Amiens 1918

[Flyby PC 23]

Just watched the program on TV called 20th Century Battlefields with Dan Snow about the Battle of Amiens in August 1918.

 

I was surprised when he mentioned the British General Rawlinson launching the newly formed RAF to support the allied offensive with some 600 planes! Further to that but not mentioned in the program, I've also read the French put close to 1000 aircraft into the air.

 

He didn't breakdown the figure, as in how many aircraft in the air at any one time and spread over what kind of area, but all the same, that is a lot of aircraft supporting the offensive, and must have been quite a spectacle to witness. A very positive spectacle for the Entente forces, but utterly miserable for the Germans.

 

I just had no idea such volumes of aircraft were used. I read about the 1000 bomber raids of WW2 thinking this was a record.

[UK_Widowmaker 571]

wow!..that's news to me too

[Hauksbee 103]

I recall reading about a young German Lieutenant who, in 1918, watched his section of the trenches crumble under the combined weight of infantry backed by tanks and aircraft. It made an impression that he never forgot. His name was Heinz Guderian.

[Olham 164]

Haven't watched this myself yet, but I wonder if this is what you meant, Flyby?

 

2oth Century Battlefields: Ep 1 "1918 Western Front"

 

1/6

http://youtu.be/rVarOtDZ7aE

 

2/6

http://youtu.be/9Gf0ZvVhYr0

 

3/6

http://youtu.be/A7lPssWoV0E

 

4/6

http://youtu.be/jKbU9tcFW4Q

 

5/6

http://youtu.be/FFpysSLgMzw

 

6/6

http://youtu.be/nobl_MFANGY

[Hasse Wind 46]

Yes, the battle of Amiens began the final phase of the war, which lead to serious German defeats and the final collapse of their fighting spirit. This became obvious when large numbers of Germans started to surrender, something that hadn't happened earlier in the war.

 

The Entente air superiority must have had an impact on the morale of the German Heer, and combined with other factors, it must have made it clear to the majority of German soldiers and officers that the end was near.

[Flyby PC 23]

Yes, that's it Olham.

[themightysrc 5]

It's worth bearing in mind that one of the reasons why the 1918 offensives by the German army were ultimately unsuccessful was because they were harried mercilessly from the air by the RFC/RNAS/RAF. The German air force began well, by all accounts, but simply didn't have the logistical expertise, know how and experience in this sort of warfare - hardly surprising, given that they'd spent so much time on the defensive - and hence they were left behind a Michael, Georgette and the subsequent operations carried on. The Entente forces dug deep indeed and despite having to retreat in the initial period of the offensives, apparently never gave up on offensive operations against the advancing German forces.

 

Personally speaking, I think you'd have to be brave beyond normal comprehension to do that, but I speak from a 2011 perspective.

 

There's plenty of written history concerning 1918, but much of it agrees that the contribution of the French, Briddish and American air services did as much as was possible in halting the German offensives. It's a period that's been neglected by historians, and I'd love to read anything like a definitive history of that year. It's a commonplace in the UK that WWI was so awful that we only remember it with a grimace and a tear. It's forgotten that the period including and following Amiens was actually the most successful period in the British Army's history.

 

But it's easier to say that it was a pointless slaughter, rather than to analyse the facts, which is a shame.

[RAF_Louvert 101]

.

 

Remember that the St. Mihiel Offensive was launched just a month after Amiens, and that little four-day-long event saw nearly 1,500 Allied aircraft going up against some 500 German planes. It was the largest coordinated massing of aeroplanes for a single attack that had ever been seen up to that point, and the lessons learned at St. Mihiel changed the face of aerial offensives forever.

 

Also, when talking about the ultimate defeat of the German Army in 1918 do not downplay what was going on in Germany itself by then. Home support for the war had completely broken down and the resources to continue to actually wage war were all but gone. It is high testimony to the tenacity of the German troops that they were able to do as well as they did for as long as they did, given what they had to work with by early 1918.

 

 

 

.

Edited September 26, 2011 by RAF_Louvert

[Hasse Wind 46]

In both world wars, the German army (Heer) was in many ways (though not all, like winter warfare) the best in the world. Their training, equipment, leadership, morale, staff system, creativity and initiative were wonderful, and produced excellent results at tactical and operational levels. In my opinion, their worst problems were always at the strategic level - production, logistics, and the top leaders, both political and military. They always ended up having too many powerful enemies and not enough powerful allies.

 

I don't think anybody could have fought better in the difficult conditions of 1918 and 1944 - 1945 than the ordinary German soldier.

[Olham 164]

I wonder how it felt, and how it must have looked for the soldiers in the trenches,

when aviation was yet so very young, and now they witnessed 1.500 aircraft crossing over the mud.

I bet I would have been awfully demoralised.

[Hasse Wind 46]

Another very nasty surprise of the war was the tank. Imagine being among the first men to experience a tank attack, with no proper weapons with which to shoot at them.

[Olham 164]

I guess, that a tank attack is even sheer terror, when you KNOW tanks, and when you HAVE weapons against them.

I would have s**t in my pants, I assume.

[Capitaine Vengeur 263]

Also, when talking about the ultimate defeat of the German Army in 1918 do not downplay what was going on in Germany itself by then. Home support for the war had completely broken down and the resources to continue to actually wage war were all but gone. It is high testimony to the tenacity of the German troops that they were able to do as well as they did for as long as they did, given what they had to work with by early 1918.

 

 

By the last weeks of the War, the Allied were amazed that the German Army hadn't collapsed already, when they saw the prisoners they captured by thousands: 17 year-old skinny and terrified kids, with too large helmets, shoe sole made of cardboard, bandages made of paper, coffee made of roasted berries, and a few beet marmalade as food rations, as sausages made of sawdust were already faraway memory. But incredibly, the German Army still held.

[Olham 164]

Jeeze, I didn't know it was that bad for the infantry in the final months - after reading

only about aviators like Udet or Buckler, who all had a better life than that.

 

All this tells me, that the Germans were far better soldiers than diplomats.

[Flyby PC 23]

I've always had the impression that the German soldiers felt betrayed and sold out by the Armistace. The pressure and necessity to stop the fighting came from events at the rear and back in Germany. It was this sense of betrayal, which added to humiliation of the Versailles Treaty, provoked much of the instability in Germany after the war.

 

I can take my hat off to the recognised quality of the German soldier, but I also have a soft spot for the much maligned British Tommy. A good number of those were the real deal too.

[Olham 164]

I was not aware that the "Tommies" were "much maligned" anywhere, Flyby?

Never heard anything like that here from Germans.

Actually, the Royal Air Force is much admired for their resistance against the Luftwaffe.

And from what my dad told me about the war, the Tommies were known for being

quite tough opponents, and for being pretty fair to their PoWs.

Edited September 28, 2011 by Olham

[Hasse Wind 46]

The British army that went to war in 1914 was excellent. They were all long-serving professional soldiers, after all. There was only one problem - the army was much too small for a major European war that lasted for years. Britain was the only European great power without conscription when the war began. While the other great powers could quickly mobilize millions of men from their vast reserves and were capable of suffering extremely heavy casualties and still keep on fighting, the British had no such reserves of trained soldiers. It took time for them to create, train and organize a big army. The battle of the Somme was the bloody proving ground of that new army. By 1918, the British had a well-trained and powerful army, capable of withstanding the last big German offensives and then taking the initiative and counterattacking. In 1918, the British (and the French too) perfected their skills at combined arms warfare, and were able to push the Germans back with brilliant use of infantry, artillery, tanks and aircraft.

 

Unfortunately these lessons were forgotten, or wrongly applied, by the French and the British in the years following WW1. The Germans didn't forget, and worked hard to perfect the use of tanks and aircraft in creating breakthroughs in enemy lines. These Blitzkrieg tactics worked almost perfectly in Poland in 1939, and both the French and British armies collapsed quickly when Hitler's Panzers attacked in the West in 1940. The Entente powers pioneered the use of tanks in WW1, and were then beaten by their own creations in 1940.

[Capitaine Vengeur 263]

There have been this theoretical and technological contest between fire and movement during all of the first half of the 20^th Century. In 1914, recent technical progresses had fire fully dominating movement: machine guns and quick-firing artillery held the battleground over simple men running the same way they did during the 19^th Century. But these technical progresses had still not been integrated in the high-ranking minds, and that's the reason why the French staff kept on launching expensive bayonet charges, the nation losing one third of her heavy overall casualties within the first nine months of the War. This trend confirmed up to 1918, firepower making terrific progress, movement not that much. The tanks of 1918 were crawling tins contributing more through fire than movement, while the air forces were still unable to support large and deep army moves. Everything changed between 1918 and 1939 with the huge technical progresses of moving armor and tridimensional warfare, to few evolutions concerning the firepower. But once again, the French staff missed the connection and sticked to the experience of 1918, favouring static defensive fire.

 

There was still some visionaries, however, and some with impressing fates. Philippe Pétain professed changes in military theories before the War, but for such a heresy to the dogma, was put into quarantine and only a aged colonel about to retire when the war broke. One of the very few junior officers able to resist to the attractive idea of glorious bayonet charges, to listen to this old fool, and even to admire the man and his ideas up to require a transfer in his regiment, was Lieutenant Charles de Gaulle, his future enemy 30 years later (writing in his notes: “Pétain professes that fire kills.”, and after the slaughters of 1914: “It appears that all of valour in the world doesn't prevail over fire.”).

 

Extremely cautious, Pétain took great care of his afflicted troops after the mutinies of 1917, never launching an offensive before being sure he had gathered an overwhelming local superiority in firepower and ammunition stocks. He was also confident about the evolving tanks as the new weapon that would make the difference, stating after the mutinies: “I'm waiting for the tanks and Yanks!”. But if in 1914 he was already a man of 1918, in 1939 he was still a man of 1918: he was too aged to admit and integrate the new progresses. On the contrary, de Gaulle was young enough to keep on evolving, and soon became well known among the small circle of the theoreticians of armor and modern warfare (his essays had been read before the War by Guderian and Patton); and for his disturbing imaginings, he knew something of the same quarantine as Pétain before 1914.

[Flyby PC 23]

Kaiser Wilhem II described the BEF in 1914 as Sir John Frenches' contemptible little army. The Tommies were delighted to rise to the challenge and revelled in the name the Old Contemptibles, even forming reunions and veterans associations called the Old Contemptibles.

 

Later in WW2, the British forces fighting hard in Italy were referred to D-Day Dodgers by Lady Astor, the first women MP at Westminster. The words caused a lot of offence, but then the same spirit rose among those brothers in arms who counsidered it a priviledge to fight shoulder to shoulder with other "D-Day Dodgers".

 

Astor also warned people to aware of men with white crows feet. This being a referrence to the sun tans around the eyes and creases which don't catch the sun as people squint in the sunlights. The barbed comments were a reference to British troops in the far East, and there is speculation Lady Aster was left a little prejudiced after one such soldier left her daughter either pregnant or with a 'dose' of something unpleasant. Despite being the first women MP, she was prominant in the appeasement policy before WW2, bigotted aganst catholics and jews, and after her remarks about the troops, Astor was quietly dropped by the Tories after 1945 as a loose cannon and something of a liability.

 

Plus, after the Battle of France, and the humiliation of Singapore, and the early reverses in the desert against Rommel, confidence wasn't high in the old British Tommy, but with the exception of Singapore perhaps, the British troops then and now are some of the finest you will find anywhere.

 

Edit - Then there is the reluctance of the Americans in North Africa, Italy, and D-Day to acknowledge the British contribution to the war, despite the Brits holding the line against much more potent and determined enemy forces and despite British Tommies having saving the US forces from annhiliation at Kesserine. There was also the bitter recriminations against Montgomery and his forces for their contribution at the Battle of the Bulge. The US generals were livid that Montgomery was trying to steal the thunder of a gallant and hard won US victory, but to quote Hasso Von Manteuffel, commander of the 5th Pazer Army, "The operations of the American 1st Army had developed into a series of individual holding actions. Montgomery's contribution to restoring the situation was that he turned a series of isolated actions into a coherent battle fought according to a clear and definite plan. It was his refusal to engage in premature and piecemeal counter-attacks which enabled the Americans to gather their reserves and frustrate the German attempts to extend their breakthrough".

 

The thing with the Americans I can perhaps forgive because Monty was not the best self publicist, but Monty also had the confidence and adoration of the British army behind him too.

Edited September 30, 2011 by Flyby PC