page_title: Second Battle of Champagne
section_title: Analysis
hierarchical_section_title: Second Battle of Champagne / Aftermath / Analysis
caption_attribution_description: Français&#160;: Tranchée de 1ère ligne en Champagne&#160;: [photographie de presse] / [Agence Rol]
context_page_description: The Second Battle of Champagne in World War I was a French offensive against the German army at Champagne that coincided with an Anglo-French assault at north-east Artois and ended with French retreat.
context_section_description: On 3 October, Joffre abandoned the attempt at a breakthrough in Champagne, ordered the local commanders to fight a battle of attrition and then terminated the offensive on 6 November. The offensive in Champagne had advanced the French line for about 4 km (2.5 mi), at a cost of c. 100,000 more French and British casualties than German losses. The French had attacked in Champagne with 35 divisions against the equivalent of 16 German divisions. On the Champagne front, the Fourth, Second and Third armies had fired 2,842,400 field artillery and 577,700 heavy shells, which with the consumption in Artois during the Third Battle of Artois, exhausted the French stock of ammunition.
  French methods and equipment were insufficient for the demands of trench warfare and a lull followed, as the French rested the survivors of the offensive, replaced losses and accumulated more equipment and ammunition. French artillery was unable to destroy the German artillery, often situated on the reverse slope of the Champagne hillsides. In some instances French regiments attacked with bands playing and their regimental flags waving.  On 22 October, Joffre claimed that the autumn offensive had resulted in important tactical gains, inflicted many casualties and achieved a moral superiority over the Germans and that only a lack of artillery had led to a failure to achieve the strategic objectives of the offensive. To keep as many German troops as possible away from the Eastern Front, offensive operations must continue but troops in the front line were to be kept to the minimum over the winter and a new strategy was to be formulated.
  The theoretical bases of the French offensives of 1915 had been collected in But et conditions d'une action offensive d'ensemble (Purpose and Conditions of all Offensive Action, 16 April 1915) and its derivative Note 5779, which had been compiled from analyses of reports received from the front since 1914. The document contained instructions on infiltration tactics, rolling barrages and poison gas, which were to be used systematically in continuous battles to create rupture. Continuous battle was to be replaced by step-by-step advances, through successive German defence lines. Methodical attacks were to be made each time and would inexorably consume German infantry reserves. The German defences would eventually collapse and make a breakthrough attack feasible. The slower, more deliberate methods, would conserve French infantry, as they battered through the deeper defences built by the Germans since 1914.
  In the autumn battles, the Allies had outnumbered the Westheer (German army in the west) by 600 infantry battalions but had not achieved a breakthrough and after the first day, German reinforcements made one impossible. Several divisions had returned from the Eastern Front but were tired and of little value. The German commander in chief, General Erich von Falkenhayn had underestimated the possibility of an offensive and kept the Oberste Heeresleitung (OHL, German army high command) reserve spread all along the Western Front, rather than concentrating it in threatened areas. French reviews of the offensive found that reserves had moved close to the front, ready to exploit a breakthrough and had advanced on time. The troops had then become bunched up with the leading divisions, blocked the lines of communication and suffered many casualties, while held up. Communications failed and commanders had been in ignorance of the situation, artillery co-ordination with the infantry had been poor and rain grounded French artillery-observation aircraft. Many of the French commanders concluded that a breakthrough could not be forced in one attack and that it would take several set-piece battles, to make the defenders collapse and be unable to prevent a return to mobile operations.
  The German report, Experiences of the 3rd Army in the Autumn Battles in the Champagne, 1915, noted that unyielding defence of the most forward positions had failed several times, because the attackers had severely damaged German field fortifications and cut t
caption: French soldiers in a trench line near Champagne (1915)
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