![]() This would mark the beginning of a tense series of notes and discussions that would ultimately result in the German delegation signing an Armistice in the early hours of 11 November 1918. President, Woodrow Wilson (1856-1924), on 3 October, accepting his “ Fourteen Points” as the basis for negotiations. On the evening of 28 September, Ludendorff went to see the Chief of the General Staff, Paul von Hindenburg (1847-1934), and told him that Germany must seek peace as soon as possible. The hard fighting that erupted across the Western Front in late September stretched German reserves to the breaking point and threatened to bring about the complete disintegration of the front. Nevertheless, the cumulative effects of Foch’s concentric attacks in late September produced a dramatic collapse of will. On 7 September OHL ( Oberste Heeresleitung – German Supreme Command) ordered the German Army to begin falling back to the Hindenburg Line, with the hope that once this had been occupied, the Allies would be unable to break through, thus raising the possibility of some kind of negotiated peace. It was not until late August that the First Quartermaster-General, Erich von Ludendorff (1865-1937), gave up his hopes of a final offensive in Flanders (Codenamed Operation Hagen). The German Supreme Command had no answer to the furious Allied attacks and remained detached from the realities of the deteriorating situation. Quentin canal (to be conducted by the British Fourth and French First Armies). Finally, on 29 September, the final stage of Foch’s plans would go ahead: the main assault on the Hindenburg Line on the St. The British Third and First Armies would strike eastwards towards Cambrai on 27 September, to be followed by an attack in Flanders on 28 September. First Army on 12 September, Foch devised a four-stage concentric offensive that would begin on 26 September with an American attack in the Meuse-Argonne. Following the pinching out of the Saint-Mihiel salient by the U.S. However, owing to the success of the Anglo-French operation at Amiens – which drove up to eight miles into the German lines south of the Somme River – Foch began formulating a more ambitious series of plans. At a meeting of Allied Commanders-in-Chief on 24 July, the Allied Generalissimo, Marshal Ferdinand Foch (1851-1929), proposed taking advantage of German disarray following the Second Battle of the Marne by securing a number of key logistical hubs (primarily the Amiens railway junction and the Paris-Avricourt line at Chateau-Thierry). The Hundred Days was not initially intended to be a war-winning campaign. Beginning at the Battle of Amiens on 8 August and continuing at varying levels of intensity until the Armistice of 11 November, the Hundred Days – actually only a total of ninety-five days – marked the final, climactic campaign of the First World War. Following the Allied counter-attack at the Second Battle of the Marne (15 July – 6 August 1918), the British, Belgian, French and American armies mounted a series of offensive operations that drove the German army from their great gains of the spring and forced the German government to seek peace. The Hundred Days (or “Advance to Victory”) was a series of major battles that took place in the final phase of the Great War on the Western Front between August and November 1918. ![]()
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