The Battle of Amiens - August 8, 1918

The Battle of Amiens began on this day in 1918, starting the 100 Days Offensive that ended World War I. There's more to the story in the August 6, 2018, episode of Stuff You Missed in History Class.

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Episode Transcript

Speaker 1 (00:01):
Welcome to This Day in History Class from how Stuff
Works dot Com and from the desk of Stuff You
Missed in History Class. It's the show where we explore
the past one day at a time with a quick
look at what happened today in history. Hello, and welcome
to the podcast. I'm Tracy V. Wilson, and it's August eight.

(00:21):
The Battle of Amma started on this day in nineteen eighteen,
which was the start of the last hundred days of
World War One. A lot of World War One before
this point was a stalemate along the Western Front. That
stalemate had dragged on since nineteen fourteen. Both sides had
dug into these systems of trenches to try to give

(00:42):
soldiers protection against the devastating weapons of machine guns and artillery.
The trenches did protect the troops from the machine guns,
but it also meant that once they were dug in,
they couldn't go anywhere. They were sacrificing their mobility for
their safety. So to try to move the line and
to gain territory in this kind of a war, you

(01:04):
had to assault the other side's trench across no band's land,
which was the gap in between the trenches. Common tactic
was to use a creeping barrage. This was artillery that
was supposed to fall just ahead of the advancing infantry
to provide some cover to clear out the enemy. But
a lot of times this didn't go as planned. The

(01:26):
artillery would get too far ahead, it would basically serve
as a warning, or it would start to early and
warn the other side of what was coming. Or it
would tear up the ground so much that the soldiers
couldn't get through effectively. Sometimes it fell short and it
killed the advancing soldiers before they got to where they
were going. In the Battle of Amien, though, it combined

(01:49):
all of the available military technologies that the Allies had
into one coordinated assault that was not primarily a creeping
barrage and an infantry advance. It built off an Allied
success and an earlier battle that had taken place on
July fourth that had been planned out by Lieutenant General
John Monash of Australia. Monash had been a civil engineer.

(02:13):
He was not a career military man, and that fresh
way of looking at things has been credited with the
way that he approached this battle. He used fake troop movements,
bogus radio transmissions, artillery, smoke shells, air support and tanks. Altogether,
the tanks plowed through the Germans barbed wire and they

(02:33):
delivered supplies from behind the advancing infantry. The infantry later
said it was the best supplied they had ever been
in a battle. Some of the aircraft that they chose
for this mission were old ones. They picked these on
purpose because their engines were so loud that it would
cover up the sound of the tanks. The Battle of
Amia was much the same. It attacked a bulging point

(02:54):
in the German lines outside the city of Amy, which
was a critical communication and railway hub. This attack brought
together all of the military technologies that they had. There
was air support, there was artillery, tanks, infantry. Canadian and
Australian troops formed the spearhead for the advance onto the
German lines. In a war that had really been dominated

(03:17):
by battles that dragged on for months and saw massive
casualties in exchange for at most a few meters of
land gained, they advanced eight miles or thirteen kilometers just
on the first day. They liberated more than a hundred
towns and villages. They also captured a gun that had

(03:37):
been used to shell the city of emmy On from
a very long way away. Apart from the military success
for the Allies, this attack revealed the terrible morale of
the German army at this point. Quartermaster General Eric Ludendorf
called this quote the black day of the German Army
in the history of the war. Twelve thou and German

(04:00):
soldiers were taken captive, and there were huge numbers of
reported surrenders. This win for the Allies launched the last
hundred days of pushing the German Army back towards Germany
and what came to be known as the Hundred Days Offensive.
It ultimately led to the November eleventh, nineteen eighteen Armistice

(04:21):
and later the Treaty of Versailles that formerly ended the war.
Thanks to Tari Harrison for her audio skills on this podcast,
and you can learn more about this battle on the
August six episode of Stuffy Miss in History Class, which
includes more about the aftermath and how this was also
part of the lead up to World War Two. You
can subscribe to This Day in History Class on Apple podcasts,

(04:44):
Google podcasts, and wherever else you get your podcasts. Tune
in tomorrow for the best of wives, the best of
women who was anything but helpless,