The German Offensives of 1918

Rating:
Summary: A Tedious but Comprehensive Account
Review: Martin Kitchen's The German Offensives of 1918 is a tedious but comprehensive account of the final, desperate German efforts to achieve a military victory in the First World War before the American Expeditionary Force arrived in strength. The main value of this book is that it covers all the German offensives from March-July 1918; most accounts only cover Operation "Michael" in March 1918 and the US action at Belleau Wood. Kitchen's account fills in the gaps between the beginning of the offensives and the final German realization that they had lost the initiative. On the negative side, a lack of adequate maps, a plodding writing style and poor editing weaken this book. Nevertheless, the German Offensives of 1918 is a valuable addition to a First World War library.

The German Offensives of 1918 consists of thirteen chapters, beginning with a summary of the strategic situation on the Western Front from February 1917 to February 1918. This introductory chapter is a near-disaster and spends several pages mired in discussing obscure German labor union unrest before awkwardly veering back toward a military discussion of the Western Front. While the authors hits the highlights of Germany's strategic position in the winter of 1917-1918, he really only scratches the surface concerning the doctrinal transformation that made the 1918 offensives possible. The second chapter, discussing the plans for the offensives, is useful for illustrating the diverse opinions in the Army High Command (OHL) about the paths to victory, but taxes the reader's patience. Opinion in the OHL was split over whether Germany should mount one large offensive, or several smaller attacks, or finish off Italy or even to stay on the defensive and just defeat the inevitable Allied attacks. Kitchen has written other books on the OHL and this is clearly where he is comfortable, but it makes for an overly high level discussion of the campaign where a few decision-makers like Ludendorff and Hindenburg appear in individual dramatic roles but the vast majority involved are cast as ciphers. The remaining chapters cover each of the nine German offensives and the British counterattack at Amiens on 8 August 1918. The author provides only a terse order of battle for the Germans on 21 March 1918, but does not list even corps or divisions. The maps provided are also totally inadequate, with virtually no detail concerning dispositions or movements. Given these weaknesses, this book is difficult to use for a campaign study.

Kitchen's conclusion is that Ludendorff was able to utilize a formula for tactical breakthroughs to end the trench deadlock, but that he was unable to translate these local successes into an operational level victory. Essentially, Ludendorff allowed his storm troopers to take the path of least resistance that provided for dramatic advances, but failed to seize key towns like Amiens, Arras or Reims. Germany's new doctrine used in the offensives of 1918 succeeded in integrating firepower and maneuver, but was undermined by a "chronic lack of manpower and a desperate shortage of horses and motor vehicles." Furthermore, the OHL's refusal to consider a compromise peace severed the link between the offensives and the pursuit of Germany's greater political objectives. Kitchen writes that, "they [the OHL] were blinded by their conviction that the alternatives facing Germany were world power or extinction." Ultimately, the failure of the offensives was due to, "the overbearing hubris of a military elite that refused to abandon its fantastic ambitions and denied the bitter fact that for all their professional skill and tactical brilliance their ingenuous plans had come to nothing."

The German offensives did score two major accomplishments: the rout of the British 5th Army and storming the French-held Chemin des Dames ridgelines. Both these actions resulted in heavy Allied manpower losses and significant German advances, yet the Germans failed to capture any significant communication hubs or to split the Anglo-French front. German losses were also very heavy and more difficult to replace. Kitchen fails to appreciate the great assistance provided by fog and mist to the German infiltration tactics, but he is closer to the mark in his evaluation of tanks. In Kitchen's view, tanks allowed the Allies to launch counterattacks without assembling so much artillery, but they were not decisive in themselves. On the other hand, Allied air supremacy was a significant impediment to German freedom of maneuver on the battlefield.

Kitchen's book also serves to expose the base falsehoods presented in the recent revisionist account, The Myth of the Great War by John Mosier, which claims that it was the minor American action at Belleau Wood that stopped the German offensives and thereby turned the tide of war. Kitchen account clearly indicates that the German offensives had reached their culminating point weeks before Belleau Wood and that the final attacks were futile gestures born of frustration to break the Anglo-French front. Indeed, the Americans played no part at either Arras or Reims, where the British and French stopped the German offensives dead in their tracks. Even as far as the so-called Second Battle of the Marne, it is clear that the French counterattack at Soissons and their tenacious defense of Reims far out-shadowed the efforts of the solitary US division in ending the final German offensive. Furthermore, Kitchen clearly details the decline of the German army's strength and morale, all of which began well before the Americans arrived in strength at the front. In fact, Kitchen notes that the OHL promised that the U-Boat offensive of 1917 would win the war but this failed, and then promised that the 1918 offensives would win the war but these also failed. In promising victory twice to a war-weary nation and then failing to deliver, the OHL fatally compromised German morale.