Panorama of the Western theater of war 1914/15 from Compiègne to Arras, with the North Sea coast in the distance.
Reverse:Panorama des westlichen Kriegschauplatzes 1914/15 von Compiegne bis Arras.Die Panorama-Postkartenreihe umfaßt mit ihren 9 Abschnitten Nr. 400 bis 408 den gesamten westlichen Kriegschauplatz von der Schewizer Grenze bis zur Nordseeküste.Panorama of the Western theater of war 1914/15 from Compiègne to Arras.The panoramic postcard series includes with their 9 sections No. 400 to 408 the entire western front from the Schewizer border to the North Sea coast.Nr. 407Wenau-Postkarte Patentamtl. gesch.Logo: W&N AGL
". . . the French Tenth Army, fighting foot by foot, was gaining ground daily, and to such an extent that, on September 2d, it had surmounted the heights of Crouy and reached the high road from Soissons to Councy-le-Château.At the other end of the battle line the British First Army, continuing its broadly conceived operations, recommenced its attacks. On September 2d, after violent and stubborn fighting, it broke through the Droucourt—Quéant line and passed on for several miles in the direction of Marquion. After this smashing blow the enemy began to retreat along the whole front between the Somme and the Sensée, reaching new positions behind the Tortille and the Nord Canal, in front of the Hindenburg Line. Thus, at the beginning of September, victory had passed to the Allied banners, thanks to the rapid and sustained development of the operations following the German offensive of July 15th. The results envisaged in the memorandum of July 24th were being attained."
Allied Commander-in-Chief Ferdinand Foch wrote his July 24 Memorandum after the failure of Germany's fifth and final offensive of 1918, and during the Allied advance in the Second Battle of the Marne. After pointing out the weakened condition of the German army after its offenses, the ongoing strengthening of the Allied Army with the monthly addition of 250,000 American troops, and the Allied advantages in aircraft and tanks, Foch stated that it was time to seize the offensive in order to advance future operations and reinvigorate the French economy by freeing railways from Paris to critical communications centers such as Amiens and by ridding the mining region and the Channel ports of the threat of German forces. To achieve these goals Foch called for offensives that would surprise the enemy and deny him time to recover from previous blows. At a meeting on July 24, 1918 Foch had this memo, the basis of subsequent Allied operations, read to Douglas Haig, Henri Philippe Pétain, and John J. Pershing, the British, French, and American Commanders-in-Chief.
The Memoirs of Marshal Foch, translated by Col. T. Bentley Mott by Ferdinand Foch, pp. 392–393, copyright © 1931 by Doubleday, Doran & Company, Inc., publisher: Doubleday, Doran & Co., publication date: 1931
1918-09-02, 1918, September, Compiegne to Arras, July 24 Memorandum
