the great WWI infantry myth

[nokhor]

there is a generally held belief that most of the genrals in WWI were uniformly stupid. we all know the scenarios of sending wave after wave of infantry against entrenched positions to get slaughtered. i posit that it was not a lack of intelligence that led to this repetition of futility but rather that it was cultural. for over 2000 years [greeks vs persians, romans vs gauls etc] its been drilled into the brains of every military student that troops in formation defeat troops not in formation. so you had troops advancing in line against trenches and getting mowed down in WWI. the generals didn't think of it, because fighting in formation was so ingrained that it took commanders of genius or extraordinary circumstances to realize the paradigm shift. i don't think that it's a coincidence that the infantry tactics such as infiltration and pioneers that became succesful later in the war only appeared after the major powers began bringing in colonial troops who were not drilled as extensively as the regualr troops and who fought irregularly and not in formation. In the wars before WWI, infantry training was done as part of a formation [line, square, column] of hundreds or thousands of men. after WWI, infantry training was focused on squad and platoon level tactics.

[econ21]

I suspect the generals (in the sense of army commanders and general staff etc) were not that concerned about formations and fighting tactics. These things would be set by pre-existing army doctrine and modified by experience or in its implementation by lower level officers. The generals would be focussed more on strategy and logistics. Napoleon, for example, had remarkably little to say on whether his infantry should deploy in column, line or l'ordre mixe.

My impression of WW1 has always been not of the stupidity, but how quickly people (including generals) learned new ways of fighting. At a strategic level, the generals were always looking for breakthrough with their next big offensive, rather than simply accepting war by attrition. At a technical level, think about the introduction of the tank - a genuinely revolutionary concept, but being put into action in 1916 (IIRC). Ditto the development of airforces. Rommel and other development infilitration tactics that foreshadowed the blitzkrieg approach of WW2. The constraints seem to have been more technological and logistical, rather than to do with a lack of will or imagination. Lack of good communications, in particular, seems to have impeded the effective use of artillery and the ability to exploit local successes.

In terms of formations, I think people learnt pretty quickly the futility of advancing in close formation against machine guns, heavy artillery or even decent riflemen. The BEF - with few machine guns but good marksmanship - gave the Germans a rough handling in 1914 when attacked in close formation (in part because they had learnt from their experiences against the Boers). The Germans in turn learned from this and when on the defensive, quickly mastered trench warfare, relying on machineguns and defense in depth. The French entered the war more hung up on the value of the bayonet and the offensive, but over time adapted - making good use of field artillery.

I may be wrong, but my impression is that advancing en masse in close formation was not a common tactic after 1914. I am struck often by the parity in losses between the "attackers" and the "defenders" in most operations. This suggests to me that the attackers did not try insane tactics. Or possibly that even seemingly high risk offensive tactics could pay off - using local numerical superiority to seize valuable ground, forcing the defender to counterattack.

Perhaps the most striking exception to all this - and perhaps an example of stupid generals - was the British offensive in the Somme. The generals seemed to have judged that their troops were not sufficiently well trained to advance other than in close order, at a walking pace. The result was slaughter. But I doubt this was standard operating procedure.

[English assassin]

Perhaps the most striking exception to all this - and perhaps an example of stupid generals - was the British offensive in the Somme. The generals seemed to have judged that their troops were not sufficiently well trained to advance other than in close order, at a walking pace. The result was slaughter. But I doubt this was standard operating procedure.

Really the miscalculation was over the effectiveness of the artillery preparation. The generals didn't think engaging manned trenches in that way was wise, but they didn't expect the trenches to be manned any more. Keegan is very good on the barrage, why it failed, and why it was miscalculated in "The Face of Battle"

Your point about communications could well be made about a failure to call off the attack once it was clear the fundamental premise was wrong, although I suppose no major set piece attack is ever capable of being called off in its first 24 hours. In fact, says this armchair general, I would imagine no attack that was capable of being called off in its early hours would ever succeed.

SA's point about the innovations in WW1 is well made. Tanks, aircraft, gas, and modern(ish) inflitration tactics, all from nothing in four years.

[Geoffrey S]

Lack of communications was vital when manouevering large forces, particularly when the Germans entered France this slowed them down immensely and made the force rather disconnected. Bad communications and huge forces made it all but impossible for the tight control necessary to force breakthroughs in vulnerable areas, as often there would only be a small window of oppurtunity; rather than that there was certainly a tendency to rely on mass assaults aimed at breaking through the lines. While it's arguable that this was criminal stupidity on the generals part since they didn't visibly achieve anything but several hundred yards, it can also be argued that this continuous pressure eventually ground down the German army enough. It really was a war of endurance between two initially almost perfectly matched forces, but it was the allies that had the longest breath; the worst thing is the German high command realised this, which is one of the reasons they pressed for the war before France, Russia and England could outmatch them, which they viewed as inevitable.

[Seamus Fermanagh]

Lots of factors here.

Suggested reads: Face of Battle by Keagan (noted above), Tuchman's Guns of August.


Yes, the influence of close order drill on military thinking was a persistent issue. Close order drill had been the dominant element in troop discipline from the 1600's onward (and probably was central to Republican/Early Imperial Rome as well). Pscyhologically, soldiers enjoy the close company of fellow soldiers when facing battle -- but high explosive loves the bunched up targets.

Countries at the time were nations-in-arms, but had upper leadership groups that truly believed in the decisive battle. The greater ability of industrialized nations to persist in conflict despite major reverses in the field had not truly penatrated the thinking of most. There were exceptions like Kitchener, who insisted on preparing and army of millions while his countrymen thought the conflict would be over before Christmas. Both sides believed that it would be like the war of 1870 -- one great campaign and series of battles lasting no more than a season or so would decide the outcome. Look at the military plans of the participants at the outset; only the Germans had a technique that might have achieved decisive victory, and even their efforts fell short as a result of limited tactical mobility and the inevitable friction of war.

The ability of the defense to inflict casualties and the relative lack of improvements in mobility as compared to firepower doomed the participants to a war of attrition on any front where terrain or total troop density per square mile reached beyond a certain level. There were glimpses of the future -- the taxis of Paris shuttling troops to the Marne, the hit-and-run efforts of British Armored Cars in Belgium and Northeast France, but in general you had great strategic/logistical movement with limited tactical mobility. Where mobility was still possible because of more open terrain and lesser troop densities -- Palestine/Mesopotamia/Arabia -- the war was much less of an exercise in futility.

I don't know that I'd emphasize the "Colonial" element in the way you do, either. It is not as though the South Africans, Americans et. al. were more innovative than were the European locals. The Western Front was just the side with the "deepest pockets" eventually forcing the opposition to quit the game. The most successful efforts -- the stosstruppen tactics -- were pioneered by younger (and presumably less hidebound) German infantry leaders, but its not as though Ludendorf and others weren't willing to adopt them. Also, the great technology changes of WWI have already been noted.

[Kraxis]

The Balkan War in the years prior to WWI clearly showed what kind of war it would be. Formations got ripped to pieces there, and it wasn't as if the Great Powers didn't know this, they had huge numbers of observers present.
The Boer War was also a modern war where those who were unformed 'won'.

Germany couldn't count on any regional troops. They learned, and learned very well. In the end they were supreme infiltrators, and their stormtroopers was a most prudent invention.

SA, it is true that often the Germans only had a slight advantage in losses. But as you know, I suspect, the general tactic in a defensive battle was to regain the lost ground.
So instead of letting the enemy bleed himself dry, trading ground for losses, the defender counterattacked ALWAYS! So in a matter of hours who attacked would become a triviality as both sides would have attacked and lost many men in it.

Only at the very end did the Germans fianlly understand it was better to trade ground for losses, but then it was only because they didn't have the manpower reserves anymore and simply couldn't counterattack.
Incidentally the great Allied offensive of 1918 proved to be one of the most costly in WWI, but when victory is close at hand that wasn't really important. And at the same time Germany could do little to stem the tide no matter how many miles of land she traded for saved troops (and losses to her enemies).

[Scurvy]

i always thought that in WW1 the generals were fighting a "war of attrition" deliberately, ie. they couldnt directly break the trenches, and knew this, so they simple threw men at each other to try and kill as many enemies as possible, therefore it wasnt stupid, but calculated (albeit with terrible consequences for all)

certainly for the brit generals they were using their experience from the boar war but this was little use against machine guns and heavy art. I think the BEF was the best trained army at the start of the war (this might be biased, all iv ever seen about the BEF is from english pov) and brought in things like camoflauged uniforms etc...

[Watchman]

Camos came a *lot* alter on - actual camo uniforms turn first up among late-WW2 SS troops, I think, although improvised efforts were for obvious reasons being made pretty shortly into WW1 too.

It's just that the Brits had learned to use khaki uniforms in their colonial wars; in comparision the French started out with dark blue coats and scarlet pantaloons, the Germans with bright shiny leather helms with excessive (and, naturally, bright) brass decorations, the Austro-Hungarioans with garish Attila jackets...
Ugh.
Obviously, people noticed right quick there might be good reasons to change the image a bit and take a que from the Brits.

The BEF were about the most skilled army at the start of the war, but then they were full-time professionals ("more a police force for the far-flung Empire") and everyone else relied on conscripts so of course they were better trained. Too bad there was way too few of them for the needs of the attrition war to be fought, all the more so as most died off in the early stages when everyone was still learning the ropes and the commanders hadn't quite figured out the kinds of damage machine guns and artillery could do or how difficult layered linear defenses were to crack...

[Philippus Flavius Homovallumus]

I think the commanders had an idea that their losses were going to be horrific, and to be fair, in the early stages of the war, when everybody was mobile, they managed quite well. Understanding the problem however did not present an answer, the French worked out that running foward in skirmishing formation would reduce losses but it still wasn't exactly ideal.

I have the soldiers pocket book from arounf 1870 and there is a section of modern artillery and machine guns and there impact, and the fact that no on had come up with anything.

[Asmodai]

I think, that the main problem was lack of any weapon capable of breaking enemy line without heavy losses. So, WWI commanders simply threw as many soldiers as possible to cause maximum damage. But losses were horrendable and thats why germans loose that war. Tanks and aircrafts were not unknown, but their actions were not coordinated with the actions of the rest units.
And thats why, tanks and aircrafts where used by them in WWII in great effect in the early stage of war.

[screwtype]

Most of what I've read about WWI indicates that the problem was not so much in getting the breakthrough, but the inability to exploit it. The problem was lack of adequate communications rather than lack of weaponry.

[Pannonian]

there is a generally held belief that most of the genrals in WWI were uniformly stupid. we all know the scenarios of sending wave after wave of infantry against entrenched positions to get slaughtered. i posit that it was not a lack of intelligence that led to this repetition of futility but rather that it was cultural. for over 2000 years [greeks vs persians, romans vs gauls etc] its been drilled into the brains of every military student that troops in formation defeat troops not in formation. so you had troops advancing in line against trenches and getting mowed down in WWI. the generals didn't think of it, because fighting in formation was so ingrained that it took commanders of genius or extraordinary circumstances to realize the paradigm shift. i don't think that it's a coincidence that the infantry tactics such as infiltration and pioneers that became succesful later in the war only appeared after the major powers began bringing in colonial troops who were not drilled as extensively as the regualr troops and who fought irregularly and not in formation. In the wars before WWI, infantry training was done as part of a formation [line, square, column] of hundreds or thousands of men. after WWI, infantry training was focused on squad and platoon level tactics.

The BEF advanced using cover as much as possible. After the BEF was wiped out in 1914, subsequent British armies consisted of relatively ill-trained recruits who could not carry out such complicated tactics. So telling them to use cover would result in them bunching together under the same bit of cover, making them horribly vulnerable to artillery (the main killer in WWI). Making them attack in evenly distributed waves was a way of getting some decent distance between each individual soldier, while advancing with bayonets was a way of pushing them forward against the overwhelming urge to lie down and stay put.

Ideally, those men shouldn't have been sent into battle with so little training. But political realities demanded action, so the generals did the best they could with what they had. In addition, this was a new paradigm of war, and the lessons learnt from earlier disasters informed later operations.

For instance, the Somme offensive was the British and Commonwealth's blooding of their new formations, and their tactics changed almost every week with reports coming in from the front (gauging the accuracy and import of these reports was another problem). Learning from this, the Passchendaele offensive the following year was a stunning success until unseasonal weather made further actions impossible (they spoilt their record by carrying on for months afterwards). The 100 days campaign in 1918 was the culmination of these tactical lessons.

[Watchman]

When properly prepared and supported mass infantry assaults were quite capable of pushing over the no-man's land and capturing trenches. Sufficient artillery saturation for example was often quite capable of simply killing just about everything everything in the opposing front trenches so the men could get over relatively intact. The problem was in exploiting such gains - it was borderline impossible to get enough supplies over the interwening wasteland under the gentle attentions of hostile artillery and given the state the ground tended to be in, or push the all-imprtant artillery support forward to enable the infantry to hold onto their gains in the face of hostile shelling and reinforcements pouring in. After all, the defender's reinforcements came by the trech system comparatively safe from hostile interference; the attacker's had to cross the no-man's land where any enemy artillery still active could blow them to bits.

Moreover, the trenches were dug in depth from rather early on even if true defense-in-depth systems were only developed later in the war; attempts to widen such bridgeheads almost always bogged down on the backup redoubts, trenches and strongpoints.

In short, the systems and weapons of defense were superior to the systems and weapons of offense. The commanders, who quite frankly often were thinking in rather outdated terms and commonly had absolutely no idea just what the front lines were like, for the lack of better alternatives could do little but throw massive concentrations of men and material at the opposition when trying to achieve progress, and the resulting costs in lives and supplies were duly appalling.

Methods to breach the deadlock of layered linear defenses were eventually devised; the German infiltration and stormtrooper tactics worked initially, but ultimately bogged down in the defenses-in-depth and sheer attrition and exhaustion. The Allied solution, the tank, more durable and less vulnerable than even the best trained infantrymen, ultimately proved to be the correct path to pursue, and despite considerable teething problems at the beginning made mobile warfare possible again. During the Germans' major 1918 push the Allies were actually several times able to stabilize crumbling fronts with the timely intervention of ludicrously small numbers of tanks (or even armoured cars), which given their virtual invulnerability to the infantry weapons of the time often had disproportionate effects in some ways comparable to those of the war elephants of ancient times on opponents unused to them.

Later the same year concentrated Allied attacks utilizing fully mature trench-assault tactics, with ample artillery support, and spearheaded by (for the time) massive concentrations of tanks, essentially demolished the German lines.

[Seamus Fermanagh]

Well, I'd say the "ideal" form was and is the combination of "stosstruppen" infantry tactics with the shock/speed of armor -- but in general I think Watchman has this nailed down pretty well.

Also recall that the front's involved, particularly in Flanders and the Argonne, were a nearly continuous system of defenses. No flank, no options.

The BEF of 1914 was the era's best army in the world, man-for-man. At Mons canal, facing BEF riflemen in scrapes, the Germans thought they were facing machine guns! The only other troops recorded as having shot well and rapidly enough to create this effect were the USMC and all they could deploy was a heavy brigade.

Kitchener was incensed that the BEF was almost fully deployed, however, because he knew the casualties would be high and that he could never replace the experience lost by the "old sweat" regiments -- which he valued more as the cadre for his million-man army than as an independent fighting force. The losses suffered by the "Pals" on the Somme may well prove him correct.

[Don Corleone]

I'm afraid I'm going to have to claim a moment of ignorance here. You folks are using the terms 'infiltrate' and 'infiltrator's in a way that I don't understand. I know in WWII the Germans attempted to infiltrate enemy lines (dress their soldiers up in Allied uniforms, teach them to speak without an accent, etc), but that's more a function of espionage then battlefield tactics. Did the Germans in WWI actually send units dressed like BEF out onto the field to disguise them? Wouldn't that be INCREDIBLY dangerous, I would imagine the odds of friendly fire casualties would be very high.

[econ21]

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.

[Watchman]

The WW1 "infiltration tactics" could be basically summed up as "sneaking over the no-man's land in small groups of shock troops that open the way for the rest to follow" - basically, utilizing stealth, speed and small-unit tactics to avoid the crushing weight of artillery, MG and small-arms fire that invariably greeted open assaults. I wouldn't be surprised if the idea was derived from the "raids" into enemy trenches all sides engaged in, partly to gather intel from prisoners.

The breakthrough-and-isolate tactics of the mechanized Blitzkrieg are IMHO and entirely different beast. The infiltration tactics relied on the stealthiness of trained men, and the disproportionate effect well-trained and -equipped squads had in the restricted condition of trench warfare. Blitzkrieg armour tactics were almost the polar opposite, with no stealth in their actual execution and relying on the sheer overwhelming power and durability of massed tanks concentrated against a single point of the enemy line, and their mobility to exploit the breach created.

Far as I can tell the only shared element was the relegation of the "mopping up" of stubborn centers of resistance to the subsequent waves of troops, but as this was objectively dictated by the need to maintain momentum and deny the enemy time and opportunity to reorganize to contain the breaches I don't think it can be considered much of a "unifying feature."

Just my opinion though.

[Epistolary Richard]

Watchman in his first post summed up my sentiments on the matter pretty well, especially on the point of High Command's sheer ignorance of the reality of the ground that their men were fighting over. An aspect of the improvement in artillery was the ever-increasing remoteness of the general from the battlefield. One anecdotal piece I read was that a general venturing forth to the line of battle broke down in tears at having sent men into battle in such conditions - and he was still ten miles from the front.

I read the revisionist historical comment about ten years ago that the newly-recruited army was simply too inexperienced for anything but 'over the top' tactics walking across No Mans Land fully laden with pack and I originally bought it. But I put it to someone far smarter than I and they said 'ill-training isn't an excuse for bad tactics, it's a reason for better training'. There was nothing stupid nor cowardly about the British Tommy - if High Command had a more accurate understanding of conditions and if they had prepared the soldiers better in training then they could have had a more effective fighting force.

But it is one of those ongoing themes in military history - truly great commanders produce strategic and tactical innovations ideal for their situation, but these are then slavishly followed by inferior minds who live in the shadow of giants.

[Watchman]

One anecdotal piece I read was that a general venturing forth to the line of battle broke down in tears at having sent men into battle in such conditions - and he was still ten miles from the front.

I've read the same one. Although it's mentioned to be "it is said", the officer is identified as ...damn these military ranks... Lieutenant General(?) Sir Lancelot Kigell, Chief of Staff of Gen.(?) Haig during Third Ypres in 1917. In the version I have he breaks down in tears in his staff car and rhetorically laments "have we truly been sending men to fight here?" and the man accompanying him, who's been down in the trenches for much of the battle, flatly observes "it gets worse further on."

Anecdotal or not, it gets the point across. On the other hand a fair few senior officers died "with their boots on" at the front lines or were captured in combat, so all of them weren't comfortably insulated in their headquarters.

The big problem the WW1 military brass had was quite simply that nobody actually had practical experience of just what modern "industrial war" was like, or what all these new weapons developed since the Franco-Prussian War of 1870 were actually capable of. It was partly sheer inertia and technophobia, not to mention arrogance, too; for example many viewed the machine-gun as fit for mowing down inferior natives in colonial wars, but of course civilized and trained and above all white Europeans would be another matter...

That they, like most people of the time, been brought up by heavily romanticized accounts of the Napoleonic wars and assorted other conflicts fought long ago didn't exactly help them develop a mental framework well suited for adapting to the new rules. All the more so as the top brass were on the average old; real Methuselahs. Now, age has its benefits, but has a notorious tendency to ossify people's thinking...

[econ21]

The breakthrough-and-isolate tactics of the mechanized Blitzkrieg are IMHO and entirely different beast. The infiltration tactics relied on the stealthiness of trained men, and the disproportionate effect well-trained and -equipped squads had in the restricted condition of trench warfare. Blitzkrieg armour tactics were almost the polar opposite, with no stealth in their actual execution and relying on the sheer overwhelming power and durability of massed tanks concentrated against a single point of the enemy line, and their mobility to exploit the breach created.

Far as I can tell the only shared element was the relegation of the "mopping up" of stubborn centers of resistance to the subsequent waves of troops, but as this was objectively dictated by the need to maintain momentum and deny the enemy time and opportunity to reorganize to contain the breaches I don't think it can be considered much of a "unifying feature."

You had me wondering whether I was being over-imaginative in relating infilitration tactics to blitzkrieg, but John Keegan makes the same claim in his book on WW1 (p405):

German infantry in 1918"had been trained to "infilitrate" enemy positions, by-passing centres of resistance, rather than stopping to fight when held up at the front. These tactics anticipated blitzkrieg, which the German army would apply so successfully in mechanised operations in a later war."

I am no military historian, but I'll wager that the German theorists of blitzkrieg, like General Von Seeckt in the 1920s, and the practitioners, like Rommel[1], explicitly acknowledged that their method of fighting had its origins in WW1 infilitration tactics.

Blitzkrieg was certainly scaled up, but it did rely on stealth at an operational level (and often at a tactical level, e.g. through the use of paratroopers and surprise assaults to secure bridgeheads). If the French and British knew the Germans were coming through the Ardennes, the 1940 campaign would have turned out rather different. Later, when the allies did anticipate German armoured thrusts - notably at Alamein and Kursk - the attacks were unsuccessful.

I am not even sure the blitzkrieg relied on that much on the power and durability of armour to break through the enemy lines - I thought the armour was more to exploit the breakthrough. Concentrations of artillery and infantry can smash holes in a line. The real role of the tank (and dive bomber) was in playing havoc once the line had been penetrated. In 1940, the French massed armour around Sedan and the British at Cambrai, but they achieved nothing and little respectively.

What to me is distinctive about blitzkrieg is the infilitration - the Panzer divisions in France in 1940 ranging hundreds of miles behind the allied frontlines, the massive pockets of Russians surrounded in Barbarossa. What was revolutionary about the German use of armour (although anticipated by British theorists such as Fuller and Liddell Hart) was that its aim was deep penetration. When the allies learnt how to deal with infilitration and even encirclement, the blitzkrieg ceased to work.

[1]Captain Rommel captured 9000 men and 81 guns in two days in Italy. IIRC, he had only around a hundred or so men of his own, although heavily armed with light machine guns and exploisives. It's hard not to see this foreshadowing the successes of the Wehrmacht in the first half of WW2.

[Pannonian]

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.

[Pannonian]

I read the revisionist historical comment about ten years ago that the newly-recruited army was simply too inexperienced for anything but 'over the top' tactics walking across No Mans Land fully laden with pack and I originally bought it. But I put it to someone far smarter than I and they said 'ill-training isn't an excuse for bad tactics, it's a reason for better training'. There was nothing stupid nor cowardly about the British Tommy - if High Command had a more accurate understanding of conditions and if they had prepared the soldiers better in training then they could have had a more effective fighting force.

If they had prepared the soldiers better. But they didn't have time. France was in danger of losing the war at Verdun, and a major offensive had to launched somewhere to divert German attention. An offensive using inadequately trained troops was going to happen, the only question was where. The High Command picked the junction between the French and British armies as the best place, far enough from Verdun to be a nuisance for the Germans yet working in combination with the more experienced French.

[Watchman]

*shrug* Seems to get a bit semantical to me. However, to my knowledge the real pioneers of the Blitzkrieg theory were the Soviets with their "deep combat" concept, which the Germans - who were working on joint military developement programs with them around the time, the two pariahs of the international scene finding each other useful allies - picked up and put into practice a fair bit better than the Soviets who had some political issues involved.

The real key point of the doctrine in any case was massing armour into large units instead of spreading them all over in "penny packets", since massed armour obviously could easily destroy scattered armour piecemeal through local numerical superiority - and when tanks were about the only really workable anti-tank measure around...

Anyway, I find the tentative connections proposed unconvincing. All offenses, major ones in particular, were kept as secret as possible to prevent the enemy from massing their defences into the actual target area; they were obviously rather easier to deal with if they were spread out covering multiple possible approaches. Hardly anything noteworthy there, just military SOP. "Loose lips sink ships," remember ?

Particularly so if your "master plan" relies on catching the foe off guard by doing something unexpected, as was the case with the 1940 Blitz in France and Netherlands.

Put this way: if it's basic operational know-how and SOP that once realized is vigorously tried to apply whenever possible, it cannot in my opinion be "characteristic" of a particular tactical concept/scheme/technique and, hence, neither a connecting link between two or more of them.

As an example, in the naval tactics of both gunpowder-era galleys and sailing ships, firepower, maneuver and formation were very important.
The similarities pretty much ended there.

Ditto for the similarities/differences between mechanized Blitzkrieg - a tactic of mechanized forces, working best on open ground - and the "Stormtrooper" infiltration, a tactic of infantry primarily for fighting in "close" terrain such as trenches.

[Seamus Fermanagh]

*shrug* Seems to get a bit semantical to me. However, to my knowledge the real pioneers of the Blitzkrieg theory were the Soviets with their "deep combat" concept, which the Germans - who were working on joint military developement programs with them around the time, the two pariahs of the international scene finding each other useful allies - picked up and put into practice a fair bit better than the Soviets who had some political issues involved.

The Sovs did have at least one brilliant armor commander - purged by Stalin of course - but never built the support TO&E to a level that could have put the concept in practice. Rommel and the early Strosstruppen tactics are alike in concept to the blitzkrieg, albeit on a very different scale. JFC Fuller and Guderian were both early proponents. It would be hard to pin down any one source as the absolute.

[econ21]

The real key point of the doctrine in any case was massing armour into large units instead of spreading them all over in "penny packets", since massed armour obviously could easily destroy scattered armour piecemeal through local numerical superiority - and when tanks were about the only really workable anti-tank measure around...

Again, I disagree with you. Even the French and certainly the Russians had armoured divisions. The key point of the Panzer division was not to mass armour to destroy scattered enemy armour. German tanks initially were not supposed to fight tanks - that came later (when they started putting long barrelled AT-type (50mm, 75mm, 88mm) guns on their vehicles). The anti-tank measures were supposed to be anti-tank guns - both in theory and often in practice (Rommel delighted in leading British tanks into his anti-tank guns). The key point of massing armour in the Panzer division and Panzer groups was to use their armoured mobility to achieve a deep penetration. It is this aspect that is an extension of infilitration tactics.

Seems to get a bit semantical to me.

Except that I think the blitzkrieg theorists learned directly from the effectiveness of infilitration tactics. If the two ways of fighting came from totally different epochs, as in your galleys and sailing-ships analogy, then I'd agree it's not very interesting to draw a link. But if it is the same people just using technology, then the link is not only logical, it's causal.

[Pannonian]

Again, I disagree with you. Even the French and certainly the Russians had armoured divisions. The key point of the Panzer division was not to mass armour to destroy scattered enemy armour. German tanks initially were not supposed to fight tanks - that came later (when they started putting long barrelled AT-type (50mm, 75mm, 88mm) guns on their vehicles). The anti-tank measures were supposed to be anti-tank guns - both in theory and often in practice (Rommel delighted in leading British tanks into his anti-tank guns). The key point of massing armour in the Panzer division and Panzer groups was to use their armoured mobility to achieve a deep penetration. It is this aspect that is an extension of infilitration tactics.

Sounds exactly like Deep Operations. Concentrate artillery to blow a hole in the line, rush tanks and mobile infantry through the hole who then run riot in the enemy rear. The Russians even specifically organised their armies for this style of warfare.

Except that I think the blitzkrieg theorists learned directly from the effectiveness of infilitration tactics. If the two ways of fighting came from totally different epochs, as in your galleys and sailing-ships analogy, then I'd agree it's not very interesting to draw a link. But if it is the same people just using technology, then the link is not only logical, it's causal.

[/quote]
Blitzkrieg and Deep Operations emphasise what happens after the breakthrough. The breakthrough is assumed to be successful before they come into play. Infiltration enables to the breakthrough. The link you speak of is not doctrinal.

[Watchman]

The galley/roundship analogy comes from a very specific period, actually, namely the later 16th century when the Mediterranean war galley was reaching its evolutionary peak before becoming ebsolescent, and the sailing "roundship" was beginning to show it's true potential.

Curious detail: cannon-armed galleys served well in the coastal navies of the Baltic from about mid-1700s to mid-1800s, the broken coastline and extensive archipelagos of the region making their comparative agility and independence of weather highly valuable.

But anyway.

I'll grant you that the "stormtrooper" tactics no doubt played a key part in cementing the idea of "deep penetration" tactics, but I'd say that's more because they were the first tactical scheme developed that allowed such stratagems in the first place. Before them infantry assaults had inevitably been badly mauled during the advance and usually unable to properly force their way deep into the enemy trench system, at least without the committement of massive manpower and extended slugging matches between the forces in the tactical bottlenecks of the trenches.

"Stormtrooper" tactics were a means to deal with that through the use of speed, firepower and stealth to magnify the effects of small units beyond all reason and most importantly gut the front layers of the defensive system (as methods had been devised to counter the worst effects of artillery preparations, which in any case had trouble reaching the deeper layers). For the scheme to be worth anything it was pretty much a necessity for the assault units to bypass stubborn points of resistance (to be, hopefully, dealt with the later waves) and keep pushing forwards the maintain shock and momentum; had they gotten bogged down fighting such strongpoints, well, where'd the improvement to the old system been ? It'd have stalled their advance and dissipated their momentum, and allowed the enemy to form new defense lines and mass reinforcements very much defeating the whole point of the whole idea. Maintaining the advance denied the enemy breathing space, and allowed the spearhead units to engage the incoming reinforcements piecemeal, unformed and at least to a degree on their own terms.

Much of that latter part really goes under the maxim "kick 'em when they're down and don't let them get back up"; it's something commanders always strove for, they'd just been unable to achieve it with any degree of reliability for most of the war.

However, it is not difficult to find "deep penetration" elements in WW1 armour tactics either. Indeed, they tended to happen almost by default as the primitive tanks were virtually "blind, deaf and dumb" and primarily operated by proceeding along their pre-planned "attack corridor" and simply destroyed everything they could; machine-gun nests and other such troublesome strongpoints were particularly singled out for extinction. This had much the same effect as the infiltration tactics, albeit from almost polarly opposed starting point and through virtually opposite methods. The vulnerable flesh of the stormtroopers got over the no-man's land in one piece through stealth (well, the inevitable preceding artillery barrages and gas shells didn't exactly hurt); the tanks by virtue of their metal shells, which virtually bounced off anything short of cannon hits. The Stormtroopers fought their way through the maze of trenches with superior tactics, training and firepower, whenever possible circumventing stubborn strongpoints. The tanks specifically aimed to reduce such centres of resistance to smoking craters filled with bullet-ridden corpses, and crawled onwards largely by the virtue of their near invulnerability. Since they missed a fair few ones almost by default - they were nearly blind and deaf -

The end result was the same - the enemy defensive line was shredded in considerable depth (assuming the whole operation didn't go FUBAR, natch) and the rest of the infantry could pour through the gaps.

I'd almost be willing to claim the mechanized [I]Blitzkrieg[/] concept rather evolved from the massed armoured wedges the Allies started employing as battering rams to penetrate deep into German defensive systems towards the end of the Great War, the spread-out-and-isolate part being a natural addition once the mechanical developement of the fighting vehicles now actually allowed such sophistication (the developement of mechanized infantry capable of keeping up with the advance didn't exactly hurt).

What I'm trying to say is that there's no particular reason to believe the "deep combat" aspect of mechanized Blitzkrieg strategy came from the "stormtrooper" tacics save for the fact the latter was the first tactical innovation that made anything of the sort possible in the conditions of WW1 trench warfare in the first place. I'd even be willing to argue that it would have been developed even if the "stormtrooper" tactics had never been introduced - it was just too natural an element of the idea of using massed mechanized wedges to penetrate enemy lines not to have been, if such armoured Schwerpunkt strategies were introduced in the first place.

Even the French and certainly the Russians had armoured divisions. The key point of the Panzer division was not to mass armour to destroy scattered enemy armour.

The operative term is "too little, too late". At the start of WW2 the Germans were the only ones who didn't field their tanks primarily as infantry support vehicles, but as concentrated mechanized units. Even if it was an unintented side effect, the fact the massed German armour could overwhelm the comparatively isolated enemy armour - or for that matter AT guns - was certainly very useful and valuable, not in the least in sustaining the momentum of the breakthrough. It'd be kind of difficult to maintain mechanized deep penetration if it could be stumped by relatively few enemy tanks you couldn't dispose of, now wouldn't it ?

German tanks initially were not supposed to fight tanks - that came later (when they started putting long barrelled AT-type (50mm, 75mm, 88mm) guns on their vehicles). The anti-tank measures were supposed to be anti-tank guns - both in theory and often in practice (Rommel delighted in leading British tanks into his anti-tank guns).

They could, nonetheless. Tanks were eventually found to be a far better anti-tank measure than crew-served AT guns anyway, being far more mobile, durable and tactically flexible and, as a side effect, easier to concentrate if necessary. The guns weren't exactly well suited for mobile warfare either. To boot many early-war AT guns were actually rather inadequate for their job performance-vise, and in any case rarely present in enough numbers to be able to blunt the mechanized assaults; already by mid-war tank evolution was beginning to outpace AT gun developement, and the late-war heavy AT guns were becoming severely unwieldy, near-static monstrosities. Even the famed German 8.8cm (especially in its original AA configuration) was so large and heavy its deployement was often very troublesome; it made a really good tank gun though...

Let's be honest here. The theory and practice of tank design and deployement wasn't the only field where everyone had greater or lesser teething problems, and theory and reality often weren't compatible; anti-tank measures were another. Take for example the anti-tank rifles...

The Sovs did have at least one brilliant armor commander - purged by Stalin of course - but never built the support TO&E to a level that could have put the concept in practice.

The Soviets developed a rather sophisticated armour doctrine by mid-Thirties, and even started reforming their military to implement it. Stalin's purges and shifting favourites came in the way about halfway through though, with the primary theorists finding themselves in the camps, the idea itself blacklisted, and the (already badly gutted by the purges of the officer corps) army itself undergoing a counter-reformation back to the "old" system (ie. the same infantry-centered one everyone except the Germans had at the start of the war, which proved to be something of a liablity). Once the Germans proved the viablity of the "deep combat" concept in Poland and France Stalin duly made *another* about-face and started reforming the army yet again for the new system...

The Soviets got it going properly by about mid-war, at which point the remaining Western Allied had also caught the idea, and duly proceeded to roll the Germans back.

[Kagemusha]

The difference between Soviet Armour doctrine and Blitzkrieg was that at early war Soviets didnt understand the importance of ground attack aeroplanes.While the German Blitzkrieg success propably owned thanks to their Stukas as much as their Panzer tactics.

[screwtype]

Blitzkrieg and Deep Operations emphasise what happens after the breakthrough. The breakthrough is assumed to be successful before they come into play. Infiltration enables to the breakthrough. The link you speak of is not doctrinal.

That's only partly correct Pannonian. Blitzkrieg was actually a marriage of the experience of both sides in WWI - the combined arms tactics of the Allies, together with the infiltration tactics of the German Stosstruppen.

Basically, it was about searching for a weak point in the enemy line, hitting it hard to create the breach, and then exploiting that breach with mobile divisions backed up by air power.

But one of its features that hasn't got much of a mention yet is that of communications. Radios in every tank which could contact not only each other but also air, artillery and other assets was one of its most important features. The French were probably beaten in 1940 as much because they were still relying on telephone lines and fighting at a World War One pace as for any other reason.

[Watchman]

Excessively static mechanized formations (deploying tanks mainly as infantry support sort of killed their strategic mobility) didn't help any.

Still, you should see the primitiveness of the Soviet intra-tank communications...