Second Marne - Directive No. 4

Battles of the First World War Podcast

Mike Cunha

History

4.8 • 812 Ratings

🗓️ 1 December 2025

⏱️ 30 minutes

🔗️ Recording | iTunes | RSS

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Summary

In the prelude to the prelude of the Second Battle of the Marne in 1918, we set the clock back to December 1917 to look at the position of the Allies at that point in the war. Specifically, we look at French Army commander General Philippe Petain's Directive No. 4 issued that month. In this short memo Petain advocated for a defense in depth strategy on the front lines, as Entente forces began to prepare for the inevitable German onslaught on the Western Front.

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Transcript

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0:00.0	We must maintain a wait-and-see attitude, with the firm idea of resuming, as soon as we can, the offensive, which alone will give us final victory.
0:18.0	General Philippe Beton, French Army, commanding, December 22nd, 1917.
0:25.6	The President I'm going to be....you know, Hey folks.
1:20.1	Welcome to the Battles of the First World War podcast.
1:24.3	Second Myron, Directive number four.
1:30.1	Okay. Second Marn, Directive Number 4. Okay, so here we are. If you're new to the podcast, let me give you a short introduction to the world that is the BFWP.
1:42.5	So my name is Mike, and by day I am an educator. I'm going to teach history, of course,
1:48.4	because I love it, and also because I thoroughly suck in mathematics. Reading and books are my
1:54.3	thing and have been since I met the Hardy Boys mystery series when I was in the third grade.
2:00.1	My personal gateway drug into history was World War II, of course, when I was in the third grade. My personal gateway drug into history was World War II, of course, when I was an elementary
2:05.6	school student.
2:06.8	But as a teenager, I became aware of World War I, yeah, it took me a while, and dove into
2:12.7	that.
2:13.9	My bachelor's degree is in history, and while I have one master's in special education for the day job,
2:19.8	I recently completed my thesis for a second master's in military history with the University of Birmingham in the UK.
2:29.3	Fingers crossed that I passed that as grades have not been given out yet. As much as I could with
2:36.6	Birmingham, I focused on the Great War. The Battles of the First World War podcast has been
2:44.3	going since June of 2016. And before that, I had a short-term podcast series named the Battle of Verdun podcast that I began
2:53.6	sometime in 2014. I've been doing this for a while, I guess, and it started as a hobby and has
3:01.3	turned into a labor of love. And I do love it, seriously. Since 2014, I have met an incredible amount of equally
3:11.7	enthusiastic people, and that is 100% thanks to this podcast. The internet can often be
3:19.0	Conneré Absalue, as the French would say, but I believe there is still a lot of good out there in it, too.
	...

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