A full-scale offensive began.

On May 29, 1917, just after dawn, about 800 German-Austrian combat planes took off from airfields in Lorraine or Alsace, close to the French lines, and began to bombard the French artillery positions on the southwest side of the Maas lines.

In this era, the performance of the aircraft was still very backward, and it could only carry two 50-kilogram aerial bombs at most, which caused little damage to the enemy's strong fortifications, but also had considerable destructive power for artillery positions laid in exposed positions. The German Fokker III fighter was arguably the best fighter of its time, and the Austro-Hungarian Isleya "Pigeon" fighter was no less powerful than the German fighter.

Unlike the air force specially established by Germany, Austria-Hungary did not establish an air force, but established army aviation and naval aviation units respectively, placing aviation under the command of the army or navy. Generally speaking, each Austro-Hungarian army group would have an army aviation wing with a total of 168 combat aircraft. However, as the number of equipped aircraft increases, the number of aircraft in each air fleet increases.

On the Austro-Hungarian side, the 3rd, 4th, and 7th Air Groups had a total of more than 480 combat aircraft capable of carrying out bombing missions.

At 5:30, on the Maas River front from Verdun to Epinale, more than 2,000 artillery pieces began to bombard the French positions on the other side of the river, first opening the offensive prelude. Afterwards, bombing fighters appeared in the sky and dropped bombs on French artillery positions. The French positions along the Maas River were shrouded in fire and smoke, and the earth trembled with the sound of artillery.

The German 5th Army made a feint attack on the fortress of Verdun, while the 4th, 9th, and 11th armies began to force their way across the Maas River on the line from Verdun to Nancy. The Austro-Hungarian Army focused its breakthrough on the Epinal line, with the 7th Army attacking first, followed by the 3rd and 4th Armies after forcing a river crossing.

The assault mission was carried out by the armored clusters of the German-Austrian forces.

The Germans concentrated a total of 4 panzer divisions on the Maas line, while the Austro-Hungarian side sent 5 pantry divisions. The "gadgets" that Lehedon gave to Wilhelm II also played a big role, and the Germans soon realized the great role of tanks, and under the orders of the German General Staff, the 7th Transport Department successfully copied the LKII cavalry tank on the basis of the Israia I tank and began to form its own armored forces.

Due to the influence of Lee Haydon, the Germans were supposed to develop an A7V tank capable of carrying more than 20 people, and died abruptly, and directly hitched a ride on the rotary turret tank. But the Germans did not copy the design of the Austro-Hungarian tank, the cavalry tank of the LKII. type was better designed in terms of power and suspension system, and was more agile and lighter.

On the German side, according to the plan, the 4th Army, after breaking through the defense line on the Maas, would flank the French troops in the Verdun fortress with the 5th Army, while the 9th and 11th armies would go straight to Sharon, an important rear supply point for Verdun, after which the 11th Army would attack Paris together with the Austro-Hungarian army, while the 9th Army would storm the rear of the French Somme defense line and the French army on the Reims line with the German 2nd and 6th armies on the northern front.

The Austro-Hungarian side first launched an attack was the 7th Armored Division under the jurisdiction of the 7th Army, which was built by the Austro-Hungarian Emperor and its equipment level has always been among the best in the Austro-Hungarian Army, and the 7th Armored Division also belongs to the so-called heavy armored division, with 2 tank regiments and 2 armored infantry regiments, with a total strength of 18,700 people, with 332 tanks and 186 armored vehicles.

The 7th Panzer Division's first attempts to force a crossing of the Maas River failed. The French built strong fortifications along the west bank of the Maas River, and the French artillery units behind the mountains fired fiercely at the river beach, turning the river into a sea of fire, the rubber boats and boats used by the Austrians to cross the river were blown up, and the dense rain of bullets fired from the other side of the river suppressed the people at all, and an infantry battalion on the assault mission lost half of its strength in the first attack, the soldiers were either killed or drowned, and the banks of the river were littered with corpses.

The commander of the 7th Panzer Division, Major General Herzog, hid behind the rocks and watched the situation on the other side of the river without a mirror, and the valley in the Vosges Mountains was so steep and open that any Austrian troops who descended to the beach would be attacked from above by the French troops in the fortifications on the opposite bank. The beach was littered with wrecked dinghys, and a few abandoned assault boats were whirling and floating on the river.

The Austrian and French forces faced off at the crossing point.

Herzog ordered 68 Islaya III tanks of the 58th Heavy Armored Battalion, armed with 57-mm cannons, to line up along the river bank to suppress the French fire points on the other side of the river, and the artillery fired smoke grenades at the opposite bank to interfere with the enemy's line of sight. Smoke suddenly rose from the river, and the engineer battalion began to erect pontoon bridges over the river under enemy fire.

After about an hour of fierce fighting, reinforcements from the air force arrived, and more than 160 combat aircraft of the 7th Air Wing carried out a heavy bombardment of the French artillery positions, and the French artillery fire was temporarily suppressed.

The 37th Infantry Regiment first forced a crossing of the Maas River at the village of Wata, about 5 km south of the crossing, and Herzog ordered them to quickly clear the French fire points along the river bank to the north, which weakened the French firepower on the opposite bank. Under the suppression of the tank troops, the division's engineer battalion soon pulled up several crossing cables on the river, and more and more infantry crossed the river along the cables, and the French firepower on the opposite bank became more sparse.

Herzog breathed a sigh of relief and ordered the sappers to begin erecting the pontoon bridge.

The French army lacked reserves and was underfed in defense. As a result of the large-scale mutiny, the French War Office had to mobilize a large number of troops to surround the mutinous barracks, and about a third of the troops on the Maas line were transferred to the northern front to strengthen the Somme line, while most of the French troops on this line were concentrated in the Versailles fortified area, and the forces used for the defense along the river were even weaker.

The 7th Panzer Division had already captured about 2 kilometers of bridgehead, and Herzog, well aware of the importance of the Panzer Corps for the defense, ordered the engineering units to prioritize the erection of an 18-ton pontoon bridge so that his tank units could quickly cross the river.

The French were slow to react, and by dark, Herzog's expected fierce French counterattack did not appear, and the 7th Division calmly erected three pontoon bridges in the afternoon. Tanks and armored vehicles rumbled across the river, and the French line was lightly broken through in only half a day.

In Paris, the French General Headquarters was already in disarray, and Nivelle refused to resign, was removed from the post of Commander-in-Chief, and General Petain replaced him as the new Commander-in-Chief of the Army. However, Petain, who had just taken office, was visiting the barracks, one by one, to pacify the mutinous troops.

Unexpectedly, the shape shì changed greatly. First, the Austro-Hungarian army unexpectedly began to land in the southern Pyrenees, and the General Staff was mobilizing troops to reinforce the south, but unexpectedly, the offensive of the German-Austrian army on the Maas River line also began.

Due to the large number of Austro-Hungarian troops, the French General Staff realized that the German-Austrian offensive was focused on the Vosges Mountains, where their defenses were relatively weak. But now the question is, Petain is being overwhelmed by the problem of mutinous soldiers, where can he find a large number of reinforcements?

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