The Battle That Broke The Germans

When the Allies launched an offensive at Amiens 100 years ago this month, they did so with such precision and power that enemy troops were soon surrendering in their thousands. Nick Lloyd describes a battle that shattered German morale, and asks, why is it not more celebrated today?

By the evening of 7 August 1918 everything was ready. As thousands of Allied troops shuffled into position and checked their final orders, a hush descended on the battlefield. It was an ominous silence, strange for ears used to the constant roar of the guns. And then at 4.20am, when it was still dark and the air saturated with thick fog, the barrage opened. “You could have read a newspaper whichever way you looked,” because of the reflection from the gunfire, wrote Private William Curtis of the 10th Canadian Battalion. It was a terrible spectacle, the air bright with the muzzle flashes of more than 2,000 guns unleashing hell on the German lines. The battle of Amiens – an Allied blow so devastating that it would send the German army spiralling towards ultimate defeat in the First World War – had begun.

A GRAVE CRISIS

By the time Private Curtis and his comrades went over the top on that summer morning, the First World War had been raging for four long years. At least 9 million soldiers had been killed, with another 20 million wounded or unaccounted for across the battlefields of Europe, Africa and the Middle East.

Five months earlier, the Central Powers (Germany, Austria-Hungary, Bulgaria and the Ottoman empire) had signed a draconian peace treaty with the Bolsheviks at BrestLitovsk that deprived Russia of almost 30 per cent of its prewar population and cemented Germany’s dominant position in central and eastern Europe. Meanwhile, on the western front, fighting had been intense and continuous. On 21 March 1918, Germany had launched a series of massive offensives that would break apart the trench stalemate and usher in the gravest crisis for the Allies since the opening weeks of the war.