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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.[41] Germany's effort, however, proved too late. The Western 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. Nevertheless, General Hans Von Seekt carried the stormtrooper concept forward, grounded on combined arms and mobility, as the basis for tactical doctrine and training for the new German army after World War One. Operationally however, Seekt made some changes. Most importantly, he sought to modify the focus on the encirclement battle. Seekt considered the breakthrough as an equally viable alternative worth using when an encirclement chance was unavailable.[42] Seekt's combat experience, mostly on the German Eastern Front, had helped him realize an encirclement battle need not be the consistent focus for German operational level warfare. This experience also however, had reinforced Seekt's training and had confirmed mobile warfare held the key to German success. Germany's First World War Eastern Front featured a far more fluid style of fighting than in the static trench warfare on the Western Front. In the 1920s German army Seekt hammered home his emphasis on preserving mobility and locating weak points in the enemy defenses, usually the flank. Once found it was imperative a weak point be exploited by sending the assault and pursuit echelons through and flowing around strong points. More often than not these assault armies fought concentrically, initially divided, but simultaneously arriving at the critical point on the battlefield to produce a tremendous shock effect that often resulted in enemy forces being encircle and cut to pieces.[43] Von Seekt therefore emphasized what his training had prepared him to do, fight the war of maneuver, Bewegungskrieg; since made infamous with the more commonly known misnomer Blitzkrieg.[44] In Germany's notable First World War Eastern Front victories, fighting a mobile war had produced several devastating victories. In August 1914 the outnumbered German Eighth Army had defeated the Russian Second Army at Tannenberg, by using superior mobility. In May 1915 The German Eleventh Army had achieved a decisive breakthrough against the Russians during the Gorlice offensive. In another example, during November of 1916 an ad hoc combined arms motorized team, Kampfgruppen, helped Germany break important Romanian positions in Transylvania.[45] Seekt, nevertheless, had failed to comprehensively prepare the German army for all combat facets, although it was not entirely his fault. One problem within the German General Staff had begun as the nineteenth century ended. At this point in the General Staff's development General Staff training had become increasingly technical, with a specialized focus on military history. Prior, in the mid-nineteenth century, education was broad based, across the social sciences and natural sciences. As military history began to dominate, the increasing specialization produced even more efficient officers but within narrower bands of expertise. This produced an unintended side effect; it became more difficult for these officers to effectively link the strategic level political objectives that drove any war with the strategic and operational level military means used to realize the war's political objectives. For example, the cumulative effect of marginalizing strategic level planning produced German defeat on the Western Front in the First World War, when the opening German offensive in the west came to naught at the Battle of the Marne. The German offensive had faltered, some argue, because of being a narrowly focused technical plan that foundered under the weight of exactingly strict controls over the army, vitiating the flexibility necessary to achieve victory. In the 1920s, Seekt only marginally addressed the systemic problems that produced such a planning framework. In addition, Von Seekt, and most of his peers, virtually ignored the study of coalitional warfare in spite of the role in defeat poor coordination between Imperial Germany and its partners played during the First World War. [46] Thus, the German focus on the operational and tactical, over the strategic, would seriously impair German military training and preparation for the global war Hitler would seek to fight during the 1940s. Germany's qualitative military strengths in the Second World War stemmed from an emphasis on what tradition, training, and experience had taught German officers such as Seekt. Namely, combined arms mobile tactics pursued by independent tactical leadership operating under a clear, concise, operational framework prepared by thorough staff work would more often than not carry the day on the battlefield. Germany's Second World War military weaknesses also stemmed from past decisions. Notably decisions made regarding relegating logistical considerations and intelligence work to second-class status, and other such failings at the strategic planning level. In addition, other problems were apparent. Seekt's emphasis on operational and tactical movement and mobility did not prove all-encompassing, for example, he devoted little time to address positional defensive warfare. Following the First World War the German army's training in positional defensive warfare had languished. In part, Von Seekt was justified in marginalizing such training. The First World War's early years had seen Germany sucked into a positional war, Stellungskrieg, in Western Europe that fatally drained the never abundant German manpower pool. Accordingly, to fight a fluid, mobile war served Germany best, especially when regarding Germany's multiple challengers on both her western and eastern borders. Nevertheless, the First World War's Western Front also offered Germany much to learn from a defensive standpoint. Just as German tactics helped break the stalemate in the Western war, an evolution in German defensive tactics had helped Germany gain relative strength vs. its allied foes even as the German army fought the positional defensive war Von Seekt abhorred.[47] During the bleak winter of 1916-1917 Field Marshall Paul von Hindenburg and General Erich Ludendorff had realized Germany's manpower problems meant a two front war represented a long-term loser for Germany. Hindenburg and Ludendorff as such sought a decisive result in Eastern Europe - at the same time holding off the British and French in the west. Nevertheless German defensive strategy in the west, predicated on holding territory at all costs, resulted in the German army taking a beating. If Germany was to execute an offensive worthy of chasing Russia from the war, than Germany needed a new defensive strategy to stop the allies in the west.[48] Consequently, Hindenburg and Ludendorff abandoned the strategy that required holding onto terrain with a lengthy but thin defensive trench line.[49] Instead, German combat units and engineers constructed new defensive positions behind the old line and Germany's leaders authorized a strategic withdrawal to the new defensive front. A shortened line released manpower for multiple new defensive lines - in depth, making better use of terrain, and constructed in such a manner as to flexibly preserve manpower.[50] The Germans placed the main line of resistance to the rear, behind a thinner screening line used to stop allied patrols from ascertaining the main defensive line's true location. The screening lines also serve a reconnaissance function of their own, with the trench lines arrayed in depth behind the advanced line assuming the most important defensive role. The primary advantage gained by screening the main defensive line came from shielding most defenders against the ever-present threat posed by massed allied artillery fire. Allied failure to recognize the German main defensive line's location, because of German defensive screening, meant the allies often wasted firepower on lightly manned defensive positions. Additionally, advancing allied infantry frequently outpaced heavy fire support when they moved beyond the range of supporting artillery - incapable of displacing forward through the churned up no man's land and former screening defensive line.[51] German firepower - arrayed successively and supporting the main defensive line - therefore would cut attacking allied infantry to pieces. German infantry maneuvered freely to either avoid allied military concentrations or overwhelm weaker allied assault elements. In addition, to bolster the main defensive line, Germany created additional defensive lines that allowed exhausted defenders to fall back and allowed new units to rotate forward to slow the allied assault. As the allied assault lost speed, defensive reinforcements flowed to the defensive front's threatened sector. After the weakened allied infantry bogged down, well within the German defensive positions, German counterattacks, supported by heavy weapons, pushed the surviving allied infantry from the German positions. Consequently, the defensive front elastically returned to its initial disposition. [52] Overall, although the German army under Seekt's hand was world-class, in spite of Versailles, it therefore had notable flaws as it attempted to grapple with traditional and modern issues. Von Seekt's greatest legacy came from the long-standing offensive tactics and doctrines he carried forward; combined arms offensive doctrines developed within a comprehensive framework. These doctrines mixed the old with new to maintain the German Army's emphasis on innovation, flexibility, and freedom at the tactical and operational level.[53] Doctrinal developments codified by Seekt thus set the stage for the additional building blocks that produced German military success; the German military establishment's training, organization, and choices in equipment. 1 |2 |3 |4 Next Page |
The Globe At War |
The Decades between the World Wars: How Germany Created a Dominant Army from the Ashes of Overwhelming Defeat - Part One |
The German War Machine's Doctrinal Base Disgusted by the extreme loss of life and lack of innovation characterizing the First World War's trench warfare dominated Western Front; Seekt resurrected traditional Prussian/German theories of war as part of his answer to the peril static attritional combat posed to Germany. Seekt had many influences from both the past and recent German history. For instance at the turn of the 20th century Schlieffen had authored the general operational framework for attacking the Western Allies in the event of war; as per German tradition it was up to his subordinates to fill in the details and then execute their plan as they best saw fit.[22] Seekt relied on such tradition as a basis for the army's organizing doctrines, published in 1921 as Command and Combat with Combined Arms. Doctrine was and is critical to any military establishment's success, with doctrine comprising: "…the collective body of thinking and writing that describes how a military organization expects to fight. It identifies the mission, assesses the enemy's capabilities, and suggests how the assets available should be orchestrated and employed to attain the desired ends. An effective doctrine addresses all three levels of warfare - the strategic, operational, and tactical - and links them together…At all levels, doctrine must be realistic, asking only the possible of one's forces and addressing real-world threats and objectives. It must be consistent...Finally it must be accepted by those who put it into effect."[23] For Germany doctrine meant centuries of study and practice seeking to solve the problem of fighting numerically superior foes on multiple fronts.[24] Therefore, Seekt, just as did his predecessors, knew Germany needed a strategy based upon mobility to balance the odds.[25] Seekt had ample precedent to rely upon in reforming the German army following the First World War. For instance, by the 19th century, Chief of the Prussian General Staff and Great General Staff from 1857-1888 Field Marshall Helmuth Carl Bernard Graf von Moltke had perhaps most successfully used theories of mobile war to resolve first Prussia's and, after unification, Germany's poor strategic situation.[26] Moltke won brief, decisive campaigns against Denmark in 1864, Austria in 1866 and France in 1870-71. Moltke's victory's validated the theories defining Prussian military success, including integrating new technologies into Prussia's mobilization and solidifying the General Staff's primacy as a source for professional leadership on issues associated with warfare.[27] Von Schlieffen's quest for a battle of annihilation, niederwerfungsstrategie, envisioned as a means for quickly destroying the enemy army, arose from the conceptual framework previously embraced by Moltke's General Staff in response to Germany's central European position.[28] The German focus on operational solutions to Germany's unique problems also built upon a long Prussian and then German military tradition of tactical brilliance. A tactical brilliance only eclipsed by Germany's devastating strategic failures during the First and Second World Wars. Nevertheless, following World War One, as German theoretical and strategic conceptions for total war evolved, other strains of thought within the German military establishment retained a traditional focus on seeking quick success on the battlefield. One important principle for success revolved around keeping the enemy off balance through gaining the initiative. Losing the initiative posed a special risk for the invariably outnumbered German army. To retain and hold the initiative the German military establishment had, as one solution, constructed strong command and control capabilities.[29] Emphasis on command and control had evolved during the fluid and fast changing environment represented by the 20th century battlefield. Decisions made in such a combat environment demanded timeliness and decisiveness. Senior commanders removed by great distance, tied to their communications equipment, faced making potentially crippling command decisions lacking relevance to the situation at the front. To avoid this problem required higher-level officers to provide clear goals, through directives, that local commanders implemented as they saw fit.[30] As noted by American military historian Geoffrey P. Megargee, "August Neidhardt von Gneisenau recognized that a senior commander could no longer be completely familiar with the situation that each of his subordinates faced, and so they promoted the idea that orders should indicate objectives while leaving subordinates the widest possible latitude in deciding how to achieve them."[31] Thus, from the top down, German military training sought to inculcate a value for clarity, precision, and flexibility. |
Engraving of August von Gneisenau (1760-1831) - Picture in Public Domain |
At the top level, so staff officers in the Prussian and German army could better serve, (in the German army staff officers held equal responsibility with their commander for the command decisions made) the prospective staff officers apprenticed in field commands before taking their staff positions.[32] Meanwhile, at the tactical level, German officer candidate schools emphasized flexibility and aggressiveness. Training priority in Germany's military schools focused on instilling and encouraging in officer candidates the ability to exercise independent thought under extraordinary pressure. German officer candidate schools course curriculum reflected the preference for producing junior officers and NCO's with a skill set capable of dictating a battle's flow. Finally, a crucial part of the German curriculum emphasized training every commander at a level well above his own, i.e. a platoon commander trains as a Company commander. If the situation on the ground changed, as it always does, local leaders adapted to better attain objectives without interference from higher up the command chain. In such a manner, momentum carried the German army forward rather than the reality in many other armies; many suffering from rigid command structures leaving junior officers feeling obligated to stop and "await fresh orders".[33] Moreover, when officers or NCOs were killed on the battlefield even a junior soldier could quickly step in, take over the unit, and meet the mission goals. Auftragstaktik is the popular, although over employed and somewhat historically inaccurate term - as few in Germany actually used this term during the 1920s and 1930s,[34] embodying these mission flexible concepts for meeting specific goals. Nevertheless, the frustration many feel as they attempt to wrap their minds around the concept behind Auftragstaktik illustrates the difficulty in executing the concept properly to this day - despite considerable efforts by the US military in particular.[35] In November 1934, Captain James C. Crockett, assistant U.S. Military attaché in Germany attended German army training exercises and noted the importance attached by the German army in training junior officers to issue realistic, simple, and clear orders; leaving creative options open for solving problems. Although the German General Staff often is portrayed as wooden and inflexible, the reality discussed herein explains why the early 20th century German army ranks among the premier fighting formations in modern history.[36] During The First World War, as had been commonplace during the Prussian army, local German commanders often took temporary command over larger formations led by higher ranked officers because the Germans took this belief in the local commander's expertise to a level whereby local commanders would command all reinforcements arriving on the battlefield.[37] American historian Robert Citino has also recently emphasized how "the 'independence of the lower commander' (Selbstandigkeit der Unterfuhrer)" created an advantageous situation for the German army on the battlefield whereby "A commander's ability to size up a situation and act on his own was an equalizer for a numerically weaker army, allowing it to grasp opportunities that might be lost if it had to wait for reports and orders to climb up and down the chain of command."[38] Moreover, the long standing Prussian and then German system of command and control further shortened the chain of command. The local commander on a battlefield, although responsible for the decisions made on the battlefield, also often received guidance from a General Staff officer previously assigned to him. This General Staff officer, well versed in the common operational scheme of maneuver embraced by the Prussian/German army, therefore was able to advise the local decision making officer in a manner consistent with the campaign's larger operational goals. With these General Staff officers present at their subordinate's headquarters it helped ensure continuity between the campaigns goal and the independent tactical methods used to attain that goal.[39] Seekt's training methodology built upon and emphasized such qualitative work to solve real problems that had confronted the German army during World War One. For example, after the First World War had begun the western front's attritional battle was the greatest problem that confronted the German army. The concentrations of available battlefield firepower simply wore out frontline units. During World War One, battlefields proved exceptionally deadly places for massed units of men, almost entirely because of technological reasons. The late 19th century-early 20th century revolution in arms had produced weapons designed to decimate concentrated army's; machine guns - often employed with interlocking fields of fire - enormous minefields, massed artillery, and poison gas. To combat these imposing threats combatants dispersed, and entrenched into the ground. By embracing dispersal, commanders reduced the proportion of casualties within front line units. Accordingly, trench based defensive systems had spread from Belgium to the Swiss border. If Germany expected to stay in the war it would have to return movement to the battlefield, but Germany's strategic level leadership had failed to come up with a viable answer. In early 1918 however, the answer to the Western Front's stalemate emerged. Germany resurrected a battlefield approach to warfare that drew on past tradition, doctrine, and training to emphasize a combined arms war of maneuver. Combined arms maneuver based warfare also later represented the essence behind German tactical superiority in the Second World War; providing a critical link between the 17th Century Prussian army and the Wermacht of the 1930s and 1940s. The German solution to the attritional problem on the western front therefore came through reestablishing a war of movement by relying first on existing doctrine, such as local initiative in command, and second, allocating greater firepower at the platoon and squad level. These decisions empowered tactical level combat officers by allowing them 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.[40] |
Stormtroopers on Germany's Western Front during World War I - Picture in Public Domain |