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Chapter X
‘Throughout this work I have striven to make it clear that the 1918 Spring Offensive was clearly the most decisive battle of the First World War.
The German attempt to snatch victory from the jaws of defeat very nearly succeeded and it is a indignity to those who fought on either side of this climatic showdown to suggest that the offensive was merely a hopeless roll of the dice by a nation already defeated. I hope I have succeeded in making this case, though it is also important to consider some of the greater repercussions that followed.
Many of the offensive’s implications are often misattributed to the Entente’s Hundred Days Offensive that followed the failed German effort. Whilst Ludendorff should be acknowledged for his identification of weak points and using heavy artillery and Stoßtruppen to destroy them, it would be the massed concentrations of airpower and armour seen in that summer of 1918 would be a prelude to the standard offensives of the Second World War.
The real implications of the Spring Offensive lie not in the ingenuity of the German staff but in their failures. A young Adolf Hitler, the man who would ignite an even more destructive conflict less than three decades later, found himself amidst these failures and swore vengeance not just on the entente but on the aristocratic establishment that had abandoned himself and so many others to wither on the vine.
From the safety of his headquarters General Ludendorff had been all too aware that Germany couldn’t win a war of attrition. Even before the Entente offensive began tens of thousands of fresh American troops were appearing each week whilst Germany couldn’t even afford to make-up their own losses in new recruits.
With his remaining forces spent in the failed offensive it wasn’t long before he began looking for ways to spin Germany’s inevitable defeat into someone else’s failure.’
James Beatty, The Kaiser’s Last Gambit
---
The figure had looked almost comedic to begin with, one side of the body relatively neat, the other side ragged and smouldering.
One side of the face had a stunned look like the comedic foil in a movie picture, the other side covered in so much blood and dirt that it was hard to see any expression underneath.
His walk was similarly reminiscent of the movies, shaking and jittering as if electricity were going through this body with large exaggerated steps away from the scene of the explosion that had done this to him. The shock compelled him to ignore the round that landed nearby, and the resulting collection of screams and torsos that flew everywhere. The man seemed fixated on getting somewhere but seemed to have forgotten where he was going. He stood still for a moment before the exaggerated steps began again.
It was no longer any surprise that these sights could be disturbing and hypnotic at the same time. Adolf had had four years of this trauma by now. The bloodied automaton that went by the name of Probst was simply the most recent entry into a long list of similar events. Whilst Adolf had survived this far he remained distracted by what could have very easily been his own fate. He’d learned to shake these thoughts off but he still couldn’t get rid of the ringing in his ears.
Adolf grabbed Probst by his collar and pulled him backwards into the trench, he curled up into a ball and attempted to put the stub of what had been a thumb into his mouth, only to realise there simply wasn’t enough of it left to suckle on. His remaining muscles contorted into a look of utter despair as he removed the shaking claw-like appendage from what was left of his face. The eye had could still open was full of a very infantile sadness. Everything seemed to get a return for those in their last moments. Adolf feared the regiment would all be facing the same fate soon enough, this was no ordinary offensive.
The German infantry had withdrawn during entente attacks countless times throughout the course of the war, either in temporary setbacks or as a deliberate ploy to rack up enemy casualties before countering with greater force. This wasn’t helpful experience, for the present situation was unprecedented.
There would be no counter-attack to relieve them as far more crucial areas of the line were being sacrificed with the abandonment of huge supplies of weaponry and material amidst the chaotic retreat. There were stories of mass surrenders, hundreds of weary men allowing themselves to be led away by a single enemy guard. Adolf couldn’t blame those who had given up for their leaders, and his, were nowhere to be seen.
Rumour had it that the high command was suffering from a collective nervous breakdown. Adolf wouldn’t have been surprised at all. Those at the top didn’t mind keeping men yoked in a situation that deteriorated by the moment provided they were nowhere near the danger. Now after years of comfort the armchair generals had gone weak kneed at retracting lines on a map.
The scene around Adolf and his surviving comrades, the sights, sounds, and smells, were not anything particularly worse than what they’d gotten used to over the years of conflict. Flares lit up the night sky almost pointlessly as fire spreading across the horizon, giving everything an orange glow. The collective stink of mud and cordite were mixed with reeks of unimaginable origin. His mouth was heavy with blood and phlegm. There was nothing out of the ordinary in this situation, other than the fear that it would never stop.
In previous battles there had always been some reprieve, even if temporary, from the shelling and the slaughter. The relatively static nature of the front had been a mix of lingering before spontaneous moments of horror. Even the most detached and sadistic of officers realised that everyone needing to catch their breath eventually, in the last few weeks this situation had changed dramatically.
The entente were on the offensive and they were showing no signs of stopping until they had rolled over the entirety of the Heer. After years on the back foot they finally had finally broken the German line and there no longer seemed to be any escaping from them. Adolf and Friedrich had been sent behind the line beforehand everything had gone wrong, their discussions with their fellow troops about the real motivations of this war and the overwhelmingly low opinion of their commanders had been deemed too incendiary for the front. Despite their experience they had been ordered away from the active fighting for the first time since Adolf had been interrogated for his supposed collusion with Lieutenant Gutmann. After several days of being forced to clear away the dead he had begun to pine for the days without food and sleepless nights in his bright cell. Friedrich had seemed resigned to it at the time, Adolf had only grown angrier.
He felt like he was being taunted, that his earnest attempts at fighting for Germany had been thrown back in his face mockingly. For in trying to improve the situation he was now carting away bodies and trying to sort which limb should go where, an ever present reminder of the failures of Germany’s leadership. Adolf had felt that things couldn’t get any worse, until the enemy planes had flown so low that they had almost taken his head off, announcing the beginning of the offensive that seemed as if it would never end.
It hadn’t been long before the enemy had caught up with their planes, they had brought their monstrous metal machines as well. Adolf and Friedrich had been thrown into the line alongside the rest of the punishment battalion. They had fought without a second thought, even Friedrich took the enemy seriously, the line had collapsed around them nonetheless and now they didn’t know if there even was a line left to hold.
Friedrich shook Adolf from his reminiscing. His comrade still had that earnest look in his eyes that confirmed that everything was still going wrong.
“We need to get out of here. Now.”
There was no-one left to tend to the fires burning out of control or to the helpless wounded, they crackled and shrieked respectively. There was a silence of sorts nonetheless, the firing had stopped, in the past this had been a relief now it was only a sign of warning. For the last few weeks the entente had repeated the creeping barrage over and over again, never allowing more than a few minutes for Adolf and others to compose themselves. Now he could already hear whistles and guttural shouts in the distance, too far away to make out whether they were in English or French yet coming closer all the time. There were rumours that they had been ordered to take no prisoners and whilst some had discarded these as false stories to try and put a stop to the vast number of surrenders, neither Adolf nor Friedrich were going to put them to the test.
Probst was still gibbering as Adolf took a helmet from someone who didn’t need it any longer and put it on what was left of the injured man’s head. Both men took one of Probst’s arms and put it over their shoulders before pulling him out of the hastily dug trench and began to move as quickly as they could whilst crouching, their feet constantly getting stuck in the churned up mud and pieces of things they didn’t want to dwell on. Adolf had mindlessly chosen Probst’s heavily burned side whilst he had been pre-occupied by the nearing enemy. Having regained his focus he realised that there was now a pattern to the man’s whimpering, before becoming aware of the clicking sound his arm was making. With every muddy step Probst’s bones were shattering.
His whimpering was the only protest he could make as the three made their escape.
---
The painting is Stormtroopers Advancing Under Gas Attack by Otto Dix
Though you may attribute Von Straussenberg's hubris to the Germans exaggerating their successes to their allies, the apparent victory of the Spring Offensive was met with equal joy on the German Home Front and arguably contributed to the 'Stab In The Back' myth later on.
'Among other things, the wound of our enemies in the west is so deep today that it can never heal again.
I should be telling a lie if I said that the latest German successes surprised me; of these victories I was confident.'
~ Arz von Straussenberg on the German Spring Offensive
I should be telling a lie if I said that the latest German successes surprised me; of these victories I was confident.'
~ Arz von Straussenberg on the German Spring Offensive
‘Throughout this work I have striven to make it clear that the 1918 Spring Offensive was clearly the most decisive battle of the First World War.
The German attempt to snatch victory from the jaws of defeat very nearly succeeded and it is a indignity to those who fought on either side of this climatic showdown to suggest that the offensive was merely a hopeless roll of the dice by a nation already defeated. I hope I have succeeded in making this case, though it is also important to consider some of the greater repercussions that followed.
Many of the offensive’s implications are often misattributed to the Entente’s Hundred Days Offensive that followed the failed German effort. Whilst Ludendorff should be acknowledged for his identification of weak points and using heavy artillery and Stoßtruppen to destroy them, it would be the massed concentrations of airpower and armour seen in that summer of 1918 would be a prelude to the standard offensives of the Second World War.
The real implications of the Spring Offensive lie not in the ingenuity of the German staff but in their failures. A young Adolf Hitler, the man who would ignite an even more destructive conflict less than three decades later, found himself amidst these failures and swore vengeance not just on the entente but on the aristocratic establishment that had abandoned himself and so many others to wither on the vine.
From the safety of his headquarters General Ludendorff had been all too aware that Germany couldn’t win a war of attrition. Even before the Entente offensive began tens of thousands of fresh American troops were appearing each week whilst Germany couldn’t even afford to make-up their own losses in new recruits.
With his remaining forces spent in the failed offensive it wasn’t long before he began looking for ways to spin Germany’s inevitable defeat into someone else’s failure.’
James Beatty, The Kaiser’s Last Gambit
---
The figure had looked almost comedic to begin with, one side of the body relatively neat, the other side ragged and smouldering.
One side of the face had a stunned look like the comedic foil in a movie picture, the other side covered in so much blood and dirt that it was hard to see any expression underneath.
His walk was similarly reminiscent of the movies, shaking and jittering as if electricity were going through this body with large exaggerated steps away from the scene of the explosion that had done this to him. The shock compelled him to ignore the round that landed nearby, and the resulting collection of screams and torsos that flew everywhere. The man seemed fixated on getting somewhere but seemed to have forgotten where he was going. He stood still for a moment before the exaggerated steps began again.
It was no longer any surprise that these sights could be disturbing and hypnotic at the same time. Adolf had had four years of this trauma by now. The bloodied automaton that went by the name of Probst was simply the most recent entry into a long list of similar events. Whilst Adolf had survived this far he remained distracted by what could have very easily been his own fate. He’d learned to shake these thoughts off but he still couldn’t get rid of the ringing in his ears.
Adolf grabbed Probst by his collar and pulled him backwards into the trench, he curled up into a ball and attempted to put the stub of what had been a thumb into his mouth, only to realise there simply wasn’t enough of it left to suckle on. His remaining muscles contorted into a look of utter despair as he removed the shaking claw-like appendage from what was left of his face. The eye had could still open was full of a very infantile sadness. Everything seemed to get a return for those in their last moments. Adolf feared the regiment would all be facing the same fate soon enough, this was no ordinary offensive.
The German infantry had withdrawn during entente attacks countless times throughout the course of the war, either in temporary setbacks or as a deliberate ploy to rack up enemy casualties before countering with greater force. This wasn’t helpful experience, for the present situation was unprecedented.
There would be no counter-attack to relieve them as far more crucial areas of the line were being sacrificed with the abandonment of huge supplies of weaponry and material amidst the chaotic retreat. There were stories of mass surrenders, hundreds of weary men allowing themselves to be led away by a single enemy guard. Adolf couldn’t blame those who had given up for their leaders, and his, were nowhere to be seen.
Rumour had it that the high command was suffering from a collective nervous breakdown. Adolf wouldn’t have been surprised at all. Those at the top didn’t mind keeping men yoked in a situation that deteriorated by the moment provided they were nowhere near the danger. Now after years of comfort the armchair generals had gone weak kneed at retracting lines on a map.
The scene around Adolf and his surviving comrades, the sights, sounds, and smells, were not anything particularly worse than what they’d gotten used to over the years of conflict. Flares lit up the night sky almost pointlessly as fire spreading across the horizon, giving everything an orange glow. The collective stink of mud and cordite were mixed with reeks of unimaginable origin. His mouth was heavy with blood and phlegm. There was nothing out of the ordinary in this situation, other than the fear that it would never stop.
In previous battles there had always been some reprieve, even if temporary, from the shelling and the slaughter. The relatively static nature of the front had been a mix of lingering before spontaneous moments of horror. Even the most detached and sadistic of officers realised that everyone needing to catch their breath eventually, in the last few weeks this situation had changed dramatically.
The entente were on the offensive and they were showing no signs of stopping until they had rolled over the entirety of the Heer. After years on the back foot they finally had finally broken the German line and there no longer seemed to be any escaping from them. Adolf and Friedrich had been sent behind the line beforehand everything had gone wrong, their discussions with their fellow troops about the real motivations of this war and the overwhelmingly low opinion of their commanders had been deemed too incendiary for the front. Despite their experience they had been ordered away from the active fighting for the first time since Adolf had been interrogated for his supposed collusion with Lieutenant Gutmann. After several days of being forced to clear away the dead he had begun to pine for the days without food and sleepless nights in his bright cell. Friedrich had seemed resigned to it at the time, Adolf had only grown angrier.
He felt like he was being taunted, that his earnest attempts at fighting for Germany had been thrown back in his face mockingly. For in trying to improve the situation he was now carting away bodies and trying to sort which limb should go where, an ever present reminder of the failures of Germany’s leadership. Adolf had felt that things couldn’t get any worse, until the enemy planes had flown so low that they had almost taken his head off, announcing the beginning of the offensive that seemed as if it would never end.
It hadn’t been long before the enemy had caught up with their planes, they had brought their monstrous metal machines as well. Adolf and Friedrich had been thrown into the line alongside the rest of the punishment battalion. They had fought without a second thought, even Friedrich took the enemy seriously, the line had collapsed around them nonetheless and now they didn’t know if there even was a line left to hold.
Friedrich shook Adolf from his reminiscing. His comrade still had that earnest look in his eyes that confirmed that everything was still going wrong.
“We need to get out of here. Now.”
There was no-one left to tend to the fires burning out of control or to the helpless wounded, they crackled and shrieked respectively. There was a silence of sorts nonetheless, the firing had stopped, in the past this had been a relief now it was only a sign of warning. For the last few weeks the entente had repeated the creeping barrage over and over again, never allowing more than a few minutes for Adolf and others to compose themselves. Now he could already hear whistles and guttural shouts in the distance, too far away to make out whether they were in English or French yet coming closer all the time. There were rumours that they had been ordered to take no prisoners and whilst some had discarded these as false stories to try and put a stop to the vast number of surrenders, neither Adolf nor Friedrich were going to put them to the test.
Probst was still gibbering as Adolf took a helmet from someone who didn’t need it any longer and put it on what was left of the injured man’s head. Both men took one of Probst’s arms and put it over their shoulders before pulling him out of the hastily dug trench and began to move as quickly as they could whilst crouching, their feet constantly getting stuck in the churned up mud and pieces of things they didn’t want to dwell on. Adolf had mindlessly chosen Probst’s heavily burned side whilst he had been pre-occupied by the nearing enemy. Having regained his focus he realised that there was now a pattern to the man’s whimpering, before becoming aware of the clicking sound his arm was making. With every muddy step Probst’s bones were shattering.
His whimpering was the only protest he could make as the three made their escape.
---
The painting is Stormtroopers Advancing Under Gas Attack by Otto Dix
Though you may attribute Von Straussenberg's hubris to the Germans exaggerating their successes to their allies, the apparent victory of the Spring Offensive was met with equal joy on the German Home Front and arguably contributed to the 'Stab In The Back' myth later on.
- The Red
- Word Count: 1.8k