Weapons and Tactics

Chapter 8

Columnist Brig (Retd) ZA KHAN gives an overview of the changing concepts over the years.

Industrialization

Section-1
Weapons and Other Advances

The economic systems of Europe and America started changing from agriculture to industry in the middle of the eighteenth century, the steam engine, patented in 1769, provided power to industry and started the process of industrialisation which changed the means and methods of maritime and land communications. Inventions and improvements in weapons in this period added to the destructive power of weapons and brought changes in tactics.

The rifled and breech loading cannons started appearing about 1745 AD but were not adopted for over a hundred years because they were too expensive and could not be produced in large numbers.

The ‘Sharpnel’ shell, named after its inventor, Lieutenant Sharpnel, was invented in 1784, it was a high explosive shell operated by a fuse, it was adopted by the British army in 1803. Rockets were used by Tipu Sultan in 1799, these were copied by the British and became known as ‘Congreve Rockets’.

The invention of the percussion cap, in about 1800, coupled with the invention of the ‘conoidal’ (cylindrical with a conical tip) bullet with a hollow base which expanded to seal the barrel and to rotate the bullet, giving it a higher velocity which gave greater range and accuracy, resulted in the rifle; when the paper cartridges, introduced by Gustavus Adolphus, were replaced with brass cartridges and magazines were added, the result was the modern rifle.

At the beginning of the nineteenth century, the musket had a range of 100 yards, grape and canister fired from artillery guns had a range of 400 yards. By about 1830 the smooth bore musket was being replaced by rifles, in 1841, Prussia equipped her armies with a breech loading rifle, the advantages of this were an increase in the rate of fire and the ability to load and fire from the prone position, which could not be done with the muzzle loading weapons which was generally in use.

Up to the Napoleonic wars, companies and battalions, while defending, had to stand upright or kneel to fire their muskets, the firing was in volleys on command, and while attacking they had to advance in parade like fashion, slowly, in line. By 1866, the fire power of the breech loading rifle was recognised, the number of men per yard of front started reducing to present the enemy with fewer targets; while defending the infantry no longer stood shoulder to shoulder, as it had done for centuries, it now used available cover or dug trenches. The other effect of the rifle was that volley firing and the bayonet assault lost their importance to good individual shooting.

The spreading out of troops and the use of cover led to the problem of control; for the first time in history, troops no longer fought standing up, in full view of each other and in view of their commanders, platoons, companies, battalions and higher formations became dispersed, disappeared behind cover and created control problems; individual and collective initiative and loose order became necessary making good junior officers and good non-commissioned officers as necessary as good senior officers.

 By 1865 the rifle was out ranging the grape and canister making the artillery a secondary supporting arm, with the introduction of the brass cartridge and breech loading weapons the rate of fire of the infantry increased, in the American Civil War, 1861 - 1865, at Cold Harbour, in 1864, the defenders inflicted 7,000 casualties on the attackers in minutes. Count Von Moltke, the Chief of General Staff of the Prussian Army, was of the opinion that with the infantry armed with a rifle, shooting with the weapon rested, had an advantage of three to one over men advancing against it, that infantry in defence was frontally unassailable, therefore, the Napoleonic tactics of frontal penetration under artillery fire had to give way to flank attacks.

 The first steam operated machine gun, was demonstrated in 1825, it fired 1000 rounds per minute; in 1832, Gatling, an American, invented a machine gun with ten barrels which were rotated by a hand crank, complicated mechanism ensured that at any given time five barrels were firing and ejecting their spent cartridges, the other five barrels which had just fired, were being reloaded. About 1850 the French adopted a machine gun called the ‘Mitrailleuse’. The revolver was invented by Samuel Colt in 1832.

In the field of communications, over the centuries, there had been almost no improvement, messages had to be carried by hand or delivered by word of mouth. By the close of the 18th century, the Chappe telegraph, an optical signal system, linked the cities of European countries and in France, the French army in the field was linked to Paris by it; by mid 19th century, the telegraph, a major technological advance in communications, connected the important European cities.

The telegraph, connected by wire , required wire spools and poles, the Prussian Army’s Telegraphic Institute attempted to put the paraphernalia in wagons for field use but the use remained confined, almost exclusively, to static army and corps headquarters, it could not be used tactically; since telegraph lines ran along the railway lines this facilitated movement of troops by rail for strategic and tactical concentration.

The first locomotive was built in 1801, the first railway started functioning in 1825. In 1830, the importance of a railway laid out for military use was advocated in Prussia by Frederick List, an economist; he convinced the military that Prussia, a secondary military power, located in the middle of powerful enemies, by taking advantage of its central location, with quick mobilisation and movement of troops to its borders, could deal with an enemy before another country could mobilise and intervene.

The first to grasp the military potentialities of railways were the Russians who moved a corps of 14,500 men with horses and transport 200 miles from Hradish to Cracow; in 1850 the Austrians moved 75,000 troops from Hungary and Vienna to Bohemia and in 1857 France startled the world by moving 604,381 men and 129,227 horses.

It was realised that the military usefulness of railways was dependent on the number of railway lines that could be utilised for the initial deployment preceding the outbreak of hostilities and subsequently in the maintenance of armies. Reliance on the railway also meant spreading armies according to the dictates of the railway layout, quite regardless of commanders’ desires, it was less flexible than marching columns which could be made to go further or find alternate ways around.

In Germany dozens of companies operated railway lines between whom there was no co-ordination and control, measures for a uniform system with central control were started in 1847 but were not completed till 1872. In 1864 in six days the Prussians transported an infantry division of 15,500 men, 4,583 horses and 377 vehicles, 175 miles by rail from Minden to Harburg, using seven trains per day, later two trains per day were employed for supplying the division. The scale of these operations was very small to learn important lessons, traffic moved smoothly but it was found that unloading trains created bottlenecks and wooden ramps etc were tried. In 1866 the railway network dictated the pace and the form of the Prussian strategic deployment.

Mass production, with standardised, interchangeable parts, was first resorted to for the production of muskets in the American Civil War, 1862-1865, this revolutionised industrial production methods.

Increased population made it possible to conscript large armies, mass producing factories produced vastly improved weapons and equipment and the railways made it possible to move and maintain very large armies; wars now became the clash of the manpower and the industrial and agricultural resources of warring nations.

Mobilisation for War and the General Staff

Napoleon fought his battles with armies generally under 100,000, at Austerlitz he had 85,000 troops and handled his force with great skill, the next year at Jena, in 1806, he lost control over one third of his force of 150,000, at Leipzig in 1813 he was able to command one of the three battles that were being fought simultaneously by his army of 180,000; at Waterloo, Wellington’s 67,000 men faced Napoleon’s 72,000. Fifty years later, with industrialisation, conscription and movement by rail, armies of over 250,000 men became common, at Koniggratz, in 1866, the opposing armies totaled about 450,000. The increase in the size of the armies meant that large standing armies could not be maintained, the regular army trained conscripted reservists in peace time who were called up by a general mobilisation for war order before the outbreak of hostilities, equipped, formed into units, and deployed.

In the Franco-Prussian war of 1870, the Prussian corps were mobilised in districts, they were made up of reservists from the districts and were moved according to prearranged plans from their mobilisation centres to their concentration areas. On the first two days of mobilisation call up notices were issued, personnel on leave were recalled, owners of horses were summoned and horses were requisitioned, regiments sent detachments to designated places and collected horses. Infantry units drew arms and ammunition, prepared carriages and harnesses in the first three days, horses joined them on the fourth day to make up their field trains. On the fifth day personnel on leave rejoined and drew their equipment; on the sixth and seventh day reservists were clothed armed and equipped, on the eight day, infantry regiments started moving to their concentration areas. Cavalry and artillery units took a day or two days longer, engineers and supply trains still longer; the organisation of depots, garrisons, lines of communication and reserves also proceeded simultaneously.

The mobilisation, organisation, movement and the administration of large forces involved work that required officers with special training, and Prussia was the first to develop a ‘General Staff’ which was trained for this, later this was copied by other countries except England and the USA.

The Prussian General Staff originated in the late seventeenth and early eighteenth century as “quartermaster staff”, its original function, as in other armies was laying out of camps; siting of fortifications and reconnaissance were later added to their tasks; it was organised in wartime and disbanded when hostilities ended. In 1790 it was made permanent, its functions were laid down and expanded to include leading of columns on the march and in combat, to act as commander’s ADCs (“and tender advice when asked”), administer the intelligence and espionage organisation, and to maintain the war diary.

In 1802-1803 the Prussian General Staff was divided into one part dealing with ‘strategic intelligence’ and one part with ‘the study of war’, ‘drafting of regulations’ and ‘contingency planning’; each future theatre of war had its own staff and a section for ‘military history’ was added in 1816 which later influenced the German military doctrine and practice.

In 1806 corps were provided with their own staff of four officers including the chief of staff, a divisional organisation was introduced in 1830 and brigades were given one officer. At the highest level the General Staff developed in three departments, the ‘Second (Central) Department’ dealt with organisation, training, mobilisation and deployment (therefore the railway); the other two, called Western and Eastern Departments, became the intelligence gathering organisations; in 1869 the ‘Fourth Railway Department’ was created.

The work of the General Staff in peace time was painstaking collection of information about likely enemies, making and remaking mobilisation and deployment plans, preparing standing orders and training instructions, conducting war games and staff rides to familiarise staff officers with one another and the terrain over which they were likely to operate. This system created a body of officers who were familiar with each other’s capabilities and could rely on duties being performed painstakingly and quickly.

In the Austro-Prussian War of 1866, the Prussian Army was commanded by the Prussian king with Moltke as his chief adviser. Moltke’s General Headquarters had a ‘Oberquartiermeister’ as his deputy chief of staff, a railway expert, three department heads, an inspector general of artillery, a general of the engineers, two attached generals and six ADCs.

Under the General Headquarters were the 1st and 2nd Armies, commanded by princes and the Elbe Army, an ad hoc organisation, each army had a ‘Oberquartiermeister’. The 2nd Army Headquarter had the crown prince’s two adjutants and two orderlies, the artillery commander with two adjutants, two engineering officers with four adjutants, four General Staff officers (six were authorised) with four adjutants, a Headquarters Company commander, three Military Police officers and a civilian surgeon, a total of twenty seven, including six ‘General Staff’ trained officers.

Between the General Headquarters and the subordinate headquarters and between the subordinate headquarters there was a system of daily reports. Moltke, the Chief of Staff, issued brief, to the point directives with the date it was sent; messages had to be brief and to the point because they were sent over the telegraphs which had a low transmission capacity. With an army spread out over two hundred miles direct command, in the Napoleonic manner, could not be maintained and instead, the Chief of Staff had to have his ‘eyes’, in the shape of staff officers, stationed on the spot.

 Prussian General Staff, was based on an improved version of Napoleon’s headquarters, it was compact, thoroughly trained in peace time, worked in a calm atmosphere, moved infrequently and slowly, and did not try to be everywhere at the same time. Relying on the telegraph to communicate with armies far away, the staff was able to take a detached view of events, it refused to panic when news failed to arrive, as it sometimes did not.

The Prussian Staff officers spent much of their careers on the staffs of major formations where every officer knew all others well and were members of a well knit team, this reduced the amount of information that had to be processed in the headquarters and created an extraordinary ability to recover from setbacks; though the General Headquarter had the means to keep itself informed and to make its influence felt, neither this capability nor the organisation could prevent subordinate commanders from making mistakes; because of the atmosphere created, junior officers were not afraid of making mistakes which is necessary for learning.

The Koniggratz Campaign

The Koniggratz campaign of 1866 war between Prussia and Austria illustrates the working of the ‘general staff’, mobilisation, movement and control of the armies of this period.

Bismarck, the Prussian Chancellor, following his policy of unification of Germany had to drive the Austrians out of Germany; in 1864 after the Schleswig-Holstein War the two duchies were jointly controlled by Prussia and Austria; in 1866, after diplomatically isolating Austria, Bismarck sent Prussian troops into Holstein provoking the Austro-Prussian War of 1866.

King William I of Prussia, hoping to avoid war refused to order mobilisation giving the Austrians a head start of three weeks. When the mobilisation started the Prussians had to use the five railways leading to the frontiers resulting in scattered deployment along the Saxon and Austrian borders.

Lacking intelligence of the Austrian intentions but assuming that the Austrians would not abandon their Saxon allies, Moltke deployed General von Herwath’s Army of the Elbe of one and half corps (44,000 men) on the left bank of the Elbe between Dassau and Halle. Prince Frederick Charles’ 1st Army of five corps (150,000 men) was deployed from Torgau to Gorlitz; separated by 60 miles, covering Silesia was Crown Prince Frederick William’s 2nd Army of two corps (60,000 men); west to east the front covered was over 200 miles.

On 3 June, the information was that the Austrians were preparing to send one corps to support the Saxons and three corps were identified as getting ready at Pardubitz in Moravia, which according to calculations could not confront the 1st Army before 15 June. From the Austrian deployment it was becoming clear that an offensive against western Silesia was being planned. Moltke accordingly transferred 1st Corps (30,000 men) from the 1st Army’s left to the 2nd Army and instructed the 1st Army to cross Saxony and march into Bohemia to assist the 2nd Army.

This deployment of Moltke contained the design of crushing the Austrians between the two Prussian armies, this aim was not understood by the Prussian High Command and was criticised as likely to cause each of the widely separated forces being defeated in detail. At a meeting with the King, all those present protested, V Corp commander on the extreme left of the Prussians submitted a written protest; the Prussian command system was certainly not a frictionless system.

Moltke’s task, as the Chief of Staff, was to direct a junction of the two Prussian armies before clashing with the Austrians, the town of Gitchin in Bohemia was selected by the simple calculation of the western most point the Austrians would reach before clashing with the 1st Army coming from the opposite direction.

On 8 June, the Chief of Staff of the 2nd Army, General Blumenthal, on his own initiative, on the “basis of all incoming information”, without permission from above, moved the 2nd Army laterally increasing the gap between the two armies; to counterbalance the 2nd Army’s move, Moltke transferred the Guard Corp from the 1st Army to the 2nd Army on 11 June.

Frederick Charles commanding the 1st Army interpreted the transfer of the Guard Corps as the shifting of the centre of gravity of the campaign and started moving his army eastwards in an oblique order march to close the gap between the two armies, Moltke had to step in and stop the gap being closed. On 13-14 June Frederick Charles learnt that the Austrians were sending two corps to aid the Saxons and decided on his own initiative to march west again.

Using the railway and the telegraph the deployment had been carried with brisk efficiency leaving the world gasping, once the armies were in place the method of command changed, no further attempt was made to control the movement of the armies in detail; the original plans were flexible to prevent mistakes causing catastrophes. This was because the telegraphic communication did not allow communication between armies which restricted Moltke’s span of control and each army had to be strong enough to hold out till another came to its aid.

On 15 June Moltke instructed his commanders to start the invasion of Saxony the next day unless orders were countermanded, the receipt of these orders had to be acknowledged by return telegrams.

The Army of the Elbe moved against the Saxon capital of Dresden from the west, Herwarth, the commander was kept informed of the movement of flanking 1st Army whose right wing division entered Saxony from the north. The movement of both armies was also intimated to the 2nd Army and it was warned not to cross the Austrian border unless explicitly ordered. Herwarth entered Dresden on the 18th, informed the king and not Moltke who learnt about it on the 19th.

On 19th June Moltke ordered the 2nd Army by telegram to cross the border into Moravia. A written order, sent by rail, informed that “The Saxon Army has retreated into Bohemia. All reports (intelligence reports) indicate that 1st and 2nd Austrian Corps are concentrating near the Saxon border on both sides of the Elbe. 3rd Corps is marching on Pardubitz, 8 Corps is on the way to Brunn. 4 Corps seems to be moving west. Everything, therefore, indicates that the enemy’s main force is preparing to concentrate in Bohemia.” Since the Army of the Elbe and the 1st Army were already moving into Bohemia from the west and the north it was the 2nd Army’s task to cross into Moravia to close the gap between it and the 1st Army leaving a corps to guard the Neisse. Moltke required that the location of all corps and divisions to be reported daily by telegram.

The 1st Army commander reached the same conclusion but instead of marching dispersed he kept his army together and slowly marched to the town of Richenberg where he expected the Austrians to make a stand on the river; on 24 June the army marching without an advance guard ran into Austrian hussars who fled. Puzzled by the enemy’s absence, the 1st Army halted to allow the Army of the Elbe to catch up. On the 26th the 1st Army received instructions, issued three days earlier, to march to the assistance of the 2nd Army.

The telegraph as a means of long range communications was hampered by the destruction of the Austrian telegraph system by the advancing troops who instead of preserving it for their own use, used the wooden telegraph poles for fire wood and the low priority in the order of march to telegraph detachments, prevented the laying of new lines.

The 2nd Army left its telegraph station on Prussian territory and relied on messengers, sometimes Moltke’s written detailed instructions sent by rail to clarify orders sent by telegram reached before the instruction it clarified. The only means of communication between the armies was by liaison officers, during the greater part of the campaign the 1st Army and 2nd Army were ignorant of each other’s moves.

On receiving Moltke’s instructions of 23 June, the 1st Army sent a division towards Turnau on the Iser expecting the Austrians to make a stand along the river; here a small Austrian force inflicted a sharp reverse on the 8th Division and retired across the river leaving the bridge intact. Frederick Charles, still ignorant of the whereabouts of the Austrians decided to look for them at Muchengratz and on the Iser. General Herwarth, commanding the Army of the Elbe, was now in communication with Frederick Charles, and was told to attack Munchengratz from the west while the 1st Army attacked from the north; the attack found that the Austrians had escaped. The 1st Army then planned to advance south to Jungbunzlau but a patrol reported that it was unoccupied which meant that the Austrians had retreated eastwards.

The Prussian intelligence having lost all trace of the Austrians and the communication between the armies and Berlin breaking down, the Prussian high command operated in ignorance of the situation. The 2nd Army, debouching from the mountain passes made contact and fighting took place on 27 and 28 June; Moltke on learning of this battle instructed the 1st Army to move to the assistance of the 2nd Army. The 1st Army received the instruction early on the 29 June and orders were issued to advance to Gitshin, the army commander still did not know the whereabouts of the enemy; lateral communication between the two armies was in a roundabout way.

Marching to Gitshin with 3 and 5 Division in the van, the Prussians encountered a Saxon corps and an Austrian brigade early in the afternoon on 29 June and fighting went on till about midnight when the Saxons and the Austrians withdrew to a position in the rear. Frederick Charles the 1st Army commander only learnt of the battle being fought at about ten o’clock at night while approaching Gitshin; the 1st Army cavalry was well in the rear, when the Austrians withdrew contact was again lost.

The 2nd Army entered Moravia from Silesia with the four corps passing through widely separated passes and drawing together after passing through the passes. While separated the corps fought the Austrians wherever they met and in most cases the Austrians were defeated with heavy casualties because they frontally attacked the Prussians who were armed with a ‘needle-gun’, the fore runner of the rifle. With large distances separating them and poor communications between corps, the Prussian corps managed largely without support or direction from 2nd Army Headquarters.

The 2nd Army, with I Corps, Guards Corps and V Corps, right to left and VI Corps behind V Corps, advanced into Moravia, six days after the 1st Army entered Bohemia. I Corps marched through the western most pass leading from Landeshut to Trautenau, the Guards Corps took the central road from Eggersdorf to Brannau with the headquarters 2nd Army following, and V Corps the eastern route from Reinerz to Nachod, there was about 25 miles lateral distance between corps. The only thing known about the enemy was that the passes were held by cavalry detachments.

I Corps and the Guard Corps met no opposition in negotiating the passes, V Corps met and beat a small Austrian force and occupied Nachod on 27 June. At night on 27 June I Corps informed the 2nd Army that it had met the Austrian 4 and 6 Corps at Trautenau, had been defeated and withdrawn to Landeshut; the 2nd Army ordered the Guard Corps to go to the aid of I Corps.

On 28 June, 2nd Army Headquarters located itself at the Eypel Pass between the Guards Corps and V Corps to assist either but both corps won their battles without any assistance; I Corps did not take part in the fighting.

On the evening of 28 June, the 2nd Army commander learnt the details of the defeat of I Corps; on 29 June the Guards Corps won a battle near Koniginhof and V Corps at Schweinschadel without any instructions from the army headquarters; after this contact with the enemy was lost; there was no communication between the two Prussian armies.

In the campaign, intelligence had remained poor, a number of battles had been won by the 2nd Army without direction from Moltke or the 2nd Army headquarter. Notwithstanding the use of the telegraph, the campaign showed that a force of 30,000 could only be managed when concentrated in one block, forces larger than this, once dispersed, could not be commanded.

On 30th June, with the 1st Army at Gitchin and the 2nd Army with its vanguard at Koniginhof, the distance between them was reduced to 25 miles and communications were established between the armies.

Freed from his responsibilities in west Germany, on 30 June, Moltke travelled by train from Berlin to Reichenberg in Bohemia; having received reports of the battles on 27 and 28 June but not of 29 June, on the way he sent a message ordering the 2nd Army to stay on the left bank of the Elbe and the 1st Army to advance to Koniggratz, a point downstream from the 2nd Army. Nothing was known of the Austrians but it was believed that they had crossed to the east bank of the Elbe and evacuated Bohemia. On reaching Reichenberg, in the evening, Moltke received an exaggerated report of the 2nd Army battle at Gitshin claiming that the Austrians had been driven across the Elbe.

Moltke with his General Headquarters proceeded to where the 2nd Army had located its headquarters and telegraphic communications were established with 2nd Army. A telegram informed him that I Corps had crossed the Elbe and the remaining army was to cross the next day, Moltke ordered the 2nd Army to re-cross and remain on the left bank of the river.

At the 2nd Army Headquarters, located at Koniginhof, Moltke’s telegramme of 30th June was received on 1 July but due to a coding error it was not understood. Contact with the Austrians had been lost but it was believed that the Austrians had crossed the river and withdrawn into the depth of Bohemia. On receiving the order to re-cross, the army complied.

On 2nd July a ‘staff conference’ was held in the presence of the king, the 2nd Army was ordered not to cross the Elbe, to spend the next day resting, Herwarth’s Army of the Elbe was ordered to draw level with the 1st Army and to send cavalry patrols to locate the Austrians.

On the afternoon of 2 July Prince Frederick Charles, commanding the 1st Army, received a report of camp fires at Sadowa, he sent a staff officer to investigate; the officer with a patrol of about sixteen men took a couple of prisoners who disclosed that four corps were deployed between Bistriz and Koniggratz, villagers confirmed this, the patrol observed the strong Austrians positions, returned and made its report at seven in the evening.

With the enemy’s location confirmed, the 1st Army commander independently decided to launch a frontal attack on the Austrians at 0700 hours the next morning and called upon Herwarth to advance to Nechanitz and attack the Austrian left flank. By 2100 hours all plans had gone down to subordinate units, 2nd Army had been informed and requested to support. A staff officer was sent to inform the king and did so at about 2200 hours, Moltke was also informed, since the movement had already started he did not change the plan but ordered Frederick Wilhelm, commanding the 2nd Army, to support the 1st Army “by moving all your forces against the right flank of the presumed enemy order of battle, attacking him at the earliest possible moment.”

The 2nd Army chief of staff returned to the headquarters from his meeting with Moltke at 0200 on 3 July and reported about his meeting, shortly afterwards a messenger arrived from the 1st Army requesting assistance, the chief of staff rejected the request and only made available I Corps and some cavalry patrols because he had orders not to cross the Elbe. A little later a messenger from Moltke arrived ordering the 2nd Army to move to the support of 1st Army; orders were sent to corps by 0500 hours and by 0700 hours movement began.

The 1st Army started moving into battle positions, by 8 O’clock the Army Headquarters had moved to the heights of Dub to survey the Austrian positions but visibility was restricted by fog. The army commander decided that the Austrians were going to remain on the defensive, therefore, the battle could be commenced whenever the Prussians chose to attack; the troops were tired after a sleepless night and the 2nd Army was not expected to reach the battlefield before 1230, Frederick Charles reconnoitred his right flank and ordered the attack to start ‘slowly’.

The king with his retinue accompanied by Moltke and Bismarck reached Dub at about 0800 hours and ordered an attack across the Bistritz against what was considered to be the rear guard of the Austrians. When the fog, lifted the General Headquarters and the 1st Army Headquarters at Dub attracted Austrian cannon fire, the view cleared and except the left flank the whole front became visible.

On the Prussian left flank their 7 Division fought the toughest action of the day without a single order during the action. Prince Benedek the Austrian commander-in-chief, appreciating the danger the Prussian needle gun posed, had ordered commanders to hold their troops back and rely on the superior Austrian artillery. When the Prussian 7 Division gained a local success on the Austrian right flank in a small wooded area called Swiewald, the Austrian commander counter-attacked repeatedly, out of fifty nine battalions in the area the Austrians committed forty nine, twenty eight of them disappeared totally; in effect this wrecked the right flank of the Austrians and turned into a catastrophe when the Prussian 2nd Army arrived.

The Prussian 1st Army attacked with II Corps but the corps got its divisions mixed up, it attacked without employing its artillery and suffered heavy casualties in pointless attacks against well entrenched Austrians. The 1st Army Headquarters shifted to a lower height from where the view was not good and did not note for several hours that the 2nd Army had arrived.

By the afternoon the battle was going badly for the Prussians, troops tried to flee from the battlefield and had to be stopped by the king himself. While Moltke was away reconnoitring, Frederick Charles, not understanding Moltke’s plan of crushing the Austrians by the 1st Army ‘anvil’ and the 2nd Army ‘hammer’, ordered his reserve III Corps to attack, Moltke returning from his reconnaissance countermanded the order. With no signs of the 2nd Army the king told Moltke that they were losing the battle but Moltke answered that not merely the battle but the campaign was as good as won and Vienna was at the Prussian king’s feet.

The leading elements of the 2nd Army reached the battlefield at about mid-day but because of the terrain were not noticed by both sides, at about 1500 hours the Prussian General Headquarters noticed the arrival and Moltke gave permission to III Corps to attack, the corps commander lost control on the corps, the attack was badly managed and did not influence the battle.

At 1000 hours Moltke had sent a colonel with an order for the Army of Elbe to attack the Austrian left flank and prevent a retreat, Herwarth objected that he did not have enough cavalry, the colonel returning met 1st Army cavalry, explained the situation and a cavalry division was dispatched which arrived too late to take part in the battle.

The Austrian commander-in-chief informed that his rear was being threatened by the Prussian Guards Corps and I Corps did not believe it at first but when this was confirmed, he using his artillery and cavalry proceeded to extricate 180,000 out of his 210,000 troops. The 1st and 2nd Army commanders, Moltke and least of all the king, did not realise that the entire Austrian army had been defeated, it was on the following day when the battlefield was surveyed and Austrian formations identified, the magnitude of the victory was realised.

The Koniggratz battle was planned to take the Austrians between the anvil of the 1st Army and the hammer of the 2nd Army, both armies carried out the initial movement badly, the 1st Army commander did not understand his armies role and launched attacks prematurely and unnecessarily, in spite of mistakes Moltke’s plan succeeded.

Moltke in summing up the campaign said that senior headquarters were unable to influence their subordinates; as soon as divisions and brigades came near the enemy all direction by senior officers came to an end; co-operation between arms was rare; all this occurred because ‘battle procedure and standing orders’ were not followed.

The use of the railways in the Koniggratz campaign was not a resounding success, mobilisation and deployment moved smoothly, in 21 days, 197,000 men, 55,000 horses, 5,300 vehicles were deployed. The mobilisation plans did not allow for supply trains, corps quartermasters rushed supplies to railheads without arranging the railhead’s ability to receive them, at the end of June, 17,920 tons of supplies could neither move forward or backward, railway wagons were used as temporary magazines, hundreds of them were tied up, bread went stale, fodder rotted, cattle died. Between 23 June and the Battle of Koniggratz, the railways had no effect on the progress of operations.

The Prussian General Staff at this time was not very well organised; when it took to the field, its working was not based on fixed division of work; and the separation between staff and line duties was not strict; this was an advantage rather than a disadvantage because staff officers could carry out each others’ tasks.

The staff atmosphere was informal access to every officer was there, regardless of rank. Moltke had trusted friends at lower headquarters who could supplement official reports with private correspondence. Staff officers instead of being desk bound rode singly or in pairs all over the theatre of operations observing events with a practised eye, they took action where necessary, carried out reconnaissance acting as telescopes for their commanders and carried important messages.

Developments 1850-1914

From the American Civil War onwards, battles were fought by men lying on their stomachs instead of standing on their feet. The marching in dense arrays on the battle field disappeared, when under fire troops dived for cover, units spread over large areas, commanders from the battalion commander upwards found themselves unable to exercise control with physical presence as previously.

This confusion on the battlefield was recognised and the Prussians set about to deal with the problem and made a determined effort to solve it. The first measure was to ensure a numerical superiority on the battlefield by a system of universal conscription and reserve service; the second measure was a greater measure of reliance on artillery, which being less mobile than infantry, was easier to control, this proved a great success in 1870; the third was the decentralisation of command from the top down, in particular, delegating responsibility to company commanders, making them the most important link in the chain of command. It was realised that the company is the largest unit that could be directly commanded by a single man under the conditions of dispersion and mobility characteristic of the modern battlefield. This led to the evolution of the system of command which was the reason of German successes in both World Wars.

The last measure to correct the deficiencies of tactical control was a superior system of strategic command. Moltke, faced with numerous blunders by his subordinates, did not tighten controls, he used the telegraph to monitor the operations of field armies operating with unprecedented degree of independence and flexibility. Moltke’s plans were so flexible that even a battle that was nearly lost at Koniggratz resulted in a strategic victory. The loss of tactical control did not consist in trying to force order on disorder but in the decentralisation of tactical control. Now in war strategy became more important than tactics.

The economic revolution which started at the beginning of the eighteenth century accelerated rapidly in the period between 1850 and the commencement of the First World War in 1914. Industrial output increased 155 percent in Austria-Hungary, 70 percent in France, 200 percent in Germany, 300 percent in Russia and 900 percent in Sweden.

A rapid growth of population made European countries to expand overseas to find new sources of food, raw materials, markets for industrial goods and sites for the settlement of colonists. The result was the colonisation of Africa, Asia, the Pacific islands, it was checked on the mainland of China; excluding the areas which had been already colonised before 1870, in the period 1870 to 1900, Britain colonised 4,754,000 square miles of territory; France 3,583,580; Germany 1,026,220; Belgium 847,000; the United States the remnants of the Spanish empire in America and the Pacific; and Japan on the mainland of Asia.

 Wars were waged against the Red Indians, Africans and Asians who did not have the military capability to resist the onslaught of the industrialised countries. For example in 1879 the British invaded the Zulu territory in South Africa after the Zulu king Shaka rejected the British demand that the Zulus become a British protectorate, the Zulus armed only with spears defeated the British at Isandhlwana but were eventually defeated. Similarly in 1896 when British began the conquest of Sudan at Omdurman they defeated 40,000 Sudanese killing 30,000 with only 50 British soldiers killed.

 By the end of the nineteenth century significant advances had been made in weapons; bolt action rifles with cartridges using smokeless powder allowed riflemen to remain concealed and hit targets at great distances; improved machine guns provided a tremendous increase in fire power; recoil absorbing gun carriages allowed artillery to fire shells over great distances, at faster rates without re-sighting after each firing; nitrate explosive made possible shells with great destructive power.

Armed with a bolt action rifle with a magazine, the infantry gained superiority over cavalry, the Prussian Guards Cavalry Corps attacked the right flank of the French at Saint Privat, outside Metz, in the war of 1870, they went forward in dense columns up a bare slope into the fire from Chessepot breech loading rifles of the French infantry, 307 officers and 7,923 men of the Guards were killed in 20 minutes. This ended the reign of the cavalry which had started at Adrianople in 378 AD, cavalry became mounted infantry; infantry became the ‘queen of battle’.

At Plevna, in the Russo-Turkish war of 1877, to prevent a junction of two Russian armies at Adrianople (Edirne), the Turkish commander, Osman Pasha, occupied positions around Plevna in open defenceless terrain and made his force of 14,000 men dig field defences for cover. He equipped his men with a Martini rifle with 100 rounds for long range firing and with a Winchester carbine with 500 rounds for firing at short ranges. When the Russians attacked they lost 8,000 men in the first attack and 18,000 in a second attack two months later. Osman Pasha after being surrounded had to surrender but his performance showed the importance of field defences in absorbing artillery bombardments and the fearsome of infantry equipped with magazine rifles with metal cartridges.

Artillery guns had the problem of recoiling and required relaying after firing, in 1897 the French solved the problem of absorbing the recoil of guns, the result was the French 75 mm guns which fired fixed ammunition in which the projectile was fixed to a metal cartridge containing the propellant charge, as in the rifle. With a quick acting breech mechanism and the recoil absorbed the field gun could now fire several rounds a minute increasing the rate of fire. The invention started an arms race to quickly equip with a “quick firing field gun” or be relegated to a second class army.

To overcome the defensive power of the infantry the Germans changed their attack tactics to short rushes by companies while another company provided covering fire, this kept the defenders under constant fire by the attackers and prevented return fire from the defenders.

The two inventions that were to influence warfare in the twentieth century were the internal combustion engine and wireless telegraphy. The internal combustion engine was invented in 1876, it originally propelled a bicycle, then four wheeled carriages and then the aeroplane; this engine changed the face of land war by a revolution in road transport and took warfare into the third dimension, the sky.

The army transport at the start of the First World War was still horse drawn though the armies had some motor vehicles, the Germans started the war with 600 motor vehicles.

In 1897 Marconi transmitted a wireless message over nine miles and in 1901 over 3,000 miles. Armies adopted the telephone and wireless communication, the telephone was provided by well organised divisional cable companies when static, once movement started, messengers had to be used.

When World War I started, aeroplanes and airships were used for reconnaissance, later for attacking ground targets; at the start of World War I, the Germans had 384 aeroplanes and 30 airships, the French 123 aeroplanes and 10 airships, the British 63 aeroplanes.

The armies of 1914, when the World War began, retained the tactical and operational concepts of 1866 Austro-Prussian war and 1870 Franco-Prussian war. With the expansion of national economies and the rise in population the numerical size of the armies became very large, in 1914 France could field an army of 3,200,000, Germany 2,730,000, Russia 3,900,000 and Austria-Hungary 2,300,000. To cope with the immense problems of command and administration arising from the size of the armies most armies adopted a General Staff system on the Prussian model, Britain and the United States were the exceptions because of their much smaller armies.

As warfare became more dependent on rapid firing rifles and automatic weapons the weapons and stores carried into the field and the consumption per man increased at a rate greater than the rate of increase of manpower. In 1870, thirty wagons constituted a German corps ‘train’, of field bakeries, hospitals, engineering companies, this had more than doubled by 1914, the German artillery in 1870 numbered 1,584 pieces, in 1914 it was near 8000. In 1870, 200 rounds per rifle was distributed between the soldier and the various transport echelons and only an average of 56 were expended during the war; in 1914, 240 were carried and completely expended in one week. In 1870, German artillery fired 199 rounds per gun in the war in 1914, 1,000 rounds per gun were fired within a month. In the wars before 1914, artillery fire did not wear out the barrels of guns but by 1914 the situation had completely changed and the replacement of guns became a regular feature.

The increased logistic loads meant an increase in horses, in 1870 the ratio was one horse for every four men, this increased to one for every three men in 1914. Considering the increase in men and the fact that horses eat about ten times as much as men, the subsistence requirements of units increased by fifty per cent; in 1914 a corps had about 1,200 wagons shuttling between the supply base and the front.

In the half century before the beginning of the First World War there were numerous inventions and strides in metallurgy, chemical, electrical and other sciences. The mind, thought and imagination based on education gained ascendancy to produce new substances, new outlook - a process which pushed the industrial revolution into the technical revolution. As the world became more technical, the military followed suit, war became as much a clash between scientists, technicians and factories which equipped and sustained the armies as between the armies and the generals who commanded them.

Tactical Doctrines at the Beginning of the 20th Century

The Russo-Japanese war of 1904-1905 brought out radical differences from the wars of 1866-1870. Although tens of thousands of soldiers faced each other, none were visible, battlefields seemed empty, soldiers learnt to move fast and stay under cover when stationary. The air was full of bullets and shrapnel which increased the no-man’s-land between the combatants, made the spade an essential part of the soldier’s accoutrement and made rapid morale and physical exhaustion on the battlefield; the battle environment now required a soldier who could obey, think, survive as well as fight, not for hours but for days on end.

The machine gun, called by the Russians the ‘devils spout’, inflicted the most casualties on the attackers; one machine gun per company was considered essential. Infantry fire action was considered effective up to 600 yards, beyond that artillery fire had to be used to prevent attacking infantry from using their weapons.

As machine guns, trenches and barbed wire made defence stronger, the importance of artillery, both in the defence and the attack grew; indirect gun laying and firing completely replaced direct fire. It was considered that the side that could silence the enemy’s guns could capture any position by concentrating artillery fire on it and assaulting it with comparatively small numbers.

In the Russo-Japanese war the Japanese used ‘arsenic smoke’ by burning material soaked in arsenic, this was the first chemical weapon.

In the forty years before the First World War a number of military theories were put forward based on industrial and scientific development. The outstanding theory was by I. S. Bloch, a Polish banker and economist, he analysed future wars in a publication called “The War of the Future in its Technical, Economic and Political Relations”. Bloch’s theme was that war is shaped by civilisation and since by the end of the nineteenth century civilisation had nearly passed out of agriculture into industry, the character of war had changed, that previously countries were more or less homogeneous, self-contained and self-sufficing. With the invention of the railways, telegraphs, steam ships etc, there had grown an interdependence of countries on each other for the necessities of life, war would prevent a country from benefiting by the products of the country it would be fighting. He considered the introduction of the magazine rifle the perfection of slaughter and the extinction of the soldier. He predicted “At first there will be increased slaughter on so terrible a scale as to render it impossible to get troops to push the battle to a decisive issue. They will try to, thinking that they are fighting under the old conditions, they will learn such a lesson that they will abandon the attempt forever. The war, instead of being a hand-to-hand contest in which the combatants will measure their physical and moral superiority, it will become a kind of stalemate in which neither army being able to get at the other, both armies will be maintained in opposition to each other, threatening each other, but never being able to deliver a final and decisive attack. ... That is the future of war - not fighting, but famine, not the slaying of men but bankruptcy of nations and the break up of the whole social organisation. .. Everybody will be entrenched in the next war. It will be a great war of entrenchments. The spade will be as indispensable to a soldier as his rifle.”

The French generals advocated that trench warfare would not take place in a European war, that morale was the answer to the rifle and the machine gun; in the attack troops would move forward under controlled artillery fire to within 400 yards of the enemy, then charge and capture the position.

German infantry was taught to start an attack in a dense firing line, to advance till the enemy’s fire was felt then to smother the enemy’s position with fire, crawl forward to between 800 and 400 yards of the enemy, gain fire superiority and advance, finally to assault with the bayonet from 100 yards. If the advance proved impractical during the day it was to be made at night and the final assault at dawn.

In the artillery, the French considered their 75 mm field gun adequate; the Germans adopted the light howitzer and after the Russo-Japanese war, the heavy howitzer for its destructive power and effect on morale, basing it on Napoleon’s dictum of the offensive that “it is with artillery that war is made”.

In the period before the commencement of the First World War the French considered that with artillery fire power and ‘elan’ they could successfully break through a defended front and made their plans on this basis. The Germans developed the concept of avoiding a defended front by strategic outflanking, the Schlieffen Plan was based on this. After the trench deadlock, four methods were conceived and applied to break the deadlock; the first, the use of artillery to breakthrough the defences; the second, to neutralise the defenders with gas; the third to infiltrate through the defences; and finally an infantry attack supported by artillery, tanks and aircraft.

Strategic Outflanking – The Schlieffen Plan

The reason for the First World War was the naval and economic rivalry between Britain and Germany. Bismarck after the war with France in 1870-1871 followed a policy of ensuring peace to allow Germany to consolidate her gains, in 1879 he concluded a defensive treaty with Austria, two years later France annexed Tunisia which made Italy join the Austrians and Germans. In 1890 Bismarck was dismissed and a change in German attitude took place which made France enter in a alliance with Russia.

In 1895 German expansion started, the German industrial production increased, the value of German trade rose from 365 to 610 million pounds, their merchant shipping increased nearly two and half times, all at the cost of Britain, making a British economic collapse possible. In 1904 Germans declared that their empire had become world wide and started expanding their navy, the British politicians using this to create an anti-German feeling, made a treaty of friendship with France which grew into a secret military alliance. Britain, France and Russia were now allied against Germany, Austria and Italy. With the disintegration of the Turkish Empire the Russians backed the “greater Serbia” movement to make Yugoslavs look to Russia rather than Austria. The Archduke Francis Ferdinand, who was anti “greater Serbia” movement and the heir apparent to the Austrian throne was assassinated in Serajevo, the Serbian rejection of the Austrian ultimatum with Russian backing, triggered the First World War with Britain, France and Russia allied against Germany and Austro-Hungarian empire.

The German strategy, with two fronts to face, was to leave the greater part of the fighting against Russia to the Austro-Hungarians and concentrate against the French. The German plan, devised by Count von Schlieffen, was based on the certainty of the French deploying behind their heavily fortified border with the intention of an offensive, the Germans planned to deploy a defensive force on the French border to contain the French forces and an offensive through neutral Switzerland or Belgium, Schlieffen chose a manoeuvre through Belgium because he considered the Swiss terrain difficult. He planned to mass five armies of 33 1/3 corps and eight cavalry divisions divided between them; echeloned from right to left this force was to march west into Belgium, wheel south into France, envelop Paris from the west, invest the city, advance east and finally north east to take the French army in the rear and pin it against its fortifications on the border.

 Moltke, the nephew of Moltke the Chief of the General Staff in 1866, became the Chief of General Staff in 1906, between 1906 and 1914 he changed the manoeuvre to two offensive wings, the southern wing instead of holding the French so that the northern wing could wheel around to the rear of the French, was also to attack. In the 1914 plan, the Germans deployed seven armies, numbered 1 to 7 from the right to the left; the 1st Army of 320,000, commanded by General von Kluck was to advance to Aix-la-Chapelle and then on to Brussels; the 2nd Army of 260,000, commanded by General von Bulow, was to capture Liege then advance with its right flank on Wavre and its left on Namur; the 3rd Army of 180,000, commanded by General von Hausen, was to advance westward with its right flank on Namur and its left on Givet; the 4th Army of 180,000, commanded by the Duke of Wurttemberg, was to march westward with its right on Framay and its left on Attert; the 5th Army of 200,000, commanded by the Crown Prince, was to move its right to Forenville keeping its left on Thionville; the 6th Army of 220,000, commanded by Prince Ruppercht, was to advance on the Moselle, attack and pin down the French; the 7th Army of 125,000, commanded by General von Heeringen was to advance on the Meurthe to counterattack on the Lorraine.

The French, though they had intelligence that the Germans main effort would be through Belgium ruled this out, Joffre’s ‘Plan XVII’, just as Schlieffen had anticipated, was an offensive by five French armies attacking all along the border from the Swiss border to the Belgian border, leaving the left flank on the Belgian border undefended.

On August 1, 1914, most European powers ordered general mobilisation, ten days later, the German army was deployed on the German frontier according to plan and the preliminaries of occupying Liege and Luxembourg were completed.

The German 1st, 2nd and 3rd Armies crossed the Belgian frontier on August 4, 1914, in their long outflanking march; the British immediately declared war. The French 1st, 2nd and 3rd Armies, launched an offensive from the Swiss border to Alsace and Lorraine, on 14 August, and were repulsed. The German 2nd and 3rd Armies crossed the Sambre and the Meuse rivers between 21 and 24 August, pushing the French 5th Army back while the German 4th and 5th Armies started an offensive at the Ardennes on 22 August forcing the French 4th Army to retreat.

The German General Headquarters, located 150 miles, from the decisive right wing lost contact with the 1st and 2nd Armies. The German signal doctrine required the establishment of communications rearwards by subordinate units to higher headquarters, this proved wrong and wasteful. Wireless communication existed between the General Headquarters and army headquarters, it worked efficiently but elaborate coding and decoding and jamming by the French reduced its usefulness. With the failure of communications Moltke was unable to direct operations, the commanders of the 3rd, 4th and 5th Armies in the German centre attacked and drove the French from their front instead of letting them be trapped by the manoeuvre of the 1st and 2nd Armies. Also unable to control the 1st Army, Moltke placed it under the command of von Bulow, the commander of the 2nd Army, thereby the moves of the 1st Army were made to the needs of the 2nd Army rather than the need of the campaign plan.

The German 1st Army defeated the British Expeditionary Force (B.E.F.) at Mons and positioned itself to envelop the Allied left but von Bulow, the commander of the German right wing refused von Kluck permission to swing west to envelop the B.E.F. The German advance and the Allied retreat, both moving approximately 20 miles per day started a race towards Paris; the Germans, with insufficient troops to attack or screen Paris, decided to by-pass it. On 25 August it was suddenly realised by the French that within days the Germans may appear before Paris, the French 6th Army was hurriedly formed and transported to the front in 1500 hired Paris taxis.

When aerial reconnaissance showed the Germans east of Paris the French counter attacked; between 5 and 10 September the battle of the Marne was fought, about two million soldiers were involved, the largest encounter ever fought to that date. The German 1st Army, by-passing and leaving Paris to its west was attacked by the French 6th Army forcing it to face west, the German 2nd Army was facing east leaving a gap between the two armies which could have been exploited by the B.E.F. but it failed to do so though the German right wing had been weakened by the withdrawal of two corps, its logistical system based on railheads deep in Belgium was stretched beyond its limit and troops were exhausted by continous fighting from the beginning of the war.

With the collapse of communications, lacking information, Moltke sent a staff officer, Lieutenant Colonel Hentsch, on a fact finding mission across the entire front to find out the situation. Hentsch, representing the Chief of the General Staff, had the authority to direct the army commanders. On 9 September 1914, he in consultation with 1st and 2nd Army Headquarters, without reference to the General Headquarters, decided that the German right wing should retreat to the river Aisne. This decision by a relatively junior staff officer, decided the outcome of the battle of the Marne in which the Germans had not suffered a tactical defeat and led to the German defeat in the war.

The initial campaign of movement was followed by attempts to outflank which resulted in a race to the sea. In October and November the Germans made a powerful push to seize the French Channel ports, they took Ghent, Bruges and Ostend but could not capture the Channel ports because the Belgians flooded the district of Yser.

 The German and Allied formations while outflanking became hopelessly mixed by the time the sea was reached, in early November trenches made their appearance and the fighting took a new form of two opposing lines of trenches stretching for 752 kilometres, from the Swiss border to the English Channel.

 The trenches that developed were not mere slit trenches for the temporary protection of a few men, they were more than a man’s height in depth and broad, there were living trenches where the men lived in mud and squalor, communication trenches connected the living area with the fighting front and the supply area in the rear. The trenches were protected with barbed wire entanglements and defended with bolt action breech loading rifles and machine guns firing 650 rounds per minute; the British had 64 machine guns and the Germans 90 on a divisional front.

 The trenches and the barbed wire entanglements impeded the attackers and aided the defenders, the defence became the stronger form of war. To overcome the defence a solution was sought in the obliteration of trenches by programmed intense artillery bombardments combined with rigid infantry movement. The intensity of the bombardments can be gauged by the following British ammunition expenditures, battle of Hooge (1915) 18,000 shells; Somme (1916) 2,000,000; Arras (1917) 2,600,000; Messines (1917) 3,500,000; Ypres III (1917) 4,300,000.

 Preliminary artillery bombardment ensured initial success but it converted the battlefield into craters which prevented vehicles from going forward and supplying the attacking troops; the craters favoured the defending machine gun and attacking troops usually found themselves in a salient with its tactical disadvantage, artillery fire instead of liquidating the defence consolidated it.

After attack based on artillery failed, the Germans in the second battle of Ypres, in April 1915, resorted to the use of chlorine gas which made the French flee but the Germans were not able to gain any advantage; chlorine was easily countered with a respirator; phosgene gas shells were employed at the end of 1915; sneezing and mustard gas were employed in 1917. Gas inflicted heavy casualties, it tended to blow back with the wind and it failed to break the deadlock of trench warfare.

The Germans after trying artillery bombardment and gas decided on infiltration as a means of overcoming the stalemate; the British, after trying neutralisation by artillery fire, arrived at the concept advancing guns and machine guns protected by armour – the tank.

Attack With Artillery Support – The Somme Disaster

After the trenches appeared in November 1914 the forced immobility was used to restore order in the disorganised forces on both sides, divisions were assigned measured distances of the front, organised into corps and corps into armies.The General Headquarters were located well away from the front where there were almost no signs of war, army and corps headquarters were invariably out of artillery range and were located at varying distances behind the front, corps headquarters in villages, division headquarters in farm houses in the fighting line; headquarters were connected with telegraph and telephone lines. In a field army daily 10,000 telegrams were sent, 20,000 telephone calls were made and 5,000 messages were sent through “military dispatch service”, the army official mail service; 85 percent of the traffic went through the telephone and telegraph lines which were buried, immobile and vulnerable to cratering caused by shellfire; from the army headquarters to battalion headquarters, all commanders were tied to the telephone.

Trench warfare created a quantitative analysis, raids per battalion per month, yards of front per man, yards of front per gun and so on; in this environment the battle of the Somme was planned and fought.

In December 1915, the idea of the Somme offensive was originated by General Joffre, the French Commander-in-Chief; the offensive was preceded by detailed preparations, roads, railway spurs, hospitals, base camps, water pumping stations, supply dumps and transport parks were constructed. 400,000 men, 100,000 horses, 18 divisions, 1537 guns and 3,000,000 artillery shells were collected and were available. Also prepared were eight large and eleven small mines (tunnels dug to the enemy’s defences and explosives placed) to destroy a fourteen mile section of the German front. The training, assembly and deployment took four months, every unit reached its start point on time, paths through the British wire entanglements were made and clearly marked, each man was to carry 66 pounds of equipment.

For the attack, General Haig issued a 57 page order excluding appendices on “the use of gas”, “bridging preparations”, and “divisional preparations”. The preliminary bombardment before the attack was to be a week long, the German lines, including garrisons in fortified strongholds and their approach roads were to be neutralised.

The attacking infantry was to follow behind a “barrage”, a new term which meant that exploding shells preceding the attacking infantry, whose movement was precisely co-ordinated with the artillery shelling so as to allow the defenders no time between the ceasing of the shelling and the arrival of the attacking troops.

Lacking reliable communications between the attacking infantry on the move and the supporting artillery an extremely rigid method was adopted based on the number of shells that were required to destroy a yard of trench. Advancing infantry and artillery batteries were allotted ‘lanes’ running perpendicular to the front, firing was to proceed according to a strict schedule, the time to be spent on each target was calculated to the minute in such a way as to allow a steady uniform advance by the infantry closely following the barrage. Artillery ‘forward observers’ accompanied the infantry but the artillery firing schedules could only be changed by Corps Headquarters located five to ten miles behind the front.

The advance of the infantry was restricted by the range of the guns, the theoretical limit of the infantry advance was about six thousand yards from the guns and about five thousand yards from the front line; in practice, artillery fire was only effective where it could be corrected by the artillery observer which was normally about one thousand yards and in the most extreme about four thousand yards, this was the maximum distance the infantry could advance before the artillery had to be moved. The objectives were, therefore, set by the limitations of the artillery and not by what was known of the enemy’s depth positions, the German second line was not included in the first day’s objectives on more than half of the fifteen mile front, they remained intact ensuring the failure of the attack.

The experience of every war since 1866 had shown that battlefield confusion made effective command impossible; the British, to prevent this assigned a width of front to each corps, division, brigade and battalion; a standard width of front along which it was to advance, slowly and deliberately without disturbing the troops’ alignment, to reach an objective within a prescribed time. The troops, after reaching the objectives a mile to two and a half miles away, regardless of the opposition or no opposition facing them, were to halt, consolidate, re-establish communications; the second wave was then to catch up, guns were to move forward and the entire process repeated.

With orders going into such minute details, battalion commanders upwards were forbidden to go forward with their commands because if they did they would be out of communications with their superiors.

Communications, forward of the division headquarters, were a problem; wireless was in its infancy, it was too bulky to be carried forward and did not work very well under trench warfare conditions, pigeons, dogs, runners, flags, lamps, verey lights, boards with markings for aerial observers and loudspeaker equipped aircraft were tried; none of these methods worked with any efficiency.

Supplying the attacking troops with ammunition and other things was another problem, the British tried to resolve the supply problem by loading the individual infantry man with vast amounts of equipment and food and prescribed a slavish adherence to predetermined plans.

On 1 July 1916, General Rawlinson, the 4th Army commander, after a preliminary bombardment of ten days, launched the attack at 0730 hours with the detonation of the mines. The British infantry battalions attacked in four to eight waves, a hundred yards apart, marching slowly almost shoulder to shoulder, forbidden to run or take cover, within hours there were 60,000 casualties, 20,000 killed. At nightfall many battalions had barely a hundred survivors who occupied the forward German trenches or hid in shell holes; VIII Corps had 13,000 casualties and ceased to exist as a fighting force.

Communication with the attacking troops collapsed when the troops left the trenches where the telephone wires ended; due to casualties the system of sending information regularly from the forward troops did not work and no effort was made to establish communications from the top down.

 On the extreme right, the 18th and the 30th Divisions of XII Corps reached their objectives by 1300 and 1400 hours because the artillery barrage in this sector had levelled the German trenches; the attacking troops suddenly found themselves in undefended open country, the corps commander requested permission to continue the advance but it was refused because the success was in the wrong place and the day’s schedule had been met. Other unexpected successes were also not exploited, on 10 July 114 Brigade of 38 Division reached its objective with hardly any loss, it found that resistance had ceased and requested permission to continue but the artillery programme could not be changed and permission was denied.

On 10 July, General Rawlinson, aware of the magnitude of his losses, concluded that the only way to carry the German second line of defence was to approach it in darkness, objections of control were raised but it was decided to go ahead. An attack was launched at 0345 hours on 14 July after a preliminary bombardment of three days, within two and half hours all objectives were captured with 9,194 killed and wounded, a low figure by the war’s standard, but again permission to pursue the withdrawing Germans was withheld.

Under the British system of command, carefully made plans were required to be carried out rigorously deviation to overcome the confusion of the battlefield and operations had to be staggered for the re-establishment of the control of each phase; only the top commanders had the authority to make alterations in plans.

The offensive went on for four months, the battle continued as a slogging match between the two armies till 18 November 1916, it degenerated into a battle of attrition with each side suffering 600,000 casualties without affecting the course of the war.

Attack By Infiltration

Like the British and the French, the Germans constructed trenches, carefully located headquarters with a network of telephone and telegraph communications, their staff became victims of the telephone and paperwork but it never became as rigid as the British. The General Staff from the wars of 1866 and 1870 had developed a certain informal relationship between the staff and field commanders through their regional organisation, this, in the First World War, went down to the battalion, company, platoon and the NCO who commanded the section (the section now appeared as a tactical unit). Through this informal source of information the staff were able to gauge the difficulties of the troops and developed new techniques; new weapons, flame throwers to clear bunkers and the sub-machine guns to shoot up men in trenches were developed; a new method of command developed and new tactics known as infiltration were developed.

When the British were launching their offensives based on artillery bombardments with rigid boundaries, frontages and advances, the German 11th Army (on the Eastern Front) directive stated “The attack, if it is to succeed, must be pushed forward at a rapid pace. The Army cannot assign the attacking corps and divisions definite objectives for each day, lest by fixing them the possibility of further progress may be obstructed.” The directive further stated “Any portion of the attacking troops which are successful in pushing on will expose themselves to the danger of envelopment. Thus the troops which least deserve it may meet with disaster as a result of their rapid advance. Consideration of this possibility makes it necessary for the Army to fix certain lines, which should be reached by the whole force, if possible simultaneously. Any progress beyond these lines will be thankfully welcomed by the Army and made use of.” Recognising that an offensive could not be closely controlled from above, the Germans laid down the minimum objectives to be achieved and did not restrict the advance of successful troops.

Besides in the offensive, the counterattack authority in defence was also delegated, front line divisions had their counterattack troops with a counterattack force commander located at the division headquarters and had to keep himself familiar with the situation.

With the American entry in the war, the Germans were faced with the need of delivering a smashing blow and ending the war before the Americans could bring their full weight to bear; the task of the Chief of the German General Staff, General Ludendorff was to attain a breakthrough on the Western Front, a goal that had eluded both sides since 1914. Both sides in the past had planned their offensives based on strategic considerations, Ludendorff started with assumption that tactics were more important than strategy, that is, that an offensive should be launched where a tactical breakthrough was possible and not where a strategic one was desirable; this led to a most careful study of tactical problems involved.

After considerable consideration the front Lens and La Fere, on both sides of St. Quentin was selected and the preparations were started in December 1917. Roads, railway spurs, airfields, depots, hospitals, communication networks were built; men, horses, guns and supplies were massed. To get rid of habits inculcated in four years of trench warfare and to instill a new offensive spirit, the best troops in divisions were pulled out of the front and gathered into specially organised, specially trained storm-troop detachments whose purpose was to spearhead the attack; besides this, officers and men under thirty five years of age were collected from all fronts to form forty seven assault divisions which were divided between the 17th, 2nd and the 18th Armies.

The training directive, dated 1 January 1918, titled “Attack in War of Position” stated:

“The attack demands STRICT COMMAND, CAREFUL AND THOROUGH PREPARATION, AND THE COOPERATION OF ALL ARMS within the fighting units and with neighbouring units, and also clear grasp of objectives to be reached. On the other hand, every attack offers the OPPORTUNITY FOR THE FREE ACTIVITY AND DECISIVE ACTION at all levels down to the individual soldier”.

“CLOSE LIAISON BETWEEN ALL ARMS AND ALL COMMANDERS, from the front to the rear and from the rear to the front, and laterally is indispensable. Only such liaison enable the High Command to take the necessary measures in time.”

“ The objective of the attack is to penetrate as deeply as possible into the enemy positions aiming, at the very least, at the gun line which must be reached on the first day. The first break is comparatively easy to achieve. The difficulty consists in bringing up reinforcements at the correct time and place. The opponent, taken by surprise, must not be allowed to recover his balance. His counter measures must be overturned by the offensive’s rapid progress. EVERYTHING DEPENDS ON A RAPID ADVANCE, CARRIED OUT BY THE LEADING TROOPS IN THE CERTAINTY THAT FLANK AND REAR PROTECTION, AS WELL AS FIRE SUPPORT, WILL BE TAKEN CARE OF FROM BEHIND.”

“The danger lest the offensive will spend itself is great. The dead point must be overcome by the energy of the commanders, located far in front, and by the stream of fresh reinforcements from the rear.”

“THE MOST CRITICAL FACTOR IS NOT THE NUMBER OF TROOPS BUT THE FIREPOWER OF THE ARTILLERY AND THE INFANTRY. FORCES THAT ARE TOO NUMEROUS MAY OBSTRUCT EACH OTHER AND COMPLICATE THE SUPPLY PROBLEM. EVERYTHING DEPENDS ON RAPID, INDEPENDENT ACTION BY ALL HEADQUARTERS WITHIN THE FRAMEWORK OF THE WHOLE, AND ALSO ON THE ABILITY OF THE ARTILLERY AND AMMUNITION SUPPLY TO KEEP UP.”

The directive went on to state that in the attack, as in the defence, the division was the basic organisation with the staff and the technical means to ensure the co-operation of all arms; arms’ chains of command, bypassing the division to the corps headquarters was to be avoided. The planning was to be detailed but not to rob subordinate commanders of their initiative. Precise objectives were to be assigned for the initial stages but not subject to limitations once these objectives were attained. Commanders up to divisions were to follow their troops forward with necessary signal units and equipment; where necessary forward command posts were to be established and division headquarters and above were to employ lookouts, runners and airborne observers to watch the progress of the battle and send reports independent of the troops involved.

Troops were instructed to use coloured signal rockets when objectives were reached, control lines were crossed, enemy artillery fire shifted but headquarters were warned not to place too much reliance on these signals; instead headquarters were instructed to use liaison officers in order to gain information of events in their own formation and neighbouring units. Similarly inter-arm co-operation was ensured by the exchange of liaison officers between artillery and infantry.

 It was realised that artillery support during the later stages of the attack would not be practical unless chains of command were decentralised, therefore, some artillery and mortar batteries were not to take part in the barrage but would be ready to move; these would be attached to leading infantry regiments and closely follow them and provide direct fire support wherever and whenever called upon to do so by battalion and even company commanders.

 The leading troops were to be accompanied with machine gun detachments (these up to then were considered primarily a defensive weapon), and flame-throwers, a new weapon in 1918, making integrated teams capable of dealing with obstacles on their own and thus independent of communication with, and support from senior headquarters in the rear.

The leading troops were not to get involved in the clearing of the remnants of the enemy, they were to reach the enemy positions as the last shells of the barrage fell and by-pass the surviving centres of resistance, the lateral clearing of the trenches were to be carried out by small attacks, the main attacking force was to leave behind detachments to deal with them if necessary, but the momentum of the attack and the contact with the retreating enemy was not to be lost. No provisions were made for maintaining the cohesion of the attack, senior commanders were to be well forward and not to allow local checks and reverses to delay the offensive as a whole.

In the absence of suitable communications between advancing infantry and the supporting artillery, the shortcomings of the pre-planned artillery firing schedule was a problem. The best solution was a firing schedule with fire progressing in an orderly manner from one target to another, coloured rocket signals were to be used to signify that predetermined lines had been reached.

Infantry was trained to follow the barrage closely accepting some casualties, and in the new infiltration tactics the guiding idea was that the leading troops should probe and penetrate the weak points of the defence while reserves should be used to back up success and not to redeem failure, in short the tactical concept was to exploit the line of least resistance.

In March 1918, 192 German divisions were available against 173 Allied divisions, including four and half double sized American divisions. The Germans had 85 ‘storm divisions’ in reserve, the Allied reserve was 62 divisions.

To gain surprise, the assaulting divisions were brought up by night marches, artillery was massed in concealment and opened fire without registration and preparations were made for attacks at other points, as feints, to mystify the enemy.

The German offensive planned to cut across the British rear with the 17th Army, in the centre the 2nd Army and on the left the 18th Army were to mount subsidiary attacks for holding off the French to the south and then to reinforce the expected breakthrough by the 17th Army.

At 0540 hours on 21 March, 1918, the ‘Kaiserchlacht’ (Emperor Battle) started on a wet foggy day, 6,608 German guns opened a bombardment on a forty mile front whose precision and intensity had never before been seen. Firing without prior registration, shifting from target to target according to a schedule, the guns alternated between high explosive and gas, to demolish the British strongholds and as the stunned defenders emerged to catch them with gas. After four hours and fifty minutes the bombardment reached its climax with a rain of high explosives on the first British line and then changed into a creeping barrage which was closely followed by the detachments of storm troopers. Finding most of the British defences smashed and bypassing centres of resistance, the German infantry took only half an hour to break through the British first line, an un-heard of achievement in the war up to then.

At noon the fog lifted which facilitated the observers in the five observation balloons per division. By 1400 hours the British had been pushed back to their main battle zone and on the British right, the 5th Army barely clinging to the rear defences. With telephone communications demolished, runners unable to get through due to the German infiltration, the cohesion of the British forces began to break. The German communications also broke down, the General Headquarters was not able to form a clear picture of events and the situation, but since this was expected the attack continued to make good progress.

By the evening of the 21st it was clear that the 17th Army and the right wing of the 2nd Army had failed to pinch out the strategic Cambrai salient, the flank protecting 18th Army had cut through the British 5th Army. Ludendorf had a choice between taking advantage of an opportunity and maintaining the tenacity of purpose, he chose the latter disregarding the principles of reinforcing success and taking the enemy in the flank, he assigned his three reserve divisions to the 17th Army and all three armies were ordered to continue the advance as planned for the next day.

On the second day considerable gains were made by the 18th Army and the 2nd Army, the 17th Army was stuck in front of the strongly fortified town of Arras. On the third day Ludendorf again reinforced the 17th Army and for the next two days the 17th and the 2nd Armies made considerable progress though there was no success at Arras. On the morning of 25th March Ludendorf ordered the 6th Army on the right of the 17th Army to attack Arras on 28th March, this attack failed in the face of well prepared resistance of the British 3rd Army.

The attacking troops, fatigued by continous fighting and unable to resist the temptation of looting the British stores that had fallen into their hands, slipped out of control and stopped responding to orders and the offensive ground to a standstill.

The German offensive had proved so successful that on 26 March General Foch was appointed the co-ordinator of Allied armies. By 5 April the attack had exhausted itself with the Germans in an extensive salient, another powerful attack was launched on the British 1st Army which petered out by 30 April creating another salient. On 27 May the Germans launched their third offensive and another large salient was created, in June two attacks were launched and on 6 July the last attack took place.

The German infiltration tactics of by-passing centres of resistance and clearing them up later were successful, they made tactical gains but the gains did not conform to the strategic aim, therefore, the offensive did not have an effect on the outcome of the war.

Attack With Tank Support

The tank developed from the idea of an armour protected gun advocated in 1878 by Colonel C. B. Brackenbury which was tested by the Germans in manoeuvres but was not adopted. It solved two difficulties that had faced armies since the introduction of firearms - how to harmonise movement with firepower and provide protection against rifle, machine guns and shell fragments.

The tank, a tracked vehicle capable of crossing battlefield obstacles and moving across country, provided armour protection against rifle, machine gunfire and shell fragments to its crew who manned artillery pieces and machine guns, this solved the difficulty of moving on bullet swept battlefields that had faced armies since the introduction of firearms.

Tanks were successfully employed in the Cambrai attack on November 20, 1917. In this attack there was no preliminary artillery bombardment, instead tanks grouped in threes acted as mobile armoured batteries ahead of the advancing infantry. It was thought if the tanks could put the infantry through the main trench system, the infantry and cavalry would be able to advance without the assistance of tanks. In the battle of Cambrai it was found that infantry and cavalry could not advance without tank support because the enemy very easily rushed machine guns into positions to stop them.

On 4 July 1918, the 4th Australian Division co-operating with the 5th Tank Brigade of the British 4th Army attacked the village of Hamel east of Amiens, and took the objective at such a low cost that General Rawlinson, the army commander, suggested a similar operation on a larger scale to General Haig who suggested it to Foch as an offensive to advance the Allied line east and south east of Amiens to free the Amiens-Paris railway from German gunfire; this developed into the Battle of Amiens.

As the plans developed, the French 1st and 3rd Armies were placed under Rawlinson’s command and the objective was extended to the line Roye-Chaulnes fifteen miles further east. For the attack on 8 August, General Rawlinson had under his command the British III Corps with three divisions in the line, one protecting the left flank and one in reserve; in the centre the Australian Corps with three divisions in the line and two in reserve; on the right the Canadian Corps with two divisions in the line and two in reserve. Also under Rawlinson’s command were three cavalry divisions and three infantry divisions, the 3rd, 4th and 5th Tank Brigades, the 10th Battalion of the Tank Corps the 5th Brigade, of the RAF of six corps squadrons, eight scout squadrons and three bomber squadrons.

The concept of the battle was that the British III Corps would protect the left flank, the Australian and the Canadian Corps were to carry out the main attack and the French XXXI Corps would protect the right flank. The objectives were phased; Green Line first objective, Red Line second objective for all corps; Blue and Blue Dotted Lines, the third objective for the Australian and Canadian Corps respectively. On the first objective a halt of two hours was to be made to allow troops of the second wave to pass through.

The task given to the Cavalry Corps and the 3rd Tank Brigade was to pass through the Australian and the Canadian Corps, secure the Amiens outer defences and when relieved, to advance south-eastward to the Roye-Chaulnes line to cut the German communications and ease the advance of the French.

The frontage of the attack extended from Moreuil in the south to the river Ancre in the north; the divisional front was 2,250 yards at the start and 3,000 yards at the finish.

The Cavalry Corps, the Canadian Corps and the Australian Corps had the 3rd, 4th and 5th Tank Brigades respectively under command. The 3rd Tank Brigade had the 3rd and the 6th Tank Battalions; the 4th Tank Brigade had the 1st, 4th, 5th, and 14th Tank Battalions; the 5th Tank Brigade had the 2nd, 8th, 13th, 15th Tank Battalions and the 17th Tank (Armoured Car) Battalion was equipped with 12 armoured cars.

In all eleven tank battalions and one armoured car battalion were to take part in the attack, the 3rd and 6th Battalions had 48 Medium A (Whippet) tanks armed with four Hotchkiss machine guns; the 1st and 15th Battalions had Mark V Star tanks, male with two six pounders and four Hotchkiss machine guns and the female with six Hotchkiss machine guns; the 2nd, 4th, 5th, 8th, 10th, 13th and 14th Battalions had 36 Mark Vs and six in reserve to replace breakdowns, the male Mark V had two six pounder guns and four Hotchkiss machine guns, the female had six Hotchkiss machine guns; the 17 Tank (Armoured Car) Battalion had twelve armoured cars. The total was 324 heavy tanks, 96 Whippet (light) tanks, 42 tanks in reserve, 96 supply tanks (converted Mark IVs) and 22 gun carriers converted for supply; the grand total was 580.

The other characteristics of the tanks were as follows:

The German 2nd Army with 10 divisions and four in reserve held the front from Meaulte, on the left flank of III Corps to St Hubert Wood, three and a half miles south of Moreuil and the 18th Army from St Hubert Wood to Noyon with 11 divisions in line and four in reserve.

Rawlinson’s 4th Army battle tactics were to be same as at Cambrai, tanks were to assemble 1000 yards behind the infantry starting line before the H-hour, fixed at 0420 hours on 8 August 1918, they were to move forward to the start line, under the cover of aircraft engine noise, cross the start line at H-hour and lead the infantry forward behind a creeping barrage fire by one third of the guns of the army, while the other two thirds shelled the German artillery positions. The XXXI Corps of the French 1st Army, on the right of the British, did not have many tanks, therefore, a 45-minute barrage on the German trenches and guns preceded their attack.

Air warfare development during the years of the trench warfare stalemate had been considerable. Aircraft were initially used for the direction of artillery fire then for reconnaissance and aerial photography for trench maps, these tasks led to the development of combat aircraft, aerial combat, and low flying attacks on trenches and gun positions. In 1914, at the start of the war, the Royal Flying Corps had 63 aircraft, 165 officers and 1,264 men; on April 1, 1918 the Royal Air Force was created as an independent force and by mid-1918 it had 291,175 officers and men, 22,000 aircraft, of which 3,300 were first line.