When Chief of the German General Staff and effectively co-dictator of Imperial Germany Erich Ludendorff gave the green light for the Germans final offensive in the West the outcome of WW1 still hung very much in the balance.

The Central Powers defeat of Tsarist Russia had allowed Germany to shift huge numbers of men and material from east to west. The choice they faced was to go for one final roll of the dice in the west with the aim of splitting the allied armies or to consolidate their territorial gains with the help of the extra resources now in German hands following the punitive treaty of Brest-Litovsk.

What swung the balance in favour of going for broke was the arrival of a 100,000 American ‘doughboys’ each month in France as well as the increasingly precarious position of Germany’s allies – Austro Hungary, the Ottoman Empire and Bulgaria. The Germans decided it was now or never to win the war and to put an end to the naval blockade that was taking a terrible toll on the civilian population.

Meticulous planning, smarter use of artillery with shorter, better sighted, intensive bombardments as well as fast moving German Stormtrooper units led to substantial initial breakthroughs on 21st March, the days and weeks that followed.

The initial attack, Operation Michael, fell like a hammer blow on the British near Saint-Quentin at 4.40 am. A staggering 3.5 million shells were fired in the first five hours of the battle as the Germans captured nearly all their first day objectives. The stalemate of o