In the spring and summer of 1918, replenished by new divisions transferred hurriedly from the East after the crushing defeat of Russia, the German army launched a bold new campaign on the Western Front. Appearances, however, were deceptive. Imperial Germany, as many army staff officers admitted, was playing its 'last card', and after initial successes, the Ludendorff offensive ran out of steam.

On 18 July, having rebuffed the last major German assault, French forces in the Marne area launched a surprise counter-attack. This marked the beginning of the 'Hundred Days', an Allied counter-offensive that finally broke the military stalemate on the Western Front and brought the First World War to a close.

Central to this triumph was the Battle of Amiens (8-11 August 1918). This combined air, artillery, infantry and tank offensive was prepared in utmost secrecy, with the aim of driving the German forces away from an area with vital railway links. Ludendorff famously described 8 August, the first day of the battle, as 'the black day of the German army'. By 13 August, British and French forces had advanced up to 11 miles eastwards on a 47-mile front, killing, wounding or capturing 48,000 enemy troops.

Although the offensive, hampered by heavy tank and aircraft losses, slowed down as it reached the old battlefields of the Somme, the psychological damage that it wrought within the German army was immense. Both Ludendorff and Kaiser Wilhelm II now concluded in private that Germany could no longer win the war.

Douglas Haig

Crown Prince Rupprecht

Max von Boehn

Albert

Péronne

The Hindenburg Line - the series of German defensive fortifications stretching from Cerny, east of Soissons, on the Aisne to a point near Beaurains and Neuville Vitasse, just south of Arras - was broken by a series of four major Allied offensives at the end of September. The final phase of the war was characterised by inexorable German retreat, albeit amid continued fighting. Just two minutes before the signing of the armistice, at 11 am on 11 November 1918, a Canadian soldier in a village to the east of Mons was killed by a German sniper.

How were the Allies able to defeat Germany in 1918? By this time, as the Battle of Amiens illustrated, the British army had learned how to successfully combine infantry and artillery in a co-ordinated attack. The Allies had superior air power at their disposal and made better use of intelligence resources. They also possessed brave and durable troops - witness, for example, the efforts of Australian troops at Mont Saint-Quentin on 1 September and Canadian troops at Canal du Nord on 27 September.

The claim that the USA 'won the war' for the Allies in 1918 is an exaggeration. In fact, notwithstanding successes such as the attack on the Saint Mihiel salient (12-16 September 1918), the American Expeditionary Force (AEF) was used sparingly until late in the war and casualty rates within its inexperienced ranks were disproportionately high.