The First World War was modern war, and total war, and many traditional tactics and strategies
no longer worked.
Over the course of the war, all of the armies developed new weapons and new doctrines.
We’ve done specials about a variety of these things, but this is the final installment
of the evolution of the German army in World War One.
I’m Indy Neidell; welcome to a Great War special about the German army in 1917 and
1918.
During that time period, Quartermaster General Erich Ludendorff made fundamental changes
to the German army based on his experiences in warfare on the Eastern Front.
The German army in 1915 and 1916 under Chief of Staff Erich von Falkenhayn was stuck in
the old doctrine of the immovable battlefield.
He believed that every inch of ground had to be contested or, if lost, be recaptured
immediately.
This led to horrendous casualties, since there was no flexibility for things like using more
favorable terrain, or moving vulnerable troops out of range of enemy fire.
Whole battalions were lost in “the least imaginative offensive of the war”, as some
historians describe Verdun, where German soldiers advanced into killing fields.
When Paul von Hindenburg and Ludendorff visited Verdun after replacing Falkenhayn in charge
of the armies, they agreed that to win the war would require a complete re-thinking of
Germany’s tactical approach.
Ludendorff had learned on the eastern front that ground itself was not important, fighting
power was.
He instructed not only his senior commanders in his doctrines, but also NCOs and even front
line platoon leaders in a new line of tactical commands.
In 1917, he issued “Principles of command in the Defensive Battle in position warfare”
and in 1918 “the Attack in Position Warfare”.
The endless expanses of Russian territory showed the limits of operational warfare,
and commanders there valued tactical success.
Operational warfare had always been the traditional emphasis of the German General Staff, but
it certainly couldn’t annihilate the Russian army in a two front war.
Even against, Romania, which was a textbook case of operational maneuvering warfare, they
couldn’t annihilate the entire Romanian army.
See, before 1914, the word “breakthrough” didn’t even appear in many military handbooks.
It was too dangerous and the attacking armies moved too slowly for it to work.
Operations meant massive enveloping movements, but these were just not possible anymore,
certainly not on the Western Front.
What good were strategic objectives in trench warfare?
But breakthrough is what Ludendorff wanted to achieve, and to do so he needed the expertise
of two men.
One was Oskar von Hutier.
He had not only studied the experiences of German assault troops in battle, but also
German analysis of enemy tactics, in particular French “movement and fire” doctrine and
the shock troop tactics of Russian General Brusilov.
He refined this to maximum effectiveness.
Instead of assault waves that stacked up against centers of enemy resistance, he envisioned
quick infiltration movement.
Storm troops were to penetrate the enemy’s weak spots and bypass the strong, which would
surround and isolate them.
There would be a system of leaps and bounds; as one group advanced, another would cover
them, and they would move rapidly through enemy lines.
To increase their firepower, they were equipped with the newly developed light machine gun,
the MG 08/15 - six of them per company.
Reserves would be sent in to either mop up the isolated strong points, or to follow into
the breaches.
Unlike earlier, they would only be sent in where attacks were successful, and decentralized
assault squads could attack the enemy from the flanks or the rear.
But his whole system would only work by relying on shock and an already weakened defense system.
That’s where the other man comes in.
Georg Bruchmüller.
Bruchmüller was an artillery genius by any standard, and he designed a system to work
with the shock troops.
His preliminary artillery barrage was in three phases over just five hours.
This was very different from what the allies did.
To avoid a lengthy, less effective barrage, targets would be meticulously mapped and pre-registered.
Bruchmüller did not believe that destroying the enemy defense system was possible, but
neutralizing it was.
Phase one was half an hour long, aimed at troop concentrations and communication hubs,
and was mostly gas shells.
Phase two was two and a half hours long.
This was aimed at each enemy gun identified by aerial photography or that had fired back
in phase one.
It was 50/50 gas and high explosive shells.
Phase three was two hours of mostly high explosives aimed at both infantry and artillery.
A creeping barrage would open near the end of that phase, under which the German infantry
would advance.
The barrage was flexible and would halt at points, waiting for the infantry’s pyrotechnic
signal to continue.
Bruchmüller’s artillery relied heavily on gas shells.
Long gone were simple gas screens that offered only moments of shock value; the new system
had three agents, sorted by colors.
There was Blue Cross, which was non-persistent and non-lethal, but clogged gas masks and
forced their removal.
Green cross was non-persistent, but was lethal, while Yellow Cross was persistent, lethal,
but also blistered exposed skin.
To achieve synergy, blue and green crossed were fired simultaneously right in front of
an advance.
They would dissipate before German troops arrived.
Yellow Cross was shot at enemy flanks or artillery, and its persistent nature would close off
those areas and slow or eliminate counter attacks - the Germans called this “Buntschießen”.
Bruchmüller believed gas had a higher suppression factor than high explosive shells, so his
artillery didn’t have to fire as often and could be used with less accuracy when targets
were not well-identified.
Doing all of this required reorganizing German artillery units from defensive to offensive
engagement.
For defensive fire they had been de-centralized, so he had to re-centralize them, which had
the advantage of using fewer but better trained artillery officers.
Divisional artillery would work in close battle, and Corps artillery in deep battle.
For maximum effect, the artillery had to be concealed until the final moment.
It was to destroy control of the defense system, not the system itself.
Without the ability to coordinate, the enemy could not effectively respond, and suppressed
and confused soldiers would be overwhelmed by the shock troops while their system of
command was disrupted.
There was also aircraft developed specifically to help disrupt the enemy.
They were designed to strafe ground troops with machine guns and drop small bombs, and
they had extra armor on their undersides.
Slower than fighter planes, they flew as low as possible and would distract the enemy at
just the moment his eyes should be focused in front of him.
The assault at Riga and the counterattack at Cambrai had shown the effectiveness of
the combined system.
That last as the first successful methodical assault by German troops on the Western Front
since Verdun ended, and the enemy, unused to playing defense, now faced a meticulously
planned system that was brutally effective.
These were the tactics that were used to the greatest degree in the German Spring Offensives
of 1918 - the Kaiserschlacht, but most of them would remain in the German army handbook
until well into the Second World War.
We want to thank Markus Linke for doing the research for this episode.
We now have a whole playlist containing our episodes about the German Army evolution during
the war and you can revisit that right here.
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And don’t forget to subscribe, see you next time.