Events
March21, 1918
Germany launches spring offensive
March23
German long-range guns begin shelling Paris
March24
German forces cross the Somme
March25
Allied front line is broken
March30
Germans are stopped at Moreuil Wood
April9–29
Battle of Lys
May2
General Pershing compromises on sending U.S. troops
to the front
May7
Romania signs peace treaty with Central Powers
May12
Germany and Austria sign pact to exploit the Ukraine
May21
Mutinies begin in Austrian army
May28
U.S. victory at Cantigny
July18
Allies begin major counteroffensive
July26
Allies foil German attack at Château-Thierry
September19
Turkey defeated at Megiddo
Germany’s Push for Paris
With its newly arrived forces from the eastern front, Germany enjoyed
superiority in numbers on the western front for the first time since
the earliest days of the war. Nonetheless, all sides, including
Germany, were exhausted. Their strength was limited, and fresh troops
from the United States would soon be ready to join the fight on
the Allied side. If Germany was going to somehow win the war, now
was the time.
Germany therefore poured all of its remaining resources
into a massive offensive that began in the early morning
hours of March 21, 1918. The
goal was to push across the river Somme and then on to Paris.
Like most land battles in World War I, the offensive began with
a prolonged artillery barrage. In this case it lasted for five hours and
included a heavy concentration of poison gas shells
along with the usual explosive ordinance. When the German troops
moved forward through a combination of heavy fog and poison gas
clouds, visibility was near zero, and soldiers on both sides were
largely unable to distinguish friendly from enemy forces. By midday,
the fog had lifted, and a furious air battle took place over the
soldiers’ heads while the Germans relentlessly pounded the Allies.
As the Germans surged forward, they brought
with them the newest long-range artillery cannons developed
by Krupp, which enabled them to fire accurately upon Paris from
the astounding range of seventy-four miles. On March 23,
these shells killed more than 250 unsuspecting
Parisians, who were baffled because they initially thought the blasts
were coming from the ground. The long-distance German shells killed
hundreds more in the following days. On March 24,
the Germans raced across the Somme, having captured the bridges
before the French could destroy them. On March 25,
the Allied front broke at precisely the point where the French and
British troop lines met.
The Battle of Lys
German momentum continued for another five days until
a British advance halted the Germans at Moreuil Wood on
March 30. The Allies
pushed the Germans back for several days more, until the initiative
was turned around once more at the Battle of Lys, which began
on April 9, 1918.
At Lys, the British and French began to lose ground once more, and
the Germans recaptured places (such as Passchendaele and Messines)
that the Allies had won in hard-fought battles the previous year.
By the end of the Battle of Lys on April 29,
the German army, despite its run of recent success, saw morale at
an all-time low. The French and British were in almost as bad a
state. During this period of the war, whenever either side launched
an offensive, it would only last a few days before the troops ran
out of energy and began to fall back. Nonetheless, neither British,
nor French, nor German leaders would give up, so the war continued
in this way for much of the summer.
Delays in the U.S. Deployment
Only the United States, it seemed, held the
power to shift the balance, but more than a year had passed since
the U.S. declaration of war, with little tangible result. Although
hundreds of thousands of American troops had been transported to
Europe, very few of them had actually participated in combat.
