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This image shows a huge crowd of German soldiers captured by British forces during the Battle of Amiens on 27 August 1918, less than three months before Armistice Day. Taken at the town of Abbeville, well behind the frontline, the photograph conveys the sheer number of prisoners involved, and vividly demonstrates the extraordinary successes the Allies were enjoying by this late stage of the First World War.
Three weeks earlier, on 8 August, almost four years to the day after the conflict began, the British and Imperial Army, along with their French allies, launched a major offensive against the Germans on the banks of the River Somme. Within hours, the long-running stalemate of trench warfare was broken, as a new army of conscripts broke through enemy lines with the aid of tanks, air power, and modern tactics, utilising the element of surprise with devastating effect. The British advance stretched for 8 miles, while its French counterpart gained 5 miles of territory to the south.
Some 30,000 German prisoners were captured at the Battle of Amiens, while another 75,000 were killed – staggering losses which convinced Erich Ludendorff, joint commander of the German army alongside Paul von Hindenburg, that the war was all but over. Ludendorff would later refer to 8 August as der Schwarze Tag (‘the black day’) for the German Army.
The Battle of Amiens marked the beginning of the Allies’ Hundred Days Offensive, a series of battlefield successes that forced the German collapse and led to the signing of the Armistice at Compiègne on 11 November that year. But, though Amiens brought the end of the war within sight, it was by no means easy for the Allies: there were also some 265,000 British casualties between 21 August and 11 November that year. Meanwhile, the German home front collapsed into the turmoil of revolution.
Given the dire military situation in the field and the hunger for peace back home, many of the soldiers pictured here may be forgiven for having felt relieved to be captured.
Text: Calum Henderson / Image: Wikimedia Commons
