Quote Originally Posted by Simon Appleton
Don, as I understand it, infilitration tactics are essentially trying to breakthrough weakpoints in the enemy lines and not bother initially about reducing strong points. The idea was to get into the rear - hit the vulnerable communications and supply lines, so that this demoralises, isolates and confuses the strong points left behind on the front lines. IIRC, Rommel pioneered the tactic with great success against the Italians, leading small groups of heavily armed men (lots of light machine guns, handgrenades etc). The Germans later adopted it wholesale with Strosstruppen (storm troops) that had a lot of initial success in the Ludendorf offensive 1918. The Wehrmacht armoured encirclements in Barbarossa are in some ways the ultimate extension of this principle. Part of the appropriate response, as the Russians and others discovered, was to create "hedgehogs" that could survive such encirclement rather than surrender en masse.
The Germans learnt the technique of infiltration from the Russians, who used it with great success in the Brusilov offensive in 1916. The Austrians collapsed under the Russian attack and were effectively knocked out of the remainder of the war. German troops under Ludendorff were rushed in to stabilise the front, which they eventually did.