Even as Pershing had been preparing and launching this first big American attack, Foch’s original plan had been growing by bounds. No longer was the offensive to be confined to a British strike along the Somme and an American drive on M?zi?res. The new plan also included a Belgian-British-French attack along the Lys and French attacks in between British and Americans. It was to be a grand assault all along the front?said Foch: “Tout le monde ? la bataille!”. The aim was to cut the enemy’s rail line at M?zi?res and Aulnoye, the latter in front of the British, and thereby force the Germans to retire inside their frontier before winter set in. For the offensive Foch had 220 divisions?160 in line, 60 in reserve. They included 42 of the big American divisions, although some of these had only recently arrived and Pershing would be forced to cannibalize others to obtain replacements. Ten American divisions would still serve with British and French armies. Assisted by the French Fourth Army on the left, the American attack was to begin first, on September 26. It posed a tremendous logistical effort involving rapid transfer of some 800,000 men, 200,000 French moving out of the new American sector west of Verdun, and 600,000 Americans moving in.
That it was completed in secrecy and in time for the jump-off was attributable in large measure to the planning of a young officer on Pershing’s staff, Col. George C. Marshall. Again the British and French furnished most of the artillery and tanks (190 French lights) and some of the 800 aircraft supporting the attack. The terrain over which the advance was to pass was studded with natural and man-made obstacles. From high ground east of the Meuse River, which formed the right boundary for the attack, and from densely wooded high ground of the Argonne Forest in the left of the attack zone, German eyes could look down on much of the battlefield; and in the center, between the forest and the river, the Germans held a hogback ridge replete with fortified spurs and stone-walled villages. The Germans had established three lines with trenches, barbed wire, deep dugouts, and concrete fighting posts, while a fourth was under construction farther back. Particularly formidable were strongpoints at Montfaucon, Cunel, and Barricourt. In a sector approximately twenty miles wide, Pershing massed three corps, each to employ two divisions forward, one in reserve. With a superiority in men of 8 to 1, he hoped to make the ten miles through the first three German positions in one sustained drive.
The Term Paper on World War Planes British Germans
Weaponry, Ground, Air and Water Warfare in WWI World War I was called the Great War because so many countries were involved, and advanced weaponry was developed. The British and the Germans were the ranking pioneers in weapons development. All the countries that participated in the war used different types of attacking methods to destroy their enemies. The weapons that determined the outcome of ...
The infantry began to advance before daylight after a 3-hour artillery bombardment. Achieving surprise, they caught the Germans with only four divisions in the line. General Bullard’s III Corps on the right pushed five miles through both the first and second German positions, but General Cameron’s V Corps in the center ground to a halt before the bristling defenses of Montfaucon, and General Liggett’s I Corps on the left could advance little more than a mile through the thick, almost trackless Argonne Forest. During the next few days, the troops plodded slowly forward, at last carrying Montfaucon and putting the V Corps through the second German line, but progress amid the trees and dank ravines of the Argonne Forest still was slow. Flanking fire from east of the Meuse and from uncleared portions of the Argonne harried units on the right and in the center. Most of the supporting tanks succumbed to the usual troubles of mud and mechanical failure. Congestion and muddy roads hampered resupply. Most serious of all was the inexperience of the troops, for having used his experienced divisions in the St. Mihiel salient Pershing had had to withhold them from the first assault.
Units got lost, message traffic broke down, some commanders failed. Any hope that an advance by the French Fourth Army on the left might unhinge the Germans in front of the U.S. troops went for naught, for the French were making no more rapid gains. As September came to an end, Pershing had no choice but to pause to reorganize. Elsewhere on the Western Front, progress was, with one exception, not much more encouraging. The Belgian-French-British effort on the Lys bogged down in rain and mud, as had every offensive in that region, while the French in the center of the Allied line were not to begin their attack until British and Americans on their flanks had driven deep enough to threaten the Germans opposite them with entrapment. Only the British along the Somme provided any indication of decisive success, scoring a deep penetration of the Hindenburg Line with the help of the 27th and 30th Divisions of the U.S. II Corps. The penetration was soon expanded to create a gap all the way through the fortifications, but the effort left British troops temporarily spent. Despite the disappointing progress of the grand offensive from an Allied viewpoint, it was enough to start a collapse within the German High Command.
The Essay on ‘Lions led by donkeys’ How accurate is this assessment of the British army on the western front in the First World War?
How accurate is this assessment of the British army on the western front in the First World War? The statement ‘lions led by donkeys’ means that there were brave soldiers led by incompetent generals. The statement blames the generals for the number of lives lost, although England did eventually win. The statement is therefore untrue as the generals fulfilled their duty as their army and country ...
On September 28, Ludendorff mused at such length on the miseries besetting him that he worked himself into a rage, foamed at the mouth, and fell to the floor. That evening he called on Hindenburg. The situation, the two agreed, was infinitely worse than in August when they had first urged the kaiser to seek peace, advice that had produced no results. They had no alternative now but to agree to surrender all conquered territory in the west and try to negotiate a peace on the basis of President Wilson’s Fourteen Points. On October 4 the German chancellor cabled Wilson asking for an armistice. Without informing the Allied governments, Wilson answered with a request for clarification. The German chancellor replied on October 12 that the Germans agreed to all Fourteen Points; but by this time word of the peace feeler had reached the French and British, who for their part were in no mood to accept Wilson’s unilateral actions. Furthermore, Ludendorff himself had recovered from his convulsive fit, had seen that the Allied offensive had imposed no rout, and had come to believe the Germans could get terms that would allow them to withdraw behind their own frontier, reorganize their armies, and resist any peace proposals they deemed unacceptable.
The Essay on Otto Von Bismarck Germany German Army
Otto von Bismarck was a very important and influential person in the history of Germany, as well as the rest of Europe. He used his position and influences to change the course of German history. Bismarck greatly changed Germany, unified his country, and strengthened it. Bismarck wanted to see Germany united, under Prussian rule. Germany was, at that time, divided into many small states, making it ...
Yet events were taking place that were destined to tie Ludendorff’s hands and harden Wilson’s resolve. Not the least of these were continued fierce German resistance and the revelation, in those areas where the Germans were forced to retire, of wanton destruction and a barbaric disregard for human life more flagrant than those excesses of 1917 when they had left behind a wasteland in retiring into the Hindenburg Line. On the Meuse-Argonne front, Pershing’s First Army renewed its offensive on October 4 after inserting experienced divisions into the line, but during the brief pause in operations Ludendorff had brought in reinforcements. The fight to clear the rest of the Argonne Forest and pierce the third German line progressed no more swiftly than before. In the Argonne a “lost battalion’, of the 77th Division was surrounded for five days before other troops could break through to free 194 survivors out of an original 600. In the Argonne, too, an American patrol took about 75 Germans by surprise and was herding them toward the rear when German machine gunners opened fire, killing and wounding 9 out of 17 in the patrol. When a German lieutenant led a charge aimed at the survivors, Pfc.
Alvin C. York, a Tennessee sharpshooter, cut down 15 Germans one by one until at last surviving members of this group too surrendered. When a count could be taken, it revealed that York had captured 132 of the enemy. To dispense with the troublesome German flanking fire from heights on the other side of the Meuse, General Pershing broadened his attack to include the east bank. To control that phase, Pershing created the Second Army under General Bullard. Relinquishing command of the First Army to General Liggett, Pershing himself moved up to the level of army group. Despite the added strength on the east bank, the fight continued slow and costly, for Ludendorff looked on the offensive as such a threat to the vital railroad through M?zi?res that he eventually committed 27 of his reserve divisions to this sector. Some help developed on the left when on October 5 the U.S. 2d Division, attacking with the French, captured high ground known as Blanc Mont, prompting a slow German withdrawal before the Fourth Army back to the Aisne River. On the 10th, the I Corps finally cleared the last of the Argonne Forest, but bitter fighting continued through the rest of the month for the fortified hills between the forest and the Meuse.
The Essay on Becoming A Soldier Army Commander Day
Becoming a soldier The clock was ringing so loudly, it was like he was actually screaming at me. I reached my hand and slapped it. I did not want the night to be over already. I knew that this morning would be very long and grueling, the morning that I have been waiting for in a great fear for several months. It was the morning I was drafted to the army. In Israel, every boy and girl who reaches ...
Not until the last day of October was the third German position broken all along the line. The British in the meantime had renewed their offensive, driving forward inexorably as the Germans fell back grudgingly from one prepared position to another. It was in this section that much of the evidence of German destruction and barbarity was found. At the same time, continuing activities of the U-boats also helped to crystallize Allied resolve. On the 10th, a submarine torpedoed a passenger steamer off the coast of Ireland with a loss of 300 lives. A few days later another U-boat sank an Irish mail boat taking the lives of 520 passengers, mostly women and children. Affected by the public outcry over these incidents, President Wilson made clear in his reply to the second German note that the Allied military leaders would set the terms of the armistice, that there was no other way to deal with a government that persisted in illegal and inhumane acts. The note concluded that if the United States had to deal “with the military masters and the monarchial autocrats of Germany now, or if it is likely to have to deal with them later in regard to the international obligations of the German Empire, it must demand, not peace negotiations but surrender.” Confidence restored, Ludendorff called on his government to reject the terms; but the government was by this time listening to the voices of a disillusioned people, the noise of riots in the streets, and to the threat of Marxist revolution.
On October 27 the kaiser dismissed Ludendorff, who repaired in disguise to Sweden, and events strode swiftly toward a climax. The German naval commander tried to take the High Seas Fleet to sea in a last bid for glory, but the crews mutinied and brought the ships back into port with revolutionary flags flying. Revolutionary councils formed among the soldiers in the trenches. Bulgaria in late September had already dropped out of the war; Turkey followed on October 30; Austria-Hungary on November 3. On November 6 Ludendorff’s successor, General Wilhelm Groener, urged the government to conclude an armistice within three days or face chaos. All along the front, meanwhile, the Allied armies had renewed their offensives in what became a general advance. In the far north two U.S. divisions?the 37th and 91st?fought with the Belgian-French-British force under the Belgian king. Haig’s British troops entered their objective of Aulnoye on November 5, while the French armies maintained steady pressure against the German center. Beginning on the first of November, the U.S. First Army renewed the attack with the V Corps in the center driving six miles the first day to take heights just south of the fourth German line near Barricourt.
The Essay on German Americans
In 1990 the U.S. Census Bureau reported that 57,985,595 people in the United States claimed some measure of German ancestry. This makes up almost a quarter of the U.S. population. German immigration started as early as 1607. The first three Germans to migrate to the U.S.were, F.Unger, H. Keffer, and F. Volday who were followers of Captain John Smith who settled in Jamestown, Virginia. They started ...
This feat assured success of the whole operation, for it prompted German withdrawal behind the Meuse. On November 5 the III Corps forced a crossing of the Meuse, and three days later American troops held high ground overlooking the city of Sedan, a few miles east of M?zi?res, and brought the lateral railroad under artillery fire. There the advance stopped as Marshal Foch shifted the American boundary eastward to allow the French the honor of retaking Sedan, scene of a disastrous French defeat in 1870. The Meuse-Argonne was the greatest battle yet fought by the U.S. Army. Almost 1,250,000 American troops had participated during the course of the offensive. Casualties were high?120,000 of all types?but the results impressive. Until the last, this battle had worried German commanders most; unlike other sectors of the front, here they had little space short of a vital objective that they could afford to trade for time. Under pressure of continuing Allied attack and of public agitation at home, the Germans early on November 8 sent delegates to a railroad siding in the Compi?gne Forest west of Soissons to discuss armistice terms. The next day the kaiser abdicated, fleeing to the Netherlands in exile, and the Germans proclaimed a republic.
Under terms of the armistice, the Germans were to withdraw from all occupied territory, including Alsace and Lorraine; retire all armies to the east bank of the Rhine; provide the Allies with bridgeheads beyond the Rhine; and relinquish specific amounts of military equipment that would preclude their continuing the war. The fighting ended at the eleventh hour of the eleventh day of the eleventh month, 1918. Men died right up to the last, but finally, after more than four grim years, it was over. Of the men of all nations in uniform, more than 8,500,000 died, and total casualties exceeded 37,500,000, a price that would forever invite criticism of the way commanders on both sides fought the war. American casualties alone totaled 320,710. So ended the first adventure of the United States in departing from its traditional policy of noninvolvement in European affairs. That the nation could make such a decisive contribution in so short a time hardly could have been conceived in advance. That there would be mistakes, blunders, shortcomings under such a rapid expansion and commitment was perhaps inevitable. Until mid-1918, for example, when separate replacement training camps were at last established, units both in the United States and overseas had to be broken up to provide replace- ments.
The Essay on Living the American Dream: Of Mice and Men
What is the American Dream? There are a myriad of aspects to it, but one general idea: the ideal life. It is making a lot of money, being respected, and triumphing difficult situations. In the book Of Mice and Men, written by John Steinbeck, Lennie and George’s dream is to live on a ranch of their own. But through these difficult times will their hard work pay off? In his novel, Of Mice and Men, ...
This practice was damaging to morale and damaging too in that it sent many poorly trained men into the lines. So close did the American supply system in France come to breaking down that in the summer of 1918, under threat of intervention from Washington, Pershing had to exert special efforts to rescue it. Pershing himself was overburdened with command responsibilities?theater, line of communications, and tactical. The dependence on the Allies for air, artillery, and tank support, however inevitable in such a rapid deployment, did nothing for efficiency on the battlefield. On the home front some Americans vented their hostility on other Americans for no more valid reason than their ancestry. Yet countless other things were done effectively. The nation handled conscription with minimum friction and without disruption of the economy. The Army expanded with almost incredible speed while still maintaining efficiency. The Navy performed invaluable service in defeating the submarine and, with British help, in getting the Army safely overseas. Although the war ended before American industry could demonstrate its full wartime potential, the record, with some exceptions, was impressive nevertheless. Most important of all, the nation and its Army had provided a force that reached embattled Europe in time to rejuvenate flagging Allied fortunes and provide sufficient advantage to assure victory for the Allied side.
