110 e lusive v ictories
among the units committed to the fi rst attacks. Operations bogged
down, too, because officers bungled the coordination of artillery
support and failed to make adequate provisions to resupply men who
had moved into enemy territory. Against an enemy with four years of
combat experience (and sometimes as much time to prepare defensive
works), the halting American performance should have surprised no
one. Fortunately for the AEF, the Germans had weakened some of their
positions, either to reinforce other sectors threatened by simultaneous
British and French attacks or in preparation for withdrawal to a shorter
and more defensible main line. Pershing would never admit it, but
the Americans fought mostly second- or third-rate German divisions
already seriously depleted by earlier losses. Even with this, casualties
swiftly mounted, and American battle deaths would exceed 116,000 in
a bit more than four months of heavy combat, with an additional
200,000 wounded. (We should keep these losses in perspective: the
British Army suff ered nearly 60,000 casualties on the fi rst day of its 1916
Somme off ensive, while France absorbed more than six million casu-
alties over the course of the war.)
By August 1918 the German army had reached the limits of its
endurance. Th e Allies launched one attack after another to drive the
Germans back to their March starting positions, then continued with
additional assaults that forced further withdrawals. Ludendorff , archi-
tect of the spring off ensives, now concluded that the war was lost. On
August 18, he advised his government to fi nd a way to end the war by
diplomatic means, but he withheld full information about how grave
the situation had become. In the vain hope that some battlefi eld success
might yet allow it to secure more favorable terms, Berlin chose to play
for time rather than seek an immediate cessation of hostilities.
One month later, after the British had broken through the main
German defensive position on the Western Front (the Hindenburg
line) and precipitated a full-scale retreat, Ludendorff lost his nerve and
insisted the government seek an immediate armistice. He subse-
quently disavowed his own recommendation, claiming that the army
could continue to off er eff ective resistance behind the German border.
(Th is reversal helped give rise after the war to the “stab in the back”
myth—the infl ammatory claim that the government decided to quit
the war even though the German Army could continue to prevail on