What Role Did America Play in Defeating the German Spring Offensive in 1918?

This article is an edited transcript of The Battle of Belleau Wood – Michael Neiberg, available on History Hit TV.

Dan speaks to Professor Michael Neiberg about the famous stand of the US Marine Corps during the Battle of Belleau Wood, part of the German Spring Offensive in 1918.

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The first major involvement of American troops in the First World War came in June 1918 at the Battle of Belleau Wood. They went on to fight a series of large engagements.

On 7th May 1915, the ocean liner RMS Lusitania was sunk by a German U-boat off the coast of Ireland with more than half the passengers and crew being killed. Some of those lost were Americans and the sinking hardened opinion in the United States against Germany and marked the beginning of the process which led to the USA entering the First World War on the side of the allies. To mark the anniversary of the sinking Stephen Payne joins the podcast. Stephen is a British naval architect and worked on designing passenger ships for over 40 years and is an expert both in their construction and their history. He and Dan discuss the circumstances of the sinking, whether there was any justification for it and the effect it had on public opinion and naval policy.

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Germany’s final push to win the war

In the spring and early summer of 1918, Germany made a final attempt to win the war before the American Army could make itself felt. With the Russian army having collapsed in the east, Germany moved as many infantry divisions to the west as it possibly could and launched a series of offensives against the Allies.

…it would have been easy to look at a map and believe that they were moving towards Paris.

The Battle of Belleau Wood took place during the third of five offensives that made up the Spring Offensive. The impression was that the Germans were heading for Paris. Today, historians don’t think this was actually the case.  At the time, however, it would have been easy to look at a map and believe that they were moving towards Paris.

You can imagine the panic among the Allies at that thought.  So it was a question of whether the Germans can move those units from east to west faster than the Americans can get them from the United States to Western Europe. This is the context to the Battle of Belleau Wood.

The German Spring Offensive made rapid gains but failed to crush the Allied defence

Why were the Americans at Belleau Wood?

In launching their Spring Offensive, the Germans were hoping to force the French and British to move their reserves to meet these offensives, leaving a weakness somewhere on the Western Front. General Ludendorff, the German general who planned the offensive, famously said:

“We’ll punch a hole and then we’ll see.”

Ferdinand Foch, the commander of the Allied armies, must defeat this attack that seems to be threatening Paris, without weakening the reserves that the French and British have up in Flanders. If the American Second and Third divisions go towards Belleau Wood and Château-Thierry, that’s enough men to safeguard Paris and safeguard the communications there, without having to weaken Flanders.

The US Marine Corps’ take on the story is that the Americans go into this fight because they’re the best and they are ready. And there is a small element of that. But the real reason is that Foch really does not want to take divisions away from Flanders.

Despite its Orwellian sounding name - the Ministry of Information was not something from a dystopian novel, but instead a government department that played a vital role in WWII. With so-called Snoopers listening in on conversations in pubs, spies eavesdropping at bus stops, and government censoring throughout- the Ministry of Information was responsible for gathering information about public morale, and helping to ensure that no important military information fell into the wrong hands.

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America’s biggest battle yet

American troops began arriving in Europe in the summer of 1917. By May 1918, more than a million soldiers had arrived, though most of them were not battle ready. The Americans fought their first battle in May 1918, when the 1st Division was selected to attack around the village of Cantigny. But Belleau Wood was the first multi divisional battle.

An American division is roughly 25,000 to 26,000 men, which is about twice the size of a European division. The later battles of Saint-Mihiel and Meuse-Argonne were both bigger battles than Belleau Wood. But at the time, it is the first large multi-division battle the Americans fight.