All activity on the home front had one ultimate objective: defeating the Central Powers on the battlefield. This was accomplished. The navy performed with special distinction. In April 1917, German submarines sank more than 870,000 tons of Allied shipping; after April 1918, monthly losses never reached
The Western Front, 1918 The Germans launched their great offensive in the spring and summer of 1918 with the goal of taking Paris. American troops helped hold the line at Chateau-Thierry and Belleau Woods. Several months later, a half million American soldiers participated in the counteroffensive that drove the Germans back to the Meuse River.
300,000 tons. The decision to send merchant ships across the Atlantic in convoys screened by destroyers made the reduction possible. Checking the U-boats was essential because of the need to transport American troops to Europe. Slightly more than 2 million soldiers made the voyage safely. Those who crossed on fast ocean liners were in little danger as long as the vessel maintained high speed and followed a zigzag course, a lesson learned from the Lusitania, whose captain had neglected both precautions. Those who traveled on slower troop transports benefited from the protection of destroyers and also from the fact that the Germans concentrated on attacking supply ships. They continued to believe that inexperienced American soldiers would not be a major factor in the war.
The first units of the American Expeditionary Force (AEF), elements of the regular army commanded by General John J. Pershing, reached Paris on Independence Day, 1917. They took up positions on the front near Verdun in October. Not until the spring of 1918, however, did the “doughboys” play a significant role in the fighting, though their mere presence boosted French and British morale.
Pershing insisted on maintaining his troops as independent units; he would not allow them to be filtered into the Allied armies as reinforcements. This was part of a perhaps unfortunate general policy that reflected America’s isolationism. (Wilson always referred to the other nations fighting Germany as “associates,” not as “allies.”)
In March 1918 the Germans launched a great spring offensive, their armies strengthened by thousands of veterans who had been freed from the eastern front by the collapse of Russia. By late May they had reached a point on the Marne River near the town of Chateau-Thierry, only fifty miles from Paris. Early in June the AEF fought its first major engagements, driving the Germans back from Chateau-Thierry and Belleau Wood.
In this fighting only about 27,500 Americans saw action, and they suffered appalling losses. Nevertheless, when the Germans advanced again in the direction of the Marne in mid-July, 85,000 Americans were in the lines that withstood their charge. Then, in the major turning point of the war, the Allied armies counterattacked. Some 270,000 Americans participated, helping to flatten the German bulge between Reims and Soissons. By late August the American First Army, 500,000 strong, was poised before the Saint-Mihiel bulge, a deep extension of the German lines southeast of Verdun. On September 12 this army, buttressed by French troops, struck and in two days wiped out the salient.
Late in September began the greatest American engagement of the war. No fewer than 1.2 million doughboys plunged into the Argonne Forest. For over a month of indescribable horror they inched ahead through the tangle of the Argonne and the formidable defenses of the Hindenburg line, while to the west, French and British armies staged similar drives. In this one offensive the AEF suffered 120,000 casualties. Finally, on November 1, they broke the German center and raced toward the vital Sedan-Mezieres railroad. On November 11, with Allied armies advancing on all fronts, the Germans signed the armistice, ending the fighting.
World History
