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Hundred Days' Offensive : ウィキペディア英語版 | Hundred Days Offensive
The Hundred Days Offensive was the final period of the First World War, during which the Allies launched a series of offensives against the Central Powers on the Western Front from 8 August to 11 November 1918, beginning with the Battle of Amiens. The offensive essentially pushed the Germans out of France, forcing them to retreat beyond the Hindenburg Line, and was followed by an armistice. The term "Hundred Days Offensive" does not refer to a specific battle or unified strategy, but rather the rapid series of Allied victories starting with the Battle of Amiens. ==Background== The German Spring Offensives on the Western Front, which began on 21 March 1918 with Operation Michael, had petered out by July. The Germans had advanced to the Marne river but failed to achieve a decisive breakthrough. When Operation Marne-Rheims ended in July, the Allied supreme commander, the French Ferdinand Foch, ordered a counter-offensive which became the Second Battle of the Marne. The Germans, recognising their untenable position, withdrew from the Marne towards the north. For this victory, Foch was granted the title Marshal of France. Foch considered the time had arrived for the Allies to return to the offensive. The American Expeditionary Force was now present in France in large numbers, and their presence invigorated the Allied armies.〔.〕 General John J. Pershing, was keen to use his army in an independent role. The British Army had also been reinforced by large numbers of troops returned from the Sinai and Palestine Campaign and Italy and large numbers of replacements previously held back in Britain by the Prime Minister, David Lloyd George.〔 A number of proposals were considered and finally Foch agreed on a proposal by Field Marshal Douglas Haig, the commander of the British Expeditionary Force (BEF), to strike on the River Somme, east of Amiens and south-west of the 1916 battlefield of the Battle of the Somme, with the intention of forcing the Germans away from the vital Amiens–Paris railway.〔 The Somme was chosen as a suitable site for the offensive for several reasons. As in 1916, it marked the boundary between the BEF and the French armies, in this case defined by the Amiens–Roye road, allowing the two armies to cooperate. Also the Picardy countryside provided a good surface for tanks, which was not the case in Flanders. Finally, the German defences, manned by the German 2nd Army (General Georg von der Marwitz), were relatively weak, having been subjected to continual raiding by the Australians in a process termed peaceful penetration.
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