The Spring Offensives and the Hundred Days

CHAPTER 10 · MAR–NOV 1918 · The Great War, 1914–1918

At 04:40 on 21 March, 6,600 guns open the war’s greatest bombardment, and Operation Michael finally does what four years failed to do: breaks the trench. Stormtroops infiltrate through fog past strongpoints, the British Fifth Army ruptures, and in a week Germany advances 65 km — the map’s charcoal bulge toward Amiens. Then the pattern that will repeat in each of the five spring offensives (Michael, Georgette on the Lys, Blücher to the Marne — the three arrows): spectacular break-in, then starvation of the breakthrough as guns, shells and food fail to cross the wilderness the bombardment made,

The turn: Amiens, 8 August 1918.

This chapter is one scene of an interactive atlas: the map repaints as the dates advance, campaigns draw themselves, and every chapter argues its causes and consequences — then a field exam asks you to prove it on the map.