Chapter 101

GERMANY'S DYING DESPERATE EFFORT

In the spring of 1918 it must have been plain to the German High Command that if the war was to be won it must be won at once. In spite of all their leaders said of the impossibility of bringing an American army to France they must have been well informed of what the Americans were doing. They knew that there were already more than two million men in active training in the American army, and while at that time only a small proportion of them were available on the battle front, yet every day that proportion was growing greater and by the middle of the summer the little American army would have become a tremendous fighting force.

Their own armies on their western front had been enormously increased in size by the removal to that front of troops from Russia. Hundreds of thousands of their best regiments were now withdrawn from the east and incorporated under the command of their great Generals, Hindenburg and Ludendorf, in the armies of the west. They must, therefore, take advantage of this increased force and win the war before the Americans could come.

The problem of the Allies was also simple. It was not necessary for them to plan a great offensive. All they had to do was to hold out until, through the American aid which was coming now in such numbers, their armies would be so increased that German resistance would be futile. Under such circumstances began the last great offensive of the German army.

At that time it seems probable that the armies of Great Britain and France numbered about three million five hundred thousand men, and that, of these, six hundred and seventy thousand were on the front lines when the German attack began, leaving an army of reserve of about two million eight hundred and fifty thousand men. A considerable number of these were probably in England on leave. The number of French soldiers must have been between four and five million, of whom about one million five hundred thousand were on the front line. Adding to these the American, Belgian, Portuguese, Russian and Polish troops the Allied forces could not have been short of eight million five hundred thousand men.