21 March in military history: German spring offensive begins, 1918

21 March 1918 · 108 years ago

Racing the Americans

The collapse of Russia let Germany bring the great bulk of its divisions from the Eastern Front to the West. The German command wanted to strike before the Americans could arrive in force; Ludendorff wrote that if the first attack failed, the next would depend "upon the rate of arrival and value of the Americans".¹

Ludendorff chose to attack the British on both sides of St Quentin, hoping to separate the bulk of the British Army from the French. Haig had expected an attack aimed at separating the French and British armies and at Amiens.²

General Gough's Fifth Army held about 42 miles of front. Haig wrote that its three defensive belts had been built or were nearly finished; Edmonds, the British official historian, judged that they existed "practically only on the Staff maps".³

Gas and high explosive

The bombardment opened at about 4.40 a.m. on 21 March, according to the British and Australian official histories; Haig's despatch says shortly before 5, and Ludendorff just before 4. It fell with gas and high explosive on the British Fifth and Third Armies from the Oise to the Scarpe. The Germans had planned it to last only five hours, and in some sectors it went on until about 9.35 a.m..⁴

Into the fog

Thick fog lay over the battlefield, and the German infantry broke into the British forward zone, overwhelming or surrounding the outposts. The attack struck a front of about 50 miles; Haig gives fifty-four.⁵

Whom the fog helped is disputed. Edmonds judged that the German infantry "does not appear to have been hampered by the fog", while Ludendorff wrote that it "impeded and retarded our movements".⁶

Many of the Fifth Army's forward battalions ceased to exist as units on the first day, and within eight days, the American Battle Monuments Commission writes, the Fifth Army had been practically destroyed.⁷

Short of Amiens

On 26 March, at Doullens, General Ferdinand Foch was charged with coordinating the action of the Allied armies on the Western Front. By early April the offensive had been stopped short of Amiens, which the Germans never took. The Allied counteroffensive that ended the war is told in our articles on the Hundred Days Offensive and on how World War I ended.⁸

Also on 21 March: Alexandria, 1801

On 21 March 1801, before Alexandria in Egypt, a French army attacked Sir Ralph Abercromby's British army before daylight and was beaten off. Abercromby was wounded and died on 28 March aboard Lord Keith's flagship, the Foudroyant. Hutchinson reported the French loss at upwards of 3,000 killed, wounded and prisoners; Wilson, in his history of the expedition, put it at about 4,000.⁹