Part 5

After the Battle of the Marne, the War in the West assumed on the German side first of all the character of a defence accompanied by offensive tactics, and subsequently, after the attack at the Yser had proved unsuccessful and when further troops had to be conveyed to the East, was completely transformed at the end of November, 1914, into an entrenched war. It ought, however, to be realised that though in the World War entrenched fighting has gained such prevalence and importance, this is not necessarily a result of the highly developed technical science of our age, but first and foremost the result of the inability of our enemies to break through the German fronts in the East and the West. If the armies of the two contending parties had been equally efficient, it would have been impossible for us to maintain our positions for any length of time, in view of the overwhelming numerical superiority of the forces which were directed against ourselves and Austria-Hungary from all sides. It lay with our opponents with their vast numbers, when they had forced us to retreat, to give to the War once again the character of a war of movement. They did not succeed in doing so. On the other hand, the forces of the Central Powers were insufficient to enable them to push the offensive to any considerable extent beyond the permanent positions taken up on the Western front at the end of 1914 and on the Eastern front in the autumn of 1915, and on their side to pass once more to the war of movement. This was reserved in the further course of events for the Serbian and (a year later) the Roumanian theatres of war. In view of our central position, we were obliged, since we had not succeeded in breaking through at the Marne, to content ourselves with an "offensive with a limited goal," to use the words of Clausewitz. He says further: "A defence which is organised on conquered territory has a much more irritating character than one upon our own soil: The offensive principle is engrafted on it in a certain measure."[7] The course of the World War has quite confirmed this. But at the same time this view involves the admission that the maintenance of such a defence ought in itself to be considered as an important success. Apart from this offensive defensive, the only possibility for the Central Powers could be to anticipate the enemy's actions in particular cases, as was done by our army at Verdun and by the Austro-Hungarian army in the Venetian Alps; the initiative as a whole we were obliged to leave to the enemy. Consequently, we were driven to the tenacious, to a large extent passive, retention of our entrenched lines, and to their consolidation with the aid of every means furnished by the art of field-fortification.

According to the notions that prevailed up to that time, the possibility might have been considered, where our troops were suffering heavy losses as a result of holding on under exposure to the fire of the enemy's heaviest artillery and bomb-throwers, and where the latter had done destruction to our trenches, of allowing the enemy to break through, and then driving him back again by means of the reserves at the back of our lines. This procedure was, in fact, from the beginning employed several times with success at various sections of the front against bodies of the enemy forces which had broken through. To extend it systematically to larger sections of the front, and thereby on our side to resort to a certain extent to the methods of the war of movement, seemed to the Supreme Command for a long time inadvisable, in view of the limited forces and artillery at their disposition. Experience had, moreover, shown how difficult it is to straighten out salients which have once been formed on an entrenched front. Even when salients have been enveloped, they have, by the very nature of modern methods of fighting and effectiveness of weapons in entrenched warfare, been held both by ourselves and by our enemies, in so far as the nature of the ground made this possible.

The more and more insistent attempts of our enemies to prepare the way for their infantry by the mechanical power of bomb-throwers and heavy artillery led to a different method of defensive fighting. The German Army Report of the 17th of April, 1917, describes it briefly in the following words:

"In the presence of modern artillery fire, which flattens out positions and produces broad deep craters, rigid defence is no longer possible. The struggle is no longer for a line, but for a whole deeply echeloned fortified zone. So the contest for the foremost positions surges this way and that, with the aim, even if it involves the loss of implements of war, of saving the lives of the men, and at the same time of weakening the enemy by inflicting on him severe and sanguinary losses."

This procedure preserved the lives and at the same time the morale of the troops, who now no longer saw themselves to the same extent as hitherto exposed without means of defence to the devastating fire of the enemy. The enemy could be allowed to boast of his slight local successes, if only his attempts to break through were frustrated. It remained none the less a prerequisite condition of this new procedure that adequate reserves of troops for the counter-thrust, as well as munitions, should be at hand. Deficiencies in both these respects were revealed more than once in the defensive engagements of the years 1915 and 1916 on the Western front.

It did not seem advisable to leave large sections of the front open to the enemy with a view to subsequently meeting him in a great offensive engagement on the French or Belgian territory occupied by us, thereby giving the situation quite a different character from a strategic point of view. Such a counter-attack on a large scale would have involved the reconquest of the newly-organised enemy positions, and if the counter-attack did not effect a complete recovery, this method would in course of time have amounted to the surrender of larger and larger portions of the enemy territory occupied by our troops. To be sure, many of our positions exhibited serious defects, since their selection was not the result of forethought and a free choice; they were situated wherever our own or the enemy's attack had been brought to a standstill in the autumn of 1914. Moreover, quite apart from the moral factor, which in these days of extreme publicity has quite another significance than was formerly the case, and apart from the endeavours of the enemy Press to exploit for their own ends even our most trifling reverses, such reverses as were inevitable from time to time, the objects at stake were far too precious to justify us in yielding up large stretches of territory, even if it were only temporarily. We had to strive to turn to the best possible account the productive district of Northern France, with its wealth of industries.

The shifting back of portions of our front in the district of the Ancre, the Somme, and the Oise at the end of the winter of 1916-17 did not take place until the situation as a whole had been to a certain extent transformed, and after we had been able to prepare stronger and more favourable positions in the rear. This evacuation of the front line took the enemy more or less by surprise. Our skilfully executed withdrawal resulted in considerable losses to the enemy when they subsequently pressed forward, while we gained time as well as greater security and husbanded our forces. Moreover, it was only the most westward projections of our front which were concerned in this withdrawal.

According to Clausewitz, war must be subject to the one supreme law of decision by force of arms. In this sense did Frederick the Great, Napoleon, and Moltke conduct their operations. With them it was a question of the annihilation of the enemy's forces, not of the winning and keeping of provinces. If the entrenched battles of the present War had for their purpose the holding of ground that had been won, none the less the implied contradiction with the theories of the greatest generals of modern times is only apparent. In the World War it was a question of battle-fronts which we held and in contending for which our opponents sacrificed the blood of their troops, and not of a cordon of positions after the fashion of those of the eighteenth century. The entrenched lines of that time served principally to keep the enemy at a distance, and as far as possible to obviate a pitched battle. Considering the inadequacy of the means of attack at that time and of the old hired armies, as well as the inferior mobility and deficient driving force of a linear _ordre de bataille_ they frequently fulfilled their purpose.

When, however, war was dominated by the will of a powerful leader, it took on immediately quite a different aspect. Nevertheless it must not be overlooked that even Napoleon frequently advocates entrenched positions, and that he himself at times, when his troops had been brought to a standstill, had recourse to them, for instance in 1807 at the Passarge, and in the autumn of 1813, when, though his defence remained mobile, he constructed extensive temporary fortifications on the Elbe. Frederick the Great, too, finally adapted himself to a Bunzelwitz. Already at the conclusion of the campaign of 1758, he admitted[8] that to attack the enemy without having first secured for oneself a superiority as regards firearms would be much as if a mob armed with cudgels were to engage an armed military force; that it was necessary to adopt the Austrian system of a powerful artillery, however inconvenient this might be; and that lessons might be learnt from the enemy in regard to the skilful exploitation of the ground.

"The best infantry in the world," he said, "may in certain cases be thrown into disorder, when it has to contend against the enemy, his guns, and disadvantages of ground. Our own infantry, enfeebled and demoralised alike by victories and defeats, demand to be sparingly employed for difficult undertakings. One must be guided by a consideration of their intrinsic worth."

After the Seven Years' War, the King gave even more emphatic expression to these views in the military section of his _Politisches Testament vom Jahre 1768_. In this he says: "We must reckon upon the possibility of a mere contest for entrenched positions (_Postenkrieg_) with the Austrians"; and he says further:

"Formerly victories were won by the courage and strength of an army; now it is always the artillery that decides, and the skill of a general consists in bringing up his troops against the enemy without allowing them to be crushed before the beginning of the offensive proper."

Although the conduct of war at the time of Frederick the Great, being based upon entirely different political and economic conditions, was quite different from our conduct of war, none the less it engendered many phenomena, as is proved by the King's observations, which have been repeated in the present World War, though in a different form. In any case it is clear from the words of King Frederick that both during and after the Seven Years' War he was constantly at pains, pen in hand, to attain clearness with regard to the most important questions of the military art. We may well see in this an exhortation that we should apply to every innovation that is to be introduced the touchstone of the experiences of previous wars, if we desire to be preserved from one-sidedness.

Hence it would be wrong to maintain that, in the future, entrenched warfare must necessarily play such a dominant part as it has played in the present War. Even King Frederick speaks of an entrenched war against the Austrians only as a consequence of their skill in choosing favourable positions. That, even in his later years, he still conceded the chief importance to decision on the field of battle is evident from his plans for the Bavarian War of Succession, and in spite of the inaction which, as it turned out, marked the course of this armed demonstration--for it was really nothing else--here too he had based his chief hopes upon a "good battle" in Moravia.

We shall have to consider how, in future, to preserve for war the character of the war of movement, all the more so since, in the World War, it has only been by the war of movement that we have reaped decisive results. It will, of course, be accompanied by many of the features of entrenched warfare, and, in consequence of the necessity of bringing up and setting in operation the numerous present-day methods of attack, it will be slow. An approximate illustration of this is furnished by the course of the operations in East Prussia and Lithuania and of the Germano-Austro-Hungarian offensive in Galicia and Poland in the summer of 1915, as well as by the campaigns in Serbia, Transylvania, and Roumania; and the rapid progress of operations in these instances furnishes convincing proof that the resolute will of a leader, combined with the valour of his troops, is capable of overcoming those difficulties which the bringing up of their numerous weapons of war entails upon a modern army. For this kind of warfare we ourselves had received just the appropriate training, and we were in fact superior to all the other armies. Such a form of warfare is decisive, and will always remain decisive; the years which we have spent in our trenches do not alter this fact in any way.

That spirit of the offensive which is peculiar to our army we must study to preserve by every means in our power. It has achieved striking results in this War, and has recently once again proved its effectiveness in the summer of 1917 in Eastern Galicia and in the defensive battles in North France and Flanders. But we must not lose sight of the fact that from time to time, at the beginning, a systematic adherence to offensive tactics, even where the situation rendered it more advisable to make full use of the strength which the effectiveness of present-day weapons gives to defensive tactics, cost us a heavy sacrifice. In any case the War has proved that the assertion often made in time of peace that the spade digs the grave of the offensive is not correct. This assertion may be compared with the saying which was current in the Prussian army, to its very great detriment, before the battle of Jena: "Skirmishing encourages the scoundrel in human nature." From the military point of view Goethe is right when he says: "For it is just where ideas are lacking that a phrase is most welcome." Catch-words are always prejudicial in their effect, and most of all so when it is a question of the blood of our sons and brothers. It was not only King Frederick who expressed his sense of the importance of selecting strong positions. Napoleon, the representative of the most uncompromising offensive, told the officers of his engineer-corps in 1806 that in the coming campaign against Prussia he intended that a very great quantity of earth should be shovelled up.[9] And Moltke writes[10]:

"The offensive is by no means merely tactical. A clever military leader will succeed in many cases in choosing defensive positions of such an offensive nature from a strategic point of view that the opponent is compelled to attack us in them.... A strategical offensive consorts very well with a tactical defence."

It was, it is true, as early as 1865 that the Chief of the General Staff of the Prussian army wrote those words: "But he belonged to the number of those great and rare men in whose case a profound study of theory has almost been a substitute for practice."[11] Thus Königgrätz, Metz, and Sedan did not cause him to alter his views materially. Again, in 1874, he says:

"I am convinced that, as a result of the improvement of firearms, the tactical defensive has acquired a great advantage (from a local tactical point of view) over the offensive. It is true that in the campaign of 1870 we always took the offensive and that we attacked and captured the strongest positions of the enemy, but with what a sacrifice? It seems to me to be more advantageous only to proceed to an offensive after having repelled several attacks by the enemy."[12]

The Field-Marshal certainly did not overlook the fact that such an opportunity of this nature as presented itself to Napoleon at Austerlitz occurs but seldom and cannot be created at will. It is sufficient, then, to draw attention to the fact that any leader who has recourse to defence, wherever this is in conformity with the situation, is showing himself in full agreement with the greatest military leaders of the past.

War is, to quote the well-known phrase of Clausewitz, "the continuation of politics by other means." It has already been mentioned that it has resulted from the political and economic situation that we and our allies have had to wage battle on the two fronts under difficulties which had hitherto not been suspected and which have continually increased. It was this that gave rise to the peculiar form of the present War, as well as to the necessity, notwithstanding the power of the blows which we dealt, of continually husbanding the forces at our disposal. Hence the judgment pronounced by Clausewitz on the conduct of King Frederick in the year 1760 is fully applicable to our Supreme Command. He said[13]: "The whole campaign exhibits a husbanding of forces, accompanied by the greatest activity and skill." Numerous other comparisons with the Seven Years' War present themselves, only that as the theatre of war, in place of the Eastern and Central districts of Germany on which Frederick the Great fought, we must substitute Europe. Just as at that time Prussian regiments fought at Rossbach and a month later at Leuthen, so now our army corps and divisions have fought first in the West, then in the East, then in the Balkans, and _vice versa_. Just as Frederick the Great at that time held the inner line, so did we also in the World War. This has proved to be to our advantage (just as it proved to Frederick's advantage), even though the difficulties of the situation as a whole still remained. If, as we hope, policy succeeds in future in preventing the recurrence of such a menacing situation, or at any rate in producing the effect that we shall have greater freedom for violent and decisive blows in one direction, then the War will take a different shape and will be more like former wars.

Our business, therefore, is to maintain the fundamental ideas of war as they lived in the German army up to the year 1914, to soak them in the experiences of the present War, and to make the fullest technical use of these experiences, but to do all this without giving an entirely new direction to our thinking on strategy and tactics. We can only strive continually after perfection; we cannot attain it. Even King Frederick had to resign himself to this fact. In the Testament of 1768 he writes:

"The military art demands continual study, if one wishes to attain a thorough mastery of it. I am far from flattering myself that I have exhausted it. I am even of opinion that a human lifetime is not long enough in order to pursue it to the very end, because with every fresh campaign I have acquired new views as the result of new experiences, and because there still remain a multitude of things concerning which fate has not permitted me to collect any experience."

Even less than at the time of Frederick the Great, when conditions remained in all essential respects unchanged, and such alterations as occurred in the weapons of war were insignificant as compared with to-day, can we now tell whether the next campaign will not cause us to form new views. Napoleon once declared that one must alter one's tactics every ten years, if one wished to maintain one's superiority. We proceeded in accordance with this principle prior to the War. Our armaments were at the highest level of efficiency; our service regulations were entirely up to date and adapted to the most recent experiences of war, in particular the experience of the Russo-Japanese war. This in itself is an indication that the World War need not effect revolutionary changes; in fact it is impossible that it should do so. On the whole, our training was quite on the right lines. The wide scope which our regulations always allowed made it easy for the troops to adapt themselves to the needs resulting from the effect of modern weapons. Thus they adapted themselves to the entrenched warfare to which they were unaccustomed and which they disliked. The principles for attacking enemy positions and for the defence of one's own have, as we have already mentioned, been changed several times, in accordance with the conduct of the enemy and the nature and strength of his weapons. In matters of detail new experiences have been gleaned over and over again, but the fundamental tendency of our regulations has not really been affected. It has been proved they were right in everywhere giving precedence to mind over form, for that adaptability which had been inculcated in our whole army down to the man in the ranks proved decisive. It resulted in the fact that the spirit and the nature of this War were recognised in the army long before they were generally recognised at home.

It is true that during the long peace the army had become very inert in many respects. Innovations were only tardily adopted. Many tried to extract from the regulations a compromise between what was old and past and what was new and enduring. In this they overlooked the fact that even enduring things will constantly call for improvements. This applies also to the experiences afforded by this World War. They cannot continue indefinitely to be authoritative any more than the experiences of earlier wars, if only because the development of technical science both on the land and in the air can never come to a standstill. Above all, the individual must impress upon himself that a certain partiality must always attach to his own particular experiences. Our troops have exhibited a striking faculty of adapting themselves to circumstances, but the same cannot be said of all their officers; and this prolonged trench warfare in itself has a dangerous tendency to engender a one-sided view. It has also to be remembered that the conditions in the East and the West respectively were entirely different.