Just a few months later, however, the Allies were back on the offensive. So what went wrong?

The Spring Offensive

In the spring of 1918, mobile warfare returned to the Western Front. The German Army, desperate for victory before the arrival of American troops, launched a series of attacks known collectively as the “Spring Offensive”, or Kaiserschlacht (Kaiser’s Battle). Troops on the front were bolstered by reinforcements transferred from the east, where Russia had collapsed into revolution.

In their first target sector, the Somme, the Germans had numerical superiority in both manpower and guns.

The opening attack of the offensive came on 21 March amid thick fog. Elite stormtroopers led the way, infiltrating the Allied line and spreading disorder. By the end of the day, the Germans had broken into the British defensive system and captured 500 guns. Successive attacks made further gains. The Allied situation looked grim.

German troops oversee a captured British trench during the Spring Offensive.

But the Allies held out…

Despite significant gains, the opening phase of the Spring Offensive failed to secure all the objectives set by the German General Erich Ludendorff. The stormtroopers may have managed to break into British defences, but the Germans struggled to exploit their successes.

Meanwhile, the British, though unaccustomed to being on the defensive, put up a stiff resistance, clinging on until battered units could be refreshed with reserves. And when things started to go wrong for Germany, Ludendorff chopped and changed his objectives, rather than focusing his forces.

… just

In April, the Germans launched a fresh attack in Flanders and the defenders found themselves outnumbered once again. Territory hard won in 1917 was surrendered. In a reflection of the gravity of the situation, on 11 April 1918 Britain’s commander on the front, Douglas Haig, issued a rallying call to his troops:

There is no other course open to us but to fight it out. Every position must be held to the last man: there must be no retirement. With our backs to the wall and believing in the justice of our cause each one of us must fight on to the end.

And fight they did. Once again, defective tactics and stiff Allied resistance left the Germans unable to translate an impressive opening punch into a decisive breakthrough. Had they succeeded, they might have won the war.

The Germans suffered heavily for their failure

The Spring Offensive rattled on into July but the outcomes remained the same. Their efforts cost the German Army dearly, both in terms of manpower and morale. Heavy losses among the stormtrooper units stripped the army of its brightest and best, while those who remained were war weary and weak from their limited diet.

American troops march to the front. The Allies’ eventual manpower advantage was important but not the only factor that led to victory in 1918. (Image Credit: Mary Evans Picture Library).

By contrast, things were looking up for the Allies. American soldiers were now flooding into Europe, fresh, determined and ready for the fight. The numerical superiority that Germany had enjoyed in March was now gone.

The Germans launched what would be their last major attack in mid-July at the Marne. Three days later, the Allies successfully counterattacked. The pendulum of strategic advantage had swung decisively in the Allies’ favour.

The Allies learned hard-won lessons

An Australian soldier collects a captured German machine gun in the village of Hamel. (Image Credit: Australian War Memorial).

The Allied forces of World War One are too often depicted as inflexible and incapable of innovation. But by 1918 the British Army had learned from its past mistakes and adapted, harnessing new technologies to develop a modern, combined arms approach to battle.

This new sophistication was showcased on a small scale in the recapture of Hamel in early July. The Australian-led attack, commanded by General Sir John Monash, was carefully planned in strict secrecy and employed deception to maintain an element of surprise.

The operation was completed in under two hours with fewer than 1,000 men lost. Key to its success was the skillful coordination of infantry, tanks, machine guns, artillery and air power.

But the greatest demonstration of the power of combined arms tactics was yet to come.

Amiens crushed any hope of a German victory

After the Second Battle of the Marne, the overall commander of Allied forces, France’s Marshal Ferdinand Foch, planned a series of limited offensives along the Western Front. Among the objectives was an attack around Amiens.  

The plan for Amiens was based on the successful attack at Hamel. Secrecy was key and complex deceptions were carried out to conceal the movement of certain units and confuse the Germans over where the blow would fall. When it came, they were utterly unprepared.  

German prisoners of war are depicted being led towards Amiens in August 1918.

On the first day, the Allies advanced up to eight miles. This gain caused them the loss of 9,000 men but the German death toll of 27,000 was even higher. Significantly, almost half the German losses were prisoners.

Amiens exemplified the Allied use of combined arms warfare. But it also highlighted Germany’s lack of any effective response to it.

The Allied victory at Amiens was not just confined to the battlefield; shaken by events, Ludendorff offered his resignation to the Kaiser. Though it was rejected, it was now clear to the German High Command that the possibility of victory had slipped away. Not only had the Allies defeated the German Army on the field at Amiens, but they had also won the psychological battle.  

The Battle of Amiens in August 1918 marked the beginning of what is known as the Hundred Days Offensive, the final period of the war. What followed was a series of decisive clashes; the legacy of the costly attritional battles of 1916 and 1917, the psychological toll of poor food and defeat, and the Allies’ tactical adaptability all served to grind down the German Army to the point of collapse.

1. Deadlock in fighting

Contrary to the popular image of the Western Front during World War One, the opening weeks of the conflict saw rapid mobile warfare. By the end of September 1914, however, both sides had dug in, with Germany fortifying a line that stretched the length of France with thousands of machine guns, artillery and barbed wire.

Any attack pitting human flesh against such a defence could only result in massive bloodshed. Something was needed to even the odds.

2. The Landships Committee

From the moment that fighting on the Western Front ground to a standstill, minds in Britain and elsewhere turned to solving the problem of the deadlock. Among those tackling the issue was British Prime Minister Winston Churchill – though First Lord of the Admiralty, by the end of 1914 he was already involved with the development of a prototype trench bridging machine.

Following a proposal from Lieutenant Colonel Ernest D. Swinton, in early 1915, Churchill also received a memo from Maurice Hankey of the Imperial Defence Committee on the subject of creating an armoured machine gun destroyer that would enable British infantry to cross the Western Front’s No Man’s Land.

The memo fired Churchill’s imagination and he gathered together a team of naval officers, politicians and engineers to design such a machine. The Landships Committee was born.

3. ‘Little Willie’

The Landships Committee initially struggled to settle on a design for their machine. But by mid-1915, engineers William Tritton and Walter Gordon Wilson had produced a prototype for Britain’s first tank that was based on a set of specifications issued by the War Office. Essentially consisting of a metal box mounted on caterpillar tracks, the prototype was named “Little Willie”.

4. ‘Mother’

A Mark I tank.

Wilson was dissatisfied with Little Willie and so set about designing a new prototype that could better handle the terrain of the Western Front. He drew up a new design that would run tracks, especially designed by Tritton, all the way around a rhomboidal chassis.

The new design, named “Mother”, was mocked up and successfully trialled in April 1916. It then went into production under the designation Mark I. Once it had gone into production, the vehicle was referred to as a “tank” rather than a landship in order to preserve its secrecy.

5. First action

The Mark I first saw action on 15 September 1916 at the Battle of Flers Courcelette – part of the Battle of the Somme. The effectiveness of the tanks at their first appearance was mixed. Of the 32 tanks ready for action on that day, only 9 were able to reach the enemy lines and engage in actual combat.

Many broke down and were abandoned. Nevertheless their psychological impact on both sides was massive and Douglas Haig placed an order for another 1,000 of the vehicles.

6. Success at Cambrai

Following their baptism of fire at Flers, the tanks enjoyed mixed fortunes on the Western Front. Unforgiving terrain, insufficient numbers, lack of coordination with other arms and improving German anti-tank tactics led to disappointing outcomes for the tanks at the likes of Arras and Passchendaele.

But at Cambrai in November 1917, everything came together. Almost 500 tanks were available for the attack against the Hindenburg Line, which took place across firm ground and saw infantry, tanks, artillery and air power working together to achieve an impressive breakthrough on the first day.

7. Tank banks

Following their success at Cambrai, the tanks became celebrities at home. The government recognised their money-raising potential and arranged for tanks to tour the country in a war bond drive.

The tanks would arrive in towns and cities to much fanfare, with local celebrities standing on top of the vehicles and making crowd-pleasing speeches. The tanks would act as banks from which war bonds could be bought and towns were encouraged to compete to raise the most money.

Countless trinkets and tank souvenirs became available – from little crested china tanks, to tank handbags and even hats.

A tank named Julian shows off during a Tank Bank tour.

8. Tank vs tank

In 1918, Germany began producing its own tank – though they only ever built a very small number. On 24 April, the first ever tank versus tank engagement took place when a British Mark IV opened fire on a German A7V at Villers-Bretonneux during the Spring Offensive.

9. The Whippet

Whippets are seen in action at Maillet-Mailly, France, in March 1918.

Soon after production began on the Mark I tank, Tritton began work on a new design for a smaller, faster tank. Despite plans for the new tank to be ready in 1917, it was 1918 before the Whippet entered service.

Though difficult to drive due to its twin engines, the Whippet was undoubtedly fast and capable of causing mayhem when let loose behind enemy lines. It offered a glimpse into the future development of the tank.

10. Plan 1919

In 1918, J. F. C. Fuller was chief of staff of the British Army’s Tank Corps. He drew up a plan to win the war in 1919, based on his belief in the tank as master of the battlefield. Fuller believed the way to defeat the enemy was to cut off its head – in other words, to take out the military leadership.

Fuller envisaged a force of light, fast tanks, supported from the air, that would puncture the enemy line, causing mayhem in the rear and severing the chain of command. Heavy tanks would then advance on the now disorganised and leaderless front line.

The plan called for over 4,000 tanks – far more than Britain could have produced. In any case, the war was over by November 1918. But Fuller remained one of the Tank Corps’ most vocal advocates into the 1920s.

On 8 August 1918 British, Commonwealth, American and French troops had smashed through enemy trenches just outside Amiens, driving many German troops to surrender.

Cavalry, armoured cars and light tanks had run amok deep behind enemy lines, returning mobility to a battlefield that had long been entrapped by the static defences of barbed wire, bunkers and trenches.

Amiens is a battle that marks the beginning, not just of the end of the First World War, but of a new era of modern warfare. The methods used by Allied troops at Amiens are closer to the tactics of battlefields today than they were to the fighting of just three years earlier in the opening battles of the war.

Why Amiens?

Amiens was chosen by the Allies for the first big set piece attack of the summer of 1918. The German offensive of the spring had come close to dividing the British and French, decisively puncturing the Western Front, but it had failed.

The German army had sustained enormous losses and now had an even greater length of frontline to defend. At Amiens the conditions were thought suitable for tanks, and an attack there would push the Germans back from the city’s vital railway junction.

The Allies had learned a huge amount during the long and brutal battles of 1916 and 1917, these new tactics would be demonstrated by huge numbers of artillery pieces, tanks, planes and infantrymen that were assembled to give the Allies an overwhelming local advantage.

The city of Amiens photographed in May 1918.

A combined arms assault

Troops were secretly concentrated in the sector. The Canadian Corps, the British Empire’s best troops in the summer of 1918, were moved by night to the frontline. Radio operators were left in Flanders to convince the Germans that the offensive would come up there.

Nearly 600 armoured vehicles, almost the entire strength of the Armoured Corps, were moved up at the last moment, their rumble disguised by low flying aircraft. Unprecedented numbers of guns were brought in. They would not have to take their customary ranging shots, because they could now be registered silently.

Mathematical calculations about weather, range, barrel temperature and wear were made which meant that shells could be dropped straight on their target without a lot of practise shots, which alerted the enemy that lots of new guns were in the sector. The German artillery was pinpointed, and earmarked for destruction, by listening devices and aerial reconnaissance.

A British Mark I field gun.

At 0420 the still of a quiet night was obliterated by a massive artillery bombardment. Gunner J.r. Armitage wrote, “All hell broke loose and we heard nothing more. The world was enveloped in sound and flame, and our ears just couldn’t cope.” Allied guns roared, sending shells screaming towards German lines.

Heavy guns pounded German artillery positions with high explosives and gas to suppress their ability to fire on allied troops as they moved forward. The lighter guns immediately fired a creeping barrage, a protective wall of fire and steel which moved forward at the same pace as the infantry. The moment the artillery opened up the infantry and tanks moved into no man’s land.

All hell broke loose and we heard nothing more. The world was enveloped in sound and flame, and our ears just couldn’t cope.

They walked at the pace of the creeping barrage, 100m every three minutes. If any German defenders managed to get themselves up onto the firing step or man their machine guns as soon as the barrage passed, the Allies could take them on with their own light machine guns, grenades and mortars, bypass them or call over a tank to help them out.

The attack of the Canadians and Australians in the centre went like clockwork. The Australians advanced 3,500m to their first objective at 0715, the Canadians arrived slightly later. Then fresh troops arrived to push to the next objective, between two and five kilometres away.

Tanks provide vital support

Some troops bragged that they did not really need the tanks, which broke down and they regarded as too slow. One Canadian battalion by contrast gave a glowing report. “It is very doubtful,” the war diary records, “if we would have been able to have gotten forward without considerable manoeuvring and reinforcements if it had not been for the timely intervention of a tank, which exterminated a series of machine gun nests which held up the whole battalion.”

A British Whippet tank – their mobility was to prove a key factor in the rapid advance.

One Australian wrote, “Whenever we found ourselves in trouble we signalled to the tanks, and they turned towards the obstacle. Then punk-crash, punk-crash!… another German post was blown to pieces.”

By midday the success of Canadian and Australian troops had torn a hole in the German defences and for the first time in years the cavalry were able to break through and exploit. Thousands of horses carried their riders deep behind the defending Germans, as light tanks called Whippets, and armoured cars sped alongside them.

The breakthrough

The tyranny of the trenches had been lifted. 12 armoured cars crashed into the village of La Flaque, they opened fire on a road choked with German transport. They poured bullets into carts, trucks and staff cars until their barrels glowed hot.

At Framerville British Whippet tanks surprised senior German officers as they had their lunch, and captured a crucial map of powerful German defences further north. One British Whippet, named Musical Box, went on a solo rampage, destroying German targets for hours, until it was finally knocked out. Its exploits turned it into a legend in armoured history.

At the end of the day the Canadians had advanced a staggering 8 miles, the furthest achieved to that point in the war by British Empire troops.

Australian troops had pushed 6 miles, while the French advance of 5 miles was also impressive.

British troops to the north struggled across difficult terrain and made much less progress. Remarkably 18,000 Germans had been taken prisoner. It strongly suggested that many had lost the stomach to go on fighting, and this, more than anything else sent a dire warning to their commanders.

The German army was exhausted by its Spring Offensive and the huge strides forward in Allied offensive capabilities, demonstrated at Amiens meant that it was doubtful whether the Germans could go on. Ludendorff tendered his resignation.

Even in Austria it sent shockwaves through the high command. The unimaginable had occurred. The mighty German Army had just been badly beaten. It was the beginning of the end

Could it be that this short, four-day clash, resulting in relatively low casualty figures and ending with an Allied advance of eight miles, is overlooked because it doesn’t sit comfortably within our long-established perceptions of the First World War?

Whether this is true or not, the Battle of Amiens certainly undermines some of the most common misconceptions about the war of 1914-18. Here are four it challenges.

1. The British Army was incapable of change

World War One was an entirely new kind of conflict, and one that the British Army of 1914 was not designed to fight. The scale of the armies and fronts involved, the unprecedented destructive power of the weaponry, and the emergence of new technologies all posed unique challenges.

Yet over the course of four years, the British Army adapted and innovated at a startling pace. New weapons transformed infantry tactics. Developments to artillery resulted in targets being hit with pinpoint accuracy. And the emerging technologies of air power and armour were harnessed and moulded into effective fighting forces.

The Battle of Amiens demonstrated how far the British Army had come. A combination of deception and a short bombardment meant the Germans were caught by surprise by the opening attack. Allied counter battery fire, guided by aerial reconnaissance, stripped away German artillery support. This enabled Allied infantry and tanks to press deep into German lines, capturing guns and men in their wake.

Artillery tactics improved beyond all recognition over the course of World War One. By 1918, Allied forces were utilising aerial reconnaissance and specially developed ranging techniques to achieve incredible accuracy. Almost all German batteries at the Battle of Amiens were identified and targeted by Allied artillery.

In a remarkably short period of time, the British Army had evolved from a small professional force into an effective mass army, capable of combining arms in coordinated modern weapons systems that foreshadowed the most successful battles of World War Two.

2. Allied forces consisted of “lions led by donkeys”

We’re all familiar with the popular depiction of the generals in World War One: bungling toffs who blithely threw hard working Tommies into the hell of No Man’s Land in their thousands for no discernible purpose.

In 1914, the generals were confronted with a conflict the like of which they had never known before. Not all were up the mark. But others demonstrated a great capacity for adaptation.

Indeed, the Battle of Amiens, and the subsequent success of the Hundred Days Offensive, can largely be attributed to the man often cast as the chief butcher of the British Army – Field Marshal Douglas Haig.

It’s true that Haig oversaw unimaginable bloodshed in the battles of 1916 and 1917. Yet in 1918, the impact of these attritional struggles took its toll on the German Army as their reserves dwindled.

Meanwhile, Haig championed the introduction of new technologies such as tanks and air power and pushed for improved training and new tactics; credit for the transformation of the British Army into the modern fighting force that took to the field at Amiens belongs to the field marshal.

3. Even minute gains always resulted in huge death tolls

Casualties in the Battle of Amiens were relatively low. Allied casualties numbered in the region of 40,000, while German casualties were around 75,000 – 50,000 of which were prisoners. These less newsworthy sums may account for Amiens’ lowly ranking in the hierarchy of World War One battles.

When we mark the anniversary of a First World War battle, we often focus mostly on the casualty figures. To an extent, rightly so. But this emphasis on death, coupled with the enduring concept of “the lost generation”, leads to an overestimation of the war’s death toll.

The total death toll among soldiers from the UK was around 11.5 per cent. A not insignificant figure, certainly, but far from a lost generation. In fact, a soldier had been more likely to die in the Crimean War than in World War One.

4. The Allies lost all of the battles

British soldiers transport a wounded colleague on a wheeled stretcher along the La Boisselle to Amiens road during the Battle of the Somme, in July 1916.

The Somme, Passchendaele, Gallipoli. Allied defeats and disappointments dominate the popular understanding of World War One. They do so because a battlefield strewn with the bodies of tens of thousands of dead and dying troops, seemingly sacrificed for nothing, fits the pervasive narrative of a futile war. The victories of 1918 are too often overlooked.

Indeed, the First World War actually culminated in one of the most successful campaigns in British military history. The eventual German collapse was the result of any number of factors but the external pressure exerted by the sustained Allied offensive on the Western Front cannot be underestimated.

Further reading: 

Snow, Dan (February 2014) Viewpoint: 10 Big Myths About World War One Debunked. BBC. Retrieved August 2018

The offensive begins

Led by General Sir Henry Rawlinson’s Fourth Army, the Allied offensive was aimed at clearing parts of the railroad running from Amiens to Paris that had been held by the Germans since March.

It began on 8 August with a short bombardment followed by a methodical advance along a 15-mile (24-kilometre) front. More than 400 tanks led the way for 11 divisions, which included the Australian and Canadian Corps. Support was also offered by the left wing of General Eugène Debeney’s French First Army.

Germany’s defences, meanwhile, were manned by General Georg von der Maritz’s Second Army and General Oskar von Hutier’s Eighteenth Army. The two generals had 14 divisions on the front line and nine in reserve.

The Allied attack proved overwhelmingly successful with the Germans being forced back up to eight miles by the end of the first day alone. Though this pace wasn’t sustained for the rest of the battle, it nonetheless marked a hugely significant advance in a war where minute gains had generally only been won at great costs.

But the Allied victory went beyond geographical gains; the Germans had been unprepared for the surprise offensive and its impact on German morale was crushing. Some front line units had fled the fighting after putting up barely any resistance, while others, some 15,000 men, quickly surrendered.

When news of this response reached General Erich Ludendorff, the deputy chief of the German General Staff, he called 8 August the “Black Day of the German Army”.

On the second day of the battle, many more German troops were taken prisoner, while on 10 August the focus of the Allied offensive shifted to the south of the German-held salient. There, General Georges Humbert’s French Third Army moved toward Montdidier, forcing the Germans to abandon the town and enabling the reopening of the Amiens to Paris railroad.

The Germans’ resistance did begin to increase, however, and, in the face of this, the Allies brought the offensive to a close on 12 August.

But there was no disguising the scale of Germany’s defeat. Around 40,000 Germans were killed or wounded and 33,000 taken prisoner, while Allied losses totalled some 46,000 troops.

The tank was an adaptation of existing armoured vehicles, re-designed to cope with the unique challenges of trench warfare. Below are listed five of the important models and a brief synopsis of their role in the war.

Marks I-V Male

The original tank, the Mark I was a heavy vehicle designed to flatten enemy fortifications. It was developed to be able to cross trenches, resist small-arms fire, travel over difficult terrain, carry supplies, and to capture fortified enemy positions.

In this regard it was broadly successful, although it was prone to mechanical failures. The Male tank was armed with two six pounder naval guns, while the Female version carried two machine guns.

Of subsequent models the Mark IV was the next significant version. It saw mass action at the Battle of Cambrai in November 1917. The Mark V entered service in mid-1918. Overall, while dogged by initial unreliability problems, the Mark series proved an effective weapon, having a potent psychological impact on the enemy as well as supporting several large offensives.

British Medium Mark A “Whippet”

The Whippet was a highly mobile tank, developed in the latter stages of the war to complement the slower British machines. It first saw action in March 1918 and proved very useful in covering Allied forces recoiling from the Spring Offensive.

In one celebrated incident at Cachy, a single Whippet company wiped out two entire German battalions, killing over 400 men. Plans to create 5 tank battalions each containing 36 Whippets were abandoned, but it remained a useful asset throughout in 1918 and was a major force in the breakthrough at the Battle of Amiens.

German A7V Sturmpanzerwagen

The only tank to be used in field operations by the Germans, the A7V was developed in 1918. It had a mixed record in World War One, seeing action at the Third Battle of Aisne and the Second Battle of the Marne.

Its successes were generally limited to supporting actions, and soon after the war other designs were planned. Germany only deployed 20 tanks during the war, while the Allies deployed thousands – this could be seen as a cause of their failure to defeat the Allies in the 1918 Spring offensives, and the subsequent overall defeat.

French Schneider M.16 CA1

Prematurely deployed in April 1917 to support the Nivelle Offensive, the Schneiders were indicted by that offensive’s failure. 76 of 128 were lost, and mechanical failures were a particular concern.

However, they proved more successful in recapturing Chemin-des-Dames, and in subsequent offensives they filled a marginal but helpful role. Like most WW1 tanks they were handicapped by structural frailty and slow speed.

French Light Renault FT17

A light tank, and the first to have a rotating funnel, the FT17 was of revolutionary, influential design. Most tanks today mimic its basic design. They were first deployed in May 1918 and were a runaway success.

As the war became more mobile the FT17 proved increasingly useful. particularly in ‘swarming’ enemy positions. After the war they were exported to many countries, but by World War Two the original model was completely obsolete.