The Last Battle by Peter Hart

Author:Peter Hart
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Profile Books
Published: 2018-03-14T04:00:00+00:00

8

CATCHING UP

I am presently still alive. I can’t tell you what is happening here on the German side. There is no quiet moment any more. We had to move back more than 100 kilometres within a few days. Whoever can’t run is taken prisoner. Please don’t be upset. There’s nothing we can do. There are no men left. It won’t take long this way.1

Gefreiter hans spieb,2 Machine Gun sharp-Shooter Detachment 2, 2nd Bavarian Division

THE FOCH SERIES OF OFFENSIVES LAUNCHED during the last week of September 1918 has come to be seen as the point of no return for Germany in the Great War. With an ever-changing focus, the attacks had battered away at the German Army all along the Western Front, from the Meuse to Flanders. With the Hindenburg Line broken, the Germans had no great defensive lines left that could realistically hope to stem the Allied onslaught, no masses of reserves left to reverse the tide of battle. The German casualties were horrendous: all told, since the launch of the Spring Offensives on 21 March to 1 October they had lost 40,722 officers and 1,181,577 other ranks. This mass leaching away of German strength had coincided with the utter collapse of the Bulgarian and Turkish allies. The Bulgarians had held their own in the Salonika Campaign from 1915 deep into 1918, but an Allied campaign launched in September 1918 had finally flung them back, triggering their surrender through an Armistice signed on 29 September and taking effect the next day. The Turks had hoped to profit from the collapse of their eternal enemy Russia by advancing into the Caucasus, but they had been under severe pressure in both the Palestine and Mesopotamian campaigns since 1917. Early successes like Gallipoli had converted to a cycle of repeated defeats, while events on the Western Front made it obvious to the Turks that with Germany herself on the rocks there was no hope of relief. In October, the Turkish government were to start the process which would ultimately lead to an Armistice with the Allies, signed on 30 October. Germany’s final ally, Austro-Hungary, the fading empire that had provided the genesis of the war, was also clearly approaching the end of her military resources. Hindenburg summed up the dreadful situation of the German Army.

What terrible demands were made in these few weeks on the physical strength and moral resolution of the officers and men of all staffs and formations! The troops had now to be thrown from one battle into another. It was seldom that the so-called days in rest billets were enough to allow us to reorganise the decimated or scattered units and supply them with drafts, or distribute the remains of divisions we had broken up among other formations. Both officers and men were certainly beginning to tire, but they always managed to find a new impulse whenever it was a question of holding up some fresh enemy attack. Officers of all ranks, even up to the higher Staffs, fought in the front lines, sometimes rifle in hand.

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