A School History of the Great War

by Albert E. McKinley; Charles Augustin Coulomb; Armand Jacques Gerson

And now came a lull of over a month while the Germans were reorganizing their forces and preparing for a still greater blow. Again the element of surprise was employed. The Allies expected another attack somewhere in the line from Soissons to the sea, and their reserves were so disposed as to meet such an attack. But the German blow was directed against the weakest part of the Allied line, the stretch from Rheims to Soissons, where a break might open the road to Paris from the east. The third drive began on May 27. For over a week the French were pushed back, fighting valiantly, across land which had not seen the enemy since September, 1914. The greatest depth of the German advance was thirty miles, that is, to within forty-four miles of Paris. The enemy had once again reached the Marne River and controlled the main roads from Paris to Verdun and to the eastern parts of the Allied line.

The fourth drive started a few days later, on June 9, in a region where an attack was expected. It resulted in heavy losses to the Germans, who succeeded in pushing only six miles toward Paris in the region between Soissons and Montdidier (mawn-dee-dyā´). The advantages of a single command had begun to appear. General Foch could use all the Allied forces where they were most needed.

The fifth drive opened on July 15 and spread over a front of one hundred miles east of Soissons. The Allies were fully prepared, and while falling back a little at first, the American and French troops soon won back some of the abandoned territory.

The Turning of the Tide.—A glance at a map of the battle front of July 18 will show that the Germans had driven three blunt wedges into the Allied lines. These positions would prove dangerous to the Germans if ever the Allies were strong enough to assume the offensive. And just now the moment came for Foch to strike a great counter-blow. During the spring and early summer American troops had been speeded across the Atlantic until by the Fourth of July over a million men were in France. On July 18 fresh American and French troops attacked the Germans in the narrowest of the wedges along the Marne River and within a few days compelled the enemy to retreat from this wedge. On August 8 a British army began a surprise attack on the middle wedge, and by the use of large numbers of light, swift tanks succeeded in driving the Germans back for a distance of over ten miles on a wide front.

The offensive had now passed from the Germans to the Allies. Under Foch's repeated attacks the enemy was driven back first at one point and then at another. He had no time to prepare a counter-drive; he did not know where the next blow would fall. By the end of September he had given up nearly all his recent conquests, devastating much of the country as he retired. In several places also he was forced still farther back, across the old Hindenburg line. In two days (September 12-13) the Americans and French under the direction of General Pershing wiped out an old German salient near Metz, taking 200 square miles of territory and 15,000 prisoners. Altogether, by the end of September, Foch had taken over a quarter of a million prisoners, with 3,669 cannon and 23,000 machine guns.

It is said that the complete defeat of the German plans was due primarily to three things: "(1) the dogged steadfastness of the British and the patient heroism of the French soldiers and civilians; (2) the brilliant strategy of General Foch, and the unity of command which made this effective; (3) the material and moral encouragement of the American forces, of whom nearly 1,500,000 were in France before the end of August."

The War in Italy, the Balkans, and Syria.—The summer of 1918 witnessed the launching of a great offensive by the Austrians against the Italian armies holding the Piave front. It is probable that the chief purpose of this blow was to draw Allied troops into Italy from the battle front in Belgium and France. The Italians, however, proved themselves amply able to fight their own battle, and the Austrian attempt was repulsed with tremendous losses.

The autumn of this year saw important happenings on the Balkan front also. This theater of the war had been uneventful for a long time. The battle line extended from the Adriatic Sea to the Ægean, and was held by a mixed army of Serbians, Greeks, Italians, British, and French, under the command of General D'Esperey (des-prā´), with headquarters at Salonica. Opposed to these troops were armies of Bulgarians and Austrians, together with a considerable number of Germans. Encouraged by the German defeats in the west, which had forced the withdrawal of large numbers of German troops from eastern Europe, the Allies launched a strong offensive on the Balkan front in the middle of September. Day after day their advance continued, resulting in the capture of many thousands of prisoners and the reoccupation of many miles of Albanian and Serbian territory. The campaign was one of the most successful of the whole war. Within two weeks the Bulgarians asked for an armistice, accepted the terms that were demanded, and on September 30 definitely withdrew from the war. Their surrender broke the lines of communication between the Central Powers and Turkey and at one blow destroyed Teutonic supremacy in the Balkans. An even more important consequence was the moral effect on the general public in Germany, Austria, and Turkey, where it was taken by many as a sign that surrender of the Central Powers could only be a question of time.

Meanwhile, events of almost equal importance were taking place in Palestine and Syria. General Allenby had taken Jerusalem in December, 1917. In the fall of 1918 new and important advances were made in this region, Arab forces east of the Jordan coöperating with the British armies. By the close of September more than 50,000 Turkish soldiers and hundreds of guns had been captured. In October General Allenby's men took the important cities of Damascus and Aleppo, and in Mesopotamia also the British began a new advance. Turkey was already asking for an armistice, and now accepted terms that were virtually a complete surrender (October 31).