First World War German Stormtroopers

The German solution to the attritional problem on the western front
came through reestablishing a war of movement by relying first on
military tradition and existing doctrine, and second; allocating greater
firepower at the platoon and squad level. This allowed tactical level
combat officers to create combined arms units capable of independent
action on the battlefield. These stoss, or assault, battalions helped
the Germans break through the Allied trenches and the Western
Front's stalemate. By concentrating firepower in mobile weapons such
as submachine guns, grenades, flamethrowers and light artillery pieces
- employed in the direct fire role - German Stoss soldiers, or
stormtroopers, took advantage of the weaknesses exposed by
defensive doctrines that seemingly had solved the battlefield's
lethality.

The German emphasis on mobile small units directing overwhelming
local fire superiority in a concentrated fashion against spread out
allied positions allowed Germany to begin breaking the deadlock on the
Western Front. The stormtroopers regularly avoided allied
strongpoint's and infiltrated deep into allied positions to attack crucial
command and control centers, supply depots, and artillery positions;
restoring tactical mobility to the battlefield. Infiltration tactics did not
arise out of a vacuum in 1918; the Prussian and German army had laid
the groundwork for such tactics during prior centuries by pushing the
idea that lower ranking officers should be free to find their own
solutions to tactical problems. Germany's late First World War effort at
breaking the stalemate, however, proved too late. The Allies also had
developed a mobile solution to trench warfare, but through a new
technology employed en masse as a shock weapon; the tank -
ironically the vehicle later used by the German Army to previously
unimaginable success in 1939-1941.

Picture in Public Domain