The First Battle of the Marne produced the so-called Miracle of the Marne, when French and British forces stopped the initial German drive on Paris in 1914. Hundreds of thousands of casualties later, with opposing forces still dug into trench lines, the Germans tried again to push their way to Paris and to victory. The Second Battle of the Marne (July 15 to August 9, 1918) marks the point at which the Allied armies stopped the massive German Ludendorff Offensives and turned to offensive operations themselves. The Germans never again came as close to Paris nor resumed the offensive. The battle was one of the first large multinational battles fought by the Allies since the assumption of supreme command by French general Ferdinand Foch. It marks the only time the French, American, and British forces fought together in one battle. A superb account of the bloody events of those fateful days, this book sheds new light on a critically important 20th-century battle.

This is the first study of the Ludendorff Offensives of 1918 based extensively on key German records presumed to be lost forever after Potsdam was bombed in 1944. In 1997, David T. Zabecki discovered translated copies of these files in a collection of old instructional material at the U.S. Army Command and General Staff College at Fort Leavenworth, Kansas. He presents his findings here for the first time, with a thorough review of the surviving original operational plans and orders, to offer a wealth of fresh insights to the German Offensives of 1918. David T. Zabecki clearly demonstrates how the German failure to exploit the vulnerabilities in the BEF’s rail system led to the failure of the first two offensives, and how inadequacies in the German rail system determined the outcome of the last three offensives. This is a window into the mind of the German General Staff of World War I, with thorough analysis of the German planning and decision making processes during the execution of battles. This is also the first study in English or in German to analyze the specifics of the aborted Operation HAGEN plan. This is also the first study of the 1918 Offensives to focus on the ‘operational level of war’ and on the body of military activity known as ‘the operational art’, rather than on the conventional tactical or strategic levels. This book will be of great interest to all students of World War I, the German Army and of strategic studies and military theory in general.

For the first time in a generation, here is a bold new account of the Battle of the Marne, a cataclysmic encounter that prevented a quick German victory in World War I and changed the course of two wars and the world. With exclusive information based on newly unearthed documents, Holger H. Herwig re-creates the dramatic battle and reinterprets Germany’s aggressive “Schlieffen Plan” as a carefully crafted design to avoid a protracted war against superior coalitions. He paints a fresh portrait of the run-up to the Marne and puts in dazzling relief the Battle of the Marne itself: the French resolve to win, and the crucial lack of coordination between Germany’s First and Second Armies. Herwig also provides stunning cameos of all the important players, from Germany’s Chief of General Staff Helmuth von Moltke to his rival, France’s Joseph Joffre. Revelatory and riveting, this is the source on this seminal event.