100 Years Ago

After the Soviet Union surrendered to Germany on March 3, 1918, the German strategy was to overwhelm the Allies in the West before the U.S. could muster large amounts of materiel and men to the war zone. General John J. “Black Jack” Pershing arrived in France in May 1917 and American forces had been deploying to France since the fall of 1917. The Germans gained a numerical advantage on the Western front, due to the movement of 50 divisions from the Russian front, and launched the first phase of the spring offensive on March 21, 1918. In the March 29, 1918 edition of The Madisonian, this dispatch reported the start of the German attack, which included the use of chemical weapons.