We made a special episode about the Hindenburg Line, Germany’s flexible defense system
built in early 1917, and that has led to a lot of questions from you guys - mostly of
the nature of did it work?
Did it keep the Allies at bay?
Let’s find out.
I’m Indy Neidell; welcome to a Great War special episode about the German flexible
defense, and how it fared at Passchendaele.
If you’re not sure how that system worked in general, here’s a quick recap.
The system was created by Fritz von Lossberg under the orders of Quartermaster General
Erich Ludendorff and was called the Siegfriedstellung by the Germans.
In contrast to the normal way of packing frontline trenches with soldiers, the Germans used a
large area for defense in depth, with layers of pillboxes, bunkers, and machine gun nests
in a checkerboard pattern that mutually supported each other in a deep killing zone.
For the enemy to achieve a breakthrough, he would have to pass through all of this to
reach the main defensive lines, and each point on the way was designed to delay him as much
as possible, inflicting constant damage.
Artillery and counterattacks would catch anyone in the open.
It was a formidable system.
It had been effective so far when used properly, but Passchendaele, also known as the Third
Battle of Ypres, would be its real testing grounds.
Now, the advance German positions were pretty much entirely destroyed by the preliminary
artillery barrage, but the bunkers and pillboxes scattered around the field stood and their
occupants defended themselves against the Allied infantry.
Many strongpoints fell, but they inflicted terrible casualties before doing so, and the
Allies could only move at a crawl through the boggy, muddy ground, and the defenders
stood their ground.
But the German defense system wasn’t merely passive; it had an active counterattack element.
Ludendorff used stormtroop doctrine in his reserves, the Eingreiftruppen.
These were highly mobile, heavily armed infantry platoons that were kept out of range of enemy
artillery and used as rapid response teams.
Unlike storm troops, though, they were not intended to pierce an enemy’s defensive
positions, but were to crash into an enemy advance, preferably from the flanks, while
that enemy was engaged with the pillboxes, and with light machine guns and grenades would
create a mobile defense belt that would ideally strangle the attack or rout the enemy.
They were kept in a state of constant readiness and the real trick was to send them out at
just the right moment, when the enemy was most vulnerable, for poor timing could doom
the counter attack, so an experienced Hauptman or Leutnant could even overrule a general’s
decision in order to get it right.
The Eingreif troops also had anti-tank units who used iron core bullets and light artillery
to penetrate the machines, and the counter assault groups were very effective in the
first few weeks of the battle, catching the plodding Allied troops off guard time and
again, and sabotaging their morale.
There were problems, though.
Mist and smoke favored an attacker, sure, but rain was a defender’s friend, so the
counter attacks certainly had no weather advantage.
German artillery was way outgunned by the British and the batteries couldn’t remain
in one place for too long without being destroyed, and the terrain was terrible for moving them
around.
Also, the super-heavy British artillery was out of their range.
And the Allies were learning.
By mid-September the British began concentrating their artillery fire on the German strongpoints,
their main obstacles, and they began to crack under the shelling.
They also stopped trying to breakthrough the whole system, and began using small bite and
hold tactics that ran counter to the defense doctrine.
Rather than get caught in the killing zone, the British would launch limited attacks that
didn’t trigger counterattacks and then simply stop and consolidate their positions.
Another flaw grew for the Germans - they could not retake captured positions in a consistent
line, especially under fire and in bad weather, so there were now always weak spots in their
lines for the enemy to exploit.
Communications were very difficult and sometimes non-existent; signal flares for counterattacks
got lost in the weather, telephone lines were cut, and runners could take hours to get a
message through, assuming that they even made it in one piece.
So the Eingreiftroops were now often sent out too late, and the British knew to expect
them now anyhow and had begun shelling rear areas to harass them and prevent them from
arriving.
By the end of September, Ludendorff was nervous.
These tactics would inexorably throw the Germans out of their positions.
He called for the German artillery to aid the Eingreifs in pre-emptive attacks, but
this proved impossible with the condition of the battlefield.
Advancing through the mud, gas, and shelling of the broken land, the men would reach the
front exhausted and under strength.
The system was failing.
But did it fail completely?
Well, not really, it never collapsed.
Mainly, by all written accounts, because of the German soldiers.
Months long shelling, gas attacks, endless bad weather, sickness and exhaustion - by
October sometimes the German defense would be two soldiers sharing a water filled shell
hole or what remained of a trench, fighting off the attackers again and again.
This is what Oberleutnant Süßenberger had to say about these soldiers: “If I live
to be one hundred, the memories of the days on the Steenbeek will never be extinguished.
Here the true greatness of the defensive battle revealed itself in full..
It requires enormous reserves of morale and courage to hold out in muddy shell holes for
seven long days on end despite bad weather and ceaseless concentrated artillery fire.
What each man in his lonely shell hole achieved deserves to be set down in letters of gold
in the history of war.”
The junior officers maintained the cohesion of their troops, forming them into defensive
clusters against the sheer endless attacks.
It was a struggle of attrition by then, and neither side could keep it up forever.
The German High Command changed its strategy, and instead of using soldiers to man equipment,
it would use equipment to man its soldiers.
Huge amounts of machine guns, grenades, and ammunition were given to the remaining strongpoints,
to turn each soldier into a personal strongpoint.
German High Command simply wanted to hold out until winter would end the fighting.
The flexible defense system was indeed formidable, but it was flawed, and though it didn’t
collapse at Passchendaele, it failed to hold in the end to the minor gains of bite and
hold tactics.
Eventually, a counter to that counter was impossible to find, because of the Allied
superiority in artillery and aircraft, and as winter rolled in, the Germans would need
to find a new defense for the spring.
Well, we’ve all heard again and again the old saying, “the best defense is a good
offense”, and it looked like Ludendorff was going to put that saying into practice.
If you want to learn more about the original design of the Hindenburg Line, you can check
out our special episode right here.
We also turned our illustration of that defense system into a great infographic poster which
you can get in our merchandise store.
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information on the Great War.