The Second Battle of the Marne

Introduction: The Two Marnes

Introduction: The Two Marnes [Allied Supreme Commander General Ferdinand] Foch was in the best of spirits. He told me that after three hours’ bombardment , the Enemy had attacked at 4am this morning on two fronts east and west of Rheims. East of Rheims on a front of 26 miles, and west of Rheims on a front of 29 miles. A front of 16 miles about Rheims itself was not attacked. The total front attacked seems therefore to be about 55 miles. —Diary Entry of British Field Marshal Sir Douglas Haig, Monday 15 July 1918 The picturesque and pastoral beauty of the Marne River valley belies its violent past. Twice during the course of World War I this peaceful region sat at the center of a massive battle. Both times, a German army had advanced into the valley, appearing, at least to Allied eyes, to pose a direct threat to Paris. Both times, the British and the French had faced the problem of improvising methods for fighting coalition war in the direst of circumstances. In 1914, the Allied coalition had held by the narrowest of margins. In 1918, the stage was set yet again for a battle that might decide the war. As in 1914, the British and French would need to work together to blunt a major German offensive. Unlike 1914, however, the Allies could draw on the strength of the new American Expeditionary Forces, even though they remained skeptical about the AEF’s amateurishness and lack of experience. Could they work together to defeat the Germans once again, or would the Second Battle of the Marne mark the beginning of the final German triumph of the war? Two of the key decision makers of 1918, Ferdinand Foch and Douglas Haig, had served on the Marne River as allies together four years earlier. In September 1914 the Germans crossed the Marne in the final phase of their grand opening offensive in the west. Recognizing the failure of their initial war plan, the Germans had hastily developed a plan for a double envelopment of Allied forces in the massive theater from the eastern approaches to Paris to the region near Verdun. The Marne sat directly in the center of the new battle area. 2 The Second Battle of the Marne As part of a larger effort to stop this German advance, Foch had been promoted and named commander of a hastily assembled French Ninth Army that he rushed into a dangerously exposed gap in the lines. He had ordered a surprise counterattack into a swamp known as the Marshes of St. Gond. The unexpected attack threw German timing off and exposed a gap between two German armies. Foch’s dispatch from what later became known as the First Battle of the Marne in September 1914 read, “My center is giving way, my right is in retreat. Situation excellent. I attack.” The actual orders he gave were less grandiloquent; Foch had ordered an attack because he realized that if he stayed in place, his new army would be overwhelmed, and if he retreated he would dangerously expose the flanks of the units adjacent to his. Thus, like Joshua Lawrence Chamberlain at Little Round Top in 1863, Foch realized that attacking was the best of a set of bad options. The proclamation , likely written after the battle for morale purposes, was broadcast Introduction 3 throughout the Allied nations by public affairs officers anxious for something dramatic to publish, and it made Foch a household name across France. It also cemented his reputation as a fierce proponent of the offensive. Haig in 1914 had been in command of the I Corps of the British Expeditionary Force (BEF). On the Marne, against rudimentary German field defenses, he had directed a charge that had disrupted German timing but failed to achieve the breakthrough that Haig still thought was possible. The failure of that charge led Haig to conclude that “the nature of the war had changed” and that the war would be long and would involve much less movement than he had originally assumed.1 In December 1915, Haig was promoted to commander of the BEF, and, despite his bloody failures in 1916 and 1917 to deliver on repeated promises of breakthroughs of the German lines, he held on to his job. The German commander of the 1918 Marne offensive, Crown Prince Wilhelm, had also been at the First Battle of the Marne, as...