GERMANY'S DOWNFALL

Bay of Plenty Beacon, Volume 7, Issue 6, 14 September 1943, Page 2

GERMANY'S DOWNFALL

TWENTY-FIVE YEARS AGO CPJiSIS OF 1918 It was on July 18, 1918, after standing up to the weight of the Germans' last bM for victory, that the Allies, prepared, at last to fight under the supreme direction of a French Commander and, fortified by the arrival of lredi American troops, began a series of offensives which brought the war to a close on November 11 of that year. After the Russian Revolution, General Ludendorf, with forty more divisions drawn from the eastern theatre at his disposal, devised thc\ strategy for the war in the west which was put imto operation early in 1918. The French and British armies were to be attacked at the point of their junction and, when split asunder, separately overcome. A creeping barrage of unparalleled. intensity sustained over a front of forty-three miles was to pave the way for the assault. This move gave a foretaste of the. blitzkrieg warfare to be popularised, but far from monopolised, almost a quarter of a century later by one who was at that time a rather obscure corporal in Ludendorf's doomed army. Creeping Barrage The British Fifth Army under General Gough, which had just taken over part of the French line, felt the weight of the lirst salvo from four thousand German guns. The day" was March 2f. With a number of circumstances in their favour the attackers carried everything before them except at Arras on the British left. The Fifth Army broke and within a few days it seemed as if Ludendorf's plan of severing the two armies had succeeded when guns were directed on the railway line south of Armiens. However, the Germans appeared to have been exhausted bv the initial effort and the thrust wa.i held, up before Amiens. Pushes were made on other parts of the Allied line. The British were tlmisj back twelve miles on the Ypres .sector in April. On May 27 the French were heavily defeated on the Chcmin des Dames. These thrusts wove, not a success in the ultimate eftect because, although they did cause the Allies some reverses, they wore stemmed., and left the Germans with three great bulges in their line, each offering an inviting target for attack. The German losses had been enormous. Another conseouenee of the German advance which had a big part in the final decision was the effect on the short-fed troons who overran the British lines and found provisions of every kind scattered about in what seemed, superabundance. The hopelessness of the Ger man soldiers spread back to the people. Germans' Deceived The Germans had been told 111:•»L the Allies were in the last stage-" of exhaustion. The discovery of the deception contributed materially to the Genuyji revolution. «* r The Allies had already, in the middle, of 1918, planned for another year of war, but when they began their attacks on July 18 they were fighting an army which was

without inspiration. Some six hundred thousand fresh troops from America more than made up the Allied losses. The American Army, under General Pershing, did not take the field until September, but individual divisions had fought with the French and British. Although short of mortars the: Allies had many other advantages. High morale, superiority in the air, hundreds of light mobile tanks and plenty of arms and stores were among them. The last seeious defect in the war machine had, furthermore, now been overcome. After the disaster of the previous March the British public agreed to the British forces bebng bought under a supreme commander. Foch in Command The man selected was. Marshal Foch, a close friend of the chief of the British stall". Foch had General Weygand as his chief of staff. Tlu: events of the next months or tw" justified the. choice. Twenty-five years ago hist July 18 General Mangin made a surprise attack on the tempting southern bulge in the German line. Three hundred light tanks and thirty thousand prisoners were captured. From then until the end of the war there was never a doubt about the Allied power of offensive. Perhaps the most outstanding incident in the progress to the end

of the war was what Ludendorf described as the "'black day of tlip German Army." It was August 8, the day when Field-Marshal Haig launched a surprise attack near Amiens. The Germans lost twenty thousand iin prisoners, but more important, lost also the positions they were confident were secure. The events led Ludendorf to the conclusion that demoralisation had eaten into hi.s troops; and Haig to the conclusion that a viblent offensive on the whole l'ront might end the war. The spine of: German resistance was broken when tlie British Army stormed the Siegfried Line, on September 29. On the following day Ludendorf asked his government to* sue for peace. The chief of the general staff had thrown up the struggle a month before the German revolution bro'ke out.