Summer Offensive (Our Place in the Sun)

The Summer Offensive, or Kaiserschlacht (“Kaiser’s Battle”), was a massive German attack against French and British positions along the western front during World War I. The offensive began on 4 May 1917 and lasted until 9 July 1917, when the French called for an armistice. It was the quickest and most brutal of the many offensives carried out on the western front and saw the Germans advance from the Hindenburg Line to as far as Paris. The attack was hastily planned in response to intelligence that reached the German High Command suggesting that widespread mutinies and desertions had drastically weakened the French lines and left them vulnerable to attack.

The offensive consisted of four separate attacks in different locations along the western front. The primary attack was Operation Blücher-Yorck, which was to take place along the Aisne River, where the French lines were considered to be the weakest. The other three attacks were to be carried out in support once Blücher-Yorck successfully dealt a fatal blow to French front line organization and forced a widespread retreat. The three other attacks were designated as Operation Georgette, Operation Steinmetz, and Operation Michael.

Due to the context of the Summer Offensive, it was relatively poorly planned over only a few days and had no clearly defined objectives other than to force a continuous French retreat and not allow the front to settle into trench warfare again. As a result of this poor planning, the German leadership often improvised as the situation on the frontlines changed from day to day. Similarly, the entente forces were unable to plan coordinated defenses against the attack since it was rather spontaneous, and therefore were unable to react in time to stop the German advance before it had made large, irreversible gains.

The offensive made widespread use of light tanks and mechanized infantry units and is sometimes regarded as a very early application of the blitzkrieg-style tactics that characterized World War II. Hundreds of German LK II light tanks and heavy A7V tanks, which were far more effective and reliable than their French and British counterparts, made their way across the battlefield, sometimes carrying shock troops who would raid enemy trenches or follow up machine gun barrages with grenades and flamethrower assaults. Once a sizable gap had been created in the front lines of an area, these tanks then used their superior speed to flank the entrenched troops on the outskirts of the area while infantry and supply vehicles moved in to take control of the recently assaulted area. Though these tactics were very successful, German logistics were severely strained and supplies were barely able to be brought to the ever-changing frontline. Thousands of German foot infantry who had to follow the advancing tanks and shock troops died of heat and exhaustion throughout the offensive.

Despite tactical superiority, it was universally unexpected that the Germans would perform as well as they did. Many now attribute their success to the fact that French morale had reached its lowest point in the war due to the disastrous Nivelle Offensive. By July, the Germans had secured the Marne and reached the outskirts of Paris, beginning a siege and artillery bombardment of the city on the first of the month. With vast areas of the French northern coast captured during Operation Georgette and a new, increasingly static front line being established, all hopes of a French victory had disappeared and the July Armistice was signed on 9 July, officially ending the war on the western front.

Nivelle Offensive
See also: Nivelle Offensive

Throughout April and May, the French and British carried out the Nivelle Offensive, a series of assaults against German lines in northern France, in an attempt to finally break the Hindenburg line and open up the opportunity for an entente victory in World War I. However, the attacks were largely disastrous, exchanging hundreds of thousands of lives for nearly nonexistent gains against the Germans. As the Second Battle of the Aisne was coming to a close in early May 1917, it came to the attention of the German High Command that the French army was currently experiencing mass mutinies, desertions, and chaos due to the series of suicidal offensives against the Germans in the previous month. In response to this information, which the German leadership believed to be correct, Hindenburg took a dangerous gamble and ordered a massive counterattack at the Aisne, which was to be led by divisions with light tank support who were to be followed up by infantry and artillery.

Hindenburg Program
See also: Hindenburg Program (Our Place in the Sun)

After the Germans failed to fully exploit the weakness of the entente forces following their defeats in the Battle of the Frontiers in order to take Paris and win the war in 1914, the German High Command was looking for ways to improve in this area in the future. As the western front settled into a stalemate with trench warfare, the German War Ministry commissioned the design of large, armored land vehicles that withstand heavy fire and be used to break through enemy lines. Early designs were not very successful and the project was slowed considerably until 1916, when the British and French successfully used tanks to attack the Germans at the Battle of the Somme. Following the first appearance of tanks on the battlefield in 1916, Hindenburg saw great potential for tanks and mechanized infantry to be put to use in aggressive offensives on the western front.

The German government began a project for the development and production of light armored vehicles which were to be used to spearhead attacks designed to disorient and scramble the enemy. Wilhelm II was very excited about this idea, and actively supported the project, which came to be part of the Hindenburg Program, a set of general economic and military policies and projects during the latter half of World War I. Additionally, Hindenburg’s plan called for increased general motorization of the German Army.

Hindenburg commissioned more infantry transport and tank designs, and soon light tanks were being produced by the thousands in Germany, with approximately 1,300 seeing combat throughout the war. To support them, hundreds of heavy tanks, the A7V, were produced over the following year. These German tanks had the advantage of being faster and more reliable than French and British tanks, though they were still often unreliable due to how new the technology was. The mass production of German tanks is widely considered to be the deciding factor on the western front and the reason that the Summer Offensive saw such large success.

New Tactics
As tank production increased and the situation on the western front continued to stagnate, the German military leadership began looking for ways in which tanks could be used to maximize their potential for quick and devastating breakthroughs. In early 1917, the German officer Willy Rohr devised a way to combine his shock troop tactics, which had seen great successes, with armored assaults supported by fast and deadly light tanks. As light tanks trapped enemy units in their trenches, heavy tanks carrying storm troops would follow closely behind, and the shock troops would disembark to brutally finish off the remaining enemy soldiers in the trenches with grenades or flamethrowers designed to force them to exit the trenches and leave them exposed to tank fire.

Once enemy front lines had been shattered and clear gaps were created, the tanks were used to infiltrate behind enemy lines and flank and trap and enemy troops that remained on the sides as foot infantry and motorized infantry moved in to take the trenches. Any enemy troops or vehicles that managed to escape the attack were decimated by long range cross-battlefield artillery fire. These new aggressive tactics were to be combined with hurricane artillery bombardments (Feuerwalze) in order to further weaken enemy front lines for assault.

Siege of Paris
See also: Siege of Paris (Our Place in the Sun)

By July, the massive casualties and subsequent increase in French desertions and mutinies left the French Army barely in fighting shape, much less in any shape to initiate a counterattack. In total, the usable fighting force of the French army numbered less than 2 million men due to the Nivelle Offensive as well as the horrific battles at Chateau-Thierry and the rest of the Marne, while the British army in France had been all but completely removed from the war by the surrender at Doullens. Conversely, German troops on the western front following the offensive numbered around 3 million, though most were undersupplied and exhausted. The remnants of a few French armies had retreated into Paris and took up defensive positions along the east side of the city. In the north, what remained of the British Expeditionary Force shelled German positions along the 1 July Line, but initiated no offensive operations. French morale plummeted further upon the news of the British surrender at Doullens and Petain recommended to his superiors that an armistice be sought. The leadership refused and Petain was dismissed and replaced with Charles Mangin.

Once Paris was surrounded on two sides, the north and east, the artillery bombardment commenced and would be nearly continuous until the July Armistice. Throughout the entire bombardment, nearly 1,000 shells were fired into Paris, causing massive damages. Although the German artillery was running dangerously low on shells, Hindenburg and Ludendorff were confident that the bombardment would force the French to surrender rather than see their greatest city decimated by German arms. The defenders, numbering about 200,000 in and around the city, attempted to relieve the siege but were unable to mount any meaningful defenses, as German air superiority prevented most overt operations. Mangin ordered a small attack to the east of the city on 30 June, but his troops refused to attack and over 110,000 men deserted and either fled the city or opted to surrender to the Germans.

The people of Paris had already begun to flee the city following the artillery bombardment that began on 17 May, but during the siege, mass emigration from the city to the southwest became commonplace. Thousands of civilians were killed in the bombardment and many others had their homes demolished, although the Germans did make an attempt to avoid purposely attacking residential areas. The French government had fled on 28 June and moved its headquarters to Bordeaux. The government’s flight from Paris, alongside the perceived unwillingness of the French leadership to make peace, later became a great influence on the growth of radical leftist politics in France. The defenders held out for just over a week, but it became clear to Mangin that nothing could be done to save the city or push the Germans back from the 1 July Line, and an armistice was signed on 9 July 1917, officially ending the western front of World War I in a German victory.

Aftermath
The Summer Offensive was one of the most successful offensive operations of World War I and was a logistical and tactical miracle relative to most other operations that took place during the war. Despite the fact that the Germans had superior tactics, numbers, and equipment going into the offensive, at its outset it was considered unlikely that the offensive would end up winning the war on the western front for the Central Powers, so all of Europe, including the German public and leadership, were shocked by what had happened. In total, the Entente had lost 2.1 million men to death, injury, or capture in two months over the course of the offensive, while the Germans lost around 890,000, including vast amounts of elite, irreplaceable storm troops which were vital to German offensive operations. Additionally, most of Germany’s deployed tanks had been badly damaged or destroyed by the time the armistice was signed, leaving the Germans unable to mount another large offensive even if they had the desire to.

The German plans, though impressive for the amount of time available to formulate them, had major strategic and logistical flaws. Foot infantry quickly became exhausted and supply lines were poor, especially since transport was made more difficult due to the destruction of flat land by artillery. Often, German attacks were uncoordinated and led to divisions belonging to the same armies performing independent operations over 30km away from each other. Though transport vehicles were abundant at the start of the offensive as a result of the Hindenburg Program, they often got stuck or were too slow to keep up with the quickly expanding and moving front line. Artillery was overused due to the employment of the Feuerwalze to open every major battle and the continuous shelling and bombardment of Paris. By the time the armistice was signed, artillery shells had almost run out and the front lines were in immediate danger of complete collapse due to supply failures. Some have suggested that the French could have mounted a successful counterattack had they known about the German supply crisis, but others have argued that the French would have seen mass desertions unlike anything before in history if ordered to go on the offensive again.

After the armistice, which was signed on 9 July, the British were forced to cease all operations and leave France, meaning that the battle on the western front had officially come to a close, freeing up hundreds of thousands of experienced German soldiers to finish off the rest of the Entente Powers. Notably, personnel from the German 7th Army who had fought at Chateau-Thierry were sent to Italy to fight in the Battle of Monte Grappa, a battle which led to the collapse of the Italian war effort and ultimately the complete devastation of the Italian army at Venice. Following the success of the Summer Offensive in ending the war on the western front, the rest of the entente collapsed within 6 months, leading to the complete victory of the Central Powers in World War I.