Postcard map of the Chemin des Dames between Soissons and Rheims. The view is facing north towards the heights of the 'Ladies Road,' the Aisne River to its south. The Germans held the high ground after the retreat from the Marne in 1914. The French suffered heavy casualties taking the Chemin des Dames in the Second Battle of the Aisne in 1917, an offensive that led to widespread mutinies in the French Army. The Third German Drive of 1918, the Third Battle of the Aisne, drove the French, and supporting British troops, from the heights, and again threatened Paris.
No. 189Das Kampfgebiet an der AisneThe Battleground of the Aisne
"At daybreak on the 26th [May 1918] two German prisoners were taken by the French. One was a private and the other an officer-aspirant, belonging to different regiments of Jäger. On the way to Divisional Headquarters their captors entered into conversation with them. The private said there was going to be an attack; the officer contradicted him. Arrived at the Army Corp Intelligence centre the prisoners were examined separately. The officer, questioned first, was voluble, and declared that the Germans had no intention of making an offensive on this front. The interrogation of the private followed. He said that the soldiers believed that they would attack that night or the following night. He was not sure of the date. . . . [The officer] gave in the end the most complete details of the attach which impended the next day. It was already three o'clock in the afternoon of the 26th. The alarm was given, and the troops available took up their battle positions."
German forces were preparing what would prove to be a devastating attack on the Allied line, the Aisne (Blücher) Offensive, the third of five drives to victory in 1918. On May 25, three French prisoners of war escaped and reported on German preparations for the assault. French General Denis Auguste Duchêne, who had already failed to follow General Henri Philippe Pétain's order to strengthen and restructure his line, dismissed the report saying, 'In our opinion there are no indications that the enemy has made preparations which would enable him to attack tomorrow'. The German prisoners take the next day were believed, and the defenders scrambled to defend a line that would prove indefensible.
The World Crisis 1911-1918 by Winston Churchill, pp. 793–794, copyright © by Charles Scribner's Sons 1931, renewed by Winston S. Churchill 1959, publisher: Penguin Books, publication date: 1931, 2007
1918-05-26, 1918, May, Chemin des Dames Winterberg map
