by J E Kauffman
As a rule the modern purely frontal battle means a slow start. Moreover, the lessons to be deduced from the failure of our enemies’ mass attacks are decisive against any imitation of their battle methods. Attempts at a mass breakthrough, even with an extreme accumulation of men and material, cannot be regarded as holding out prospects of success against a well armed enemy, whose moral is sound and who is not seriously inferior in numbers. The defender has usually succeeded in closing the gaps. This is easy enough for him if he decides to withdraw voluntarily, and it is hardly possible to stop him doing so. The salient thus made, enormously exposed to the effects of flanking fire, threaten [sic] to become a mere slaughter-house. The technical difficulties of directing and supplying the masses bottled up in them are so great as to seem practically insurmountable.
In the document, he goes on to explain that an attempt to assault the British sector could only have the objective of driving the English from the Continent. Even if the German army succeeded, he felt that the British would not give up nor could he assemble enough troops to launch a follow-up assault on the French. The only way to hurt the British, in his opinion, was unrestricted U-boat warfare to bring famine to the island. On a positive note, he wrote, Italy’s ‘internal conditions will soon make her further active participation in the war impossible …’, assuming Austrian successes continued. As for Russia, he claimed, all intelligence reports showed rapidly increasing domestic difficulties and internal problems might take the Russians out of the war. An offensive in the East would not be possible before April and he simply believed that would only put a strain on German resources and it might not bring an end to Russian resistance. Thus, he concluded, a decisive action in France was the solution:
The strain on France has almost reached the breaking-point…. If we succeeded in opening the eyes of her people to the fact that in a military sense they have nothing more to hope for, that breaking-point would be reached and England’s best sword knocked out of her hand. To achieve that object the uncertain method of a mass break-through, in any case beyond our means, is unnecessary. We can probably do enough for our purposes with limited resources. Within our reach behind the French sector of the Western front there are objectives for the retention of which the French General Staff would be compelled to throw in every man they have. If they do so the forces of France will bleed to death – as there can be no question of a voluntary withdrawal – whether we reach our goal or not. If they do not do so, and we reach our objectives, the moral effect on France will be enormous. For an operation, limited to a narrow front Germany will not be compelled to spend herself so completely that all other fronts are practically drained.… The objectives of which I am speaking now are Belfort and Verdun.32
Falkenhayn went on to explain that he chose Verdun because it was so close to the German railway system and a possible French assault from Verdun could also make the entire German front in the West untenable.
It is clear that Falkenhayn understood that he was no more likely to break the stalemate on the Western Front than the Allies had done in 1915. If Germany was to win the war, it had to be in the West and soon. He narrowed down possible objectives in the West to either Verdun or Belfort because British and French forces between Flanders and Champagne were too strong. Verdun had already been partially isolated during the 1914 campaign, which allowed the Germans to cut the rail line that passed through St Mihiel. In the Argonne, from the Vauquois area, German artillery interdicted the main rail line to Verdun from Paris. The question was whether the French would be willing to sacrifice their army to hold the city, which was reputed to be their strongest fortress. Falkenhayn did not know that Joffre initially had considered pulling back his forces from Verdun.33
Any attack in the West by the Anglo-French forces or the German army involved frontal assaults on a tactical level with a continuous trench system stretching from the North Sea to Switzerland. An offensive action involved either a broad front or a narrow front. With a broad front, the defender could not be certain where the actual main thrusts would take place and had to hold back his reserves and be careful not to commit them to counter-attacking against a divisionary thrust. The main problem was that before 1915 the French did not have enough heavy artillery for sufficient coverage of all sectors of a broad front making it easy to identify their point of attack. Pétain had already proclaimed, as did others, that ‘Artillery kills’ and that ‘Artillery conquers, infantry occupies’. The French lacked sufficient artillery to achieve this on a broad front in 1915. The alternative was a narrow front where artillery could be concentrated, but that also revealed the location of the main assault to the enemy allowing him to send in his reserves. This might work well for the methodical attack, but that would not lead to a massive breakthrough. Once taking the enemy’s first trench line, troops had to clear both flanks to prevent enemy enfilading fire into the line of advance. Meanwhile, advancing troops had to haul field artillery across no-man’s-land, already obstructed by shell craters, wire obstacles and often muddy ground. The French and Germans had already learned that trying to strike the second trench line before artillery had moved forward and to eliminate the remaining resistance points with machine guns often resulted in failure since this was the time when the defender counter-attacked. Falkenhayn realized this, but he also intended to employ new methods, weapons and tactics developed during 1915 that would help overcome these problems, or at least he hoped so. He planned to attack on a narrow front, but have his artillery lay down fire on a broad front to prevent the French from guessing from where he would launch the assault.
Beginning in 1915, the Germans worked on developing poison gas and the flamethrower. After an unsuccessful attempt to use chlorine gas on the Eastern Front in early 1915, they employed gas canisters with limited success at Ypres in April of that year.34 Both sides later utilized this deadly weapon and worked on developing counter-measures such as adequate gas masks. The German mask issued in the West from September 1915 until the end of the year included a face piece with a metal drum that held a filter. It was carried in a canvas bag that contained two additional screw-on replacement filters. The Germans called it a Linienmaske since it was made of a grey, rubberized cotton, although the official name was Gummimaske (rubber mask). The mask was effective against chlorine and tear gas. On 15 December 1915, the Germans tested the new phosgene gas, estimated to be almost ten times more deadly than chlorine, at Ypres by creating a gas cloud from cylinders. The British respirators designed only to deal with chlorine proved effective enough. The Germans only sent out patrols in an attempt to evaluate the results.35 The Germans had used the new gas on a couple of other occasions in France before December. As a result, the French equipped most of their troops by February 1916 with the new Tambute masks.36 The Germans lost the element of surprise with their early use of phosgene. Using both poison and tear gas as part of an assault forced the enemy to don their uncomfortable masks which limited their ability to see and engage the Germans.37 Since the Allied masks resisted the German gas attacks, the only alternative was to increase the duration of gas clouds until the filters in the French masks needed replacing. In addition, the Allies had decided to add phosgene gas to their assortment while the German masks were still not yet effective against it. The French started using phosgene at Verdun early in the campaign and this resulted in the Germans having to improve their own masks. The use of gas canisters was still the main method of deployment of gas, but the French had already initiated tests with 75mm gas rounds and put them in use early in the battle. This also led to the Germans developing their own gas shells making it possible to put the gas right on target.
The flamethrower could eliminate enemy strongpoints and serve as a terror weapon. Developed in late 1914, the Germans first employed this weapon on 26 February 1915 against the French at Malancourt and then against the British near Ypres at the end of July. Neither effort had remarkable success. Major Bernhard Reddeman and Richard Fiedler developed a two-man portable version
that had a range of less than 20m and sufficient fuel for less than a 2-minute blast.38 The weapon’s igniter turned the fuel into flame as it passed out of the nozzle. One man carried the fuel tank on his back and another held and aimed the hose that ignited and sprayed the liquid flame. A large stationary model had a range of about 40m and longer burn time. Their effect on the defenders was terrifying. Reddemenn commanded the first flamethrower unit. It included forty-eight pioneers with twelve small hand-pumped portable flamethrowers and two large stationary ones.39 Before the flamethrower, the most effective way to take out an enemy strongpoint was with teams that included grenadiers carrying a sack of hand grenades and troops with rifle grenade launchers. Like the flamethrower team, they had to get close to the target. The flamethrower teams became targets of revenge because of the demoralizing effect of their weapon.
At Verdun in 1916, artillery finally took precedence over French infantry as the most important combat arm. The French used older weapons, many stripped from the forts, to compensate for the deficiency in heavy artillery pieces. Both sides had continued to develop new ways of employing artillery. In 1915, trench mortars and the big guns had rained death over the battlefields of Western Europe. The trenches offered the only protection and neutralized the effects of direct-fire weapons like the French ‘75’. However, they became death traps when they were pounded by howitzers and mortars, which were in plentiful supply in the German army early in the war. In 1915, only the Germans had a good mix of artillery but in the West, it mainly performed in a defensive role. The infantry commanders had learned to keep their first line lightly manned to reduce casualties during enemy bombardment. When that line fell, they could launch a counter-attack from the second line with the support of their own artillery.
Until 1916, only ammunition and weapon shortages had limited the scale of bombardments. The French lacked indirect-fire weapons during those years and could not effectively breach barbed wire barriers or neutralize enemy trenches. The British introduced the ‘hurricane bombardment’ to the Western Front at Neuve Chapelle in March 1915. This was a short and heavy bombardment designed to break up enemy defences. It allowed the British infantry to achieve surprise and advance rapidly before the Germans had time send in reserves. This method worked well, except in places where the shelling failed to break up barbed wire obstacles. When ammunition was available, the British and French preferred prolonged bombardments that lasted for many hours or days. This alerted the Germans to the coming assault and gave them time to prepare. In 1915, the French began producing heavier weapons and a greater number of indirect-fire guns like mortars since the ‘75’ was almost useless in bombarding trenches.40 In 1915, the French took one major step forward by founding schools for the instruction of artillery officers. In late November 1915, the French army also issued a new doctrine for the artillery that called for using counter-battery fire rather than concentrating on enemy infantry. Unfortunately, many artillery officers ignored this. Pétain always emphasized the use of artillery for properly supporting his troops. Paul Strong and Sanders Marble credit Pétain with the idea of using meteorological data, such as air pressure, to improve firing accuracy and of having gunners practise pre-registered fire as well as maintaining a close liaison between the infantry and artillery.* Since he considered it a form of siege warfare, Pétain planned his operations accordingly – methodically.41 During the Champagne Offensive in September 1915, he moved his artillery as far forward as possible in order to give maximum support to his infantry during its advance to and past the first enemy trench. Once that goal was reached, he moved it forward to provide additional protection to the soldiers who moved against the next enemy position. In 1915, Nivelle went a step further as he came up with the creeping or rolling barrage. This prevented the enemy troops from leaving their shelters and taking up firing positions in their trenches after the barrage lifted but the infantry was still negotiating no-man’s-land. With the creeping barrage, the infantry followed the line of exploding shells at a distance of about 80m or more as it moved forward. The barrage could lift after hitting the enemy trench line or could continue to advance striking possible strongpoints beyond the trench line. It could also block the approach of enemy reserves from the second trench line. This required close coordination between the infantry and artillery commanders since the time schedule had to be detailed and accurate. The box barrage gave flanking protection to the advancing troops when it laid down fire on three sides.42 Signal rockets or flares helped control the artillery fire, but during the actual bombardment, they were often difficult to see.
During an Allied assault, the German long-range guns served in counter-battery fire, while the Allies generally tended to commit their guns to neutralizing the enemy infantry. Both sides continued to improve coordination for rolling barrages behind which friendly troops could advance. In one standard method, the barrage was often repeated several times to increase enemy casualties and produce false alarms. This caused the defenders to stay in their shelters longer, giving the assaulting infantry more time to reach the first line. By 1916, both sides acquired sufficient types of weapons – field artillery, trench mortars and heavy (siege) artillery – to give artillery a dominant role on the Verdun battlefield.
Tactics had drastically changed since the beginning of the war. No longer did battalions assemble for mass regimental assaults. The infantry company and platoon had become the main manoeuvre elements for holding strongpoints and penetrating enemy lines. That did not prevent the use of massed regimental and battalion attacks. Captain André Laffargue produced a pamphlet for the French army entitled ‘Étude sur l’attaque dans la période actuelle de la guerre’ in which he recommended the use of small units of specially trained assault troops whose efforts were coordinated with artillery support to breach an enemy defensive position.43 He impressed Ferdinand Foch who reassigned him to the general staff where he was ignored. It is claimed that the Germans found a copy of Laffargue’s pamphlet, which inspired then to create their own assault units and develop infiltration tactics.44 Laffargue also accurately summed up most French offensives of the first fourteen months of the war:
The characteristic of this attack is that it is not progressive but is an assault of a single rush; it must be accomplished in one day, as otherwise the enemy reforms, and the defense, with terrible engines of sudden destruction, will later recover its supremacy over the attack, which cannot quickly enough regain the mastery of this consuming fire. The whole series of frightful defences cannot be nibbled at successively; they must be swallowed whole at one stroke with one decision.*
He recognized that in these attacks that the troops employed in the assault were ‘far from being assaulting troops’. Having taken part in these mass assaults for nine months, he claimed he had been ‘part of the human canister’, or, as others would say, ‘cannon fodder’. He argued that assault troops needed well-established cohesion and special training. The men operating in the platoons and squads must work as a team. Extended duty in the trenches did produce stablility among small groups, but combat exercises and traditional training were needed behind the lines to achieve unit cohesion at battalion level. Serving too long in the trenches ‘has a tendency to kill the offensive spirit of the troops’. He stated, ‘A unit that has recently made a bloody effort is incapable of delivering a furious and unlimited assault.’ He wrote that the troops should be given activities that kept them active both when out of the line and in the trenches. In the pamphlet, he describes his ideal method of attack, but makes no mention of ‘infiltration’ and only discusses bypassing certain strongpoints. Nor does he discuss the actual creation of special shock troops, although he alludes to the fact that not every soldier in the line can be considered qualified as an assault trooper. Before continuing the advance on the second enemy trench line, machine guns and light artillery are supposed to have followed the infantry into the first line.
In March 1915, the German High Command authorized the VIII Corps to create a detac
hment for testing experimental weapons and new tactics to overcome the deadlock on the Western Front. Major Calsow from Pioneer Battalion 18 received command of this first unit of ‘shock troops’. This test unit consisted of two pioneer companies and a detachment of twenty specially designed 37mm Krupp Sturmkannone. These guns had overhead shields and the troops could easily manhandle them. The unit, known as Assault Section Calsow, first went into action near the Loretto Ridge (northwest of Arras) where it took heavy losses partially because the awkward gun shields drew enemy fire. Next, the unit went to Army Detachment Gaede in the Vosges. The Sturmkannone proved impractical and a liability for those assigned to it. Captain Willy E. Rohr, from a Guards Rifle battalion, took over the unit and reorganized it in August. Modified captured Russian 76.2mm field guns replaced the Sturmkannone. The detachment’s number of ‘storm troopers’ increased for operations in the Vosges the week of Christmas 1915 where it successfully took a key hill. Rohr’s assault battalion was reassigned to the 5th Army for the Verdun Offensive of 1916. In May 1916, the High Command ordered each army in the West to send six officers and NCOs to Rohr’s battalion for training. It was not until October 1916 that orders arrived for all armies in the West to form a battalion of Stosstruppen (shock troops). Over a year earlier, many regiments had already formed their own storm-troop units ranging from platoon to company size. Thus, during 1916 more Sturm battalions formed with two to three shock-troop companies, a machine-gun company, a trench-mortar company and a flamethrower detachment. In 1916, these units received the first issue of new steel helmets and other equipment. They played an important role at Verdun.