alternatehistory.com

…On August 29th Ludendorff launched his peace offensive against the French. Attacking South of St. Mihiel on both banks of the Meuse Luddendorf hoped to threaten French lines of communication in Lorraine and either force them into a decisive battle or a large-scale withdrawal.

Unlike previous offensives the French were prepared. Aerial reconnaissance had detected the buildup of forces, even if they did not have the precise start time the French were well aware an offensive was coming. They had prepared defenses in the same model the British had in Flanders, a series of outposts for the first three miles to slow and channel attacks, with a mainline of resistance behind it. Guns were preregistered on the German artillery positions and the French reserves were in position to counter any breakthroughs.

When the Firewall bombardment began at 3:30 French heavy artillery quickly began countering the German guns, while lighter artillery swept the assault trenches and killed the packed troops en masse. Even with the casualties and the poor effectiveness of the bombardment the assault was launched as scheduled at 5:00. Despite the lack of stormtroopers and the ineffectiveness of the bombardment the assault made greater progress than Hagen, the French being less inclined that the British to fight to the last cartridge. By the end of the day the Germans had reached the mainline of resistance and breached it in a number of places.

Foch committed his reserves during the night and a vicious battle of attrition ensued over control of the mainline of resistance, with the French attempting to retake it while the Germans tried to push to the next defensive line a further four miles back. For a week the back and forth continued, with the Germans eventually forcing the French back to the second defensive line.

Ludendorff wanted to press on but General Gallwitz, the Army Group commander, informed him that any assault on the line would be doomed to failure, too many casualties had been suffered and the frontline divisions were a shadow of their former selves. Incurring any serious losses would leave them vulnerable to a counterattack. Ludendorff was skeptical, but after inspectors determined that Gallwitz was if anything understating the precariousness of his position decided to redeploy reserves from the north to continue the assault.

An armor heavy British counterattack in Flanders on the 7th, simultaneous with a corps level American assault on the Marne denied those plans as those reserves were needed elsewhere. Ludendorff suffered a brief breakdown on the night of the 8th as he came to grips with the possibility that the war could no longer be won. There were not enough German reserves available to conduct another large-scale offensive on the French. Bulgaria and Romania showed no signs of being willing to send troops to the meatgrinder of the Western Front, the Austrians were having issues of their own and the Ottomans needed German reinforcements themselves. Any plan to bleed the French to death and end the war that way could not occur. On the 10th Ludendorff called off any future offensive actions by Army Group Gallwitz.

The Germans had suffered 90,000 casualties and inflicted roughly 100,000 on the French and captured about 100 square miles of French territory. In exchange they had used up most of their reserves and had come no closer to winning the war.

However the assault was not necessarily a complete strategic failure for the Germans. The casualties the French suffered, in particular the casualties among their infantry were impossible for them to replace. With the French having so far drawn down their rifle strength to increase artillery and machine gun strength the high infantry losses from the peace offensive rendered over a dozen French divisions incapable of combat. The French, who were already having to look at disbanding divisions to keep up with day-to-day losses, would have to disband even more. The ability of the French to conduct an independent offensive against Germany was crippled by the Friedensturm, with the attendant consequences at the Peace Table. Ludendorff would later claim this as a secondary goal of the offensive, however there is no evidence that he thought that at the time…

-Excerpt from The Loss of Innocence: America in the Great War, Harper & Brothers, New York 2014