Potentially monumental endeavours which do not work out are often obscure in history. Next Wednesday – March 21 – marks the anniversary of Germany’s Spring Offensive in 1918. In its day the great attack rattled the pillars of the Earth. Now the event is mainly remembered by military history buffs.
The great attack was an innovative and audacious attempt to break out of the trench gridlock which had dominated military operations on the Western Front for three and a half years. In September 1914 troops began receiving orders to dig in rather than continue attacking. It was not long before a line of trenches snaked across northwest Europe from the English Channel to Switzerland. The trenches were readily defended by lavish allotments of barbed wire backed by machine guns. The conflict is famous for costly and ineffective Allied attacks trying to break through the German trench lines by massive frontal attacks supported by intense artillery bombardments.
In the Spring Offensive, the Germans got away from assaulting enemy strong points, instead identifying weaker positions and picking them off, while sliding powerful forces through the gaps between strong points, isolating them to be mopped up later. The German army had pondered how best to overrun the positions selected for attack. Troops were selected and trained for the purpose. Artillery support techniques were refined.
The attackers came close to winning. The Germans tore a gaping hole in the French-British line and the Allies reeled back. But they held. The Germans suffered immense casualties, their legions left spent and overextended. A powerful Allied counterattack force surged back in the Hundred Days campaign, which brought the war to an end.
Why the Germans failed is an intriguing study in battlefield operations. Equally intriguing is what might have resulted had the German onslaught succeeded. Imagine a world never divided up at Versailles by the leaders of Britain, the United States, France, and Italy — or a Germany that never developed the sour and pervasive myth of the “stab in the back.”
But such speculative thinking is the realm of alternate history fiction — mainly a genre within science fiction and fantasy writing.
More fascinating is why it took three-and-a-half years to come up with the solution to the trench warfare dilemma. This was a conflict between nations with the most advanced technologies on earth, fielding highly-trained armies where skilled and dedicated officers devoted much thought to waging war. The professional soldiers from the peacetime armies were augmented in war by energetic and innovation-oriented individuals coming in from civilian life. Tactics actually evolved considerably over the trench warfare period. So how could it have taken so long to see what, after the Germans had tried it, seemed obvious?
Answering this may be relevant in a modern world featuring increased resort to force to settle international disputes. Powerful, technologically superior armies from dominant countries have readily squashed smaller forces in less advanced nations – then gotten bogged down after hanging around to reform the countries. The discovery that a lot of the population do not like the victors and are prepared to fight on with unconventional warfare is followed by the uncertain victory of getting out while the getting is good and leaving the substituted regimes to their own devices.
David Haas is a military history buff, and former serving soldier.
