Contemporary historians generally believe that March 27-28 was a turning point in Operation Michel. First, Ludendorff failed to take advantage of Mondial's gap, and secondly, his refusal to call off Michel instead of George One. The reason for the refusal at that time was still the hope that "Mars" would capture Alas.
At this time, an oolong incident disturbed the German army's calculations. Ruprehit sent 6 divisions to support the beleaguered 17th Army in Arras. However, these people inexplicably ran to the war zone of the 2nd Army on the afternoon of the 28th, which greatly caused the failure of the subsequent "Mars" operation. Ruprecht later admitted that his logs for the past two days were sketchy and made many mistakes, and the chief of staff, Kur, said that he was overly nervous at the time. OhL and its army group command had become a mess to deal with Ludendorff's changing offensive plans.
German soldiers advancing on the front line
At 3 o'clock on the 28th, Ludendorff's long-awaited "Mars" began. The 1,250 cannons of the 6th and 17th Army bombarded The British positions on the Arras front for a full four and a half hours. At 7:30 a.m., the German infantry charged out of the trenches, but the scene of the attack was disastrous. First, the 17th Army had invested only 9 divisions, of which only 5 could be used for offense. Second, even the official German war history points out that the infantry tactics of the 6th and 17th Armies were almost 1914-style, completely devoid of the infiltration tactics that Ludendorff repeatedly emphasized. Finally, the Germans crashed head-on into the solid positions of the British 3rd Army. By 14:00 p.m., OHL got the frustrated message that Mars' first attack had failed!
However, three hours later, the 17th Army tore a 5-mile gap in the southern line of Arras at the cost of thousands of casualties. Bellow judged that the British 3rd Army had not been adequately rested after successive battles and asked Ruprecht to send reinforcements of 2-3 divisions for him to continue his detour south to pry open the southern wall of Alas.
Ruprecht also thought Bello's plan feasible, but when he approached Ludendorff to discuss the matter, the latter refused without even looking at it. Ludendorff at this time focused all his energy on Amiens, and ordered the 2nd Army to concentrate all its forces (note that this was the first time that Ludendorff emphasized the concentration of forces since "Michel") to capture Amiens.
Changes in equipment in the German Army between 1914 and 18
At 23:45, OHL ordered again: cancel "Mars". The 17th Army would have to draw three divisions to support the 2nd Army while switching from attack to defense; the 18th Army would continue its offensive on the Champagne front after gaining 6 divisions.
Ludendorff's move marked the beginning of deteriorating relations at the top of the German military. Ruprecht and Kuhl, who had been resentful for a long time, were greatly dissatisfied with Ludendorff's move to give up "Mars" easily. Because Ludendorff has repeatedly rejected many reasonable operational arrangements for "Mars". Now "Mars" is expected to expand the results of the battle, but Ludendorff easily abandoned it. At the meeting, the Crown Prince insisted that the British must be dealt a fatal blow first. He slammed Ludendorff's call to halt Mars to his face as a purely subjective mentality, and as long as the 17th Army was strengthened and attacked again, the British army in Arras would collapse.
Commander of the German Army Group Ruprecht, Crown Prince Ruprecht of Bavaria
At this time, Ludendorff was completely hooked by Amiens. He waved the reports of Army Group Ruprecht and army 17 to the ground and left the meeting site. As the situation of the battle deviated from his own vision, he also became more irritable and difficult to communicate, and began to take direct command of the troops beyond Ruprecht. The Crown Prince's aide, Captain von Lieb, argued that "Ludendorff may have been mentally affected by the loss of his son between the previous paragraphs, and it was a sin to let him command the army, and all our troops were put in a disadvantageous position to fight because of his influence, and eventually wasted their efforts." Seeing that Ludendorff was so reckless, Ruprecht left Evans in anger and returned to the headquarters of the 4th Army to prepare for the later "George I", or "St. George".
After shrugging off The Discordant Ruprecht, Ludendorff hired the better-talking Crown Prince William to act as his accompanist with the 2nd and 18th Army. The Crown Prince spoke to Ludendorff at six o'clock in the morning of the 29th and suggested that if the 2nd and 18th Armies could not capture Amiens in time, they should advance from both flanks to encircle the Flanks of the Allied Forces. Ludendorff agreed, and sure enough, the 2nd Army encountered stubborn resistance on the 29th, and the unit was ordered to make a detour, breaking the British 3rd Army's defense line from the flanks, pulling its front near the port of Amiens, which could shell ten miles away, forcing the British top brass to rearrange its transport ships to Rouen to deliver supplies.
Crown Prince Wilhelm of the German Empire, in 1918 he was in charge of command of the German army group known as the "Crown Prince" Army Group in the middle of the Western Front, and in the later stages of Operation Michel was responsible for coordinating front-line operations
But at this time, another problem was exposed. Ludendorff, who was overly expecting Hutil to change the tide of the war, reinforced the 18th Army, resulting in more than 35 divisions under his command. This bloated army was forced to hand over its 8th Army to the 7th Army, while the 2nd Army, which was responsible for capturing Amiens at the same time, had fewer than 20 divisions.
The Allies also mobilized their troops at this time. Later in March 28, U.S. Expeditionary Force Commander John Pershing formally handed over several U.S. divisions to Fuxi. On 29 March, the Reserve Army Group, composed of the French 5th and 10th Armies, was formed, with a total of 12 infantry divisions and 6 cavalry divisions. This force will soon be on the line of Amiens. Facing the French 1st and 3rd Armies of the 18th Army, they were also reinforced by 5 and 7 divisions respectively, and Haig also took the opportunity to withdraw the British 5th Army and reorganize it into the 4th Army to defend Amiens. Both sides used these three days to redeploy their forces to win this final battle, and Ludendorff said to his staff in his office: In the next few days, we will leave everything to the 2nd Army and the 18th Army.
German soldiers charging
In the early morning of March 30, the Germans began to attack again. A total of 22 divisions (41 divisions in total) of the German 2nd and 18th Armies fought on the Amiens-Mondie line, engaging 20 divisions (39 divisions) of the British 4th Army and the French 1st and 3rd Armies. But the Germans probably only had 7-8 divisions in amiens, but they had to deal with 13 Allied divisions. William tried to break the enemy's flank by allowing the 2nd and 18th Armies to continue their roundabout attack from the north and south. To this end, the Crown Prince asked the OHL to concentrate all its artillery to support the operation. But the OHL suddenly poured cold water on the Crown Prince: the artillery units of the Ruprecht Army Group had gone north in preparation for Operation George I.
The Crown Prince did not expect that he would also be demolished, so he had to order two armies to attack with the support of his own artillery. This put Matwitz and Hutir's forces in an even tougher battle that day. To the dismay of the Germans, most of the officers and men of the assault division had not eaten hot food for 3-4 days, but they still had to perform arduous combat tasks. The german advances of the day were the occupation by the 2nd Army of the Evre Ferry at Morère, and the brief cutting off of the French 3rd Army's supply line in Avrey. But when the Germans tried to extend the results, they were blocked by a steady stream of French reinforcements. Both Matwitz and Hutier reported in the afternoon that they were "exhausted and begging for a break to fight again." William finally ordered a halt to the attack at 18:00.
The continuous forced attacks exhausted the Germans on the front lines
However, even with the tense at this point, the Germans still had room for maneuver. Crown Prince Wilhelm suggested that since the artillery of Army Group Ruprecht had begun to withdraw to the north, it would be better to focus on Operation George I. Or fix it on the spot and fight again in the next day. Ludendorff, who had been sucked into Amiens' soul, chose the latter, and he ordered the 18th Army to focus on Amiens, and the 2nd, 7th, and 17th Armies would send 7 divisions to assist them in another attack on Amiens, scheduled for 4 April. Ludendorff did not realize in the end that the 18th Army's front line was too long, hutil still needed to deal with the French army from Mondie-Condigni-Castel, and he could not devote more troops to Amiens than one army. This meant that the heavy task of besieging the city was still left to the 2nd Army.
On 2-3 April, the Germans, apart from launching a small offensive, were largely committed to recuperation. But the Allied forces were not idle, and the Allied forces on the amiens line swelled to 27 infantry divisions, 5 cavalry divisions, 1344 cannons and about 700 aircraft. By 3 April, the French were even more manned enough to replace two tired divisions of the British 4th Army with three divisions for rest. On the morning of 4 April, when heavy rain poured down on the battlefield of Amiens, Crown Prince William said to Hutil at the gate of the headquarters: We are just trying to revive a failed offensive, and how long we can live depends on God's will.
German commandos constantly attacking Allied positions
The artillery under the Crown Prince's Army Group conducted 75 minutes of artillery preparation from 5:15. At 6:30 a.m., 10 divisions of the 18th Army and 4 divisions of the 2nd Army braved the rain to attack, and only 4 of the 14 divisions were newly caught. William's aim was to reach the Villebretona-Neu-Avre line north of Amiens to the south. This front does not seem to include Amiens itself, but if successful, the Germans would be able to push their cannons just 1 km from the railroad hub. The more positions the Germans occupied, the more effective their interference with the Amiens Ferry and the railroad bridge became.
The left flank of the 18th Army repelled the French 1st Army on the outskirts of Mondie in the morning, while the right flank rushed out of the Abre Valley and established a bridgehead there. But in attacking coalition positions near the Amiens-Noi line, they encountered stubborn resistance and did not make progress until the afternoon. The 2nd Army was mainly responsible for the capture of Ville bretona that day. This village is located on the high ground overlooking Amiens, only ten kilometers from Amiens. The Bavarian 9th Reserve Division of the 2nd Army, which had taken great pains to attack the highlands at 17:00, was counterattacked by a British infantry battalion and an Australian infantry battalion and forced to retreat to a village 200 meters away. William again persuaded Ludendorff to abandon the attack, as more than a dozen French divisions had emerged on the Condigni-Custer line on the left flank of the 18th Army. These French forces were subordinate to the aforementioned French Reserve Army Group, and if they launched an attack, they would inevitably contain the main forces of the 18th Army. However, the quartermaster general insisted on a decisive victory tomorrow, and the crown prince's chief of staff, Schulenburg, also believed that it was difficult to ride the tiger at this moment, and it was necessary to give the enemy a fatal blow tomorrow.
In the middle and late parts of the war, the Germans did not have air superiority
On 5 April, the 2nd Army, supported by 3 divisions of the 17th Army, continued its attack on Ville bretona, but the results were not as good as yesterday. The attack began at 9:00 a.m. and by noon had failed under British artillery fire. The 18th Army in the south continued to expand its gains at the Bridgehead of Avre in order to encircle southern Amiens. At one point, the vanguard assault division tore open Noy's line and captured more than 500 British prisoners of war, only 20 kilometers from Amiens. But at two o'clock in the afternoon, the attack on the left flank of the 18th Army, as the Crown Prince expected, began. The Condigny front was attacked by 6-7 full French divisions, and Houtil was forced to move his reserves back to the northern flank to fight a large number of French troops. Lütwitz, commander of the 3rd Army of the 18th Army, had intended to take a nap under the oak trees closer to the line after repelling the French in the evening, because he had not closed his eyes for four days. But not long after, the messengers came and read a message that surprised him: the high command had ordered the end of Operation Michel and the cessation of the attack!
Lütwitz stood up and said to the officers and men around him, "Get a good night's sleep, gentlemen." Then he set up a hammock and slept for two days and two nights. He then led his troops into the failed Operation Archangel, just like Operation Michelle.
1918 A large number of American soldiers arrived on the Battlefield in Europe
During the 16 days of Operation Michel, the Germans penetrated 60 kilometers and occupied 1,200 square miles of land. A total of 90,000 Allied prisoners (75,000 of whom were British) were captured, 1,300 cannons were captured, and the British 5th Army was basically annihilated.
Losses of the German Empire: the 17th Army lost 81,200 men; the 2nd Army lost 73,800 men, and the 18th Army lost 84,800 men, for a total of 239,800 men.
Allied losses: 177739 british losses, 77,000 French losses, a total of 254739.
After 4 years of fighting, the German army finally realized the way to victory before falling
The Germans suffered slightly fewer casualties, but were irreparable for the rest of 1918. The Allies could rely on the Americans to fill the loopholes. In addition, the Germans lost a large number of core tools for maneuvering, the mule. According to statistics, the Germans lost nearly 30,000 horses between March 20 and April 10, and the German consumption of horses became extremely large due to Ludendorff's demand to keep the artillery forward in the mud and the call to the front line troops. This was undoubtedly a catastrophic blow to the German artillery, which would later depend on its march.
From a tactical point of view, "Michel" is absolutely successful. On the first day of the offensive alone, the Germans occupied territory that took 140 days for the British and French armies to seize from the Germans. However, as far as the standards of the German military high command were concerned, such a speed of advance was still too slow. On the first day of the offensive, the maximum propulsion was 4 km away from the standard specified on the day, and on March 22, it was 7 km away. Although the Germans made their biggest breakthrough on March 22-23, they are still 4 km away from OHL's expectations. After the arrival of a large number of French troops on March 28, the breakthrough efficiency of the German army plummeted. Ludendorff's series of decisions directly led to the bankruptcy of the entire operation.
Even the best performance of the German army is powerless, let alone a good start for the "Battle of the Emperor".