The Third Battle of the Marne, was an Allied counter-attack which took place between July the 18th and August the 4th 1918 during the Great War, immediately following the German offensive known as the Second Battle of the Marne, and is sometimes included the whole operation, together being known as the second battle of the Marne. The Third Battle of the Marne effectively marked the final stages of the Great War, ending German hopes of victory.
The tactics to be employed by the Allies in the third battle were those introduced by the British in the famous first battle of Cambrai. There was to be no long preliminary bombardment, but
tanks were used to break through the wire. The factor of surprise was restored. Petain suspended the preparations when the Germans opened their offensive; Foch countermanded this suspension and directed Mangin to carry out the original plan, by which he was to attack at 4.35 am on July the 18th. The final preparations and the movement of the tanks to the front were covered by a terrific thunderstorm, which with the droning of the noisiest French aeroplanes drowned the roaring of the engines. The 1st, 2nd, 4th, and 26th American divisions, totalling 100,000 American troops, were available, either in the front line or in reserve, besides French troops, but there were as yet scanty trained reserves at Foch's disposal to exploit victory.
At the predetermined hour Mangin attacked, and, as the tanks and infantry advanced, a creeping barrage moved before them. In all, on this day 225 tanks were employed, and their casualties were extremely heavy. Sixty-two were put out of action by artillery fire and 40 were disabled in other ways with a loss of 25 per cent of their personnel. But the work which they did was magnificent. The Germans were completely surprised; their lines were stormed, and their advance artillery were captured. In the centre the 1st and 2nd American divisions with a Morocco division advanced 5 miles, distinguishing themselves by the energy of their attack north of the Aisne, French troops covered the flank of the advance, and on Mangin's right, Degoutte pressed the Germans hard.
In all, on the first day of the battle, 10,000 prisoners and 200 guns were taken by the 10th army, and 2,000 prisoners and 50 guns by the 6th. Ludendorff admits that the position was critical.
The plight of the Germans south of the Marne compelled him to stand and fight; but he was able to throw in certain reserve divisions, which were being moved to the Ardre front, where the original intention of the Germans was to use them in striking against Epernay. On this day, according to Mangin, Petain favoured the suspension of the offensive, owing to the, lack of reserves in the French army. Foch overruled this decision and ordered up four fresh divisions, the last he had available, taken, from the British reserves.
On July the 19th the battle continued with approximately equal forces on either side, as Ludendorff brought up troops which were in process of being moved to Flanders. The number of French tanks available had sunk to 105, of which 50 were hit by shells during the day's fighting. However, in a long series of local, attacks important ground was gained which brought the high road from Soissons to Chateau-Thierry under fire of the French artillery at a range of 1.5 miles, and the railway junctions at Oulchy at ranges of 5 and 3 miles, thus threatening the whole German system of communications in the south of the salient. The effort of the Germans was now to remove or destroy the enormous material which they had accumulated in the salient, the abandonment of which was inevitable. In the night of the 19th-20th (not, as Ludendorff states, the 20th-21st) the German troops recrossed the Marne and fires and explosions behind the German front proved that dumps were being blown up and villages destroyed. On July the 20th a new French army, the 9th (Mitry), entered the battle south of the Marne, and the British 51st and 62nd divisions were put in, attacking with the French the east front of the salient south-east of Reims, astride of the Ardre, while Mangin pressed its west front, now reinforced by the 10th and 34th British divisions, which attacked south-west of Soissons on July the 23rd and the following days. Their conduct was specially praised by Mangin.
The Germans were gradually forced back to a line running from west of Soissons through Fere-en-Tardenois to Ville-en-Tardenois, and at Soissons the railways which they used were brought under a heavy artillery fire and constantly bombed by aircraft. The 15th British division stormed the chateau of Buzancy on July the 28th, and on the following day the 34th British division, fresh from Palestine, played a leading part in the attack on the ridge at Grand Rozoy winch fell into Mangin's hands on August the 1st, and dominated the valley of the Upper Ourcq. Next day Soissons was entered by French troops. On July the 21st French and American troops of Degoutte's army had cleared Chateau-Thierry, and a few days later captured the Bois de Chatelet, whence a German heavy gun had bombarded Paris. On July the 23rd the British on the east side of the salient stormed Marfaux in the face of a desperate resistance, and on July the 28th they took the heights of Bligny, while on the 27th Gouraud recovered a good deal of ground towards Moron villiers. One great result of these victories was that, by wiping out the dangerous Marnesalient, Paris was finally relieved from danger of capture,
The battle gradually came to a close early in August, with the retreat of the Germans from the country south of the Vesle, abandoning vast stores which they had not been able to remove or destroy. Mangin, in an address to his troops, summed up the magnificent results which had been obtained. They had captured 20,000 prisoners, 527 of them officers, with 518 guns, 500 trench mortars, 3,300 machine guns, and many parks and depots, in addition to the plunder which
the Germans had taken from the country, and were preparing to remove. On August the 6th Clemenccau, in his letter announcing to Foch his promotion to the rank of Marshal, summed up the results which the armies under his direction had obtained in this series of battles:
'Paris disengaged; Soissons and Chatean-Thierry recovered in pitched battle, more than 200 villages delivered, 35,000 prisoners, 700 guns taken, the hope loudly proclaimed by the enemy before his attack shattered, the glorious armies of the Allies carried forward in a single victorious bound from the banks of the Marne to the Aisne - such are the fruits of a manoeuvre as admirably conceived by the high command as superbly executed by incomparable leaders'.
Mangin points out many errors in Ludendorff's account of the operations, and particularly notes his contemptuous reference to the American troops, who fought admirably and inflicted on the Germans very heavy losses. But as the Germans in the first battle of the Marne received a disastrous surprise from the British, whom they had dismissed from their calculations, so in the second battle they received a similar surprise from the Americans, though the main fighting fell upon the French. The effect of this series of battles in exhausting the German reserves was grave. On July the 15th their strength readied high-water mark, as they had then 207 divisions on the western front, of which 81 were in reserve. The initiative passed to the Allies, and was retained by Foch, while the recovery of the. main line railway from Paris to Reims increased his manoeuvring power.
As the first battle of the Marne was the decisive engagement of the first period of the war, marking the failure of the German plans for its speedy termination, so the July-August battles were the decisive battles of the closing period; for though after it Ludendorff professed that he still hoped to crush the Allies, the German government no longer shared his delusions and the countries allied with Germany lost hope. Long before the close of the fighting, Foch, on July the 24th, had issued instructions for great offensives to open on other sections of the German front, confident that the moral superiority of the Germans had passed away. Research The Third Battle of the Marne
Abbreviations
Research The Third Battle of the Marne
