Peace with Victory: August to November 1918

Abstract

That summer on the Western Front the German army’s last glimmer of hope for a military victory was extinguished when their fifth and final 1918 drive (codenamed “Marneschütz- Reims”) failed as all the others had.¹ German morale waned, while the Allies, heartened by a million fresh American troops and unified under the command of Field Marshal Ferdinand Foch, counterattacked and caught the enemy off guard to conclude the Second Battle of the Marne, again keeping the foe from Paris. On August 8, 1918, which General Erich Ludendorff dubbed the “Black Day of the German Army,” the British began a new Somme offensive and made major gains.² Later that month, British and Empire troops that had been practically surrounded for three bloody years at the Ypres salient took the offensive and also pushed the enemy back.