed after 20 November, the German defences were reinforced and resistance hardened as the British ‘punch’ lost its hitting power. Crown Prince Rupprecht and his army commander von der Marwitz lost no time in planning a stunning counterblow as the day-to-day fighting continued in the guts of the Cambrai defence.

Counter-Attack

As the remnants of Gruppe Caudry’s front-line divisions and their reinforcements slugged it out against the remaining British tanks and infantry assaults, a new command, Gruppe Bussigny (based on XXIII Korps), was formed and commanded by General von Kathen, a tough and experienced senior officer. On 24 November preliminary orders were issued by Rupprecht’s Chief of Staff, General Hermann von Kuhl that