M3D1: “They Shall Not Pass”: Verdun, the Somme, and the Use of New Technology · Evaluate the impact of new weapons technology such as chemical weapons and long-range artillery on the men caugh

SUBSCRIBER BONUS SECTION [PAGES 97-104] Extra Round world's first nuclear-powered submarine, arrives in New York Harbor in 1958 after making the first voyage under the Arctic icecap.

SPRING 2013 I MHQ 97 SUBSCRIBER BONUS SECTION 4Yhat World War I erais Got.

Enamored with offensive schemes of war, military leaders entered 1914 expecting quick victory.

The result was instead a long, unprecedented slaughter BY JOHN PRADOS FRANCIS JOSEPH REYNOLDS AND C. W. TAYLOR, COLLIERS NEW PHOTOGRAPHIC HISTORY OF THE WORLD'S WAR. NEW YORK. N.Y.; P. F. COLLIER & SON. 1918 98 MHQ I SPRING 2013 T he armies marched off to war in August 1914.

Flags fluttered, bands played, and generals promised that soldiers would be home before the autumn leaves fell. Each of the Allies and Central Powers had painstakingly prepared for the conflict and expected a rapid, decisive result. By fall, however, fighting on the Western Front had ossified along trench lines, with the belligerents locked in a grim stalemate punctuated—over four long years—by spasms of horrific violence each time they attempted to break free of their earthen straightjackets. Millions perished.

Conventional wisdom suggests the generals and theorists who had spent years planning for the war had envisioned just such a bloody, defensive-minded struggle. Defense, this view contends, had become the most decisive form of warfare, a re- sponse to the development of a host of new, powerful weapons, particularly the machine gun. World War I, the argument goes, played out exactly as it had been planned.

In fact, the opposite is true. In the years before the great armies of Europe took the field in August 1914, the leaders of World War I overlooked or misread the lessons ofthe half dozen or more conflicts ofthe previous half century. Starting with the American Civil War and reaching all the way to the Balkan Wars of 1912 and 1913, increasingly sophisticated killing machines forced armies again and again to rely on entrenchments and de- fensive tactics. Yet the military minds who mapped out the opening of World War I saw in these new weapons only the in- creased lethality they could carry into battle. Enamored of of- fensive tactical theories, they put a premium on mobile warfare and seizing the initiative. Defense was all but forgotten as each military staff planned a war of big maneuvers. As a result, masses of men were slaughtered in the war's opening chapter, and all sides were forced into the deadly and prolonged trench fighting that would become the signature ofthe war.

On the eve of World War I, though all the combatants were infatuated with offensive warfare, top French officers were the most obsessed. One ofthe most ardent acolytes was Ferdinand Foch, the famed military thinker and commandant ofthe École Supérieure de Guerre who would rise to supreme command of the Allied armies in the war.

In his lectures—collected as a book that became a basic text for French officers—Foch declared, "victory is will." The army, he said, must be hurled "with all the means it possesses..

.as a whole on one objective." While Foch tempered such talk by emphasizing careful preliminaries to the main action, he argued that victory hinged upon the fury of the attack, along with mass, preparation, and momentum.

Another advocate ofthe offensive was Colonel Louis Loyzeau de Grandmaison, who headed the operations directorate ofthe French General Staff in August 1914. Grandmaison, like Foch, warned that too much emphasis on security—force protection as it would be called today—bred a dangerous tendency for hes- itation. Preparation was important, but action more so.

Britain's theorists, too, focused on improving the mobility of SPRING 2013 I MHQ 99 PRELUDE TO WORLD WAR I 1861 TO I914 forces.

F.

N.

Maude wanted to lighten the infantryman's load and integrate motor vehicles into the forces. Edward A.

Altham em- phasized reconnaissance in addition to the offensive. Stewart L.

Murray found classical Clausewitzean views transformed by progressively complex road and rail networks, advanced tele- phone and wireless communications, increasingly lethal weapons, the airplane, and the mass armies yielded by conscription.

Among the Central Powers, the reigning theories of war looked very similar. In Germany, the ideas of Prussian Count Helmuth von Moltke stul held sway over strategists, including the renowned general Colmar Freiherr von der Goltz, who in the late 1800s was more popular than Clause- witz, and Friedrich von Bernardi, a best-selling military historian who advocated ruthless ag- gression in his 1911 book Germany and the Next War. Considered the god of operations, Moltke had led the General Staff during the 1866 Austro-Prussian War and the 1870-1871 Franco-Prussian conflict. In both, he had relied on a mobile warfare in which armies seemingly remote and disconnected from each other con- verged to trap an enemy between them. Each war had been decided by a climactic final battle—at Königgrätz, to end the Austrian war after just seven weeks; and at Sedan, where the Prussians captured Napoleon III.

Moltke's famous successor. Count Alfred von Schlieffen, took this vision one step further, in- corporating a decisive battle (gesamtschlacht) into his operational blueprint for any war with Russia or France.

To Schlieffen, Königgrätz and Sedan were shining examples of how war should be fought and won. Moltke's infiuence persisted, particularly his practice of using rail- ways to speedily concentrate force at a selected point, a technique Schlieffen adopted and im- proved upon. Schlieffen died in 1913, months before World War I opened, but his ideas also lived on in what became known as the Schlieffen Plan, which provided a basis for Germany's opening gambit: a fast strike through France to Paris, a quick victory, and then the rapid re- deployment of troops by train to the east and a push into Russia before it could ready itself.

A s these generals and theorists planned for World War I, each had to account for more than half a century of technological advances. This was no simple matter; weaponry had evolved along every dimension and in dramatic fashion. Consider small arms.

In the latter half of the 1800s, the rifie began to sup- plant the rifled musket. Beginning with the Prussian army's adoption of Johann von Dreyse's needle gun in 1841 [see "The Gun That Should Have Changed Everything," Winter 2013], the Foch (above) and Moltke:

acolytes of the offensive breech-loading rifle became ubiquitous.

By the turn ofthe cen- tury, repeating rifles such as the Remington, Lee-Enfield, and the Mauser emerged as standard infantry arms.

The change was so great that early in the 20th century, a British military theorist estimated the lethality of small arms fire at five times greater than it had been in the American Civil War.

Artillery also evolved. Rifling apphed to cannon barrels in- creased effective ranges from 1,400 yards to as much as 2,700 by 1870.

Maximum ranges climbed to 7,500 yards.

Breech-loading artillery guns, first used in large numbers by the Prussians in the Franco-Prus- sian War, increased the rate of fire from two or three rounds per minute to double that. At the same time Alfred Nobel's invention of dyna- mite, patented in 1867, portended an era in which shells exploded with greater force. By 1890 European armies were almost uniformly equipped with breech-loading, long-range can- nons.

The innovation of recoil mechanisms also promised both greater accuracy and a higher rate of fire.

The French 75mm gun [see Weapons Check, Summer 2012], introduced in the late 1890s, used its own recoil to fire 15 rounds a minute, hitting targets 9,300 yards away.

Machine guns represented perhaps the most fearsome of all the changes. Invented in the 1850s, they were true novelties. There had never been automatic weapons so potentially devastating. Theoretically, the Gatling gun had a cyclical rate of fire of up to 600 rounds per minute. [See "Mr. Gatling's Game-Changing Gun," Spring 2010.] The machine gun's impact was initially muted, in part because of how it was used.

Gatling guns, for example, were not massed for eftect in Civil War days.

Early users also discov- ered a host of problems—ammunition supply and overheating barrels among them. Later in- novators improved upon the originals with such developments as strip-, belt-, and drum-fed ammunition and air- and water-cooled barrels.

In the 1880s Sir Hiram Maxim invented a machine gun that became the basis for the British Vickers-Maxim, the German Maxim, and other models used by armies the world over.

More followed, including the Hotchkiss and Lewis guns.

By 1914, in- fantry divisions of virtually every combatant had a complement of 24 machine guns.

Austro-Hungarian divisions were assigned 28 machine guns, their Russian counterparts 32.

Together, these new killing machines would eventually revo- lutionize the art of warfare. And the first signs ofthat revolution could be seen in the blood-soaked battlefields ofthe American Civil War. When the war began in 1861, the system of opera- tions—formations, evolutions, tactical maneuver, and weapons—remained explicitly Napoleonic. Union major gen- 100 MHQ I SPRING 2013 New artillery such as the Union's 3-inch ordnance rifle brought deadly, long-range accuracy to the American Civil War battlefield.

eral George B.

McGlellan would be nicknamed "Young Napo- leon," and a type of cannon would be known as a Napoleon. But by the end of the war four years later, the system resembled World War I more than earlier conflicts, even demonstrating the use of railroads for strategic movements.

Faced with new and frightening firepower, armies sought the protection of trenches.

Starting with the siege of Vicksburg in the spring and summer of 1863, defensive works began to dominate battles.

At Cold Harbor in June 1864, Confederates in entrenchments cut down some 7,000 Union soldiers in an af- ternoon. Prepared positions were a central feature of engage- ments at the Wilderness, Spotsylvania, and Lookout Mountain as well as the campaigns for Atlanta and Richmond-Petersburg.

With each battle, trench systems became increasingly sophis- ticated and difficult to capture. Only one man. Union colonel Emory Upton, devised a tactical solution. Traditionally, an in- fantry assault featured a slowly advancing battle line, with troops firing as they moved forward. But Upton realized that the key to attacking entrenchments was to get assault formations across the killing ground as fast as possible. At Spotsylvania in May 1864, he instructed his regiments to advance on a breastwork with speed and in narrow columns, reducing the number of troops vulnerable to fire at any given moment. They were not to halt to shoot but told to converge on a small sector of the Confederate works. Although Upton was wounded, his plan worked: His troops penetrated the Confederate line and held the position until ousted by Rebel reinforcements.

O fficial observers from European armies wit- nessed these developments. Attached to Confed- erate and Union forces, they filed copious reports on techniques, tactics, and weapons. All com- mented on the effects of prepared positions, ac- cording to an analysis by historian Jay Luvaas.

But this did little to shake their belief in the superiority of the offensive. Justus Scheibert, a Prussian observer on the Confederate side, went so far as to argue in his 1887 study of the Mississippi River cam- paign that dependence upon fortification deprived an army of freedom of action, tied down troops, and increased the danger of commanders adopting a defensive attitude.

In France, despite alleged interest on the part of Napoleon III, not a single Civil War lesson was reflected in operations during the Franco-Prussian War. More than a decade after Appomat- tox, the faculty at Frances Saint-Cyr military academy still had just three fortiflcation specialists. At the École Polytechnique, home for the study of military engineering, the fortification faculty consisted of only five officers.

Between 1871 and 1914, France did engage in a major pro- SPRING 2013 I MHQ 101 PRELUDE TO WORLD WAR I 1861 TO I914 gram of fortification construction and updating that yielded 166 new or refurbished works (including the fortress of Verdun).

Yet the focus was major works, not field fortification.

A few British students ofthe Civil War, meanwhile, had dared to argue that the increasing power of artillery meant infantry would be restricted to deployment in strongpoints or prepared po- sitions. During the early 1890s, Captain H.

R. Gall ofthe British Army published a book on modern tactics that touted the value of entrenchments; the Saturday Review noted Gall's views on "the indispensability ofthe spade as a military implement." Un- surprisingly, Gall failed to achieve much prominence as a war theorist.

In the half century following the Civil War, many conflicts il- lustrated how advancing weapons technology demanded new thinking on warfare.

The battlefield increased in every dimension.

The "killing ground" in front of a force deepened from roughly 300 yards to between 1,000 and 2,000, and the zone of engage- ment extended into the adversary's rear to a depth of another 5,500 yards or more.

An attacker could not close even the shorter distances quickly enough to preclude concentrated enemy fire.

At the same time, the fire density afforded by magazine-fed rifles, machine guns, and rapid-fire cannons was much higher.

Yet in each war, the military failed to recognize the profound change under way.

Theorists sought ways to preserve traditional forms in the face of change.

Though the cavalry charge had a lim- Britain secured victory in the Boer War only after building chains of blockhouse forts—a defensive strategy that WWI planners ignored.

ited role in Civil War combat, European planners continued to put men on horseback armed with sabers and lances.

The Austro-Prussian War and the Franco-Prussian War brought a rush to study German practice, almost immediately drawing attention away from the American Civil War experi- ence.

The two European conflicts energized the quest for lethal technology and planted the idea that war planners needed mass armies and schemes for their efficient deployment and opera- tion. France instituted conscription in 1872, swiftly followed by other continental powers. In 1914 only Great Britain fielded a volunteer force—but it had a naval reserve.

In the Russo-Turkish War of 1877-1878, entrenchments halted a Russian advance into the Balkans for four months, and there were extended battles against fortifications. Though these episodes were ignored, perhaps because the Ottoman Empire was not considered a first-class power, the breech-loading rifles that accounted for a large proportion of Russian casualties at the siege of Plevna sparked even more interest in weapons developments.

The most extensive colonial war of this period was the British conflict in the Sudan, which lasted almost two decades and fea- tured the battles of Khartoum (1884-1885) and Omdurman (1898).

The British defeat at Khartoum after a months-long siege by the Mahdist Sudanese army sustained the views of the- orists who argued the offensive was a superior form of war.

This position received further support in the Spanish-American War, where Spanish troops in larger numbers, with prepared positions plus smokeless powder (a technological advantage), were over- come by U.S.

forces.

The changing nature of warfare began to reveal itself fully with the turn ofthe century. In the Anglo-Boer War (1899- 1902), relatively small Boer contingents with good weapons pressed hard against larger British forces and laid siege to quite powerful garrisons. British armies in significantly superior numbers found hard going against long-range Boer fire. Even after defeating the main Boer field forces the British could not obtain final victory until their commander. Field Marshal Her- bert Kitchener, an engineer by training, began to rely on "block- house lines," chains of forts created to hold terrain.

The Russo-Japanese War (1904-1905) clearly demonstrated the new characteristics of warfare.

This was not quite an engagement of mass armies, but numbers reached as high as several hundred thousand on each side. This meant wide battlefronts, similar to what would dominate in World War I, which drastically limited flanking or encircling maneuvers. Battles opened with lengthy artillery preparation, machine guns were widely deployed on both sides, and brief intervals of mobile operations led to fights against entrenched positions. The Japanese launched human- wave attacks in the spirit ofthe offensive à outrance—the rufhless attack—and incurred enormous losses.

Japan lost 16,000 in one day attacking the Port Arthur fortress; in the field, casualties reached 23,000 in a week at the battle of Liaoyang and 70,000 at the culminating battle of Mukden in February and March 1905.

The casualty lists were longer for attackers than defenders in every major battle except Mukden. The portents were stark.

102 MHQ I SPRING 2013 Japanese infantry charge Russian barbed-wire defenses in the 1904-1905 Russo-Japanese War, which offered a model of modern warfare.

A s with the American Givü War, foreign müitary observers witnessed the conflict between the Rus- sians and the Japanese.

They conveniently ration- alized that "the means of war were changing so rapidly that any conclusions drawn from it could only be tentative," according to müitary historian Antulio Eche- varria, director of research at the U.S. Army War College. In- fantry tactics remained unchanged. These had evolved since the Franco-Prussian War to take account of concentrated fire by doing away with close formations; troops now were to advance loosely, then gather for a final rush.

If anything, the fighting in 1904-1905 reinforced the prefer- ence among European planners for the offensive. The machine gun was incorporated into offensive theories by positioning it as a fire-suppression weapon, shooting over the heads of attack- ers to keep the enemy down. Artülery was also deemed critical to fire suppression; its firing was to be closely coordinated with the infantry, the duel against enemy guns was considered pos- sibly decisive.

Still, theorists seem to have little interest in the relative dis- parities in losses between attacker and defender, or the fact that casualties had been so high. It was increasingly recognized that combat against prepared positions would be part of war— and that mere application of firepower would not drive defend- ers from their works. But fortresses and field works were not perceived as an inherent and inescapable new element; rather, generals and strategists saw them chiefly as impediments to the maneuver warfare they wanted to conduct.

The Balkan Wars of 1912 and 1913 offered military leaders a last preview of what industrial warfare would look like.

Again the technology and tactics of the Great War were all in- volved, including aircraft. This time mass armies took the field:

Bulgaria, Serbia, Greece, and Montenegro mobilized nearly a mulion men; Turkey had about half that number.

There were important sieges at Adrianople and Scutari as well as trench warfare along the line of fortifications the Turks had created to protect the Sea of Marmara. Nonetheless, Europe's military leaders missed the obvious. Nothing about the Balkan Wars was seen as having any application to theories of future conflict.

So came August 1914. The combatants executed their mobi- lization and raü-transport plans. Germany made ready nearly 1.5 mulion troops, whüe the French fielded more than 1 mulion, alongside 110,000 in the British Expeditionary Force and 117,000 in the Belgian army. The armies clashed along a front of several hundred mues.

Both sides had offensive plans, but the Allied side quickly lost initiative and acted in response to German operations. Efficient deployment brought mass armies ñ SPRING 2013 MHQ 103 PRELUDE TO WORLD WAR I 1861 TO I9I4 Both sides became locked in prolonged trench fighting after offensive schemes failed in the war's first weeks and led to devastating losses.

into contact in an environment where the murderous weapons the technologists had developed began to exact their toll.

In the battles of the Frontiers and the Marne the Germans launched armies like lightning bolts.

Once they clashed directly, daily engagements followed and the butcher's bill mounted.

With the failure ofthe direct approach, each side tried to flank the other in the Race to the Sea.

By the first week of October 1914—less than two months since the beginning of active campaigning—the Western Front was no longer the scene of maneuver warfare but had settled into the trench fighting that would endure through 1918. The size of mass armies, which required continuous supply flows over distances that grew during the initial advance, blunted any momentum. Cavalry proved nearly useless. The power of ar- tillery and machine guns forced men to seek cover, leading to trench systems.

Given the slaughter resulting from the offensive schemes that dominated the war's first weeks, it could not be otherwise. In August and September, the Germans had suffered nearly half a million casualties and the Allies somewhat more than that, a third to half of combat strength. No army could sustain such losses. One ofthe German commanders. Crown Prince Rup- precht of the Sixth Army, remarked that developments re- minded him of the Russo-Japanese War. Rupprecht's chief of staff wrote in his diary, "This trench and siege war is horrible!" The American Civil War veterans of Richmond and Peters- burg would have understood perfectly. It is often said that generals prepare for the last war.

That is not what happened be- tween 1865 and 1914.

Those decades witnessed a technological revolution not matched by military theory. Thinkers who worried that attrition would dominate the next war were ac- tively silenced by a system intent on preserving traditional roles and missions. Generals permitted doctrinal change only at the margins and were fixated on concepts of mass warfare certain to give those deadly weapons maximum scope. The soldiers paid the price.

MHQ MHQ contributing editor JOHN PRADOS is a senior fellow ofthe Na- tional Security Archive in Washington, D.C.

His latest book is Islands of Destiny:

The Solomons Campaign and the Eclipse ofthe Rising Sun (NAL/ Caliber). He is completing a study ofthe "family jewels," a series of CIA documents outlining the agency's misdeeds from the 1950s to the 1970s.

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