21st of March ..The Spring Offensives of 1918...

The WW1 Spring Offensives of 1918 were Germany’s last attempt to defeat the British and French armies on the Western Front. The German offensive code-named Michael opened on 21 March 1918. At 4:20am, 6,473 guns and 3,532 mortars began a devastating bombardment and five hours later the infantry advanced. The assault divisions had been allocated the best equipment, horses and fittest men and had completed four weeks’ special training in state-of-the-art infiltration tactics. Great care had been taken to achieve surprise. Tactically, results were impressive: 255 km² were overrun on the first day. By the time the offensive was ended on 5 April, the Germans had captured 3,100 km² and taken 90,000 prisoners. At these photos you can see the Schusso composite cavalrymen and the tinplate Märklin tank produced in 30s.