The extent Marshal Ferdinand Foch was able to target the enemy’s Centre(s) of Gravity during the Hundred Days campaign

 

The Hundred Days Offensive was one of the most significant episodes of the First World War because it led to the end of the war as well as the Allied victory. It came at the heels of the German spring offensives, which had caused significant damage to the Allies.[1] However, it is essential to consider that while the spring offensives were highly effective at a tactical level, for the most part, they lacked any operational rationale, with the result being that despite the considerable success of the operations, it created an environment within which it was quite difficult for the Germans to take any real advantage of the situation.[2] It is important to note that the methods that the Germans had developed in their campaigns in the east as well as their application in the European theatre ensured that they landed victories against the Allies at an unprecedented level.[3] While this may have been the case, the effectiveness of the spring offensive lay, at least partly, on the scale of the attacks themselves. Thus, more divisions were often committed to an individual attack than at any time since the beginning of the war. The rapid bombardments of Allied positions and their paralysis allowed for highly trained German infantry divisions to infiltrate and eventually overwhelm the Allies to such an extent that it prevented them from launching effective counterattacks.[4] The Allied response was what would come to be known as the Hundred Days Offensive and it was highly effective in demoralizing the Germans because of the leadership of French general Ferdinand Foch, whose strategy aimed at breaking German morale; thus leading to the end of the war. This paper makes an analysis of the extent to which Foch was able to target the center of gravity (COG) of the Germans during the Hundred Days offensive.

Foch viewed the approach that was made by the Allies as one that was outdated and required a radical change in order to ensure victory. His reasoning was especially relevant following the spring offensives, which had essentially devastated the Allies, and created a real potential for defeat. It is pertinent to not that despite the difficult time that was faced by the Allies, it was not because there was no defense. On the contrary, during the spring offensives, the Germans were forced into a scenario where they had to fight through considerable defenses by the Allies before getting to open country.[5] It is only when there was the rejection of modern precepts of defense, as seen by the actions of the French 6^th Army on the Chemin des Dames,[6] that the defenses began to rapidly collapse. However, by the end of the spring offensive, the French had become wiser concerning the offensive methods employed by the Germans and it was through the advancement of this knowledge that they were able to establish counterstrategies. The latter were highly critical to ensuring that they not only able to absorb the blows sent towards them by the Germans, but also mount a flexible defense as well as undertake vigorous counterattacks, as employed in the Battle of the Matz.[7] The importance of this move can be seen through the manner through which the tide began to change against the Germans as the Allies gained momentum and rolled back most of the gains that they had made during the spring offensive.

Foch sought to ensure that the German weaknesses on the battlefield were taken advantage of as a way of ending the conflict swiftly.[8] The step that was taken by the Allies in this case was making a surprise attack against the Germans at the Marne salient.[9] It involved making sure that the Allied forces were well coordinated in such a way that they could work together in order to achieve battlefield objectives while at the same time preventing the Germans from taking on a divided opponent. Previously, the German forces had had an easier time because of the way that their opponents were divided, with the Allies fighting on their own rather than coordinating their attacks in order to overwhelm the Germans.[10] The coordinated efforts made by the Allies, as directed by Foch, proved quite significant because if showed that the Allies could be able to fight together in unison to such an extent that they were able to stretch German lines far enough that the latter became vulnerable. This vulnerability was best exploited during the Second Battle of the Marne, which was decisive because it showcased the way that the Allies could work together to such an extent that the blows that they gave to the Germans on the western front were quite significant.[11] In this way, the German fighting power in the area was destroyed; resulting in a scenario where there was the liberation of Belgium and France from occupation.

The presence of the American Expeditionary Force (AEF) was quite instrumental in making the Hundred Days campaign as well as the Allied cause.[12] Foch recognized the potential of the Americans turning the tide against the Germans, due to the recognition of the fact that the Allied forces were not only considerably depleted, especially following the spring offensive, but there was also the realization that the Germans had themselves suffered considerable casualties. This was a major weakness in the German COG because unlike the Allies, who continued to receive reinforcements from their colonies, the same could not be said of the Germans because the latter were for the most part fighting using their European resources following the occupation of its colonies.[13] The ability of the Allies to utilize colonial resources, which the Germans did not have, provided them with an edge because it allowed them to have the ability to push back the Germans despite the considerable success of the spring offensive.[14] Foch therefore decided to focus Allied efforts in ensuring that there was the promotion of a scenario where the German lines were broken on the field. Thus, it would become possible for enemy morale to be negatively affected to such an extent that it became difficult for them to fight with the same vigor shown during the spring offensive.[15] The significance of this process can be seen through the way that Allied strategy changed; resulting in a focus on making it more difficult for the Germans to make any headway on the battlefield. Therefore, the planning and execution of the Allied strategy during the Hundred Days campaign was made more effective because of the presence of the AEF, which allowed the campaign in France to achieve the desired end state.

The Allied forces had been greatly diminished because of way that they had been utilized prior to Foch taking leadership. Close to 1.5 million Americans participated in the final stages of the conflict and it was these individuals that enabled the Allies to continue fighting despite the massive losses that they had suffered during the spring offensive.[16] They provided the Allies with the morale and numbers that they needed to win the war at a time when morale was not only low, but there was the belief that the Germans were unbeatable. However, under Foch’s leadership, this attitude changed significantly because he was an individual that believed in not wasting resources. He recognized one of the German COG as being morale and sought to ensure that this was broken in order to bring the war to an end.[17] The arrival of the Americans was a welcome boon for the Allied commander because it gave an opportunity to allow for a different approach from the one that had been previously used where there was the promotion of outdated ideas such as chivalry and direct attacks over tactics. The unification of the Allied command, as well as the coordination of the forces in this camp, made it possible to catch the Germans by surprise to such an extent that morale was broken while at the same time showing that allowing flexibility in the way that troops conducted themselves actually gave better results.[18] The reinforcements from the United States were therefore highly significant since they allowed Foch to have the troops that he needed to fulfill what was a highly ambitious battle plan.

The element of surprise played an important role in destabilizing the German COG. This was used effectively by the Allies during the attack on the St Mihiel salient, which involved the only attack that was led by the Americans during the war.[19] This proved to be an easy victory because it involved a scenario where the German army was already on the retreat and did not expect to be attacked. While this may have been a fairly easy victory for the inexperienced Americans, it is important to note that this episode established this army as a formidable fighting force which could hold its own in a conflict.[20] Foch recognized this aspect of the Americans and it was for this reason that they were mainly used to support the ambitious attacks during the Battles of Meuse-Argonne that he planned.[21] This was one of the most significant contributions of the AEF during the First World War and its reinforcing the Allies during the critical undertaking of the Hundred Days campaign ensured that there was the attainment of victory. Thus, despite the massive losses incurred by the Allies in the form of troops, it is pertinent to note that the situation could have been much worse had there not been any form of coordination between the Allied forces. The British Expeditionary Force (BEF) had also gained additional forces from other campaigns of the war and during this late stages of the conflict, they proved invaluable because they allowed the Allies to field more troops that provided the setup for a victory.[22] The inexperience of the American reinforcements, for example, was covered by the change in tactics under Foch’s leadership that gave greater independence of action to troops than the disastrous hands on approach that had nearly failed the Allied cause due to the massive casualties incurred.

Foch’s approach was one that involved ensuring that enemy vulnerabilities were taken advantage of. The bataille générale strategy that he employed is an operational art that was based on his previous experiences and these were extremely pertinent because they involved looking for loopholes within the enemy defenses and seizing them without too much difficulty.[23] The previous strategy, which had been forward moving and essentially not made any tactical sense, had often led to a loss in momentum to such an extent that the enemy could not only reinforce, but also undertake a counterattack. The understanding of the failure of this strategy ensured that Foch was able to roll back the gains that the Germans had made during the spring offensive. He undertook the application of the modern combined arms doctrine, which ensured that there was a more rapid pace to the way that the Allies undertook their offensives. One of the most significant approaches in this case was the use of tanks, because of their considerable availability, which allowed the Allies to gain an edge over the German army because of the way that they were used to significantly destabilize the defense.[24] Foch’s leadership helped to bring Allied warfare into the modern world because not only was there the need to make sure that there was the promotion of effective use of troops on the battlefield, but also a tactical focus on applying a more decentralized battle strategy that allowed individual soldiers to think for themselves.

Foch’s preferment of the use of tanks by the Allies was designed to ensure that the Germans were caught by surprise. The element of surprise was significant because it ensured that the enemy could not effectively undertake a counteroffensive.[25] This is an important aspect of the targeting of the enemy COG because it ensured that the Germans were constantly destabilized in their approach to the Allies since they could not determine their intentions until it was too late. The Hundred Days offensive, especially in such undertakings as the Battle of Amiens, was one of the most significant aspects of the manner through which Foch’s approach was put into action. The battle commenced on 8 August 1918 in a morning that was covered with heavy fog, which allowed the Allies to catch the Germans by surprise.[26] The importance of this offensive was that it was so unexpected by the Germans that some of the enemy officers were captured while still taking their morning meal. The use of tanks by the Canadian and Australian corps played an important role in making sure that within hours, the Allied objectives of the battle had been reached.[27] It provided an effective opening that allowed the Allies to not only move at a faster pace, but also caused significant damage to the enemy since they were pushed back from the positions that they had previously gained. The momentum of the Germans was therefore brought to a halt by the strategy adopted by Foch, who had learned that it was best to focus on enemy weaknesses as well as causing damage to their strengths in order to leverage over them.

When on 11 August, the Allied advance was halted; there was a shift to a different part of the line. This ensured that the Germans were not allowed to regroup effectively because they ended up in a situation where they were forced to defend since they were under constant attack from the Allies.[28] The success of the Hundred Days campaign can be attributed to this new strategy because the major COG in this case were the German manpower and resources, which were targeted constantly to ensure that they were destabilized. The continuation of this pace throughout the summer and autumn of 1918 proved decisive because the German army was given little respite and were put under continual pressure by the Allies.[29] Foch sought to ensure that all the resources that kept the enemy in the war, especially manpower, faced constant depletion with little respite as a means of exhausting the Germans while at the same time demoralizing them into surrender. He recognized the importance of the troops and the manner through which they only fought well when highly motivated and failed to do so whenever they were under considerable pressure. It is also noteworthy that the increased use of tanks in the battles of the Hundred Days campaign served the dual purpose of boosting morale among the Allies and demoralizing the Germans, while at the same time allowing for a reduction in the number of casualties among the Allied forces.[30] An important objective of this new strategy was to make sure that there was the attainment of constant victories in battles which would eventually help the Allies to build the momentum they needed to win the war.

The destabilization of the German front was the main objective of the application of Foch’s offensive strategy. He aimed at making sure that the German moral was broken to such an extent that the war could be brought to a swift end. This began with the Amiens-Montdidier offensive, which was successful in forcing the Germans to withdraw to the Hindenburg Line defenses that they had occupied before March 1918.[31] Another phase of the offensive involved making sure that the Hindenburg line was targeted along the whole of the western front through concentrated blows that were struck constantly so that the Germans could not mount an operational defense that would have otherwise overwhelmed the Allies. The two ends of the front were targeted by offensives with the British targeting toward the Cambrai, a Franco-American groups attacking the Meuse-Argonne, and a Franco-Belgian-British group attacking the Germans in Flanders.[32] Therefore, despite the complexity of the Hindenburg Line defensive system that had sustained the Germans since it was built, Foch’s offensive tactics ensured that it was taken within a week;[33] a significant feat based on the cooperation between the Allies as they fought to break German momentum while strengthening their own. The importance of this move was that it allowed the Allies the opportunity to hit back against the Germans in the most devastating way possible to make them abandon the gains that they had made while also taking the war to them. Therefore, all the strategies that were employed during the Hundred Days campaign were aimed at ensuring that the objective of targeting the enemy COG was undertaken as efficiently as possible.

The application of Foch’s offensive approach which targeted German morale ensured that the battle was won during the planning process. The inclusion of such individuals as Generals Monash and Budsworth proved important in the formulation of the plan that would eventually lead to the surrender of the Germans.[34] This was borne out of a desire to attain a decisive victory against the Germans following the latter’s success during the spring offensive that had caused a lot of devastation for the Allies. Moreover, it was designed to ensure that the Germans were prevented from launching an effective offensive against the Allies since their COG was not only targeted and destabilized, but they were also put on the defensive following a string of successes that had seemed to lead to victory.[35] An important German COG that was targeted in the effort to break morale were the communication lines, whose destruction allowed the Allies to make sure that the element of surprise was used successfully in subsequent battles of the Hundred Days campaign.[36] This approach, in addition to the use of tanks, proved decisive in bringing a change in the tide of the war against the Germans. The Allies ended up gaining the upper hand following a period where they had faced imminent defeat had the Germans sought to gain a tactical advantage over their opponents during the spring offensive. However, Foch undertook to take advantage of this loophole on the part of the German command to ensure that they did not maintain a hold over their gains and within a few months had been rolled back.[37]

In conclusion, General Foch was able to target the COG of the Germans during the Hundred Days Offensive. He valued an offensive approach that ensured that following each battle, the German morale was tested. He sought to ensure that German resources were exhausted to such an extent that the enemy was forced to seek terms of surrender. In this way, the damage that was done to the Germans by the end of the war was so great that they were prevented from launching an effective offensive. Foch was therefore able to attain his objective of demoralizing the German army to such an extent that it was less willing and able to fight effectively against the Allies. His targeting of the German COG and weakening them provided the Allies with the added advantage of creating an environment within which they were able to force a conclusion to the war.

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[1] Gregory Blaxland, Amiens 1918. War in the Twentieth Century (W. H. Allen, 1981), 25.

[2] William Philpott, "Warfare 1914 - 1918," International Encyclopedia of the First World War, https://encyclopedia.1914-1918-online.net/pdf/1914-1918-Online-warfare_1914-1918-2014-10-08.pdf.

[3] Robin Prior and Trevor Wilson, "For the German High Command, War on the Eastern Front in 1916 Was," The Oxford Illustrated History of the First World War: New Edition  (2014): 179.

[4] Giordan Fong, "The Movement of German Divisions to the Western Front, Winter 1917-1918," War in History 7, no. 2 (2000): 225.

[5] Chad G Clark, "Trampled Underfoot: The Story of Attack Aviation in the German Spring Offensives of 1918," Air Power History 45, no. 2 (1998): 16.

[6] TE Compton, "Chemin Des Dames, 27th May, 1918, the Collapse of the Defence of The," The RUSI Journal 67 (1922): 483.

[7] Tim Gale, "The French Army’s Tank Force and Armoured Warfare in the Great War," The Artillerie Spéciale, Farnham  (2013): 37.

[8] Michael S Neiberg, The Second Battle of the Marne (Indiana University Press, 2008), 7.

[9] Ibid., 81.

[10] Stephen A Clark, "Interagency Coordination: Strengthening the Link between Operational Art and the Desired End State," (NAVAL WAR COLL NEWPORT RI JOINT MILITARY OPERATIONS DEPT, 1999), 4.

[11] Elizabeth Greenhalgh, Foch in Command: The Forging of a First World War General (Cambridge University Press, 2011), 376.

[12] David F Trask, The Aef and Coalition Warmaking, 1917-1918 (Univ Pr of Kansas, 1993), 8.

[13] Jacqueline Jenkinson, "‘All in the Same Uniform’? The Participation of Black Colonial Residents in the British Armed Forces in the First World War," The Journal of Imperial and Commonwealth History 40, no. 2 (2012): 207.

[14] John D Grainger, The Battle for Palestine 1917 (Boydell Press, 2006), 151; Joan Beaumont, "‘Unitedly We Have Fought’: Imperial Loyalty and the Australian War Effort," International Affairs 90, no. 2 (2014): 397.

[15] Brian K Feltman, "Tolerance as a Crime? The British Treatment of German Prisoners of War on the Western Front, 1914-1918," War in history 17, no. 4 (2010): 435; Ryan Grauer, "Why Do Soldiers Give Up? A Self-Preservation Theory of Surrender," Security Studies 23, no. 3 (2014): 622.

[16] James W Rainey, "The Questionable Training of the Aef in World War I," The US Army War College Quarterly: Parameters 22, no. 1 (1992): 23.

[17] Wiliam Philpott, "Enduring the Great War: Combat, Morale and Collapse in the German and British Armies, 1914–1918," The English Historical Review 125, no. 515 (2010): 1036.

[18] Bernard Wasserstein, Barbarism and Civilization: A History of Europe in Our Time (Oxford University Press, 2009), 93.

[19] Hugh Cecil and Peter Liddle, Facing Armageddon: The First World War Experience (Pen and Sword, 2003), 309.

[20] James A Vohr, "American Observers on the Battlefields of the Western Front and the Tactical Evolution of the American Expeditionary Forces in World War I," (MARINE CORPS COMMAND AND STAFF COLL QUANTICO VA, 2001), 1.

[21] Justin G Prince, "Artillery in the Meuse_Argonne," A Companion to the Meuse-Argonne Campaign 75 (2014): 340.

[22] Matthew R Prescott, "Failing to Exploit Success: The British Army at Cambrai," (US Army School for Advanced Military Studies Fort Leavenworth United States, 2018), 1.

[23] Matthew Hughes and William J Philpott, "Foch’s Advance to Victory—the ‘Hundred Days’," in The Palgrave Concise Historical Atlas of the First World War (Springer, 2005), 86.

[24] Frank Eastwood, "Lieutenant-General Sir John Monash: An Engineer on the Battlefield," Chemistry in Australia, no. Aug 2014 (2014): 26; Anthony Livesey and HP Willmott, The Historical Atlas of World War I (H. Holt, 1994), 1.

[25] Brendan Hogan, "“Our Artillery Would Smash It All Up:” Canadian Artillery During the Battle of the Somme, September-November 1916," Canadian Military History 26, no. 2 (2017): 15.

[26] Wilhelm Deist and Edgar Joseph Feuchtwanger, "The Military Collapse of the German Empire: The Reality Behind the Stab-in-the-Back Myth," War in History 3, no. 2 (1996): 186.

[27] John Frederick Bligh Livesay, Canada's Hundred Days: With the Canadian Corps from Amiens to Mons, Aug. 8-Nov. 11, 1918 (Thomas Allen, 1919), 20; Major RE Priestley, Breaking the Hindenburg Line: The Story of the 46th (North Midland) Division (Andrews UK Limited, 2012), 97.

[28] Alan Kramer, "With Our Backs to the Wall: Victory and Defeat in 1918, by David Stevenson," The English Historical Review 127, no. 524 (2012): 216.

[29] Scott Stephenson, "Shock Army of the British Empire: The Canadian Corps in the Last 100 Days of the Great War," Military Review 78, no. 6 (1998): 79.

[30] David Borys, "Crossing the Canal: Combined Arms Operations at the Canal Du Nord, Sept–Oct 1918," Canadian Military History 20, no. 4 (2011): 3.

[31] Jonathan Boff, "The Morale Maze: The German Army in Late 1918," Journal of Strategic Studies 37, no. 6-7 (2014): 856.

[32] Hughes and Philpott, 86.

[33] Jackson Hughes, "The Battle for the Hindenburg Line," War & Society 17, no. 2 (1999): 41.

[34] Simon Robbins, British Generalship on the Western Front 1914-1918: Defeat into Victory (Routledge, 2004), 135.

[35] Marcus Fielding, "The Guns of August 1918: The Allied Counter-Offensive in the Somme Sector," United Service 69, no. 2 (2018): 15.

[36] HH Sargent, "The Strategy on the Western Front: Iii," The North American Review 209, no. 761 (1919): 502; AV Gompertz, "The Battle of the Somme," Professional Memoirs, Corps of Engineers, United States Army, and Engineer Department at Large 10, no. 50 (1918): 229.

[37] Michiko Phifer, A Handbook of Military Strategy and Tactics (Vij Books India Pvt Ltd, 2012), 15.