Everything about Battle Of Amiens totally explained
The
Battle of Amiens, which began on
8 August 1918, was the opening phase of the
Allied offensive later known as the
Hundred Days Offensive that ultimately led to the end of
World War I. Allied forces advanced over seven
miles on the first day, one of the greatest advances of the war. The battle is also notable for its effects on both sides' morale and the large number of
surrendering German forces. This led
Erich Ludendorff to famously describe the first day of the battle as "the black day of the German Army." Amiens was one of the first major battles involving
armoured warfare and marked the end of
trench warfare on the
Western Front; fighting becoming mobile once again until
the armistice was signed on
11 November 1918.
Prelude
On
21 March 1918, the
German Empire had launched
Operation Michael, the first in a series of attacks planned to drive the Allies back along the length of the Western Front. Michael was intended to defeat the right wing of the
British Expeditionary Force, but lack of success before
Arras ensured the ultimate failure of the offensive. A final effort was aimed at the town of
Amiens, a vital
railway junction, but the advance had been halted at
Villers-Bretonneux by the Australians on
4 April. Subsequent German offensives —
Operation Georgette (
9 April-
11 April),
Operation Blücher-Yorck (
27 May),
Operation Gneisenau (
9 June) and
Operation Marne-Rheims (
15 July—
17 July) — all made advances elsewhere on the Western Front, but failed to achieve a decisive breakthrough.
At the end of the Marne-Rheims offensive, Allied commander
Maréchal Ferdinand Foch ordered a
counteroffensive which led to the
Second Battle of the Marne. The Germans, recognising their untenable position, withdrew from the
Marne to the north. Foch now tried to move the Allies back onto the offensive.
Plan
Foch disclosed his plan on
23 July 1918 following the German retreat that had begun on
20 July. The plan called for reducing the
Saint-Mihiel salient (which would later see combat in the
Battle of Saint-Mihiel) and liberating the
railroad lines that ran through Amiens.
The commander of the British Expeditionary Force,
Field Marshal Sir Douglas Haig, already had plans in place for an attack near Amiens. When the British retreat had ended in April, the headquarters of
British Fourth Army under General
Sir Henry Rawlinson had taken over the front astride the
Somme. North of the river were
British III Corps under Lieutenant General Richard Butler, while south of the river were the
Australian Corps under
Sir John Monash. (On
May 30, all the Australian infantry divisions were united under the Corps HQ, for the first time on the Western Front). The Australians had mounted a number of local counter-attacks which both revealed the suitability of the open and firm terrain south of the Somme for a larger offensive and also established and refined the methods which were to be used.
Rawlinson had submitted Monash's proposals to Haig in July and Haig had forwarded them to Foch. At a meeting on
July 24, Foch agreed to the plan but insisted that the
French First Army, which held the front to the south of the British Fourth Army, should participate. Rawlinson had opposed this as his and Monash's plans depended on the large-scale use of tanks to achieve surprise and make preliminary bombardment unnecessary. The French First Army lacked tanks and would be forced to bombard the German positions before the infantry advance began, thus removing the element of surprise. Eventually, it was agreed that the French would participate, but not launch their attack until 45 minutes after Fourth Army.
A key factor in the final plan was secrecy. There was to be no pre-battle bombardment, only artillery fire immediately prior to the advance of Australian, Canadian, and British forces.
On a larger scale, the Allies had successfully moved the Canadian Corps of four infantry divisions to Amiens without them being detected by the Germans. A detachment from the Corps of two infantry battalions, a wireless unit and a casualty clearing station had been sent to the front near
Ypres to bluff the Germans that the entire Corps was moving north to Flanders. The Corps wasn't fully in position until
August 7. To maintain secrecy, the Allies commanders pasted the notice "Keep Your Mouth Shut" into orders issued to the men, and never used the actual word "offensive".
Preliminaries
Although the Germans were still on the offensive in late July 1918, the Allied armies were growing in strength, as more American units arrived in France, and British reinforcements were transferred from the
Mediterranean. The German commanders realized in early August that their forces might be forced on the defensive, though Amiens wasn't considered to be a likely front. The Germans believed the French would probably attack the Saint-Mihiel front east of
Reims, or in Flanders near
Mount Kemmel, while they believed the British would attack along either the
Lys or near
Albert. The Allies had indeed mounted a number of local counter-offensives in these sectors, both to gain local objectives to improve their defensive positions and to distract attention from the Amiens sector. German forces began to withdraw from the Lys and other fronts in response to these theories. The Allies maintained equal artillery and air fire along their various fronts, moving troops only at night, and faking movements during the day to mask their actual intent.
The German front east of Amiens was held by their Second Army under General
Georg von der Marwitz, with six divisions in line (and two facing the French 1st Army). There were only two divisions in immediate reserve. There was some concern among the Allies on
August 6 when the
German 27th Division actually attacked north of the Somme on part of the front on which the Allies planned to attack two days later. The German division (a specially selected and trained
Stosstruppen formation) penetrated roughly into the one-and-a-half mile front. This attack was made in retaliation for the repeated Australian trench raids south of the Somme which had gained many prisoners and affected the morale of the "Trench" divisions the Germans had stationed there. The German division moved somewhat back to its original position on the morning of
August 7, but the movement still required changes to the Allied plan.
Battle
The battle began in dense
fog at 4:20 AM on
8 August 1918. Under Rawlinson's Fourth Army, the British III Corps attacked north of the Somme, the Australian Corps to the south of the river in the centre of Fourth Army's front, and the Canadian Corps to the south of the Australians. The French 1st Army under General Debeney opened its preliminary bombardment at the same time, and began its advance 45 minutes later, supported by a battalion of 72
Whippet tanks. and not because they'd learned of the preplanned Allied attack. Although the two forces were within of one another,
gas bombardment was very low, as the bulk of the Allied presence was unknown to the Germans. The attack was so unexpected that German forces only began to return fire after five minutes, and even then at the positions where the Allied forces had assembled at the start of the battle and had long since left.
In the first phase, seven divisions attacked: the British
18th (Eastern) and
58th (2/1st London), the Australian
2nd and
3rd, and the Canadian
1st,
2nd and
3rd. The Canadian and Australian attackers were supported by eight battalions of the Royal Tank Corps, with a paper strength of 216
Mark V and 72
Mark V*, with 48 unarmed tanks used as supply-carrying tractors. Parts of the American 33rd Division supported the British attackers north of the Somme.
The attackers captured the first German position, advancing about by about 7:30 AM. The Fourth Army's casualties, British, Australian and Canadian infantry, were approximately 8,800, exclusive of tank and air losses and their French allies.
German Army
Chief of Staff Paul von Hindenburg noted the Allies' use of surprise and that Allied destruction of German lines of communication had hampered potential German counter-attacks by isolating command positions. The German general
Erich Ludendorff described the first day of Amiens as ("the black day of the German Army"), not because of the ground lost to the advancing Allies, but because the
morale of the German troops had sunk to the point where large numbers of troops began to capitulate. and the initial force of more than 500 tanks that played a large role in the Allied success. The Germans on Chipilly Spur commanded a wide field of fire to the south of the Somme, and their flanking fire held up the Australian Corps until late on the 9th, when a small Australian party slipped across the river, and captured the village of Chipilly itself, together with a renewed attack by III Corps. On the Canadian front, congested roads and communication problems prevented the
British 32nd Division being pushed forward rapidly enough to maintain the momentum of the advance.
On
10 August, there were signs that the Germans were pulling out of the
salient from Operation Michael. According to official reports, the Allies had captured nearly 50,000 prisoners and 500 guns by
27 August. Even with the lessened armour the British drove into German positions by
13 August.
[
]Aftermath
The Battle of Amiens was a major turning point in the tempo of the war. The Germans had started the offensive with the Schlieffen Plan before the war devolved into trench warfare, the Race to the Sea slowed movement on the Western Front, and the German Spring Offensive earlier that year had once again given Germany the offensive edge on the Western Front. Armoured support helped the Allies tear a hole through trench lines, weakening once impregnable trench positions. The British Third army with no armored support had almost no effect on the line while the Fourth with less than a thousand tanks broke deep into German territory, for example.
British war correspondent Philip Gibbs noted Amiens' effect on the war's tempo, saying on 27 August that "the enemy...is on the defensive" and "the initiative of attack is so completely in our hands that we're able to strike him at many different places." Gibbs also credits Amiens with a shift in troop morale, saying "the change has been greater in the minds of men than in the taking of territory. On our side the army seems to be buoyed up with the enormous hope of getting on with this business quickly" and that "there is a change also in the enemy's mind. They no longer have even a dim hope of victory on this western front. All they hope for now is to defend themselves long enough to gain peace by negotiation."[Further Information]
Get more info on 'Battle Of Amiens'.
|
External Link Exchanges
Do you know how hard it is to get a link from a large encyclopaedia? Well we're different and will prove it. To get a link from us just add the following HTML to your site on a relevant page:
<a href="http://battle_of_amiens.totallyexplained.com">Battle of Amiens Totally Explained</a>
Then simply click through this link from your web page. Our crawlers will verify your link, extract the title of your web page and instantly add a link back to it. If you like you can remove the words Totally Explained and embed the link in article text.
As long as your link remains in place, we'll keep our link to you right here. Please play fair - our crawlers are watching. Your site must be closely related to this one's topic. Any kind of spamming, dubious practises or removing the link will result in your link from us being dropped and, potentially, your whole site being banned. |
