16 - ‘Tout le monde à la bataille’

Summary

Having set the ball rolling, all Foch had to do now was to maintain the momentum with a general offensive. This he did with his customary energy – so much so that to read his directives and instructions for this offensive, planned for the end of September into October, without reference to Germany’s approach to President Wilson for an armistice based on the Fourteen Points, is to get no sense that victory was in sight. Pushing everyone into the fight, pushing to maintain maximum pressure on the enemy, was Foch’s constant war cry.

When the last Allied effort to win victory began, the Germans were back in the series of defensive positions that Hindenburg and Ludendorff had ordered constructed when they took over the supreme command in 1916, hence called the Hindenburg Line by the Allies. It was not, however, a single line, rather a series of deep positions (some extending as much as ten kilometres), stretching from the Swiss frontier to the North Sea. It consisted of five sections, named after mythical or historical figures. Wotan in the north ran from the coast to Arras. Then the Siegfriedstellung, the first to be built and the strongest, extended from Arras to Soissons. Next, Alberich linked Soissons and Laon, and Hagen extended the line to Metz and Strassburg. Behind this first defensive line ran a second, the Hunding Line. It was less deep but took full advantage of the steep wooded terrain, especially in its central section between the Aisne and the Oise rivers. It extended eastwards – the Brunhild and Kriemhild Lines – and northwards to Douai on the river Scarpe – the Herrmann Line.