Amiens 1918: Victory on the Somme

It was the remarkable success that opened the doors to victory on the Western Front. For the Allies in the First World War, it demonstrated that their superior tactics and equipment and greater material strength could win the war. Its impact on the morale of their German opponents was profound, utterly destroying the last illusions they may have had about the war’s outcome. It was the German Army’s ‘Black Day’. 

Using the IWM archive as inspiration, Bryn Hammond, who heads IWM’s team of curators, looks at the Battle of Amiens - a crucial victory in the Allied war-winning offensives of 1918. Perhaps the most famous image associated with the Battle of Amiens is the photograph above, taken on 27 August 1918 at Abbeville, well behind the front lines and shows German prisoners captured during British offensive operations throughout the month.

On 8 August 1918, British and Imperial forces in co-operation with the French, launched a major attack against the Germans astride the River Somme, east of the city of Amiens. The stunning achievement on the first day of this battle was the beginning of the period known as the ‘Hundred Days’ (8 August – 11 November 1918) in which the battlefield successes of the armies of Britain, France, the United States and their allies finally forced Germany to sue for an armistice, which eventually led to the end of the war.

Victory in the battle was achieved by a coalition of forces from several nations. Most prominent in the British Fourth Army’s attack were the Australian Corps and the Canadian Corps.

These, together with the British III Corps, were supported by more than 2,000 guns from the Royal Artillery, over 500 tanks from the Tank Corps and over 1,900 aircraft from the Royal Air Force and its French equivalent.

Fourth Army succeeded in advancing over 8 miles (almost 13km) in a single day on their main front while the French forces on their southern flank gained 5 miles (8km). For their German opponents, it represented the beginning of the end of a war that had already lasted 4 years .

The battle was a complete surprise. Deception to mislead the Germans and disguise the fact that an attack was being planned was very important and remains an important feature of many modern battle plans.

By this stage of the war, the ‘classic’ trench systems that people associate with the First World War were largely gone after the major advances accomplished by the Germans in their Spring Offensives between March and May 1918.

The senior German commanders, including Kaiser Wilhelm II, knew from this point on, that the war was lost. The battle’s most important impact was on the morale on both sides. Meanwhile, because of the scale of the losses in prisoners captured and the distance the attackers advanced, Erich Ludendorff, who was effectively the commander of the German armed forces in the war, described 8 August 1918 as ‘the black day of the German Army’ (‘der Schwarze Tag’).

The success represented a major propaganda opportunity for the British and French and IWM’s collection holds film and photographs made precisely for this purpose.

Despite the initial success in the battle, there was much more hard fighting with tremendous casualties on all sides in the final months before the war was won. Indeed, many of the technological innovations that accomplished the success on 8 August 1918 were precisely the reason why casualties on the Western Front were so high. Victory would be secured, but at an appalling cost.

Find out more

• Explore Battle of Amiens images in the IWM collection. 
• Explore Battle of Amiens footage in the IWM collection. 
• Visit our Image and Film Licensing page for licensing and archive research.