[French accent] Bonjour! I am Indy Neidell, and this is 'Out of the Trenches',
where I sit here in the Chair of Wisdom, and I answer all of your questions about the First World War.
♪ ['The Great War' intro theme] ♪
Okay, 'Kaiserschlacht' writes:
—as you do I suppose—
Well, you're in luck. Just a few weeks ago,
we came across the memoirs of Major Redemann, the father of the German flamethrower units.
We might do another special on German special forces, so I'll give you a little … appetizer here, I guess.
In his book, "The History of the German Flammenwerfer-Truppe",
he speaks of his men as a carefully selected and excellently trained and guided elite group of soldiers.
In fact, the name "Storm Troop" was coined, at first with regards to the flamethrower units,
seeing that their tactical usefulness was in attacking enemy fortifications head on.
The number of men involved in such 'Truppes' often depended on the objective,
the expected resistance and the equipment used.
The bigger flame throwers had to be operated by a small team of up to five people,
while the smaller ones could be carried and used by one or two people.
And we talked about the weapon specifics already in another 'Out of the Trenches'.
Redemann was very realistic about the effects and limitations of the weapon.
He knew that 100 liters of flammable oil could be spent in just 45 seconds, so it had to be a weapon of surprise, force, and awe!
Like storm troops, the flamethrower groups had to approach the enemy trenches as closely as possible,
—unseen—and then wait for the perfect moment.
Then the attack had to be powerful and violent,
immediately engaging and panicking the enemy.
Their organization was pretty similar to the storm troops.
It attracted young fit and aggressive men, who had no fear of handling dangerous weapons.
Once they proved their worth, they were rewarded with the official symbol of the unit: the skull.
Zachary Weiss writes:
Well the number of prisoners was kind of impossible to predict.
A nighttime raid might yield two, or maybe even up to 10 prisoners.
That was kind of predictable, but in the aftermath of a big attack,
you might end up with 500 to 5,000 prisoners.
And in the pictures you see only a handful of soldiers, sometimes even just older men from the military police,
who guarded large groups of prisoners, with only a rifle.
Usually, one guard for a dozen prisoners.
So you might think, "Well, why didn't the prisoners just overwhelm the guard since they outnumber them?,"
and the answer for that is actually as simple as it is as hard to substantiate.
The men—the prisoners—they had no stomach for a fight anymore, and the will to fight is bound to the morale of a soldier.
Throughout history, once an army was routed, once cohesion was lost to confusion,
and once human emotions like defeatism and fear had gripped the soldier's heart, there was no coming back.
That's the main reason why one soldier with an imposing bayonet could guard a large group of former enemies.
But there are of course reports of prisoners trying to escape,
of struggles against the guards, when prisoners attacked the guards and took their weapons from them.
But those incidents were few and were severely punished.
Nicholas Jensen says:
Okay!
No.
All armies went to war with different kinds of fuzes, and they would develop new ones along the way.
Most heavy artillery units were outfitted with percussion fuzes since they were intended to break walls
and fortifications with high-explosive rounds on impact.
Delayed percussion fuses, which detonated the shell after a short time period, after impact,
were used for gas shells and rounds that were intended to penetrate barricades first and then explode.
Another common fuze was the time fuze.
Shrapnel rounds were the main ammunition for the field guns at the beginning,
for the destructive anti-personnel rounds to work.
They had to time the fuses with regard to distance and projectile speed with a clockwork mechanism,
so that the shell would explode in the air over the ground.
One example for the development of fuzes was the British 106, the number 106.
Now this was especially designed to destroy barbed wire barricades,
and it was in response to the disastrous beginnings of the Battle of the Somme.
The fuzes in high-explosive shells, used in the summer of 1916, like at the Somme, they were flawed.
They would bury the shell too far in the ground before they would burst.
Against fortifications, this is fine, but it would leave barbed wire intact in a lot of cases
or if it hit muddy swampy ground, it just wouldn't explode at all
The number 106 was quite simply a highly sensitive percussion fuse.
It had a little hammer inside the nose cone that would activate the fuse as soon as it was pushed inside by impact
But, okay … This is actually a really big topic.
You also had things like super-quick percussion fuses or complex multi-effects fuses.
We could talk for hours about this. Maybe we will one day, right?
If you'd like to learn more about German storm troop tactics and development
during the First World War, you can click right here for our special about that.
And you should also check us out on Instagram, Twitter, and Facebook, and our subreddit. See you next time!