THE SPRING OFFENSIVE

© MMXX V.1.0.0

by Morley Evans

THE SPRING OFFENSIVE

1918

Amiens, France

Q: What if the Germans had captured and held Amiens during its 1918 spring offensive during WW1 with its resources/supplies?

Morley Evans

Former Government of Sask, HALT, Reason Foundation

The Germans could not support the Ludendorff offensive because they had spent the entire war on the Western Front on the defensive. The offensive fell apart.

German troops starving for years could not believe the abundance of food and wine they found. Discipline disintegrated. On the other hand, the British and French were always on the offensive on the Western Front. British trenches were unliveable, rat-infested, diseased mud holes because they were considered temporary.

German and French strategies reversed in the Second World War. The Germans were highly aggressive and mobile, taking advantage of accurate intelligence, advanced communication, logistics, and combined forces' coordination.

The French built the Maginot Line, with air-conditioning and tunnels connecting bunkers! The Maginot Line was impenetrable. The German offensive designed by Erich von Manstein simply out-flanked it by going through the Ardennes which everyone thought was impossible.

The Maginot Line was extremely expensive. The French military had to fight over the years to get the funds to build it. The gap was left open because they decided fortifications weren’t necessary there.

Returning to WW I, The Germans didn’t capitalize on the Spring Offensive because they couldn’t. They had been trained to play a different game for four years. The offence was a game the British and French knew how to play.

Germany began World War One with a strategy of mobile offence. The Germans were stopped by the BEF. The British forced Germany to adopt a defensive game. World War Two is certainly a rematch of World War One with a twenty-year intermission to reload.