March 1918 attacks and so on.

[Edward_N_Kelly]

A couple of points that either seemed to have been missed or but lightly touched on.....

Fifth Army

Gough had definite plans for the conduct of his defensive operation (and had started the appreciations on the next British Army advance) BUT his Corps commanders did not necessarily agree with the "German" defensive measures he adopted, their divisional commanders did not agree with them and so it went down the line..... It apparently reached the stage that there were some divisions who held the front line trenches at full strength and suffered in Brockmuller's "storm" (was it the northern-most division that ceased to exist in minutes because of this ?), while in others there were inadequate fieldworks because of material shortage and drive by the commanders to "drive" their troops to do what work they could. Were not many of the units actually those that had retired from Passchendaele and sent for a "rest" ?

Germans

While the Germans may have been masters of the tactical and possibly strategic arts they had no operational planning at all. They had some plans for what they were attempting (say to the level of taking Amiens BUT nothing beyond that apart from some vague notion of the Channel and Paris). They followed tactical success rather than whatever plan they had formulated and that actually drew them south of the essential rail junctions of Amiens. See the conversation between Ludendorff and Rupprecht.....

Inability to sustain their momentum was critical.

Logistics failures both in planning and execution meant that the Germans could not bring forward guns, ammunition, food and fodder particularly over the older battlefields get supplies to their troops - insufficient horses for the logistics troops were but one symptom of a greater philosophical malaise. Accordingly, they were both expected to and required to live off the land with the diversion of resources to the gathering of supplies and indeed the loss of control in certain areas and times when the troops became concerned with loot (and alcohol) rather than continuing the advance !

The storm divisions denuded the "trench" divisions of personnel, equipment and logistic support services such as to render them near immobile (this was an improvement ????) causing difficulties with relief after days of combat by these “elite” units.

As a consequence they fell into the Allied trap of 1916-17 of a series of blows that were separated by time (and distance) and allowed the deployment of reinforcements and even of counter battery fire by the Allies immediately before the German attack - the worst time for the Germans.

Another consequence of the lack of logistics was the shortage of defence stores for the securing of the areas gained (with consequent effects in JUL18 and AUG18).

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The troops from the East were a somewhat disaffecting element being made up of personnel that thought they had "done their bit" through battle and/or being POWs. They were not of the highest morale....

Now to the Allied attacks of Jul18 and later.....

The Allies coordinated a series of attacks from 8AUG18 (and even a little before) over wide areas of the front but with little time lag between blows - from the French, Belgium, BEF and AEF. This severely limited the ability of the Germans to switch reinforcements to the threatened area. Once they had started the collapse of the German front (not that it ever seemed to disintegrate – there were always some who stood to their duty), they could sustain the momentum of the advance futher than the Germans could/did..

They could supply forward the necessary ammunition and other comestibles though even they were seeing the effect of long lines of supply by OCT18 and it was estimated that the BEF could have only put two Infantry Battalions on the Rhine if there was no pause for rest and resupply ....

The Allied "elites" like the AIF and CEF were either withdrawn from combat or winding down after 3 months sustained combat by the time of the Armistice. This does not mean that the advance would have stopped - just that it was being taken over by others (eg the 46 (Midland) Division and the St Quentin Canal). The quality of the "line" divisions was not all that much lower than the "elite" divisions (in spite of John Laffin , et al).

Allied (BEF) tactics had switched from the Advance (to the end of 1917), the Defence (until AUG18) and then to the Advance again. A lot of the training for the middle phase was incomplete so the transition back was not a great wrench.

Casualties were greater in the "Hundred Days" than say Passchendaele but the gains were immensely greater as were the losses inflicted on the enemy – to the point that risks previously regarded as unacceptable were now to be taken as a matter of course.

Final point

Apparently Haig was one of the few commanders or politicians who had thought of the war ending in 1918 (and had reached this conclusion in late 1917 or early 1918) and not on the basis of the Allies losing.

Analysis of German manpower versus Allied manpower availability indicated that the Germans were in serious trouble by the end of 1918 (though this did not allow for the loss of Russia to the Allies). How he modified his opinion as a result of the loss of Russia is not recorded (that I have seen) but the analysis of the movement of divisions to the West would have shown that the Germans were keeping serious manpower in the East (for empire ambitions) rather than in the West (to win a war).

Edward