What was the Second Battle of Marnes?
The Second Battle of Marnes was the last major German Offensive. This offensive was made to be a distraction so that the Allied troops in the north would move elsewhere allowing the Germans to swoop in and ultimately win. But fate had decided not to let that happen.
How it unfolded
The Allies came to know of the plan of the offensive by interrogating 27 prisoners that had been captured on a recent trench raid. So, they laid a decoy trench front line and planned their attack as well.
30 minutes before the German’s counter attack, The Allies came alive with an onslaught of their own that shook their enemies to their core. The Germans readied their offensive and started bombarding the frontlines. Little did they know, those trench lines were just decoys with only a few soldiers manning machine guns to fool the enemy. So the Germans pounded through the “frontlines” only to discover that the real frontline was fully operational. So the German soldiers were ordered to rest and regroup.
The Ally Counterattack
Despite repeated efforts, penetrating true front lines proved impossible for them; thus ending their offensive prematurely. From there sprung forth an unexpected counterattack by Allies.
A rumor circulated that false plans detailing a supposed Allied assault were found tied onto a fallen man in a car near German territory—a cunning ruse cooked up by Allies themselves which led Germans astray into preparing for an attack at entirely wrong location while true attack points remained vulnerable.
Caught off guard and forced into retreat—an order never reversed—the defeat marked a victory for The Allies and the start of the Hundred Day War, resulting in hundreds of victories for the Allies.