Third Battle of the Aisne

Background

Between March and July 1918 Ludendorff launched five great offensives in the West, hoping to win before American numbers told. The first two, in March and April, had fallen on the British on the Somme and the Lys. His decisive blow was still meant to fall on the British in Flanders, but the French reserves stood behind them. The third offensive, Blücher-Yorck, was therefore a diversion: a blow against the French on the Aisne to draw those reserves south.

The sector chosen was the Chemin des Dames, a narrow ridge north of the Aisne that the French had taken at great cost in 1917. It was thought quiet. In late April Foch persuaded Haig to send worn British divisions there in exchange for fresh French ones, and the IX Corps (Lieutenant-General Sir Alexander Hamilton-Gordon) arrived with the 8th, 21st, 25th and 50th Divisions, all of which had suffered very heavy losses in March and April and were filled up with young drafts. By mid-May three of them held the right of Duchêne's Sixth Army between the Chemin des Dames and Reims. A French officer handing over told them: 'You are rats in a trap.'

Pétain's instructions of December 1917 laid down a thinly held forward zone and a main battle on a second position out of range of the enemy's field guns. Duchêne refused to give up the ridge and packed his infantry forward. Pétain, whose chief of staff was Duchêne's brother-in-law, reluctantly let him fight his own battle. Only on the afternoon of 26 May, after two prisoners talked, was the Sixth Army warned that an attack would come next morning.

The armies

Army Group German Crown Prince attacked with the Seventh Army (Max von Boehn), in five corps from east to west under Schmettow, Conta, Winckler, Wichura and Larisch, with the First Army's right corps facing Reims. The fresh assault divisions came mainly from the Eighteenth Army. Seventeen divisions stood in the first line and six in the second against six Allied divisions in line and four in reserve; on the 24-mile front of the break-in, thirteen faced four. The infantry were trained assault divisions, but the weapon of the day was the artillery: 1,036 batteries in Edmonds's count, 5,263 guns against 1,422 in Zabecki's, with trench mortars and masses of gas shell, all planned by Colonel Georg Bruchmüller, who had run the March bombardments.

The Sixth Army held some 55 miles with an average of sixteen divisions. From right to left on 26 May stood the French 45th Division, the British 21st, 8th and 50th Divisions, the French XI Corps (de Maud'huy) on the ridge with the 22nd, 21st and 61st Divisions, and the XXX Corps further west. The British 25th and the French 39th, 74th and 157th were in reserve. The British divisions were exhausted and half-trained, the French spread thin on a front judged suitable only for quiet times. Behind lay the Aisne and the Vesle, whose bridges would decide much.

The battle

The bombardment, 27 May, 1 a.m. At 1 a.m. Allied time (2 a.m. German) the German guns opened on a moonless night along 24 miles from Berry-au-Bac to Chavignon, extended for deception to about 36. For ten minutes every gun and mortar fired gas at every target in reach; for the next 65 minutes the mass of batteries turned on the Allied artillery while the mortars destroyed the forward trenches and wire; for 85 more minutes counter-battery and destructive fire swept back and forth over the defences, with long-range guns reaching back to the Vesle. At 3.35 a.m. the creeping barrage came down on the front trenches and at 3.40 the infantry went in. Most Allied batteries north of the Aisne were already silenced and the front zone largely obliterated.

The ridge and the Aisne, morning of 27 May. The heaviest weight fell on the French 22nd Division and the British 50th in the centre, eight divisions against two. The forward positions went in the first rush. In the 8th Division's sector the 2nd Devonshire, sheltered in tunnels under the Bois des Buttes, came out at first light and held the wood for nearly three hours until they were surrounded; Lieutenant-Colonel Anderson-Morshead was killed and about fifty men got back across the Aisne. Brigadier-General Rees of the 150th Brigade was captured. The British 25th Division was thrown in from reserve on the Green Line south of the river. The Germans crossed the Aisne around noon, some by bridges that had not been blown, and by evening were over the Vesle west of Fismes. Zabecki puts the day's advance at 13 miles, the greatest of the war on the Western Front.

28–29 May: the Vesle and Soissons. The IX Corps was pushed south of the Vesle about Jonchery by evening on the 28th. In the west the German 5th Division crossed the Aisne by a weir and a damaged railway bridge and cleared Soissons; Edmonds has it taken on the evening of the 28th, the ABMC early on the 29th. On the 28th Pétain began moving reserve divisions in; they arrived piecemeal and were swallowed in turn. By the evening of the 29th the line ran from south of Soissons to Fère-en-Tardenois.

30 May – 1 June: the Marne. On 30 May German divisions reached the Marne between Chartèves and Dormans, the first of them at 2.10 p.m., and found the bridges blown. The German count that evening was more than 50,000 prisoners and about 800 guns. What had been a diversion now looked like a road to Paris, and Ludendorff fed in more divisions. On the 31st the Germans reached the eastern edge of Château-Thierry. That evening the motorised 7th Machine Gun Battalion of the US 3rd Division arrived and, with French troops, held the crossings in the town; on the night of 1 June the French blew the highway bridge. The US 2nd Division, trucked to Meaux overnight, took up a line astride the Paris road north-west of Château-Thierry on 1 June, and the 3rd Division's infantry reinforced the French along the Marne.

2–6 June: the halt. The Germans were tired, short of supply and down to one division in reserve. On 3 June the French wiped out a bridgehead at Jaulgonne. On the 4th attacks on the western wing achieved little, and Boehn, at the suggestion of the high command, decided to stop major operations; HERO dates the end to Ludendorff's decision that day. A last local attack on the Montagne de Bligny on 6 June was beaten off by the British 19th Division. The fighting west of Château-Thierry passed into the Battle of Belleau Wood.

Aftermath

In about ten days the Germans had driven a salient roughly 50 kilometres deep between Soissons and Reims, taken some 50,000–60,000 prisoners and 650 or more guns, and destroyed the British IX Corps as a fighting force. Allied casualties were about 127,000; German estimates run from about 105,000 to 130,000. Paris was within some 70–80 kilometres, the government prepared to leave for Bordeaux, and Pétain sacked Duchêne, replacing him with Degoutte.

Yet the offensive had overrun its purpose. Its object was to pull French reserves from Flanders; instead it pulled in German ones, using up divisions meant for the Flanders blow, which was postponed and never came. The deep salient was left hard to hold, and on 18 July the Allied counter-stroke of the Second Battle of the Marne struck it. The German official monograph noted that, unlike the Allies, Germany could not replace the men it lost.

The argument over 27 May has centred on Duchêne. HERO judges that defence in depth might have stopped the Germans; Edmonds blames Duchêne's packing of the forward zone but notes that Pétain let him do it and that Clemenceau had earlier criticised Pétain's elastic doctrine. CDB90's coding of the battle as a German loss reflects the strategic verdict; on the ground it was among the biggest German gains of the war.

Wargaming it

Blücher works at two scales. The first day suits a brigade or battalion-level game on the ridge and the Aisne valley: a defender who has been ordered to hold the forward trenches, whose artillery and communications die in the first two hours, and who must decide when and where to blow bridges behind him. The Bois des Buttes, with one battalion in tunnels and a wood to hold, makes a strong small scenario, as does the scramble for the Aisne crossings.

The ten-day campaign suits an operational game with divisions or regiments as units, daily or half-day turns and roughly 2–5 kilometres to the hex. Here the German player must balance a startling breakthrough against fatigue, the loss of bridges and a supply line through Soissons, while the Allied player arrives piecemeal by lorry and rail with reserves that cannot all be held back.

The what-ifs are rich. Play the first day with Pétain's doctrine instead of Duchêne's, the forward zone thinly held and the battle fought on the Green Line south of the Aisne. Let the French blow every bridge in time. Give the Germans a firmer objective: stop on the Vesle as planned, or drive for Paris from the 30th. A victory condition that rewards the German player for drawing Allied reserves rather than for ground will reproduce the dilemma Ludendorff faced.

Maps and pictures

Pictures from the time

Photographs by the armies' photographers and the press, and drawings made at the time: free-to-use pictures from the battle's category on Wikimedia Commons. Each opens its file page there, with the full caption and source.