The Second Battle of the Marne took place in July and August 1918 and saw Germany's last advance of the Spring Offensive rebuffed by a strong Allied counterattack. With hundreds of thousands of US troops landing in Europe each month and with hundreds of new tanks at their disposal, the Allied divisions – including French, British, US, Italian, Canadian, and Australian troops – pushed the German Army into what became a permanent retreat. The Second Battle of the Marne was, then, in many respects, the long-awaited turning point of the First World War.
The Spring Offensive
The German Army had thoroughly exhausted itself in five campaigns on the Western Front from April to June 1918, a series of attacks collectively known as the German Spring Offensive. The German commander-in-chief, General Erich von Ludendorff (1865-1937), had wanted to break out of the static situation of trench warfare before the Allies were significantly boosted by the arrival of new US divisions. The fifth and final push had been the Marne Offensive, when Ludendorff had wanted to advance on either side of Reims and cross the River Marne east of Paris. This area had already been fought over in the First Battle of the Marne back in September 1914. That battle was known as the 'Miracle of the Marne,' since the French and British armies had been bashed and bruised but rallied to exploit a split in the German lines and impose a strategic defeat on an enemy that had looked like it would sweep through France and capture Paris.
At the other end of WWI, the German leadership, including Kaiser Wilhelm II, met on 3 July to discuss plans that continued to ignore the military realities at the front and the privations of the Allied naval blockade on supplies reaching Germany. A drive to make the German economy more of a full war economy was decided by way of compensation for Germany's lack of resources, and an advance in the field to take the iron and coal fields of Lorraine was sanctioned. Ludendorff was given the green light for one more offensive.
The First, Third, Seventh, and Ninth Armies were given the task of executing Ludendorff's latest plan for German domination of Europe. The advance of the First and Third Army east of Reims began on 15 July along a front 26 miles (42 km) long. This part of the offensive was a complete failure, blocked on the first day by the French First Army under the command of General Henri Gouraud (1867-1946). The French artillery proved a formidable obstacle to overcome, and Gouraud's tactic of defence in depth and not rigidly holding a thin defensive line proved highly effective. Meanwhile, on the western side of Reims, the German Seventh and Ninth Armies advanced along a front 22 miles (35 km) long. The attackers made better headway against the French Sixth Army and managed to cross the Marne. A deep bridgehead was established, but the progress was finally halted on 17 July by the French Ninth Army with support from British, Italian, and US troops.
Despite the initial successes of the Spring Offensive, the campaign as a whole had failed because the German Army met stiff resistance but could not resupply its men with food or material, since it did not have sufficient transport. Germany had worn down its best troops because it did not adopt the rotation method of the Allies, where soldiers did not permanently fight at the most ferocious points of the front. In addition, the senior German generals had not, unlike their counterparts amongst the Allies, seen the potential of modern weapons, like the tank, or the benefits of all-arms deployment (artillery, infantry, and air support).
Ludendorff had wasted 800,000 men (either dead or casualties) on his offensives, which had achieved no significant strategic gain. Failure to secure the Allied-controlled railway hubs meant the enemy could continue to replenish itself at will. By August, the US had 1.4 million soldiers in France and was shipping in 250,000 more men each month. The US forces in France were organised into 25 divisions (which were much larger than the divisions of other countries), while back in the United States, another 55 divisions were being put together.
In contrast, there were no reserves to call upon from Germany since conscription had already called up all men of fighting age not vital to other industries. The next generation of eligible conscripts would not be available until November, and they would need several months to be trained. Ludendorff had gambled and lost. The war could not now be won, and all that remained was to delay defeat so that more favourable peace terms might be won.
The morale of those German soldiers left in the field was extremely low, and mutiny was in the air. Already, German officers had struggled to keep their men from simply downing their weapons and feasting on any Allied supplies they came across. Another blow to German morale besides poor rations was the spread of Spanish influenza. The 1918 flu pandemic hit the German lines a few weeks before the Allies, and in June, it removed 500,000 soldiers from the front lines, seriously affecting the fighting capabilities of 13 divisions. Indeed, these two problems were related, since the German soldiers' poorer diet meant that their resistance to the virus was much lower than that of soldiers in the Allied armies.
Allied Counterattack
The Allies knew that one or two hard blows against the German lines might lead to immediate capitulation. The Allies also benefited from a much more unified command structure with Marshal Ferdinand Foch (1851-1929), now in ultimate charge of operations. On 18 July, Foch launched a huge counteroffensive, part two of what has become known as the Second Battle of the Marne. The Allies – French, British, British Empire (notably Canadian and Australian divisions), Italian, and US divisions – attacked the German salient around the Marne.
The French Tenth Army, commanded by the famously aggressive General Charles Mangin (1866-1925), attacked the west flank of the Marne salient. Meanwhile, the other two sides of the salient were attacked by the French Sixth Army commanded by Jean Degoutte (1866-1938). The attack spearhead was formed from the US First and Second Divisions. The US divisions fought particularly well, and "these fresh troops fought with a disregard for casualties scarcely seen on the Western Front since the beginning of the war" (Keegan, 409).
Another 14 Allied divisions provided support, and perhaps most importantly of all, the Allies could throw at the enemy 750 tanks (including the latest light Renault tanks). They also had domination of the air, Allied aircraft outnumbering German by 5:1. Aircraft were used to identify German artillery positions and points of strongest defence. Allied fighters ensured that the German air force could not provide the same service for their commanders on the ground. Finally, even in artillery, an area where the German Army had traditionally enjoyed numerical superiority, they could only bring half the number the Allies brought to the fight. The Allies used their artillery to create a 'creeping barrage' which was kept up constantly as the infantry advanced behind the falling shells, which were progressively fired further and further forward. The artillery component of the attack was intense, firing "one heavy [shell] per 1.27 yards of ground, and three field artillery shells per yard" (Strachan, 280).
Within 48 hours, the Allies had advanced 5-6 miles (8-9.5 km). From the west, the French Fifth and Ninth Armies joined the advance. The Germans started to withdraw from the Marne salient, and Soissons was retaken on 4 August, capturing 35,000 German soldiers and 700 guns in the process. The Germans, having lost nearly all of the salient they had won in the first part of July, retreated to a defensive line along the Aisne and Vesle Rivers.
Against the now entrenched enemy, the Allies could make no further headway. The clash at the Marne had cost 95,000 French casualties and 168,000 German casualties, a figure that includes men lost as prisoners of war (Bruce, 245). Without sufficient forces under his command, Ludendorff was obliged to abandon any lingering plans to attack the British in Flanders. Indeed, just manning the defensive Hindenburg Line (the Siegfried Line to the Germans), the last defensible line of the front, required extraordinary measures. 70,000 convalescent wounded were sent back to the front. Further, German divisions had to be reorganised, eliminating those too weak to function, and the surplus being used to bulk up the remainder.
Henceforth, the German Army would be steadily pushed back towards Germany, starting with the battle of Amiens, the beginning of what is often called the Allied Hundred Days Offensive. Here, Foch did not make Ludendorff's mistake and allow commanders in the field to be lured into extravagant advances to take advantage of pockets of enemy weakness that only resulted in the creation of vulnerable salients held by exhausted troops. Rather, the Allies moved forward much more cautiously, always waiting for the artillery to catch up and aid the infantry.
The French, British, and Canadian divisions that attacked Amiens benefited from the deployment of 435 tanks. Within 48 hours, as morale collapsed almost completely in many units, 30,000 German prisoners were taken. Ludendorff described the defeat at Amiens as the "black day of the German army" (Bruce, 231). Germany had no answers to the Allied number of soldiers or their effective combined use of artillery, infantry, aircraft, and tanks. As unrest rose to unprecedented levels both in the German armed forces and at home, the war came to an end with the signing of the 1918 armistice with Germany.
