Erich Ludendorff

Erich Ludendorff was a German field marshal whose 1918 offensives sought to decide the war on the Western Front. He launched the assault at the Battle of the Lys, then saw American forces emerge as a decisive factor in the German defeat at the Second Battle of the Marne—a contrast that marks the limits of Germany’s final push.

Position and Strategic Context

After Russia had been out of the war since December, German forces could concentrate on a single front, a strategic opportunity Germany had wanted from the beginning. Ludendorff used that concentration to mount a massive frontal assault on Allied lines along the River Lys, near Armentières. The offensive was intended to be decisive, making the battle a direct effort to turn Germany’s advantage on the Western Front into victory.

The Battle of the Lys

The assault began in April 1918 and brought appalling losses. The day before the attack was described, British commander General Sir Douglas Haig had urged his forces to fight on with their backs to the wall. The Battle of the Lys continued for three weeks, until Ludendorff’s offensive was stopped. Winston Churchill would later regard the struggle as critical to the Western Front and the war, but the account does not suggest that its outcome alone settled the conflict.

The Second Battle of the Marne

On July 15, German forces launched another major offensive aimed at Paris. In the fighting that followed, American troops were among the Allied forces, and the tide turned between July 15 and July 18. Ludendorff considered American forces the decisive factor in that reversal. The episode presents his campaigns against a changing military reality: the offensive at the Lys was halted, and at the Marne, the arrival and combat role of American forces helped frustrate a further attempt to win the war.