Hundred Days Offensive
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The Hundred Days Offensive was the final offensive in World War I by the Allies against the Central Powers on the Western Front from 8 August, 1918 to 11 November, 1918. The offensive was the final straw for the battered German armies which surrendered and deserted in large numbers. The offensive led to the retreat of the German armies and the end of World War I.
Background
The great German offensives on the Western Front beginning with Operation Michael in March 1918 had petered out by July. The Germans had advanced to the Marne River, but failed to achieve a decisive breakthrough. When Operation Marne-Rheims ended in July, the Allied supreme commander, the French Field Marshal Ferdinand Foch, ordered a counter-offensive which became the Second Battle of the Marne. The Germans, recognising their untenable position, withdrew from the Marne to the north.
Foch now considered the time had arrived for the Allies to return to the offensive and agreed on a proposal by Field Marshal Douglas Haig, the commander of the British Expeditionary Force (BEF), to strike on the Somme, east of Amiens and southwest of the 1916 battlefield of the Battle of the Somme.
The Somme was chosen as a suitable site for the offensive for a number of reasons. As in 1916, it marked the boundary between the BEF and the French armies, in this case defined by the Amiens-Roye road, allowing the two armies to cooperate. Also the Picardy countryside provided a good surface for tanks, which was not the case in Flanders. Finally, the German defences, manned by the German Second Army of General Georg von der Marwitz, were relatively weak, having been subjected to continual raiding by the Australians in a process termed Peaceful Penetration.
Amiens
The Battle of Amiens opened on 8 August, 1918 with an attack by 10 divisions with more than 500 tanks. The attack broke through the German lines and tanks attacked German rear positions, sowing panic and confusion. By the end of the day, a gap 15 miles long had been punched in the German line south of the Somme. The Allies had taken 17,000 prisoners and captured 330 guns. Total German losses were estimated to be 30,000 on 8 August while the Allies had suffered about 6,500 killed, wounded and missing.
The advance continued for three more days but without the spectacular results of 8 August as the rapid progress had outrun the supporting artillery. On 10 August, the Germans began to pull out of the salient they had managed to occupy during Operation Michael in March and back towards the Hindenburg Line.
Somme
On 15 August 1918, Haig called an end to the offensive south of the Somme and began to plan for an offensive at Albert. That offensive opened on 21 August. Some 130,000 American troops were involved, along with soldiers from the British Third and Fourth armies. The offensive was an overwhelming success, pushing the German Second Army back over a fifty-five kilometre front. Albert was captured in 22 August, Bapaume on 29 August, and Péronne on 31 August. By 2 September, the Germans had been forced back to the Hindenburg Line.
Breaking the Hindenburg Line
- Main articles: Meuse-Argonne Offensive, Battle of the Hindenburg Line
First, the remaining German salients west of the line were crushed in battles at Havrincourt and St Mihiel on 12 September 1918, Epehy and Canal du Nord on 18 September 1918.
Then on 26 September 1918 soldiers of the British Army, French Army and American Expeditionary Force began a combined offensive along much of the Western Front. The Hindenburg line was broken by British and American troops within hours of the attack starting. This show of force forced the German High Command to accept that the war had to be ended. American numbers together with British and French combat effectiveness was destroying the German Army as an effective fighting force. However casualties remained heavy in all of the Allied fighting forces, as well as in the retreating German Army.
Pursuit
Through October the German armies were forced back through the territory gained in 1914, but their retreat never turned into a rout. Rearguard actions were fought at Ypres, Kortrijk, Selle, Valenciennes, the Sambre and Mons, with fighting continuing until the last minutes before the Armistice took effect at 11:00 on November 11, 1918.
Suggested Reading
- Christie, Norm. For King & Empire, The Canadians at Amiens, August 1918. CEF Books, 1999
- Christie, Norm. For King & Empire, The Canadians at Arras, August - September 1918. CEF Books, 1997
- Christie, Norm. For King & Empire, The Canadians at Cambrai, September - October 1918. CEF Books, 1997
- Dancocks, Daniel G. Spearhead to Victory – Canada and the Great War. Hurtig Publishers, 1987
- Schreiber, Shane B. Shock Army of the British Empire – The Canadian Corps in the Last 100 Days of the Great War. Vanwell Publishing Limited, 2004
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