Here we are, at last, Beasts of War history fans, for the final part in our series on Centennial Gaming in the Great War. My friend Sven (@neves1789) and I have been looking at wargames set in the spring and summer campaigns of 1918, “earthquake moments” in history through which we’re now passing through 100-year anniversaries.

Read The Series Here

Up until now, these have largely been a series of German offensives aimed at winning the war on the Western Front before American numbers could be leveraged against them in a decisive way. If you’re just joining us, so far we’ve covered:

• Part One – Introduction & Background
• Part Two – St. Michael Offensive
• Part Three – Georgette Offensive
• Part Four – Blücher-Yorck Offensive

But for now, it’s time to see how these campaigns finally stagger to a bloody, smouldering end.

We’ll also see how they inevitably lead to the Allied push-backs that will lead to the November Armistice of 1918 when at last we have “All Quiet On The Western Front.”

Zeebrugge Raid

Sven Gets His Feet Wet

Throughout the series, we’ve seen the Germans on the offensive while the Allies were only conducting relatively small and local counterattacks. In April 1918 the strategic initiative was still in German hands but both sides knew it would shift to the Allies once the Americans had their fully mobilised army on the European continent.

Yet these Spring Offensives weren't the only place where the Germans were taking ground. Since late 1916 the German u-boats (submarines) had sunk an average of 300,000 tons of Allied shipping a month, at times spiking up to more than 600,000. This u-boat menace was obviously proving a major issue for the British Royal Navy who tried multiple approaches in dealing with it.

During the planning for the Battle of Passchendaele, British Field-Marshal Haig had come up with a plan, Operation Hush, to neutralise the Belgian ports of Oostende and Zeebrugge that were harbouring some of the German u-boats. The first phase would require a breakthrough at Ypres with the Allied troops advancing about twenty-five kilometres towards the rail hub of Roulers.

The second phase would see British troops land on the Belgian coast behind German front line and move inland to link up with the main Allied army. Together they could then clear the Belgian ports of German u-boats. Obviously, this plan never came to be executed as the Third Battle of Ypres got completely bogged down in the mud around a small speck of land called Passchendaele.

The u-boats remained a problem, however, and at the beginning of 1918, the Royal Navy began planning a naval operation to block the Belgian ports. The plan was fairly straightforward, sail obsolete cruisers into the ports of Zeebrugge and Oostende and sink them at the entries of the canals, thereby blocking the Germans u-boats from leaving their ports further inland.

On 23rd April the raids on both Zeebrugge and Oostende took place. The attempt at Oostende was a complete failure, German defenders were well-prepared and repelled the Royal Navy raid. At Zeebrugge the British met with more success, they managed to scuttle all three of their old cruisers in the port, including two in the canal.

Unfortunately, the Zeebrugge Raid did not yield the expected solution since the Germans were able to clear part of the canal after a couple of days. In the long run however it would provide the Royal Navy with experience that would serve them well during the Second World War, most famously with the Saint-Nazaire Raid.

Gneisenau Offensive

As we saw in Part Four, the Germans almost scored a massive breakthrough with Operation Blücher-Yorck, creating a second salient in the centre of the Western Front. With Operation Georgette and the Battle of the Lys coming to a standstill at the end of April, Ludendorff envisioned a new operation to maintain his offensive momentum.

Like Blücher-Yorck, Operation Gneisenau would serve as a diversion. This time Ludendorff’s aim was to draw British troops from Flanders. Believing that Haig and Foch (British and French commanders, respectively) would reinforce Paris if it were threatened, Ludendorff aimed his offensive right between both salients, in the direction of the French capital. By now the German army had been on the offensive for over three months non-stop.

The Allies had by this point gained valuable experience in defending against German stormtrooper tactics and had adopted a defence in depth. The assault came on 9th June, a couple days after Blücher-Yorck ended, and achieved an advance of about fourteen kilometres. After two days the attack was halted by a fierce French counterattack that used tanks and surprise to its advantage, compelling Ludendorff to call off the operation.

Endgame

The last German offensive of the war was launched on 15th July, a month after the failure of Gneisenau, aptly named “Friedensturm” or the Peace Offensive. It failed to make any real breakthrough as by that time most of the experienced German stormtroopers had been killed, wounded, or captured … and all reserves had been exhausted.

Collectively known as the Kaiserslacht (“Kaiser Battle,” also known as the Spring Offensive), these German offensives were now truly over and had cost Germany over one million soldiers. There would be no tactical, let alone strategic, victory. The Allies were regaining the initiative and preparing their own great counteroffensive. The lessons they’d learned the previous years would be put to use and finally break the stalemate.

Contrary to popular belief both in the past and present, the German army would be decisively defeated in the field in 1918, despite being on Allied territory. The Hundred Days Offensive would drive them halfway through Belgium and the east of France before finally signing the Armistice on 11th November 1918, putting an end to the Great War.

Legacy Of The Kaiserschlacht & The Great War

In the first article, we explored how trench warfare was not new but came to its full use in the First World War. Just so that many principles and techniques learned during the Great War were refined and perfected during the Second World War. The most visible being tank technology but also tactics like infiltration or defence in depth.

The Allied armies would mainly focus on defensive warfare and build some of the world’s most impressive fortifications. Having seen the effects that a prepared and fortified position offered, this was not folly. Although the Maginot Line is sometimes scolded (with the benefit of hindsight), should it have been completed, it could have formed a formidable and perhaps even war-winning obstacle.

The Germans, on the other hand, took different lessons and remembered how they had broken through the line during Operation Michael using speed and surprise. Theorising how exploiting a breakthrough with fast armoured vehicles might bring a quick end to a campaign and provide a way to avoid a two-front war, they would set themselves up for some of the most spectacular victories during the Second World War.

Oriskany Brings It Home

As @neves1789 has outlined, the slowing and eventual halting of offensives like St. Michael, Georgette, and Blücher-Yorck had cost Ludendorff’s German armies a staggering butcher’s bill in casualties. Even worse, these failings had sapped the last of the momentum generated from his momentary advantages in strategic initiative earlier in 1918.

By July 1918, the writing was truly on the wall. Not only had Gneisenau and “Peace” offensives failed, but French-American counterattacks across the Marne River had soon driven back the German Seventh and Ninth Armies, never again to threaten Paris.

Not all the news in July was so rosy. In Russia, Czar Nicholas II and his family were murdered by Russian Bolsheviks, and what remained of the Russian Empire plunged into years of brutal civil war. The first mass deaths from the Spanish Flu were also reported, a global epidemic that would quickly kill more far people than the Great War.

By August, their armies hit especially hard by the Spanish Flu, the Germans were truly reeling. On 8th August the British Fourth Army used 456 tanks at Amiens, smashing six German divisions. The first all-American attack hit at St. Mihel on 12th September, supported by almost 1500 aircraft in an unprecedented air-ground coordinated operation.

Yet still the German Army offered determined resistance and despite gaining so much ground, the Allies had a long way to go before the end of the Great War was in sight.

We actually hope to come back to the Great War later in the year, perhaps for another article series covering the battles later in September and October 1918. The Battle of the Argonne Forest is in this time period (just as one example), so there’s plenty of material to cover before the final Armistice of 11th November.

Thank You!

Of course, I want to thank Sven @neves1789 for his tireless work with these articles. Crushing out pages of text and over a hundred great photos, putting up with my incessant production schedule reminders, he truly deserves a Beasts of War “Croix de Guerre” for his part in this series.

I’d also like to thank @erik101, about half the armies and terrain in all these 15mm World War One Flames of War table photos, are his. Big thanks as well to @dignity and @johnlyons for another great interview recorded and broadcast on the Weekender earlier in the series.

As always, I’d also like to thank @dracs (Content Manager) and @brennon (Written Content Editor) for their help in scheduling and getting the articles plugged into Beasts of War, as well as @lancorz for the front-page graphics and Tom for the web support behind the scenes.

Most of all, of course, thanks to all of you, the readers, who support the continued publication of this content and make it so enjoyable to “put the ‘story’ back in history.” Many would say that narrative is the most important part of a wargame, and honestly, there’s no richer narrative than real history, real men, real smoke, real blood.

So adieu, for now, fellow grognards and “grognettes.” Please post your comments, questions, and feedback in the thread below. Also, keep an eye out for the support thread we usually start in the forums for these articles, where you can post your own table photos, war stories, battle reports, documents, video links, and so on.

Sven and I sincerely hope you’ve enjoyed this article series on the Centennial Gaming in the Great War: The Campaigns of 1918. Until we meet again in no-man’s land … keep your head down in those trenches!