German Spring Offensive (1918): Ludendorff's Last Gamble

The German Spring Offensive of 1918, known in Germany as the Kaiserschlacht (“Kaiser’s Battle”), was a series of five great attacks on the Western Front between 21 March and 18 July 1918. Planned by General Erich Ludendorff, it was Germany’s last attempt to win the First World War before the arrival of millions of American troops. The offensives broke the trench deadlock and came close to splitting the Allied armies, but they failed to achieve a decisive result and left the German army exhausted.

Background: a race against time

In early 1918 Germany had a brief window of opportunity. The Treaty of Brest-Litovsk had ended the war with Russia, freeing dozens of divisions for the West. For the first time since 1914, Germany would have more divisions in France and Belgium than the Allies.

But the window was closing. The United States had entered the war in April 1917, and American troops were starting to reach France in large numbers. The Allied naval blockade was also causing severe shortages in Germany. Ludendorff, the First Quartermaster General who effectively directed the German war effort alongside Field Marshal Paul von Hindenburg, decided to gamble on a knockout blow.

New tactics

The German army had developed new methods for breaking through trench lines. The artillery expert Colonel Georg Bruchmuller planned short but extremely intense bombardments that mixed high explosive with gas shells to stun the defenders, rather than the week-long barrages of earlier battles.

Behind the barrage came specially trained assault troops, often called stormtroopers. They moved in small groups, bypassed strongpoints and pushed deep into the enemy’s rear, leaving follow-up units to deal with isolated defenders. These tactics had been tested at Riga and Caporetto in 1917 and at Cambrai.

Operation Michael

The first and largest attack, Operation Michael, began at 4:40 am on 21 March 1918 along a front of around 80 kilometres near St Quentin. More than 6,000 German guns opened fire in a bombardment lasting five hours. Thick morning fog helped the attackers, who quickly overran the forward positions of the British Fifth Army under General Sir Hubert Gough and part of the Third Army. The Fifth Army had only recently taken over an extended stretch of line from the French and was holding it with too few troops, and its new defences in depth were unfinished.

The British suffered heavy losses, including many thousands taken prisoner on the first day. Over the following two weeks German forces advanced up to about 65 kilometres, recapturing the whole of the old Somme battlefield. From 23 March long-range “Paris Guns” shelled the French capital from more than 100 kilometres away.

The crisis forced the Allies to unite their command. At the Doullens Conference on 26 March 1918 the French general Ferdinand Foch was given the task of coordinating the Allied armies, and in April he became supreme commander. The German advance ran out of momentum before Amiens, a vital railway hub, and was halted near Villers-Bretonneux in early April. Michael was officially ended on 5 April.

The later offensives

Ludendorff then switched his effort north to Flanders. Operation Georgette, launched on 9 April on the River Lys, drove back British and Portuguese forces and recaptured ground taken at great cost in 1917. On 11 April Field Marshal Sir Douglas Haig issued his famous order telling his troops that, with their “backs to the wall”, each must fight on to the end. The offensive was stopped by the end of April. The attack also fell on the Portuguese Expeditionary Corps, whose 2nd Division was overwhelmed on the first day, a disaster still remembered in Portugal as the Battle of La Lys. The German air ace Manfred von Richthofen, the “Red Baron”, was shot down and killed over the Somme valley on 21 April, during this phase of the fighting.

On 27 May Operation Blucher-Yorck struck the French on the Chemin des Dames ridge and reached the River Marne at Chateau-Thierry, less than 60 kilometres from Paris. American troops helped stop the advance in June, including at the Battle of Belleau Wood. A fourth attack, Operation Gneisenau, between Noyon and Montdidier on 9-12 June, made only limited gains.

The final offensive, around Reims from 15 July, was met by prepared French defences. On 18 July French and American forces counter-attacked, opening the Second Battle of the Marne and ending Germany’s hopes of victory.

Why the offensive failed

The German attacks won ground but not victory. Ludendorff had no clear strategic goal beyond breaking the Allied line, and he repeatedly shifted from one sector to another when an attack stalled. The ground gained was mostly devastated land of little value, and it left the German army holding longer, weaker lines.

German supply could not keep up with the advance: horses were scarce, lorries few, and starving troops sometimes stopped to loot Allied food stores. Above all, the losses fell heavily on the best assault divisions, which could not be replaced, while the Allies were reinforced by fresh American divisions.

The offensives also had political effects. The shock of March persuaded the British and French to accept a unified command under Foch, and it led the United States to speed up the shipment of troops, with more than 250,000 men arriving in some months of the summer. In Germany, by contrast, the failure of a campaign presented as the final effort before victory badly damaged morale at the front and at home. Desertion, shirking and surrender rose sharply in the second half of 1918.

Key people

• Erich Ludendorff (1865-1937), First Quartermaster General, who planned and directed the offensives and grew increasingly erratic as they failed.
• Paul von Hindenburg (1847-1934), Chief of the General Staff and the public face of the German high command.
• Ferdinand Foch (1851-1929), the French general appointed to coordinate the Allied armies in March 1918 and later supreme commander.
• Douglas Haig (1861-1928), commander of the British Expeditionary Force, whose armies bore the brunt of Michael and Georgette.
• Hubert Gough (1870-1963), commander of the British Fifth Army, who was removed from command after the March retreat, a decision many historians regard as unfair given how thinly his line was held.
• Oskar von Hutier (1857-1934), commander of the German Eighteenth Army, after whom Allied writers named the new infiltration tactics.

By the numbers

Casualty figures differ between national official histories and later studies.

Timeline

• 1918, 21 March: Operation Michael opens against the British Fifth and Third Armies.
• 1918, 23 March: The Paris Gun begins shelling Paris.
• 1918, 26 March: At Doullens, Foch is given coordination of the Allied armies.
• 1918, 5 April: Operation Michael is halted short of Amiens.
• 1918, 9 April: Operation Georgette begins on the Lys.
• 1918, 11 April: Haig issues his “backs to the wall” order.
• 1918, 27 May: Operation Blucher-Yorck opens on the Aisne.
• 1918, 9-12 June: Operation Gneisenau between Noyon and Montdidier.
• 1918, 15 July: The last German offensive begins around Reims.
• 1918, 18 July: The Allied counter-attack on the Marne begins.

Why it matters

The Spring Offensive was the last time Germany held the initiative on the Western Front. Its failure, and the irreplaceable losses it cost, set the stage for the Allied victories of the Hundred Days Offensive and the end of the war in November 1918. Its infiltration tactics also influenced military thinking for decades afterwards.