Hundred Days Offensive
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For Napoleon Bonaparte's offensive, see Hundred Days.
| Allied "Hundred Days" Offensive, 1918 | |||||||
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Part of the Western Front (World War I) | |||||||
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| Combatants | |||||||
 Belgium British Empire France United States of America |
 German Empire |
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| Commanders | |||||||
| King Albert I Ferdinand Foch Douglas Haig Philippe Petain John Pershing |
Erich Ludendorff |
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| Casualties | |||||||
| 411,636 British Empire 531,000 French 127,000+ American |
785,733 | ||||||
| Hundred Days Offensive |
|---|
| Amiens – 2nd Somme – Arras – Havrincourt – St.-Mihiel – Epéhy – Hindenburg Line – Meuse-Argonne – Courtai – Selle – 2nd Sambre |
| Western Front |
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| Frontiers – Liège – Antwerp – Great Retreat – Race to the Sea – Neuve Chapelle – 2nd Ypres – 2nd Artois – Hill 70 – 3rd Artois – Loos – Verdun – Hulluch – Somme – Arras – Vimy Ridge – 2nd Aisne – Messines – Passchendaele – Cambrai – Michael – Lys – 3rd Aisne – Belleau Wood – 2nd Marne – Château-Thierry – Hamel – Hundred Days |
The Hundred Days Offensive was the final offensive of World War I, by the Allies against the Central Powers on the Western Front, from 8 August 1918 to 11 November 1918. In French, it is sometimes referred to as "Les cent jours du Canada" (Canada's Hundred Days), highlighting the prominent participation of Canadian forces under British command. The offensive led to the final demoralisation and retreat of the German armies and the end of World War I.
Contents |
[edit] Background
The great German offensives on the Western Front beginning with Operation Michael in March 1918 had petered out by July. The Germans had advanced to the Marne River, but failed to achieve a decisive breakthrough. When Operation Marne-Rheims ended in July, the Allied supreme commander, the French Field Marshal Ferdinand Foch, ordered a counter-offensive which became the Second Battle of the Marne. The Germans, recognising their untenable position, withdrew from the Marne towards the north.
Foch now considered the time had arrived for the Allies to return to the offensive. The Americans were now present in France in large numbers and their presence invigorated the French armies. Their Commander in Chief, General John Pershing was keen to use his army in an independent role. The British Army had also been reinforced by large numbers of troops returned from Palestine and Italy, and large numbers of replacements previously held back in Britain by Prime Minister David Lloyd George.
Foch agreed on a proposal by Field Marshal Douglas Haig, the commander of the British Expeditionary Force (BEF), to strike on the Somme, east of Amiens and southwest of the 1916 battlefield of the Battle of the Somme. The Somme was chosen as a suitable site for the offensive for a number of reasons. As in 1916, it marked the boundary between the BEF and the French armies, in this case defined by the Amiens-Roye road, allowing the two armies to cooperate. Also the Picardy countryside provided a good surface for tanks, which was not the case in Flanders. Finally, the German defences, manned by the German Second Army of General Georg von der Marwitz, were relatively weak, having been subjected to continual raiding by the Australians in a process termed Peaceful Penetration.
[edit] Amiens
The Battle of Amiens opened on August 8, 1918 with an attack by more than 10 Allied divisions — Australian, Canadian, British and French forces — with more than 500 tanks. Through careful preparations, the Allies achieved complete surprise. The attack, spearheaded by the Australian Corps and Canadian Corps of the British Fourth Army, broke through the German lines and tanks attacked German rear positions, sowing panic and confusion. By the end of the day, a gap 15 miles long had been punched in the German line south of the Somme. The Allies had taken 17,000 prisoners and captured 330 guns. Total German losses were estimated to be 30,000 on August 8 while the Allies had suffered about 6,500 killed, wounded and missing.
The advance continued for three more days but without the spectacular results of August 8 as the rapid advance outran the supporting artillery and ran short of supplies. On August 10, the Germans began to pull out of the salient that they had managed to occupy during Operation Michael in March, back towards the Hindenburg Line.
[edit] Somme
On August 15 1918, Haig refused demands from Foch that he continue the Amiens offensive, even though the attack was faltering as the troops outran their supplies and artillery, and German reserves were being moved to the sector. Instead, Haig began to plan for an offensive at Albert, which opened on August 21. The main attack was launched by the British Third Army, with an American corps attached.
The offensive was a success, pushing the German Second Army back over a fifty-five kilometre front. Albert was captured in August 22. On August 26, the British First Army widened the attack by another twelve kilometers. Bapaume fell on August 29. The British Fourth Army also resumed its offensive and the Australian Corps crossed the Somme River on the night of August 31, breaking the German lines at Mont St Quentin and Péronne. The British Fourth Army's commander, General Henry Rawlinson, described the Australian advances of August 31-September 4 as the greatest military achievement of the war.[1] By September 2, the Germans had been forced back close to the Hindenburg Line, from which they had launched their offensive in the spring.
[edit] Breaking the Hindenburg Line
Foch now planned a great concentric attack on the German lines in France, with the various axes of advance converging on Liege in Belgium.
The main German defences were anchored on the Hindenburg Line, a series of defensive fortifications stretching from Cerny on the Aisne River to Arras. Before the Foch's main offensive was launched, the remaining German salients west and east of the line were crushed at Havrincourt and St Mihiel on September 12, Epehy and Canal du Nord on September 18.
The first attack of Foch's Grand Offensive was launched on September 26 by the American Expeditionary Force in the Meuse-Argonne Offensive. Two days later, the Army Group under Albert I of Belgium (the Belgian Army and the British Second Army under General Herbert Plumer) launched an attack near Ypres in Flanders. Both attacks made good progress initially but were then slowed by logistic problems, particularly in the American sector.
Meanwhile, led by the Canadian Corps, the British armies had overrun two lines of the Hindenburg Line near Cambrai. Then on September 30 Haig launched the main attack on the Hindenburg Line, led by two divisions from the United States II Corps, which had been attached to the Australian Corps. The Americans captured the 4.5 mile (7.2 km) long canal tunnel at Bellicourt, but came under an intense counterattack and were assisted by the Australians.
Two days later, a British division made a successful amphibious assault across the canal to the south of the tunnel, to widen the breach. By October 5, British Fourth Army had broken through the entire depth of the Hindenburg defences. Rawlinson wrote, "Had the Boche [Germans] not shown marked signs of deterioration during the past month, I should never have contemplated attacking the Hindenburg line. Had it been defended by the Germans of two years ago, it would certainly have been impregnable..."
This collapse forced the German High Command to accept that the war had to be ended. The evidence of failing German morale also convinced many Allied commanders and political leaders that the war could be ended in 1918. (Previously, all efforts had been concentrated on building up forces to mount a decisive attack in 1919.)
[edit] Pursuit
Through October the German armies were forced back through the territory gained in 1914, but their retreat never turned into a rout. However, the Allies were pressing the Germans back towards the lateral railway line from Metz to Bruges (shown in the map at the head of this article), which had supplied their entire front in Northern France and Belgium for much of the war. As the Allied armies reached this line, the Germans were forced to abandon increasingly large amounts of heavy equipment and supplies, further reducing their morale and capacity to resist.
Casualties remained heavy in all of the Allied fighting forces, as well as in the retreating German Army. Rearguard actions were fought at Ypres, Kortrijk, Selle, Valenciennes, the Sambre and Mons, with fighting continuing until the last minutes before the Armistice took effect at 11:00 on November 11, 1918.
[edit] Suggested Reading
- Christie, Norm. For King & Empire, The Canadians at Amiens, August 1918. CEF Books, 1999
- Christie, Norm. For King & Empire, The Canadians at Arras, August - September 1918. CEF Books, 1997
- Christie, Norm. For King & Empire, The Canadians at Cambrai, September - October 1918. CEF Books, 1997
- Dancocks, Daniel G. Spearhead to Victory – Canada and the Great War. Hurtig Publishers, 1987
- Schreiber, Shane B. Shock Army of the British Empire – The Canadian Corps in the Last 100 Days of the Great War. Vanwell Publishing Limited, 2004
