ASSAULT ON THE HINDENBURG LINE

Assault on the Hindenburg Line

As the First World War neared its end, Allied forces targeted the Hindenburg Line, Germany’s most formidable defensive system on the Western Front. On September 29th, 1918, British, Australian, and American troops attacked near the St. Quentin Canal, where German engineers had used a long canal tunnel as a buried strongpoint. American divisions, including National Guard units from the 27th and 30th Divisions operating under British command, were thrown into some of the hardest fighting. They struggled through belts of barbed wire, deep trenches, and interlocking machine-gun fire to reach their objectives. The assault cost many lives, but it successfully broke sections of the Hindenburg Line and contributed directly to the cascading German retreats that followed. For the United States, these operations were another proof that its citizen-soldiers could fight alongside veteran Allied units in the most demanding operations of industrial-age warfare, adding weight to American influence at the negotiating table.