Battle of Amiens | |||||||
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Part of World War I | |||||||
Amiens, the key to the west by Arthur Streeton, 1918. | |||||||
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Belligerents | |||||||
United Kingdom, France, Canada, Australia | Germany | ||||||
Commanders and leaders | |||||||
Henry Rawlinson | Georg von der Marwitz | ||||||
Strength | |||||||
4 Aus. divisions, 4 Can. divisions, 2+ British divisions, 534 tanks | 6 divisions | ||||||
Casualties and losses | |||||||
22,200 | 74,000 |
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 led ultimately to the end of World War I. The Australian and Canadian divisions that spearheaded the attack managed to advance over eight miles on the first day, one of the greatest advances of the war. Amiens was one of the first major battles involving armoured warfare and marked the end of trench warfare on the Western Front with fighting becoming mobile once again until the armistice was signed on November 11th, 1918.
Prelude
On 21 March, 1918, Germany 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 (BEF), 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.[1] Subsequent German offensives — Operation Georgette (9–11 April), Operation Blücher-Yorck (27 May), Operation Gneisenau (9 June) and Operation Marne-Rheims (15—17 July) — had made advances but failed to achieve a decisive breakthrough.[2][3]
When the Marne-Rheims offensive petered out the Allied supreme commander, French Field Marshal Ferdinand Foch, ordered a counter-offensive which became 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 offense and he agreed on a proposal by the commander of the BEF, Field Marshal Sir Douglas Haig, to strike on the Somme, east of Amiens and southwest of the 1916 battlefield of the Battle of the Somme.
The Somme was chosen as a suitable site for the offensive for a number of reasons. As in 1916, it marked the boundary between the BEF and the French armies, in this case defined by the Amiens-Roye road, allowing the two armies to cooperate. Also the Picardy countryside provided a good surface for tanks, which was not the case in Flanders. Finally, the German defences, manned by the German Second Army of General Georg von der Marwitz, were relatively weak, having been subjected to continual raiding by the Australians in a process termed Peaceful Penetration.
The plan
Just before, the Australian General John Monash had won a devastating lightning attack in the Battle of Hamel. He used a number of novel tactics designed to protect the infantry, e.g. aerial support such as parachute drops of supplies, and tank cover such as creeping barrage. Hamel itself had a relatively small number of casualties, but the plan was to be scaled up considerably.
The initial attack would be made by the British Fourth Army, commanded by General Sir Henry Rawlinson, who had also been in command on 1 July 1916, the disastrous first day on the Somme when the British army suffered nearly 60,000 casualties.
The British went to great lengths to deceive the Germans as to their intentions and achieve surprise. On this occasion there would be no preliminary bombardment. The massed artillery would open fire at zero hour, at the same time as the infantry advanced. The movement and assembly of tanks was drowned out by low flying aircraft. The British had concentrated 324 Mark IV and Mark V battle tanks, 184 supply tanks and two battalions of light (14 ton) Medium Mark A "Whippet" tanks.[4]
An elaborate deception was carried out to make the Germans believe the veteran Canadian Corps were elsewhere. A Canadian unit made itself obvious at Ypres and faked radio signals were used to suggest the corps was near Calais. The corps was secretly transported from Arras and was in position east of Amiens without the Germans being aware.
The battle
The battle began in dense fog at 4:20 AM on 8 August.[4] From north to south the attacking formations of the Fourth Army were the British III Corps (north of the Somme), the Australian Corps and the Canadian Corps. The French First Army would keep contact in the south before making its own attack later.[1]
In the first phase seven divisions attacked, the British 18th (Eastern) and 58th (2/1st London) divisions, the Australian 2nd and 3rd divisions, and the 1st, 2nd and 3rd Canadian divisions. These troops were to capture the first German position, advancing about 4000 yards, an objective they had reached by about 7:30 AM.[4]
In the centre, the leading divisions had been followed up by supporting units who would move through to attack the second objective a further two miles distant. Australian units had reached their first objectives by 7:10 AM, and by 8:20 AM the Australian 4th and 5th and the Canadian 4th divisions moved off, passing through the initial hole torn in the German line.[4] The fog was now dissipating and the troops were confronted with a spectacular view of tanks, cavalry and lines of advancing infantry. Many German gun positions had been overrun but surviving guns now engaged the tanks, knocking many of them out.
The third phase of the attack was to have been performed by infantry-carrying tanks (Mark V* type) however the infantry were able to carry out this final step unaided.[4] The Allies had penetrated well to the rear of the German defences and cavalry now continued the advance, one brigade in the Australian sector and two cavalry divisions in the Canadian sector. Allied forces harassed German postions throughout the advance, RAF and armored car fire kept retreating Germans from rallying.[4]
By the end of the advance, a gap 15 miles long had been punched in the German line south of the Somme. The Fourth Army had taken 13,000 prisoners (8,000 by the Australians, 5,000 by the Canadians) while the French had taken a further 3,000. The Australians also captured 173 guns and the Canadians 161. Total German losses were estimated to be 30,000 on 8 August while the Allies suffered about 6,500 killed, wounded and missing.[5]
The advance would continue for three more days but without the spectacular results of 8 August as the rapid progress had outrun the supporting artillery.[6] Trench warfare had stopped most offensives on the Western Front for exactly this reason, that constant force could not be applied to a vulnerable point. On 10 August there were signs that the Germans were pulling out of the Michael salient.
Conclusion
The German commander-in-chief, General Erich Ludendorff, described August 8 1918 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.[1] Amiens was also a turning point in the tempo of the war. The Germans had started the offensive before the war devolved into trench warfare with the Schlieffen Plan. Then after the Race to the Sea the Western Front line moved very little for several years. Finally the German Spring Offensive earlier that year had once again given Germany the offensive edge on the Western Front. Armored 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.[1]
References
- ^ a b c d Historical Atlas of World War I. Anthony Livesey, Henry Holt and Company: New York. 1994
- ^ The Defeat of Imperial Germany 1917-1918. Rod Paschall, Algonquin Books of Chapel Hill: Chapel Hill, North Carolina. 1989
- ^ Kaiserschlat 1918 – The Final German Offensive. Randal Gray, Grolier Educational: Danbury, Connecticut. 1997
- ^ a b c d e f The British Army in the Great War: Battle of Amiens
- ^ Chronicles of World War One, Volume II: 1917-1921. Randal Gray, Facts on File: New York. 1991.
- ^ Australians in France - The Battle of Amiens
Suggested Reading
- Christie, Norm. For King & Empire, The Canadians at Amiens, August 1918. CEF Books, 1999
- Dancocks, Daniel G. Spearhead to Victory – Canada and the Great War. Hurtig Publishers, 1987
- McWilliams, James and Steel, R. James. Amiens – Dawn of Victory. Dundurn Press 2001
- Schreiber, Shane B. Shock Army of the British Empire – The Canadian Corps in the Last 100 Days of the Great War. Vanwell Publishing Limited, 2004