In 1918 OHL unleashed a series of massive attacks to bring victory. Each attack began with a multi-million shell hurricane artillery bombardment. Bauer assembled the guns that were commanded by Colonel Bruchmüller. Repeatedly they broke through British and French lines. After four successful months an attack on the French along the Marne River was bloodily repulsed and then on 17 July 1918 the right flank of their salient pointing towards Paris was crushed by a powerful, joint French and American attack led by massed tanks. Bauer realized that the war was lost and that "in decency” it should be ended. He notified his industrialist friends. Bauer and the Crown Prince agreed that Germany needed a dictator, their choice was Ludendorff. Their misreading of the nation's political situation was exposed when Ludendorff was dismissed on 25 October so despised that for safety he fled the country. Vice-Chancellor Friedrich von Payer, the only member of the administration also in the "Reichstag", excoriated Bauer for his un-military political meddling. Bauer took this dressing-down as a tribute to his invaluable work; but he retired from active service on 31 October 1918, a few months after being promoted to Colonel. A close student of the war described Bauer: "There is a strange mixture of force and weakness, calculation and abandon, intelligence and illogic in this man."