peace of Brest Litovsk (March 2nd, 1918) gave the Western allies some intimation of what a German victory would mean to them. It was a crushing and exorbitant peace, dictated with the utmost arrogance of confident victors.
All through the winter German troops had been shifting from the Eastern to the Western front, and now, in the spring of 1918, the jaded enthusiasm of hungry, weary, and bleeding Germany was lashed up for the one supreme effort that was really and truly to end the war. For some months American troops had been in France, but the bulk of the American army was still across the Atlantic. It was high time for the final conclusive blow upon the Western front, if such a blow was ever to be delivered. The first attack was upon the British in the Somme region. The not very brilliant cavalry generals who were still in command of a front upon which cavalry was a useless encumbrance, were caught napping; and on March 21st, in "Gough's Disaster," a British army was driven back in such disorder as no British army had ever known before. Thousands of guns were lost, and scores of thousands of prisoners. Many of these losses were due to the utter incompetence of the higher command. No less than a hundred tanks were abandoned because they ran out of petrol! The British were driven back almost to Amiens.[1] Throughout April and May the Germans rained offensives on the Allied front. They came near to a break through in the north, and they made a great drive back to the Marne, which they reached again on May 30th, 1918.
This was the climax of the German effort. Behind it was nothing but an exhausted homeland. Fresh troops were hurrying from Britain across the Channel, and America was now pouring
- ↑ "I found a general opinion among officers and men under the command of the Fifth Army that they had been victims of atrocious staff work, tragic in its consequence. From what I saw of some of the Fifth Army staff officers, I was of the same opinion. Some of these young gentlemen, and some of the elderly officers, were arrogant and supercilious, without revealing any sign of intelligence. If they had wisdom, it was deeply camouflaged by an air of inefficiency. If they had knowledge, they hid it as a secret of their own. General Gough in Flanders, though personally responsible for many tragic happenings, was badly served by some of his subordinates, and battalion officers and divisional staffs raged against the whole of the Fifth Army organization, or lack of organization, with an extreme passion of speech."—Philip Gibbs, Realities of War.
