Anti-tank defences 1918

[Desmond7]

Paragraph caught my eye in Middlebrook' Kaiserschlact.

He talks about British troops being rather peeved at having to dig extra wide anti-tank trenches/ditches in the 5th army sector as part of the 'elastic defence' principle. The troops' felt vulnerabilty to artillery bombardment while performing this task.

Any evidence of these fortifications in today's landscape in this sector.

And: The German High Command had turned their noses up at tanks .. generally. The Brits did not know this so they invested time and labour on these fortifications. What were Britain's spies up to? Did they have no-one 'in place' to guage German assessment of tanks/or indicate that 'likely' German industries had NOT been ordered to engage in tank production?

Did the intelligence dept. of that era have any sources at such levels within Germany?

Des

[Paul Reed]

While very few German made tanks were used in March 1918, large numbers of captured British MkIVs were. There are no surviving anti-tank ditches on the landscape to my knowledge. Several anti-tank minefields were laid on the British front, using modified Toffee Apple TM weapons; one of these around Gouzeaucourt was never properly cleared and killed many French farmers when they got tractors in the 1930s; it was known locally as 'The Field of Death'.

[Desmond7]

Thanks to Paul for the landscape update and the minefield horror story!!

Anyone cast light on the usefulness or otherwise of the Secret Service during thge war?

Des

[larneman]

I had a bit about the James Bonds of WW1 here at

http://1914-1918.org/forum/index.php?showtopic=21898&hl=bond

Liam

[healdav]

Read 'The Secrets of Rue St Roche'. You will see how difficult it was to get info back from 'over the line'.

I doubt that they had any real idea of what was happening in German industry or design or anything else.

No radio (to all intents) as they were too big.

Newspapers were very slow and censored.

Post censored.

[healdav]

Just realised. I put Larneman's document on-line. I don't have a copy with me, but I have a feeling that it was talking about Belgium. Their reports, I think, went via Holland and were mostly concerend with troop movements (and supplies).

There was very little of the 'stealing secret documents' going on.

[larneman]

Hi Des,

What a monster, the Sturmpanzerwagen A7V "Mephisto". I would dig a few trenches to stop one of these things.

Liam

"Only 20 A7Vs were built by the Germans, the rest of their tank force was made up of captured Allied vehicles."

Sturmpanzerwagen A7V "Mephisto"

"The Michael Offensive

Although the whole concept was called the Kaiserschlacht- The Emperor's Battle it had eleven tentative operations coded from North to South as:

George I and II - Hazebrouck/Ypres;

Georgette - Lille;

Mars/Valkyrie - Arras;

Michael III - Bapaume;

Michael II - Albert;

Michael I - Crozat canal;

Blucher - the Aisne river/Chemin des Dames;

Rheims/Marneschutz - Rheims and The Marne;

Gneisenau; Compiègne/Chateau Thierry. "

"although Villiers-Brettoneux fell to an attack led by the huge new German tanks - the Sturmpanzerwagen A7V - in the first ever tank-to-tank engagement, the German advance was still 20km short of Amiens. Although the fighting continued around Arras, on the 28th March, LD launched the Mars Operation on Arras, but without conspicuous success."

The Michael Offensive

[Desmond7]

Messages received and understood.

Des

Thus .. lack of 'inside industrial info' indicates that 'Intelligence Services' were not remotely geared up for Industrial Scale war?

Des

[healdav]

In sense I think you are correct, the Intelligence Services weren't set up for industrial espionage.

They were just coming out of the 'genetlemen are not spies' era (and remember Stimson carried this on in the USA right up to WW2). Indeed, even in WW2 MI6 spent an awful lot of time trying to stop SOE from blowing things up. They knew that collecting information on numbers of guns being made was the way to do things; blowing them up might well prvoke a war.

To be fair, from where would they have got the spies and how would they have reported back in any real time sense? I doubt that many British could pass as German and even fewer would get jobs in German industry or sensitive ministries. Even of they had, just how would the info get back? The report that was quoted mentions a 'portable' radio (I think) that 'only weighed 60 pounds'? - memory may be at fault with the detail. Anyway, not the sort of thing you keep in your pocket or under a desk.

Post was heavily censored, especially to Switzerland or Holland. Personal travel was very slow and very difficult.

Would any Germans have wanted to be British agents? I doubt it. During WW2 there was an active if small resistance to the nazis, but I doubt that there was one in WW1.

No war before WW1 had required anything like industrial espionage, so there was no system for it at all. Even if there had been, it would have been difficult to do much. There was no prospect of any raid on a tank factory - whether by soldiers or bombers. Bombing railways was very difficult.

In Secrets of Rue St. Roche there is a description of a message asking the allied planes to bomb from lower as they kept missing the Luxembourg station and railhead (immensely important). In fact, the worst damage was to civilians and ironically they destroyed the house of one of the spy ring. Quite why the bombers didn't come lower is a mystery as there were very few AA guns, if any, around the station (note, must research that, if possible).

[Desmond7]

Points well made.

Cheers

Des