On this day in 1917, German
troops begin a well-planned withdrawal—ordered several weeks previously by
Kaiser Wilhelm—to strong positions on the Hindenburg Line,
solidifying their defense and digging in for a continued struggle on the
Western Front in World War I.
One month after Paul von
Hindenburg succeeded Erich von Falkenhayn as chief of the German army's general
staff in August 1916, he ordered the construction of a heavily fortified zone
running several miles behind the active front between the north coast of France
and Verdun, near the border between France and Belgium. Its aim would be to
hold the last line of German defense and brutally crush any Allied breakthrough
before it could reach the Belgian or German frontier. The British referred to
it as the Hindenburg Line, for its mastermind; it was known to the Germans as
the Siegfried Line.
In the wake of exhausting and
bloody battles at Verdun and the Somme, and with the U.S edging ever closer to
entering the war, Germany's leaders looked to improve their defensive positions
on the Western Front. The withdrawal to the Hindenburg Line meant that German
troops were removed to a more uniform line of trenches, reducing the length of
the line they had to defend by 25 miles and freeing up 13 army divisions to
serve as reserve troops. On their way, German forces systematically destroyed
the land they passed through, burning farmhouses, poisoning wells, mining
abandoned buildings and demolishing roads.
The German command correctly
estimated that the move would gain them eight weeks of respite before the
Allies could begin their attacks again; it also threw a wrench into the Allied
strategy by removing their army from the very positions that British and French
joint command had planned to strike next.
After the withdrawal, which
was completed May 5, 1917, the Hindenburg Line, considered impregnable by many
on both sides of the conflict, became the German army's stronghold. Allied
armies did not break it until October 1918, one month before the armistice.
Taken from: http://www.history.com/this-day-in-history/germans-begin-withdrawal-to-the-hindenburg-line
[23.02.2015]
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