A world undone: the story of the Great War, 1914 to 1918 (98 page)

No one including Ludendorff himself could have said at that point what the purpose of a continued Hutier advance was supposed to be. Below and Marwitz had had a clear mission from the start, but there had never been a comparable goal for Hutier. His astonishing progress gave rise to a question: progress toward
what?
What actually was the
value
of the ground he had taken and the great expanses of territory that lay open in front of him? The absence of an answer exposed the emptiness of the Michael operation after the first day’s failure on the right. “We tear a hole in the enemy line,” Ludendorff had said when challenged, “and everything else follows.” Now he had his hole—though not the hole he had wanted—and his next step was going to be to jump into it. Whatever his decision should be called, it was not strategy. It was more like an act of faith—of Micawberish blind hope that something, somehow, would turn up.

On Friday morning all three German armies returned to the attack. There could be no surprise this time, and because the troops on both sides were in new positions and the fog had returned to blind the gunners, there could be no Bruchmüller barrage. Below’s troops, running head-on into reserves sent forward by Byng, got nowhere. Marwitz managed to inch forward on both sides of the Flesquières salient, but the salient itself, which Ludendorff had expected to crush on the first day, again refused to fall. Again almost all progress was on the German left, where Hutier’s men continued to advance almost as fast as their legs could carry them. They got across the Somme and the Crozat Canal—the British had failed to blow the bridges—and forced Gough to resume his retreat.

Gough’s efforts to find a foothold became increasingly desperate. Military police stopped fleeing troops at gunpoint and forced them into whatever defenses could be found or thrown together. Officers stood in the rear, pistols in hand, to keep the men at their posts. None of it was enough, and the retreat always resumed. Haig sent an appeal to Pétain, asking him to send help. By the time this message arrived, Pétain already had seven divisions on the way—one more than he and Haig had promised to send if either came under attack.

By nightfall on March 22 the Germans had again accomplished something new to the Western Front: they had kept a major offensive moving forward through a second day. Also again, their success had been limited to the left wing. Ludendorff’s plan had been completely overtaken by events. As he tried to adapt, his difficulties mounted. His supply system, positioned for an advance in the north, was not prepared to follow Hutier’s army. That army, weary after two days of rapid pursuit over difficult ground, was running out of essentials as basic as water. French and British reserves, meanwhile, were racing to intercept it.

Dawn on Saturday, March 23, found the British on the verge of ruin. Not only Hutier’s army but even Marwitz’s advance units were now fifteen miles beyond their starting points. Gough’s army was ceasing to be a coherent fighting force. Eight of the divisions with which Gough had begun the battle were in shambles. Hutier’s troops were west of the Somme, gobbling up mile after mile. As it disintegrated, Gough’s left wing had lost contact with Byng’s right. Byng’s flank was exposed, and the line he had to defend grew longer. Haig asked Pétain for an additional twenty divisions. Pétain replied that this was impossible—he was expecting an attack in Champagne. He did, however, send another six divisions. This was in addition to the seven sent earlier—divisions that were now reaching the battlefield but finding it impossible to get around behind Gough’s fast-fleeing troops and into the path of the Germans. Pétain had done far more than he had ever promised. His doing so has to be considered a magnanimous act, especially in light of the fact that he was right about Champagne: the Germans
were
preparing an attack there. Haig, however, was not satisfied. To the contrary, he was resentful of Pétain.

On the third day the Germans’ advance put them within reach of a bona fide strategic prize. Directly ahead, due west of St. Quentin, was the city of Amiens, the importance of which can be made clear even today by a glance at an ordinary road map. Almost all the highways in the region run into Amiens, which sits at their center like the hub of a great wheel. In 1918 all the railways ran through Amiens too, creating a transport center very near to where the British sector ended and the French began. The town was vital to the British, to the French, and to their ability to maintain contact. On March 23 it was thinly defended. If Ludendorff had ordered it taken, he could have separated the two allies so completely that it might then have become possible to destroy their armies one by one.

Instead, turning away from a vital target that the enemy was unprepared to defend, Ludendorff sent his armies in three directions, each of which had comparatively minor potential. Below, once again bogged down, was given reserves and told to turn farther toward the north. Marwitz was to push westward on a trajectory that would carry him not to Arras, not to Amiens, but to a point between the two. Hutier was directed southward toward the town of Noyon in the direction of Paris.

Perhaps Ludendorff thought he could finish both of his enemies with one master stroke, a great combination of separating and enveloping movements that would simultaneously destroy the British on his right and the French on his left. If that was the idea—no alternative explanation seems equally plausible—it was beyond the capabilities of the German forces. It brings to mind the campaigns of Conrad von Hötzendorf, who had wrecked the Austro-Hungarian armies with theoretically brilliant but unrealistic lunges at instant glory. The March 24 orders issued by Ludendorff—a Ludendorff alienated from the Max Hoffmann whose brains had so often been so useful, and increasingly remote from his own staff and the commanders of his armies—provide early evidence that he was breaking down under the strain with which he had been living for nearly four years.

On this same day an explosion mysteriously occurred in the heart of Paris. People searched the sky for enemy aircraft but found nothing. Then came another explosion, and another. Finally the mystery was solved: this was the work of artillery. An enormous new cannon called the Kaiser Wilhelm gun was firing eight-inch shells from freshly conquered territory more than seventy-five miles from the capital. Between its March debut and August, it would fire 283 rounds into Paris, killing civilians and destroying property at random, accomplishing absolutely nothing.

Kaiser Wilhelm himself was exceptionally active on this day. Rocketing about in his private train, declaring victory to everyone within earshot, he ordered the schools of Germany closed in celebration. He had champagne served at dinner. “If an English delegation came to sue for peace,” he pronounced, exposing the childishness of his daydreams, “it must kneel before the German standard.”

Also on March 23 a young German pilot was shot down behind the British lines—the second of Ludendorff’s beloved stepsons to die in this way.

Early on the morning of Sunday, March 24, the commanders of the six British battalions clinging to the Flesquières salient agreed that, with their position rapidly deteriorating, their choice was to withdraw or to be destroyed. They ordered a retreat that left the British center without its anchor. The entire British line was now pulling back, the Germans advancing everywhere. Even Below was making slow progress. Hutier continued to encounter almost no resistance, though his army was running down badly. Looting and drunkenness were breaking out wherever tired, hungry German troops came upon some of the enormous stores abandoned by the British. Not as malnourished as their families back home but chronically ill-fed nonetheless, they were astonished to find the enemy so abundantly provided with food, liquor, and good wool and cotton clothing—things almost unavailable in Germany. They had been told that the Entente was suffering as severely as they were. They saw that this was untrue.

The greatest weakness of Ludendorff’s attack force had come fully into play: he had no pursuit capability with which to run down and destroy the defeated British divisions. What remained of the German cavalry was in the east, where vast open spaces afforded scope for operations of a kind not possible in the west. Ludendorff had neither tanks nor enough armored cars to make a difference. Germany being without access to rubber, its few motor vehicles were fitted with steel tires that destroyed whatever roads they used. Hutier could advance no faster than his men could walk, and those men had been walking and fighting for four days. They ended Sunday’s march eight miles short of their assigned objective. Farther north the Germans took possession of Bapaume but also did not reach their goal.

This was no consolation to Haig and Pétain. The Germans were not only continuing to advance but positioned to drive a wedge between them. Relations between the two commanders were badly strained, Haig unimpressed with the two hundred thousand troops that Pétain had sent to his aid. Haig understood the importance of maintaining the connection between his line and that of the French—“our Army’s existence in France depends on keeping the British and French armies united,” he declared—but somehow he regarded this as Pétain’s responsibility. When the two generals met on Sunday night, Haig learned that if the German advance continued, the French intended to fall back toward the south. His reaction appears to have been a mixture of rage and panic. He blamed Pétain, who had no choice in the matter: his orders, direct from the French cabinet, were to defend Paris at all costs and to the exclusion of other priorities. Pétain sent a telegram asking his government to get the British to stay far enough to the south that he would not be required to overextend himself in order to maintain contact.

Without access to rubber, the Germans equipped their vehicles with steel tires

The crisis produced in Haig an abrupt change of mind on the subject of a supreme commander for the Entente armies. Knowing that such an assignment was sure to go to Foch, judging that Foch was likely to be far more willing than Pétain to advance to the north rather than withdraw, Haig that night sent a telegram to Lloyd George asking him to reopen the question. It happened that just hours earlier Clemenceau, prodded by Foch, had sent a wire of his own to London suggesting the same thing. Lloyd George dispatched Lord Alfred Milner, the war minister, to France to make it happen.

On Monday Ludendorff awoke at last to the importance of Amiens. With French and British reserves now pouring into the front lines, Below was once again blocked, his objectives hopelessly out of reach. But Amiens, if captured, could justify the entire campaign. Ludendorff ordered Marwitz to link his left wing with Hutier and move to take the city. The head of the French rail system, meanwhile, was begging Foch to “save Amiens or everything’s lost—it’s the center of all our communications.” Foch, Pétain, and Clemenceau met at Compiègne, trying to figure out how to balance Haig’s appeals for more help with the defense of Paris. Haig was meeting with his army commanders—all but Gough, who had more pressing concerns—at Doullens, not a great distance away from Compiègne. When Clemenceau offered to join them the next day, the British readily agreed.

On March 26, with the Germans sixteen miles from Amiens and still advancing, the French leaders arrived at Doullens. They were a formidable group: President Poincaré, Clemenceau, Pétain, and Foch, who was delighting the premier with talk of shifting over to the offensive. On hand to greet them were Haig and his generals plus, from London, Wilson, the new chief of the imperial general staff, and Lord Milner. Haig was, for once, eager to cooperate. In response to a question from Clemenceau, he declared his determination to stand and fight at Amiens rather than pull back to the north. It was Milner who brought up the matter that had brought all of them together. He proposed that Foch be named “coordinator” of the Entente forces “around Amiens.” The French, of course, assented, all but Pétain enthusiastically. Haig, of all people, objected that Foch must be given more authority than Milner’s words implied. His motives were obvious. Foch’s new role would permit a more thorough and systematic sharing of reserves, and under current circumstances that could only benefit the British. The wording was changed, accordingly, to extend Foch’s responsibilities to the entire Western Front. Haig’s diary entry of this date reveals his thinking. “In my opinion,” he wrote, “it was essential that Foch should control Pétain.”

To the extent that Foch’s elevation was an implicit criticism of Pétain’s response to the German offensive, it was undeserved and unnecessary. By March 26 the offensive was essentially at an end, in large measure because Pétain had stripped so many troops from his own line and reserves that twenty-four French divisions were now assembling in the path of Hutier’s and Marwitz’s armies. As more arrived and the tide began to turn, Foch would win much credit—less because of anything he had done than because of the timing of his appointment. Still, the appointment was important. A step had been taken toward unified command.

Foch, immediately after his promotion, complained of having been given the task of winning a battle that was already lost. Something closer to the opposite was true. The Michael offensive was losing its force and coherence, deteriorating at times into a kind of blind and almost random lashing out at the defenders. Hutier’s worn-down troops continued, where they were confronted only by the remains of Gough’s army, to move forward at a pace that would have seemed incredible except that the British were not even trying to resist.