page_title: Battle of the Menin Road Ridge
section_title: German defensive preparations
hierarchical_section_title: Battle of the Menin Road Ridge / Prelude / German defensive preparations
caption_attribution_description: English: The British front line and the German defences in the area east of Ypres, mid-1917, with the active Albrecht Stellung, Wilhelm Stellung, Flandern I Stellung, Flandern II Stellung and Flandern III Stellung
context_page_description: The Battle of the Menin Road Ridge, sometimes called "Battle of the Menin Road", was the third British general attack of the Third Battle of Ypres in the First World War. The battle took place from 20 to 25 September 1917, in the Ypres Salient in Belgium on the Western Front. During the pause in British and French general attacks from late August to 20 September, the British changed some infantry tactics, adopting the leap-frog method of advance.
  Waves of infantry stopped once they reached their objective and consolidated the ground, while supporting waves passed through the objective to attack the next one and the earlier waves became the tactical reserve. General adoption of the method was made possible when more artillery was brought into the salient, by increasing the number of aircraft involved in close air support and by the Royal Flying Corps giving the tasks of air defence, contact-patrol, counter-attack patrol, artillery observation and ground-attack to particular aircraft.
  In early September, optimism increased among German commanders that the Flanders offensive had been defeated and several divisions and air units were transferred elsewhere.
context_section_description: From mid-1917, the area east of Ypres was defended by six German defensive positions the front position, Albrechtstellung (second position), Wilhemstellung (third position), Flandern I Stellung (fourth position), Flandern II Stellung (fifth position) and Flandern III Stellung (under construction). Between the German defence positions, lay the Belgian villages of Zonnebeke and Passchendaele. "Elastic" defence tactics had been rejected by the 4th Army Chief of Staff, Major-General Fritz von Loßberg, who believed that a tactical withdrawal by trench garrisons would disorganise the counter-attacking reserves, leading to the loss of the sector and danger to flanking units. Loßberg ordered the front line of sentry groups (Postengraben) to be held rigidly; British attacks would exhaust themselves and then be repulsed by local German reserves or by Eingreifdivisionen. Loßberg also judged that there was little prospect of British attacks being delayed by their need to move artillery forward and build supply routes. The British had a huge mass of artillery and the infrastructure necessary to supply it with ammunition, much of it built opposite the Flandern I Stellung in the period between the attack at Messines and 31 July.
  German defensive tactics had been costly but succeeded on the front of XIX Corps on 31 July and against II Corps on the Gheluvelt Plateau on 31 July and during August, although the counter-attacks had been stopped in their turn by British artillery fire, when they reached areas where observation and communications between British infantry and artillery had been restored. Ludendorff later wrote that losses in the August battles had been unexpectedly high. The pause in British operations in early September helped to mislead the Germans. General von Kuhl (Chief of Staff, Army Group Crown Prince Rupprecht) doubted that the offensive had ended but by 13 September had changed his mind. Despite urging caution, Kuhl sent two divisions, thirteen heavy batteries and twelve field batteries of artillery, three fighter squadrons and four other air force units from the 4th Army. In the area about to be attacked, the army had six ground-holding divisions backed by three Eingref divisions and 750 guns.
caption: The British front line and the German defences in the area east of Ypres, mid-1917
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