a mere pocket, which was, however, held stubbornly because in this area there had been captured from the French, in May, vast quantities of munitions and military supplies of all kinds and of materials which were urgently needed in Germany, but which there had not been time or facilities for removing. In addition a vast amount of German material had been brought up for the maintenance of the army on the Marne front, and for the July 15 attack. Much of this was irreplaceable, and the German army had to fight to gain time to remove as much of it as possible.
Ludendorff, who had been present with his army during the Champagne-Marne drive, was not especially disheartened' at its result and had gone to Flanders hoping to recoup his failure in Champagne by hastening the preparations for his offensive next in contemplation in the Lys salient. It was there that he received news of the Soissons reverse. He immediately realized the threatening consequences to his armies of this Allied counter-thrust, and returned to Avesnes to arrange the necessary withdrawal from the salient.
Materially this retrograde movement did not seriously com- promise the German army, since, except during the penetra- tion by the three assault divisions (two American and one Moroccan) S. of Soissons on July 18 and 19, the withdrawal was made slowly and in good order, inflicting as heavy losses on the attackers as the Germans themselves suffered. But Ludendorff soon recognized that the Lys offensive would have to be indefi- nitely postponed and the troops destined for it used in easing the situation in the Marne salient, where the Allied forces French, British, American and Italian troops were now pressing vigorously from all points. What Ludendorff apparently failed to gauge correctly at this time was the resultant damage to the moral of the German army; neither did he yet, seemingly, share the conviction, which had now been brought home to the German people and to Germany's allies, that all hope of ending the war by a German victory was gone, and that the only question left impending was whether it would end by a com- promise or by the utter defeat of the Central Powers. Had the German High Command faced at this time the logic of the situation and made a decision to do, after the " Second Marne," what most German officers have since agreed should have been done after the first battle of the Marne, namely, to retire to the line of the Meuse and re-form, subsequent history might have differed materially from the actual events.
As proposed by Haig on July 24, the Australian and Canadian corps on Aug. 8 attacked side by side the German salient fac- ing Amiens, supported by a French corps on their right and a British corps on the left. This attack was one of the most brilliant and tactically interesting episodes of the war, and showed Ludendorff again that the much disparaged tanks were, on ground suitable for their employment, a potent factor in a surprise attack. Although the sector against which the assault was launched was held by first-class troops, the German divisions were overrun and virtually annihilated as organized units. This attack dealt a stunning blow to the pride of the German High Command, a deadly one to the weak moral of the troops, and produced a corresponding exhilaration in the British army, all ranks of which could now clearly see that a complete and final inversion of roles had taken place.
The shock was felt throughout Germany and reacted strongly upon the Government. The unsuccessful Marne attack, with the subsequent withdrawal from the Marne salient, although manifestly a lost battle, had, nevertheless, been one initiated by the German High Command on a battle-field of its own choice. The battle of Amiens could not be so interpreted. The Allies had here initiated the attack and it had been completely successful. Ludendorff correctly names Aug. 8 as the " Black Day " of the German army in the war. So grave was the crisis felt to be that a conference of army leaders and members of the German Cabinet was called to meet at Spa on Aug. 13. It was there agreed that further prosecution of Germany's war aims was hopeless, and that a peace would have to be negotiated at the first favourable opportunity, that is, at the first turn in the
military situation even temporarily favourable to Germany. That looked-for turn never came. Under the persistent Allied attacks the German army reserves steadily dwindled, munitions and supplies lessened, and moral evaporated.
The day following the Amiens success Foch decided not to put the American army which now had some 1,250,000 men in France in on the Vesle, where the situation was virtually stabilized, but to assign it at once the task of reducing the St. Mihiel salient (see WOEVRE, BATTLES IN).
The battle of Amiens was followed up by a French attack between the Oise and the Aisne on Aug. 20, which forced the German line back on Chauny. Still more serious for the enemy was the attack by the British III. Army, on Aug. 21, N. of the Somme, on the line Bapaume-Peronne, which brought another crisis. By the end of Aug. the military situation had become sufficiently defined to enable the Allied leaders to look beyond a mere driving of the German army back to its strongly fortified lines of the previous winter, popularly known as the Hindenburg line, and to make plans for its rupture in a way to reap the largest strategical as well as tactical fruits of victory.
For this the British army, now fully restored in man-power and in high moral, and the American army, untouched by war weariness or reverses, inspired by an almost religious fervour of belief in the righteousness of the cause in which it was fighting, were of necessity regarded as the chief Allied weapons. The French army was tactically a trained and skilled army, but could no longer count on any large reserves of man-power to replace losses, and the general feeling among the French that their country had already been " bled white " in the war led to the not unreasonable contention by Government and people that, while France must still do her share to the end, her army must from now on be spared as much as possible, since in any event French losses in man-power would far exceed that of any other nation in the war.
Foch, therefore, determined on two main offensives: the British, supported on their right by the French, were to break the Hindenburg line in the direction of Cambrai-St. Quentin; the Americans, after completing the reduction of the St. Mihiel salient, which had been assigned as their first task, were to break through the German lines of defence N. of Verdun, sup- ported on their left by French armies, and to advance in the direction of Mezieres. In other words, the German line in northern France, constituting as it did a huge salient, was to be attacked in the simple orthodox manner by pinching in the two flanks. Of these two the Americans had possibly the harder task, for the Verdun front was well adapted to and thoroughly organized for stubborn defence, and, inasmuch as the railway communications through Sedan-Mezieres were essential to the German army so long as its front lay W. of the Meuse river, the Verdun front, only 50 m. in front of this railway line, was bound to be defended with all the vigour and skill still remaining in the German army. Connecting these two attacks, the French army was to continue its operations to throw back the Germans beyond the Aisne and the Ailette. Such was the Allied plan formulated in Foch's directives of Sept. 3.
By the end of Aug. the German High Command ordered the evacuation of the Lys salient, and it was completed Sept. 6.
On Sept. 2 the attack of the British III. Army N. of the Somme was extended northward, E. of Arras, to include the I. Army reinforced by the Canadian corps; and as a result the whole German army fell back to the so-called Hindenburg line, which the Germans themselves designated the Siegfried Stellung. There they hoped to gain time to reorganize the depleted units.
This withdrawal, and the accumulating evidences of increasing demoralization in the German army, made it evident to Allied military leaders that offensive operations on a still larger scale could be safely initiated; and Marshal Foch, in a conference with the British and Belgian commanders-in-chief at Cassel Sept. 9, arranged for a fourth offensive, on the extreme northern part of the western front, to force the Germans back towards Ghent.
On Sept. 12 the American I. Army, as previously agreed upon, attacked and captured the St. Mihiel salient.
