The Spring Offensive, also known as the Kaiserschlacht or the Ludendorff Offensive, was a massive offensive undertaken by the Imperial German Army from 21 March to 18 July 1918 on the Western Front of World War I. The German High Command decided that the only way to win the war would be to quickly destroy the Entente forces on the Western Front before the United States could fully deploy its resources, and the Germans committed 74 divisions (including 50 veteran divisions transferred from the Eastern Front) to a massive, multi-front assault into western Flanders (in Belgium) and northern France. The Germans made significant territorial gains, but at a colossal loss of 688,341 soldiers; their advance was halted at the Second Battle of the Marne, and, in August - with US troops ready for action - the Entente launched the Hundred Days Offensive and destroyed the German armies on the Western Front.
Background[]
From autumn 1916, Field Marshal Paul von Hindenburg and General Erich Ludendorff pursued a German military victory at all costs. By resuming unrestricted submarine warfare from February 1917, the Germans drew the United States into the war. American troops would not, however, be ready to fight in large numbers until summer 1918. Meanwhile, Russia underwent a revolution and dropped out of the war, signing a humiliating peace treaty with the Central Powers at Brest-Litovsk.
Freed from the need to fight a war on two fronts, the Germans concentrated on the Western Front, gambling on winning the war before US troops took the field. Germany's devastating Michael Offensive, launched on 21 March 1918, forced an Allied retreat and virtually destroyed the British 5th Army. It did not, however, achieve the knockout blow to the Allies that Hindenburg and Ludendorff were seeking.
Offensive[]
By the start of April 1918, it was clear that the German Michael Offensive launched on 21 March had failed to inflict a decisive defeat upon the Allies. It had nonetheless gained territory and placed the British Army, in particular, under immense strain. Seeking to capitalize on this advantage, General Ludendorff ordered a fresh offensive, shifting the point of attack to the mostly British-held sector of Flanders. The site of some of the fiercest fighting of the war, including the Battle of Neuve Chapelle, the three battles of Ypres, and the Battle of Messines, the Flanders sector was crucial to Britain because it defended the Channel ports. A German breakthrough would threaten to cut the transportation link between the British Army in France and its home bases.
Resuming the offensive[]
Code-named Operation Georgette, and known as the Battle of the Lys, the German offensive in Flanders opened on 9 April with an attack by the Sixth Army in the area of Neuve Chapelle. As in the Michael Offensive, the Germans unleashed a powerful onslaught against a relatively weak defensive sector. The full brunt of the initial attack was borne by the 2nd Portuguese Division, commanded by General Manuel Gomes da Costa. Portugal had entered the war in 1916 and a Portuguese Expeditionary Force had been deployed with British forces on the Western Front since summer 1917. Poorly led and suffering from low morale, the Portuguese troops were about to be relieved of frontline duties when the German offensive began. Stunned by a perfectly orchestrated German bombardment, the Portuguese faced German infantry in the morning fog. Despite individual acts of heroism, Gomes da Costa's troops put up little resistance. Some 7,000 Portuguese were taken prisoner and a similar number were killed or wounded.
Crisis for the British[]
A German cartoon of Hindenburg thrashing Haig
The British 55th Division held its position to the south of the Portuguese, but to the north the British were forced to retreat, losing the town of Armentieres on the second day of the battle. This was followed by further losses as the German 4th Army launched the second phase of the offensive at the Ypres salient. Held by the British 2nd Army under General Herbert Plumer, this ground had become scared to the British due to the sheer scale of the sacrifice that had taken place there. Now Plumer was forced to abandon Messines Ridge and Passchendaele, withdrawing to a defensive line on the very outskirts of Ypres itself.
On 11 April, British commander-in-chief Field Marshal Douglas Haig's order of the day called for a fight in defense of "the safety of our homes and the freedom of mankid." Haig's rhetoric drew a mixed response from war-weary British soldiers, but it did express the enduring resolve of senior Allied commanders at a crucial moment of the war. Instead of falling apart, the Allies pulled together.
Foch takes charge[]
On 14 April, the British formally acknowledged French General Ferdinand Foch as Supreme Commander of the Allied Armies on the Western Front. Although Foch was slow to respond to appeals from Haig for reinforcements, rightly fearing an imminent German offensive against a French-held sector of the front, he eventually sent French troops to relieve exhausted British formations. The Belgian army, on the British left, also stepped up its efforts.
By the third week in April, the Flanders offensive had degenerated into a series of local engagements in which stubborn defense by Allied troops slowed German progress to a crawl. Neither the French Channel port of Dunkerque nor the vital rail junction of Hazebrouck were seriously threatened. Farther south, on 25 April, a German attack toward Amiens failed to take the city.
Still seeking the elusive decisive victory, Ludendorff gathered German strength for yet another major offensive, code-named "Blucher-Yorck", in May. Instead of reinforcing the effort in Flanders, he chose to attack at the Aisne River in northern France, held by the French 6th Army. Some 6,000 guns and 2 million shells were assembled for the initial bombardment, undetected by the Allies. The main weight of the attack was to fall upon the Chemin des Dames ridge, captured by the French in May 1917. It was defended by British soldiers who had been transferred to this quiet sector from Flanders for a period of rest and recuperation. Crowded into forward positions in poorly organized trenches, the British were decimated by the German initial bombardment on 27 May and then overrun by stormtroopers.
Allied troops retreated across the Aisne, pursued by the Germans. A German advance of 9 miles on the first day was maintained over the following week. By 3 June, the Germans had reached the Marne River. With Paris apparently under threat, France experienced the same sense of crisis that Britain had in April. Few people then recognized the truth - that the German offensives had failed to achieve any decisive objective.
Aftermath[]
The Gemrans had hoped to win the war before US troops were engaged. By June 1918, time had run out. The first Americans entered combat under overall French command at the Aisne in late May 1918. The following month, US troops were prominently involved at Belleau Wood and the Battle of Matz. A final German offensive was defeated in July at the Second Battle of the Marne. Massive German losses since 21 March demoralized German troops, and there was an increasing sense that Germany had lost its strategic purpose. The tide was set to turn on the Western Front.