COLLAPSE OF GERMANY.

Timaru Herald, Volume CVIII, Issue 16821, 29 May 1919, Page 5

COLLAPSE OF GERMANY.

INNER HISTORY OF LAST YEAR'S OFFENSIVE. !) ■j' How desperate the great German really was, how and why it .'was hurried forward with inadequately troops, and something of it's :cost to the enemy, are revealed in a (letter written by a German officer in j Germ any to a brother officer, prisoner of war in England,' a translation of which has been supplied to "The Daily '■News."

• The first great mistake of the war, ■Jfciys i\\Q writer,-was ''the complete under-rating of the Englishman as a land fighter";' tlio second was tho finder-rating of America in her capacity both to build ships and to raise /an army. ' We got false .information from our ~• navy, which had 'own thoroughly -. spoilt by the great fuss made ever .. Jfc by everyone from the Kaiser downwards. Injudiciously distributed dis.■jj mad=. th c subninrinu- romi manders report a much larger number of ships sunk than was renlly the ... . case;, thus tho. great Army General Staff worked on a false basis." 91X> METHODS AND BACKWARD MEN. Great mistakes were made in , the German shipbuilding programme and the navy failed in any way to disturb sbo -transport of American troops,- with tho result that in January, 1918, the American Army in .the-field was much Jarger than tho General Staff was fcware of .

"When more details were ascertained it was then necesary to take She offensive with all speed, earlier fyhan had been planned, arid before gfie army had been sufficiently trained for it. I watched thr'eo divisions at. drill. They attacked almost in the same way as in August. 1914, in massed formation. The troops from the East especially were extremely backward, officers as well ns men. As a result we had the

anormnus loses of the first offensive (1.30,000 men)." '{Elsewhere the writer of the letter remarks that the troops from 'the Eastern front only went to the- West aEaimt their wiil. The losses above referred to took the Germans by surprise, and \>y April 18, when it had been, hoped io smaSi a, pa usage to the ■ coast. via Amiens, the offensive on tho great scale, had already failed. N<"t enough Voops were available, and' the break tiirousrh could not 'be made.- • '■- "The aim mentioned in Uudendorff s order nt changing the trsiicii war into n. war of movement -ivns not attained, and at this point ppr.es terms ought to have been proposed. Ine iollowuijv offensives at Soissons

Kemmel, and later at Eheims. were, only 'miserable attempts. From ■ th» , cirne ot the failure of the first offensive at Amiens Ludendorff seems to .have lost his nerve." Th e collapse 0 f the army was not the work of the Revolution, and the Revolution was not the cause, but the result of defeat. Discipline 'at the front underwent considerable deterioration last year, particularly among the, troops' from the East, but also in the drafts from homo.

OFFCERS AND POLITICS. "In the Ersatz battalions old incompetent Colonels, and often very lazy and conceited dug-out officers spent their time and nothing was done." When "Luclendorff eventually took the matter into his own hands "an entirely mistaken explanation of the matter was made .to the troops at the front. The task' <>f enlightening them was mostly left to retired officers, who used the opporunity to work upon the men for political purposes." Ludendorff's fighting method is held by this'authority to have been "very excellent," but his.pjans,' it wera received with little favour in the fi,eld, where genii ty, incompetence, and war-weariness militated against them In,an analytical review of■ the lutionary movement the" writer traces' tb-9 of confidence' in General Headquarters, which preceded, and paved the way for it, to "the American leaflets" and the tanks. Government irresolution and the disordered state of the finances of the Empire are held by him to have been largely" responsible for the crash that came 'when the war was. lost. .The Revolution ■■- however, had' been under, organisation for : about a ysar. "at first withontttKe help of Russiar."Bolshevik capital, but later with it. ■ ; "'.''■' '■ "The'propaganda at the front was carried out under a systematic and well-thought-out plan. When the mutiny at Kiel broke out a large portion of the* troops at the front and atxhbme were already infected." The letter concludes by emphasising the peril of Bolshevism. "So long as Spartacism remains as it. is now, all possibility of establishing.:; order is destroyed." :•-,.,.. ,'■■■-..»■'■ • .