Military Review of the Greatest Battle in History From March 21 to April
17, 1918 On March 21 the Germans began the great battle which military
experts of both sides believe may decide the war. What was indicated in
broad lines was that they wished to reach the Channel by way of the
Somme and thereby isolate most of the British Army and the entire
Belgian and Portuguese Armies in the north. A corollary to such an
isolation would have been a movement south on Paris.
As to the narrower lines of the German military plan, however, they
became clear. The Germans struck from points where their railways
allowed them the greatest possible concentration of troops and at points
where the lines of the Allies, owing to the uncompleted battles of
Flanders and Cambrai and the failures at Lens, St. Quentin, and La Fère
last year, were relatively weak or could be out-manoeuvred with superior
force of men and material.
In the first phase of the battle, which carried the enemy down the Somme
and its southern tributary, the Avre, to within six miles of Amiens, and
to within forty-six miles of the Channel, they first eliminated the
Cambrai salient so as to protect their northern flank and then
concentrated their attack between St. Quentin and La Fère, near the
point where the French and the British Armies joined. The flanks of the
great salient thereby developed, however, made dangerous further
progress down the Somme. On the north it was threatened by the Arras
salient with its protecting ridge of Vimy; on the south by the watershed
of the Oise and Aisne.
Frontal attacks to eliminate the Arras salient and the, Oise-Aisne
watershed having failed, a flanking movement against the former, which
should also have strategic ramifications further north, followed as a
matter of military expediency. Thus on April 9 the second phase began.
Again they sought the line of cleavage between two armies, where
differences of language and tactics made military cohesion
difficult--between the British and the Portuguese on the Lille front. A
successful penetration of this front for a distance of ten miles would
have placed the enemy on the left-rear of Vimy Ridge in the south, and
in the north on the right-rear of Messines Ridge, which protects Ypres,
the capture of which by the British a year ago had made the subsequent
battle of Flanders and their occupation of Passchendaele in the
direction of Roulers possible.
In other words, Vimy Ridge bears the same relation to Arras that
Messines and its contiguous hills do to Ypres, but while the former
ridge also flanks the great German salient stretching down to the Oise,
the latter ridge flanks from the southeast the British salient at Ypres
developed by the battle of Flanders.
In this second phase of the great battle the German penetration, through
military design or expediency, has so far been developed in the
direction of Ypres; not in the direction of Arras.