separating the BEF and the French Army. But 191 8 was not to be a year of military or
strategic miracles for Germany.
Familiar problems compromised the German gamble. Their offensives were logis-
tically impractical – recall 1914! – and consequently the best of the German infantry,
though frequently tactically successful, took disabling casualties. The Germans rapidly
outran their artillery support and could not provide adequate substitutes from the air or
from weapons integral to their combined-arms combat teams. With respect to the higher
direction of this final, monumental effort, Ludendorff proved himself a true disciple of
Moltke the Elder, who had claimed that ‘strategy is a system of expedients’ (Hughes,
1993: 47). There was no consistency of operational purpose for strategic effect. The
Germans launched offensive after offensive against different sectors of the Allied line in
obedience to no coherent strategic conception.
With the Germans exhausted, demoralized and greatly reduced in numbers by their
extraordinary casualties, from July until November 191 8 the Allies counter-attacked
continuously all along the Western Front. Between 21 March and 25 June, German
casualties totalled 1 million, suffered mainly by their better formations. Not only was
the numerical and material balance moving ever more rapidly in the Allied favour, but
their forces, the British and French at least, had more or less mastered a new style of
combined-arms warfare. (This is discussed in the next section.) Although it is a cliché to
repeat the mantra that there were no decisive battles in World War I, Amiens on 8 August
was termed the ‘Black Day of the German Army’ by no less an authority than the highly
strung generalissimo himself, Erich Ludendorff. The Allied forces were exhausted,
particularly so the BEF because it was bearing the heaviest burden of the fighting, but
they continued their attritional and unstoppable advance, step by step, from 8 August
until 11 November. On 29 September the BEF broke into and through the Hindenburg
Line (which generally consisted of six lines of defence) at the St Quentin Canal, and it
was plain for all to see that the end of effective German resistance was approaching.
Nevertheless, despite unsustainable casualties, some mass surrenders, a hopeless military
situation and rock-bottom morale, much of the German Army retreated slowly in fair, if
not reliably good, order, and continued to inflict high losses on their careful pursuers.
The fact that the German Army had been beaten but not routed in the field was
registered in the signing of an Armistice on 11 November 191 8. That army on the
Western Front was, and always had been, the centre of gravity of the war-making of the
Central Powers. It was defeated by the cumulative strategic effect of four and a quarter
years of attritional combat. The Germans had always believed that they were certain to
lose a protracted war against a coalition blessed with superiority in numbers of soldiers
and economic resources. That belief was vindicated in 191 8.
Modern warfare
World War I offers a near-perfect illustration of the wisdom in Clausewitz’s trinitarian
theory of war. As was explained in Chapter 2, the Prussian advised that war is composed
of ‘primordial violence, hatred and enmity; of the play of chance and probability within
which the creative spirit is free to roam; [and] of its element of subordination, as an
instrument of policy, which makes it subject to reason alone’ (Clausewitz, 1976: 8 9). In
1914–15 none of the great powers believed they could stand aside. Policy drove strategy
90 War, peace and international relations