13 - Cantigny

Summary

By the previous standards of trench warfare on the Western Front Ludendorff’s offensives in March and April had been great successes. His armies twice broke through the British front and rapidly advanced across open terrain. But the semi-mobility achieved by the rupture of the British front could not be maintained, and these break-ins could not be converted to a break-out. Slow-moving and often unreliable tanks (of which the Germans had few) could not maintain the momentum of the drive. Nor could mounted soldiers who were extremely vulnerable to machine guns. Cratered battlefields made the forward movement of big guns difficult, and infantry proved helpless once it got beyond the range of its own artillery. Logistics also played a central role as German troops marched well beyond their railheads. As infantry outdistanced its artillery and supplies these offensives lost their momentum and inevitably ground to a halt. The will of the British remained unbroken.

As his casualties mounted, Ludendorff’s position began to appear untenable. “He had become a typical chair-borne general who conducted operations from an office desk,” concluded Walter Goerlitz. “Clausewitz had designated strategy as the art of applying available means. Ludendorff could no longer distinguish between what was possible and what was not. Everything was possible if you barked out the order for it in a loud, gruff tone of voice.” His offensives created bulges in the enemy’s front but they also created vulnerable salients his own troops had to defend. Occupying makeshift defenses along an expanded front with precarious flanks, his armies were now much more vulnerable than previously when they occupied the strongest defensive positions on the Western Front.