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Map of the Western Front on October 4, 1918. From The History of The A.E.F. by Shipley Thomas.
Propaganda postcard of General Paul von Hindenburg as Colossus astride East Prussia and Russian Poland. Hindenburg commanded German forces in East Prussia.
Detail showing the British sector of the Western Front from a map of the Allied offensives of 1918, from July 18 and the Second Battle of the Marne to the Armistice on November 11. From The Memoirs of Marshall Foch by Marshall Foch. The 1st and other armies to the south are French.
Postcard map of East Prussia and Polish Russia with a message and postmark, Vienna, August 20, 1915. From a series that asks, 'Do you know the high times?'
Map of the Allied offensives of 1918, from July 18 and the Second Battle of the Marne to the Armistice on November 11. From The Memoirs of Marshall Foch by Marshall Foch.
"At 5.30 a.m. on October 4th the general attack was renewed. The enemy divisions on the front from Fresnes-en-Woevre to the Argonne had increased from 10 in first line to 16, and included some of his best divisions. The fighting was desperate, and only small advances were realized, except by the First Division on the right of the First Corps. By evening of October 5th the line was approximately Bois de la Cote Lemont-Bois du Fay-Gesnes-Hill 240-Fleville-Chehery, southwest through the Argonne." ((1), more)
"There was nothing left to capture in this region but the last strongholds of the Hindenburg Line. On October 5th, these were assaulted. The British Fourth Army, crossing the Scheldt between Crévecœur and Le Catelet, captured the plateau of Beaurevoir-Montbrèhain, and thereby completed for its sector of attack the conquest of the renowned German position. In contrast to this success, the French First Army, closely held to its mission of 'supporting at all costs the right of the British Army,' encountered the strongest sort of resistance east and northeast of Saint-Quentin." ((2), more)
"Further south Horne's, Byng's and Rawlinson's armies had by a combination of concentrated onslaughts on narrow sectors of the Siegfried Position followed by leverage to widen the penetrations and so link up, smashed through the entire width of the main German fortifications by October 6th. Their success had been extraordinary and only achieved by considerable skill and determination . . . plus mist — which if not so thick as upon the first morning of the British crossing of the canal, or upon the morning of March 21st, had nevertheless made their progress possible. Even so the Siegfried Line had been won only at immense cost, and by the time the Fourth Army had breached the final defences — the Beaurevoir Line — they had exhausted their strength." ((3), more)
"Early in October, 1918, Polish deputies in the Vienna parliament joined their counterparts in Berlin in demanding a united and fully independent Poland, and on October 7, the Regency in Warsaw called for a Polish national ministry and a representative assembly, chosen on broad democratic principles, to write a constitution. Polish politicians in Galicia journeyed to Warsaw to participate in setting up a provisional government and Polish soldiers disarmed loyalist Hapsburg troops in the province. Bit by bit, Poles acquired control of former Russian Poland expelling the administrators and soldiers of the Austrian and German occupation." ((4), more)
"On October 8th, Cambrai was taken, the Germans opposite forced back behind the river Selle, and the front cleared from the Sensée in the north to a point east of St. Quentin in the south. Since September 26th, the British had taken nearly fifty thousand prisoners and captured a thousand guns.Prisoners were being captured further south, too, as the Americans gradually sorted out the chaos behind their front and began inexorably to press forward through the Argonne towards Mézières and Sedan." ((5), more)
(1) Excerpt from American Commander-in-Chief General John J. Pershing's 'final report' on the beginning of the second phase of the Meuse-Argonne Offensive on October 4, 1918. The first phase had begun on September 26 and had fallen well short of Pershing's goals.
The Great Events of the Great War in Seven Volumes by Charles F. Horne, Vol. VI, 1918, p. 341, copyright © 1920 by The National Alumnia, publisher: The National Alumni, publication date: 1920
(2) Excerpt from the Memoirs of Allied Commander-in-Chief Ferdinand Foch on the continued breaking of Germany's Hindenburg Line, its last and strongest line of defense. Crèvecœur-sur-l'Escaut and Le Catelet are south of Cambrai and north of St. Quentin. The British Fourth Army was at the southern end, the right, of the British line.
The Memoirs of Marshal Foch, translated by Col. T. Bentley Mott by Ferdinand Foch, page 416, copyright © 1931 by Doubleday, Doran & Company, Inc., publisher: Doubleday, Doran & Co., publication date: 1931
(3) From north to south, the British commanders mentioned were Henry Horne, First Army, Julian Byng, Third Army, and Henry Rawlinson, Fourth Army. To the north the Belgian Army Group under Albert, King of the Belgians, was struggling with the ground conditions. The combined, well-constructed, multi-line German defense system was referred to by the Allies as the Hindenburg Line, by the Germans as the Siegfried Zone. Germany's Operation Michael, the first of five offensives in 1918, had begun on March 21 in fog that had helped confound the British defenders.
1918, the Last Act by Barrie Pitt, page 253, copyright © 1962 by Barrie Pitt, publisher: Ballantine Books, Inc., publication date: 1963
(4) What would become Poland at the end of the war was, in 1914, parts of three empires: Polish western Russia, part of northern Austria-Hungary, and part of East Prussia in Germany. In October, 1918, Poles demanded an independent nation unifying ethnic Poles, based on Russian Poland, but incorporating Poles in the lands of the swiftly-disintegrating Austro-Hungarian Empire. Warsaw, Russia's third largest city, would be the capital. Ignoring the struggling and seemingly failing Bolshevik regime in Russia, the Poles would need to contend with Ukraine for its boundaries. Galicia was northeastern Austria-Hungary. On the Russian side of the Carpathian Mountains, it had been the site of much of the fighting between Russia and the Central Powers. In the beginning of October, the governments in Vienna and Berlin were making peace overtures as they realized the war could no longer be won.
The Passing of the Hapsburg Monarchy, 1914-1918 2 Volumes by Arthur James May, page 782, copyright © 1966 by the Trustees of the University of Pennsylvania, publisher: University of Pennsylvania Press, publication date: 1966
(5) The British, French, and Americans all advanced on October 8, 1918, the French at the southern end of the British line near St. Quentin. The same day, the Americans and French began an attack on German artillery positions on the heights of the Meuse River that threatened the American advance in the Argonne. On October 8, taking part in that Meuse-Argonne Offensive, Corporal Alvin York of Tennessee earned his Medal of Honor by knocking out German machine gun positions, in the process taking 35 of the guns, killing 25 or more soldiers, and capturing another 132.
1918, the Last Act by Barrie Pitt, pp. 258–259, copyright © 1962 by Barrie Pitt, publisher: Ballantine Books, Inc., publication date: 1963
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