Imagine for a second. Just put yourself in this
headspace for a minute. You are a master strategist.
You've spent weeks, maybe months, coming up with
this completely brilliant plan. It's a military
fakeout, so perfectly designed, so meticulously
crafted, that it is guaranteed to fool your enemy.
Completely. And you're expecting, you know, a
modest, tightly contained victory. Just enough
noise to pull their attention away from your
actual target. Exactly. But then the unbelievable
happens. Your fake out is so incredibly successful
that you actually accidentally win way too much
ground. Which sounds like a good thing. Right.
But you shatter their front lines, you capture
tens of thousands of prisoners, and suddenly
you find yourself completely ruining your own
master plan. Well, because you simply cannot
resist the urge to chase an unplanned runaway
victory. It is one of the most fascinating psychological
traps a leader can fall into. It really perfectly
encapsulates the utter chaos, the desperation,
and just the sheer unpredictability of the Western
Front in the final year of World War I. That
is exactly what we are getting into today. Welcome
to this deep dive. We are exploring a truly wild
story of strategy gone completely rogue. Yeah,
it's a crazy one. Our mission today is to break
down the third battle of the AIM. which was fought
in France in the spring of 1918. We have this
really comprehensive stack of historical research
detailing the entire operation, and we are going
to extract the most critical insights for you.
We want to understand how a simple diversionary
tactic morphed into an unprecedented breakthrough.
And more importantly, what this history teaches
you and me about the very real dangers of unexpected
success and deeply stubborn leadership. Because
this is a pivotal moment in the 20th century.
This battle perfectly illustrates the shifting
dynamics of the war just before the American
forces arrived in full to tip the scales. Right.
It really serves as a master class in how a brilliant
tactical maneuver can completely derail your
grand strategy if you just lack the discipline
to stick to the script. So I want to jump right
into the mindset of the commanders. Paint the
picture for us. What exactly is the atmosphere
on the Western Front? in the spring of 1918.
To really grasp the tension of this moment, you
have to understand that the German Empire is
fundamentally racing against the clock. They're
running out of time. Exactly. The operation we
are looking at is part of what was known as the
Kaiserschlacht. or the Kaiser's battle. It's
this series of desperate spring and summer offensives.
And the reason for the rush is simple, yet totally
existential. The Americans are coming. The American
Expeditionary Forces are on their way across
the Atlantic. The German High Command knows that
once the Americans fully deploy in France, the
sheer volume of fresh troops and unbroken industrial
power will make a German victory virtually impossible.
So the window is closing fast. It's slamming
shut. The pressure on the German leadership is
just staggering here. Yeah. And into this pressure
cooker steps General Erich Ludendorff. He is
the first quartermaster general of the German
army. He's effectively the mastermind running
the entire war effort at this point. Right. And
he engineers this specific offensive, which is
brilliantly code named Operation Blucher York,
after two Prussian generals who fought Napoleon.
A bit of historical flair there. Definitely.
So Ludendorff is looking at the entire board
and he views the British Expeditionary Force
in the north as the ultimate threat. But what
absolutely blew my mind in the research is that
his goal at the Aisne River. It wasn't to win
the war there at all. Not even remotely. If we
connect this to the bigger picture. Ludendorff's
grand strategy was entirely focused further north,
up in the mud of Flanders. Yeah. He wanted to
launch his real decisive war -ending offensive
up there, which was planned as Operation Hagen.
But to make Hagen work, he needed to thin out
the Allied lines in Flanders. So he needs a distraction.
A massive one. So Operation Blucher York down
at the Aisne was designed purely as a giant terrifying
distraction. He calculated that if he struck
hard enough at the Aisne, it would directly threaten
Paris. And if Paris looks like it's going to
fall? The Allies panic. They pull their reserves
out of Flanders and rush them south to defend
the French capital. It's the ultimate sleight
of hand. Look over here. Panic over here while
I get ready to throw the knockout punch up there.
That was the plan. And when you read about who
was actually waiting on the allied side of this
distraction, it is genuinely heartbreaking. You
have several divisions of exhausted British troops
stationed at the Chemin des Dames Ridge. Specifically,
the British IX Corps. Right. And these veterans
had just survived the brutal Michael Offensive
earlier that spring. They had been through hell.
They were totally depleted. And they were specifically
transferred to this ridge to rest and refit.
They were essentially told, go hold this line.
It's a quiet sector. Nothing is going to happen
here. They were battered men placed in what everyone
believed was a safe haven. And the geography
matters here, too. The Shemini Doms Ridge. which
translates beautifully and tragically to the
ladies path, was this formidable elevated position.
A really strong defensive spot. Very strong.
The Germans had actually held it from 1914 all
the way until 1917 when the French finally captured
it at a staggering cost in human life during
the Neville Offensive. It was a prized, blood
-soaked piece of high ground. Okay, let's unpack
this because this brings us to a catastrophic
failure of leadership on the Allied side. The
defense of this area was controlled by French
General Denis Auguste Duchesne. Yes. And Duchesne
makes a decision that is just mind -boggling.
The French commander -in -chief, Philippe Petain,
had given explicit written instructions to all
his commanders. He said, you must defend in depth.
It was standard doctrine by that point. But Duchesne
flat out refuses. He decides he is not going
to abandon the ridge, not even a little bit.
This is a textbook example of a commander letting
ego and past trauma override sound military doctrine.
Wait, before we get into his reasoning for a
second, can you explain defend in depth for us?
How is that different from what armies were normally
doing in the trenches? Absolutely. Think of defending
in depth like the crumple zone on your car. If
you put all your strongest steel right on the
front bumper, the whole car shatters on impact.
But if you design the front to absorb the blow
and crumple, the passenger cabin stays safe.
That makes sense. In World War I terms, defending
in depth meant leaving your front trenches lightly
guarded. Just a skeleton crew to slow the enemy
down and absorb the initial terrifying artillery
bombardment. So you let them take the front.
Right. Because the bulk of your forces are kept
safely miles back out of artillery range. Once
the enemy infantry advances and tires themselves
out, taking those empty front trenches, your
main force sweeps in for a devastating counterattack.
You bend so you don't break. Exactly. So Petain
orders the crumple zone, but Duchesne refuses.
It's like putting all your chess pieces in the
very front row. He forces all his troops, including
those exhausted British veterans we talked about,
right up to the very front lip of the trenches
on the ridge. Why would a seasoned general do
something so obviously reckless? because of the
psychological weight of the ridge itself. Duchene's
reasoning was deeply rooted in the staggering
cost paid to capture the ladies path the previous
year. The sunk cost fallacy. Exactly. He was
paralyzed by it because tens of thousands of
French soldiers had bled and died to take that
specific dirt in 1917. He could not bear the
political or psychological thought of yielding
a single inch of it back to the Germans, even
temporarily to gain a tactical advantage. That
is something I want you the listener to really
let sink in. Think about a time you refused to
abandon a failing project or a bad investment
simply because you had already poured months
of work or thousands of dollars into it. It's
a very human reaction. It is. You tell yourself
I can't quit now or all that effort was for nothing.
Now imagine the cost of that stubbornness isn't
a missed deadline at work but the lives of tens
of thousands of men. Duchenne's inability to
let go of the past completely blinded him to
the reality of the present. And by huddling his
men together in defiance of Petain's orders,
by putting all his most valuable chess pieces
in the front row, Duchesne turned his army into
an unprecedentedly easy target for what the Germans
were about to unleash. Which brings us to the
morning of May 27th, 1918, the attack begins.
And reading the descriptions of this in the sources,
it is just apocalyptic. The Germans unleashed
what they called a Feuerwaltz. A rolling bombardment.
But the scale of it is hard to comprehend. We
are talking about over 4 ,000 artillery pieces
opening fire simultaneously on the tightly packed
allied front lines. 4 ,000 guns. All at once.
Because Duchenne had compressed his troops so
densely into those forward positions, the sheer
volume of high explosives absolutely decimated
them. The British and French forces suffered
unimaginable losses before a single German soldier
even stepped out of their trench. And it wasn't
just traditional explosives tearing up the earth.
The historical accounts detail how this barrage
was immediately followed by a faturated poison
gas drop. It was relentless. So you have these
soldiers standing shoulder to shoulder, surviving
the concussive terror of thousands of artillery
shells only to be enveloped in a cloud of poison
gas. The physical and psychological devastation
is complete. And then, once the gas began to
clear, the real assault started. This is where
the tactical innovation of the German Army really
showed. They sent in 17 divisions of Sturmtruppen,
or stormtroopers. And these weren't your average
infantrymen marching in straight lines across
no man's land, right? Not at all. They were highly
trained in infiltration tactics. What exactly
did that look like on the ground? How do you
infiltrate a heavily fortified trench network?
Instead of a rigid sweeping line that just gets
mowed down by machine guns, storm troopers moved
in small autonomous squads. Think of them like
water finding the cracks in a dam. Oh, I see.
If they encountered a heavily defended strong
point, they didn't stop and fight it. They bypassed
it entirely, slipping through the weak points
in the line, cutting communication wires and
causing chaos deep in the rear. And they just
leave the strong point. They left them for the
regular infantry following behind to mop up.
The Allies were entirely blindsided. Because
Duchenne loaded everyone at the front, there
was no backup. The dam broke and there was nothing
behind it to stop the flood. Nothing at all.
The Germans smashed through eight Allied divisions,
creating a staggering 40 kilometer gap. That
is about 25 miles of completely undefended territory
between Rhimes and Soissons. They moved with
such terrifying speed that they reached the Aisne
River in under six hours. Under six hours. To
advance that quickly in the context of World
War One trench warfare, where armies literally
fought for months to gain a few hundred yards,
is almost unheard of. By nightfall, the German
army had pushed the allies back an extra 15 kilometers
in a single day. The entire allied defensive
structure in that sector had completely evaporated.
Here's where it gets really interesting. To really
grasp how bizarrely successful and entirely disconnected
the German High Command was during this breakthrough,
there is this surreal anecdote from the front
lines that I couldn't believe when I read it.
Oh, the Kaiser's visit. Yes. Right in the middle
of this catastrophic collapse of the Allied lines,
Kaiser Wilhelm II himself decides to visit the
battlefield to inspect the progress. As one does.
Right. And while he is touring the devastation,
he asks to interview a captured British prisoner
of war. He specifically sits down with Brigadier
General Hubert Reese, a British commander whose
brigade had just been overrun. And the Kaiser,
surrounded by the smoke and ruin of one of the
most brutal offensives of the war, finds it immensely,
genuinely amusing to learn that General Rees
is Welsh. Because the British Prime Minister,
David Lloyd George, was also Welsh. Exactly.
It is this bizarre, almost polite moment of royal
cocktail party amusement happening while tens
of thousands of men are dying in the mud. just
a few miles away. It really speaks volumes about
the detached reality of the high command. They
viewed it as a grand game. But back on the strategic
level, the sheer success of this game was about
to become Ludendorff's undoing. How so? Because
by May 30, just three days into the offensive,
the Germans had captured over 50 ,000 Allied
soldiers. They had seized over 800 artillery
guns. They had pushed so far and with such speed
that they were now within 35 miles or 56 kilometers
of the Paris city limits. Hold on. You were telling
me he engineered the perfect trap, the exact
diversion he needed, and it worked flawlessly.
But instead of springing the real trap in Flanders,
he changes his mind. He does. How does a supposedly
brilliant military mastermind make that kind
of error? He becomes blinded by the shiny object
in front of him. This raises an incredibly important
question for anyone studying leadership. Ludendorff
abruptly changes the entire operational objective.
He just pivots. Instead of sticking to his grand
strategy and merely using this to draw enemy
forces away from Flanders, he orders his 7th
Army to push the advance fully toward Paris.
He commits his reserves to the Aisne Drive, making
it a primary offensive. Wow. The historical records
show this was never at any point the intention
of the operation. It is the ultimate example
of strategic scope creep. For anyone listening
who manages a team or runs a business, you know
exactly what scope creep feels like. You start
a project with a clear, tight goal, but then
you get a little early success. And suddenly
you start adding features, expanding the timeline,
chasing new ideas that weren't in the original
brief until the project becomes a bloated, unmanageable
mess. And that's exactly what happened here.
Ludendorff suffered from catastrophic success.
By pushing his armies toward Paris, he essentially
drove his own military machine right off a cliff.
The mechanics of moving an army in 1918 were
brutally unforgiving. The German forces simply
outran their own logistics. They advanced too
quickly for their horse -drawn supply lines to
keep up over the shell cratered roads. They couldn't
get food or ammo. Right. The soldiers were dealing
with extreme physical exhaustion from days of
rapid, constant fighting, they lacked the fresh
reserves necessary to maintain the momentum,
and their casualties were mounting heavily as
the Allies finally shook off the shock, regrouped,
and began launching coordinated counterattacks.
So the runaway train runs out of track. By June
6 at the Marna River, the whole offensive just
grinds to a dead halt. Just days after coming
within striking distance of Paris, the German
advance is completely neutralized. And the human
cost of Ludendorff's sudden pivot was staggering.
Despite penetrating the Allied lines deeper than
they had at any time since the war began in 1914,
the offensive bled the German army dry. How bad
were the losses? By the time the guns fell silent
on this Pacific battle, German casualties reached
130 ,000 men. 130 ,000 men lost for a diversion
that mutated into a failed primary objective.
And the combined total for the Allies was just
as horrific, reaching up to 127 ,000 casualties.
We're looking at over a quarter of a million
human beings killed, wounded, or captured in
just over a week of fighting. The immediate fallout
on the Allied side was swift, too. General Duchesne,
the man whose stubborn refusal to defend in depth
created the conditions for this slaughter, was
promptly sacked. Fired on spot. Bettane removed
him for his disastrous handling of the troops
and replaced him with Jean de Gouda's commander
of the Sixth Army. You really have to wonder
how entirely different the battle would have
played out if Duchesne had just checked his ego
and listened to his boss. But looking at the
broader picture of who was actually fighting
to halt this German advance, the Third Battle
of the Aisne involved an incredibly diverse coalition.
It really did. The research points out that Italian
troops were present in the trenches alongside
the French and British. But crucially, this battle
marks a monumental turning point for the United
States military. It absolutely does. We noted
earlier that the Germans were racing the clock
against the American arrival. Well, time was
up. They made it. This battle marked one of the
very first instances where an appreciable number
of American troops, specifically the second and
third infantry divisions, actually stepped into
the fray and proved themselves in major sustained
combat on the Western Front. What I found so
fascinating about this is the logistical reality
of trying to integrate American forces into a
European trench system that had been entrenched
for years. It was a logistical nightmare, primarily
because of how the forces were structured. The
divisions of the American Expeditionary Force
were essentially double the size of those fielded
by the British, the French, or the Germans. Double
the size. A full -strength American division
boasted around 20 ,000 men. Because of their
sheer overwhelming size, the French often referred
to them as Grande's divisions. Put yourself in
the boots of an exhausted German soldier. You
have been fighting nonstop, living in the mud,
surviving on meager ratchets for four long years.
Your army has just pushed itself to the point
of total physical collapse, chasing Ludendorff's
dream of taking Paris. Yeah. And suddenly, looking
across the battlefield, you are facing these
massive, fresh, highly equipped Grande's divisions
entering the line. The psychological blow of
that alone must have been devastating. signaled
the definitive end of German numerical superiority.
But diving even deeper into the historical lineages
of who exactly was fighting within those American
ranks, there is a profound detail that deserves
our full attention. Let's hear it. The legendary
African -American regiments, famously known as
the Buffalo Soldiers, are officially tied to
the campaigns of the Third Battle of the Aisne.
This is a piece of history that doesn't get talked
about nearly enough. Who were the Buffalo Soldiers,
and how did they end up fighting in this specific
pocket of France? The legacy of the Buffalo Soldiers
stretches far back into the 19th century. These
original units, specifically the 9th and 10th
Cavalry Regiments and the 24th and 25th Infantry
Regiments, had a long storied histories in the
American West and the Spanish -American War.
Right. But their presence in World War I comes
with a deep tragic irony. Because the United
States military was strictly segregated at the
time, many high ranking American commanders refused
to let African American troops fight alongside
white American troops. So their own country's
military leadership marginalizes them. How do
they end up on the front lines, halting a German
breakthrough? The French army, which was bleeding
out and desperately needed men, had no such reservations
about race. They gladly welcomed these African
American regiments. They just needed soldiers
who could fight. Exactly. The French integrated
them, equipped them with French helmets and weapons,
and sent them into the absolute worst of the
fighting. Their involvement in the campaigns
of the Third Battle of the Aisne and the subsequent
offenses that finally broke the German army is
a testament to their incredible resilience. The
records note they fought with immense distinction
for a global coalition, even while facing systemic
discrimination from their own government back
home. cinematic picture of a world converging
on this one stretch of river in France. You have
exhausted British troops hoping for arrest. You
have a stubborn French commander refusing to
yield an inch of ground out of pure pride. You've
got highly trained German stormtroopers infiltrating
the lines. Italian forces holding the flanks
and these enormous fresh American divisions including
the deeply historic Buffalo soldiers all colliding
in this chaotic bloody week in 1918. And as we
pull back from the trenches and synthesize all
of this information, there are two monumental
lessons about human nature and decision making
that emerge from the smoke. The first is the
sheer peril of the sunk cost fallacy, which General
Duchesne perfectly tragically illustrates. Yeah.
He could not separate the past bloody cost of
capturing the Chemin des Dames Ridge from the
present tactical reality of how to effectively
defend it. Right. His inability to let go of
a piece of ground out of pride cost him his command
and nearly cost the Allies the war. That is the
cautionary tale of holding on too tight. But
the second lesson is the exact opposite. It's
the danger of abandoning your principles when
things go incredibly well. Ludendorff's mistake.
Exactly. Ludendorff had a brilliant grand strategy.
But the moment he tasted an unexpected, shiny
tactical victory, he threw his master plan out
the window. He chased the runaway train, falling
victim to strategic scope creep until his army
was completely exhausted and bled out on the
road to Paris. It is vital to remember that Ludendorff's
diversionary attack at the Aisne actually worked.
It achieved exactly what it was supposed to do.
It panicked the allies. But he couldn't just
take the win. Instead of taking that win, halting
his advance and shifting his focus back to his
main war -winning objective in Flanders, he got
greedy. And by the time his forces stalled in
June, he had lost 130 ,000 men and the window
for German victory had permanently slammed shut
with the arrival of the Americans. It is the
ultimate story of a fake out that was simply
too successful for its own good. It is a reminder
that sometimes winning the wrong battle can cost
you the entire war. Which brings us to a final
thought for you to ponder as we wrap up. Go for
it. Think about Ludendorff's fateful decision
to abandon his original plan when the aimed attacks
succeeded beyond his wildest dreams. If he had
maintained his discipline, if he had halted the
advance once the Allies were sufficiently distracted
and launched his true offensive in Flanders as
planned, would the entire outcome of World War
I have been different? Does a leader's inability
to handle unexpected success ultimately doom
their grandest ambitions? That is a phenomenal
question to leave you with today. It really forces
you to examine how you handle your own unexpected
victories. When you get a sudden win, do you
stick to the grand plan, or do you lose your
discipline and chase the runaway train? Thank
you so much for joining us on this deep dive
into the third battle of the Azzane. We hope
this exploration has given you a fresh perspective
on the hidden complexities of history and leadership.
Keep questioning the history you think you know,
stay insanely curious, and we will catch you
on the next Deep Dive.