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The Turning Point

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The Turning Point CHAPTER XI1 THE TURNING POINT THE 18th of July, 1918, was the turning point of the Great War. This narrative left the French front when the powerful German thrusts of May 27th and June 9th had been brought to a stop by French-and American-resistance Birth along the hIarne and north-east of ConipiCgne. of the plan The attack south of the ;2isne had left, bulging towards Paris, a huge salient in which the German troops were supplied by only one line of railway, which crossed the Aisne at Soissons a few miles behind the western side of the salient. The position here was an invitation to a coun- terstroke, and that fighter of fighters, Mangin, with the Tenth French Army, had been put in there as had the Fifth French Army on the eastern side of the salient, with orders to harass the enemy with small attacks. But Foch had already, on June I& ordered PCtain to be ready by July 15th for a much larger offensive, the Tenth and ‘Sixth Armies striking the west- ern side and the Fifth the east- F~~~~~J,~~~~i~~ the ern. Foch’s plan, formulated on Gcrtmn salient, July 191s. June 16tl1, was to capture the heights south-west of Soissons so as to bring the German com- munications under artillery fire-an operation which, he thought, would require a big concentration of tanks and artillery, but not of infantry. The sooner this was undertaken. beiore the Germans organised their new positions, the better. On 441 442 THE A.1 F. IN FRANCE [Mar.-Sept., 1918 July 9th Foch extended the scope of this scheme, insisting on the importance of the Fifth Army’s simultaneous attack from the east, which he had been inclined in the meantime to reduce. He was now looking to this counterstroke to force the Germans to evacuate their salient in very difficult conditions. This attack would be the first of the disengaging offensives, which ever since hlarch he had been itching to launch. Foch did not envisage this counter-offensive as a decisive stroke-the decision would be sought for. as on June 27th he wrote to the Italian Commander-in-Chief, General Diaz,’ by “an attack in full force on all fronts, Salonica, Italy, and Franco-British.” This should begin as soon as the arrival of American reinforcements caused the “numerical” superiority to swing back to the Allies,2 who had lost it when the Russians made peace. This general offensive might begin in September (though Foch had no hope that it would end the war until 1919). On June 28th, when asking Haig to arrange a counter- stroke for the end of August, he said that the French also were going to attack, not on the hfontdidier-Noyon front as previously planned, but “elsewhere.” No notion of his Soissons plan was imparted by him to Haig, and the British representatives at French headquarters apparently had no inkling of it.3 But such plans depended upon what the enemy did in the meantime; an earlier scheme had been torn into ribbons by the events of May 27th. On June rgth, when Events the Noyon offensive ended, the German com- in June maid had still some 50 divisions in reserve of which half were being carefully nursed in Flanders, and it was certain that behind the German front preparations were feverishly going on for a new attack as soon as resources could be mustered. Again there set in the 1 Frcnch Oficrol History, Tome T’II. AnneAes, Vol. I. p. 11. * Probably the Allied troops in France already outnumbered considerably those of the Germans-American dlvisions were nearly twice the nominal strength of German ones But Foch was thinking of effectlve divisions. He had already shown a tendency to overrate the German superiority. (See footnote 58, ). 172). a The American Commander-in-Chief. Gen. Pershing. during June suggested to Foch a coonter-offensive toHards Soissons. Foch said he was thinking of one Later, on June 23. Pershing offered Clemenceau eight American divisions for such an offensive. Foch again merely said that he was studying a project for an offensive. June, 19x81 THE TURNING POINT 443 strain of anxious search for signs of the direction in which the accumulating mass of German reserves would be thrown. This time the period of waiting was much more eventful than that which occurred after the Battle of the Lys. First, just when General Diaz, after delay, and under pressure from Foch and Clenienceau, was about to attack the Austrians, the latter, on June I4th, struck at him, attacking both from the mountain front, where they were faced partly by the British and French contingents, and on a wide sector near the Adriatic. In the mountain area they had no success, but on the plains, screening their efforts with shell, they crossed the Piave River. Here great difficulties set in and, the river descending in flood, they were forced a few days later to recross it. \I having lost, according to Italian claims, 200,0o0 men, OM~lcs including nearly 25,000 prisoners. The Italian casualties were said to be 80,ooo. Diaz was constrained by fear that the Austrians would return to the offensive reinforced by German divisions-an apprehension which Foch, aware of the strain imposed on the German Army by the sustained offensive in France, held to be groundless; nevertheless these events obliterated the prospect of the Italians undertaking for the present any more than minor attacks. At this juncture all the Allied peopIes were surprised and puzzled by a speech delivered in the Reichstag by the German Secretary of State for Foreign Affairs, Herr Iiiihlmann. Its effect at the front as well as among cikilians is clearly shown in the following extract from the diary of an Australian at corps headquarters. June 26th. Tuesday. To-day from the German papers there is reported Kuhlmann’s speech, in which he makes the astonishing admis- sion-considering what the German attitude has been of late-that “complete victory by force of arms is not possible to either side.” He also blames Russia, not England, for the War. Indeed he expressly says that England was not directly to blame, but only indirectly. Of 444 THE A.1.p. iN PkANCE [June, rgrd course he has been taking Lichnowsky’s memorandum‘ to heart. But whatever he thinks, why has he said it? Also, in the German wireless there is a report of a speech by Nauniannj saying that there is no hope of victory. Now why is this speech sent out by the German wireless? Does it mean that they haxe cGme suddenly to realise that there is really no hope-that the American reinforcement has become too big and that the submarine campaign has failed? It is quite likely that it is a barrage of talk put up before the offensive on precisely the same plan as the barrage of shells will be put up-to aap the strength of the (Allied) soldiers by making them think that Germany is offering fair terms, or is about to do so: and so make them more ready to be taken prisoner when the time comes. Or it may be a diversion, intended in the same way as a raid in another part of the line before the big attack. Or it may be an overture to our Labour Party meeting in England, which has just decided to abjure the party truce and to contest all or any seats at the elections.6 Whatever the motives for Kiihlmann’s statement and its publication-and these will presently be discussed-the effect was very cheering to the Allies, from Foch to the last-joined reinforcement. No one, however, imagined the statement to mean that the enemy command was abandoning its hammer- strokes. Yet for a fortnight after the Noyon offensive ended there was no clear indication of German preparation for an inimediate offensive. In Flanders, it is true, an attack was obviously threatening, but on June 29th Haig’s chief of intel- ligence, Brig.-Genl. Cos, judged it to be not yet iniiiiecliately imminent . In the second half of June PCtain, who for a time had only five fit divisions in reserve, continued to press Foch for the return of the six French divisions of the D.A.N., still in Flanders. Foch still agreed with Haig that the main danger was in the north, and his relations with Pktain were strained in consequence; but at a conference with Clemenceau he agreed that Paris must be safeguarded by keeping part of his reserves between- it and the enemy. Accordingly he suggested that 4 See f. 458 6 An eloquent social democratic leader. 8 How true these interpretations were is shown on +fi. 459-60. But the diarist adds: “I daresay the time will coiiie when it will he difficult to realise that this was the attitude which people had honcsily to adopt . towards (,crmany But, after the negotiations with Russia. even thoze who were not convinced hy the events of the opening of the war have had their eyes opened The difficulty of entering into negotiations with Germany will be that her standards have become so militaristic that she holds it riglit to use negotiations for peace as a move of war+ E as a means to sap the resistance of a deinocratic people to such a point tha; she can break off the negutiations and renew the war upon them at any stage with them disarmed and her arm8 all sharp and ready.” June-July, 19181 THE TURNING POIKT 445 French and British divisions still away from their national zones should now be returned to their respective armies.
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