Comment by choeger | Hacker News Reader

Comment by choeger | Hacker News Reader

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While that article rightfully points to the operational advantages of the defender (coordinated counter attacks with unhindered artillery support) it leaves out some of the options that could have changed the situation: Air force, tanks, and motorization.

Each of these techniques had the potential to dramatically shift the balance of the war:

Air attacks could have taken out the counter artillery batteries. (Look at what planes Germany threw over the channel.)

Tanks could have carried the advance much faster (and did in the later stages of the war) and, more importantly, made counter attacks so much more difficult.

Motorization, in particular the use of light mobile infantry (e.g., German Kradschützen) could have enabled quick lateral movement of troops. Instead of trying to breakthrough over maybe 5km of the front, mobile units could have fanned out to attack the first line from the flanks over a range of tens of km.

All these "wonder weapons" did exist in WW1 but were not deployed in large formations (except for tanks). I think the main reason was that there simply was no large industry supporting the armies with these systems when the war started.

I do agree, but he does call it out as "part 1" and he is going to discuss the options that could have changed the situation next week.

> Next time we’ll take a look at the solutions that actually did disrupt this trench stalemate and consider the degree to which such solutions could have been implemented any earlier than they were.

This is not only the territory of dubiously useful counterfactuals, but also doesn't square with the actual history of the day.

Some of the faults I see with this way of thinking:

A. The pieces of modern 'combined arms' forces, like tanks and war planes, were not advanced to the point where they could achieve the 'combined' part. The entire reason why these weapons work so effectively in modern doctrine is that they operate together with infantry. Tanks of this era were brand new, extremely experimental weapons. They moved at the speed of a 100+ year old tractor. This is not a weapon yet capable of being deployed en masse and just winning the war like that.

B. To suggest that these weapons were 'capable' of winning the war, but just weren't deployed correctly or in enough numbers is to project incompetence on to military leaders of the past. Clearly they did try these things, and they did not work. There was no reason to expect that if tanks with 1918 level technology didn't achieve much success, then they should have just tried throwing more at the equation, or to expect modern combined arms doctrine to just spring out of their minds fully formed.

C. It's been touched on in the (very good) original post, but the land of the western front, torn up by artillery and barbed wire, was not the suitable environment for mechanized warfare to be developed. Doctrine can't spring forth from nowhere to solve a problem. It has to accompany these changes in military technology under conditions that allow commanders to experience what this technology is and isn't good at, and 100 year old trucks were certainly not going to be great at blitzing across crater-strewn Flanders.

D. You suggest this all may have been a matter of no ready-to-go industry existing for these new weapons. I would argue that if there was ever a thought they had a solution involving these tools, the massive armament industry of WW1 could easily have been brought to bear upon making them.

Now I am really, really far from a military aircraft history guy. So I don't feel super comfortable commenting on the air theory, but from my limited reading I believe the problem to be one of engine design and general new-ness of these things as weapons themselves (just like tanks).

The Wrights flew their powered plane in the end of 1903. WW1 is almost exactly 10 years after that. Again, it is unreasonable to expect the technology to be at the point to support modern doctrine. These were brand new, and engines were simply not both strong and light enough to create the kinds of war planes you'd see in the next 30 years.

To summarize though, again, I think the most salient point is really just that people of the past are often not as illogical about these things as you might expect. They wanted to end the war. If there was even a sliver of a chance of any of these weapons being 'the' breakthrough, they would have pushed the technology as far as it can go to find it. The fact that they did not, is evidence enough. If the solution was simple, it wouldn't have been a stalemate.

This is a great response. I often describe this as the 'video game tech tree' problem. It is very easy to know where to put time/resources when you know what the next step of the tech tree is and how it will help solve problems. At the time it is far more difficult to know which of the many possible options will result in a tool/outcome that will be the solution to the current problems.

This has nothing to do with contemporary officers being incompetent or illogical (Although precisely this kind of officers seems to exist in each war. At least at the beginning...)

I think the main problem here is that new doctrines are hard to develop during wars. The German Stoßtrupp doctrine is a succesful example, btw. The various forms of artillery support are another. But these doctrines were developed around existing tools.

If you look at the planes of 1917 or 1918, you find surprisingly sophisticated tactical and strategic bombers. A Schwerpunkt attack under local air superiority would have been very difficult, logistically and tactically, but the planes existed.

Regarding the tanks, you just have to look at the FT17 - it came too late for the French but it was exactly the right tool and could have been built by the Germans as well. The relatively low speed doesn't really matter once the enemy's first line is breached, a few dozen of these tanks would effectively prevent any counter attack and could immediately pressure the second line. They would also draw a lot of artillery fire and massively reduce the value of the indirect artillery pieces that dominated the battlefield.

At the same time, every army could have fielded motorized infantry with motorcycles (afaik only the US did). Such troops would obviously be useless in the first wave of the attack but they could push through a breakthrough and outflank counter attacks. The technology and equipment did exist, but here I think the contemporary doctrine would not allow for such relatively autonomous and expensive small units.

I am no expert on air warfare either, but, in support of your arguments here, I think it is worth pointing out that in the early years of WWII, despite the much-advanced air-warfare technology, neither Germany's bombing of Britain nor Britain's bombing of Germany had the effectiveness that was expected. It is true that Germany made effective use of airplanes in its early invasions, but it did not save them at Stalingrad or Kursk.

One cannot seriously discuss the advantage new technology will bring without considering the opposition's response, which often quickly nullifies the initial advantage, e.g. gas -> gas masks, submarines -> convoys.

In the interwar period, many leading air power theorists were of the opinion that an unrestricted bombing campaign of your enemy's cities would cause them to collapse in a matter of weeks [1].

Needless to say, 100 years of experience in warfare has provided several examples of trying to destroy a country primarily through a bombing campaign, and the number of times this can merely be argued to be successful can be counted on one hand. The number of times it has been unquestionably successful remains at 0.

[1] I just re-checked the quotes in J. F. C. Fuller's "The Conduct of War", and the general he quotes gives the timeframe of less than a week, after air superiority has been won, specifically advocating that the war would be won before the enemy has mobilized.

You should read up on modern (not Soviet) accounts of the battle of Kursk. The effect of the Luftwaffe was huge.

As it failed to stop the Red Army's advance to and into Germany, that is beside the point here.

In fact, as Wikipedia puts it "The Battle of Kursk was the first time in the Second World War that a German strategic offensive was halted before it could break through enemy defences and penetrate to its strategic depths. Though the Red Army had succeeded in winter offensives previously, their counter-offensives after the German attack at Kursk were their first successful summer offensives of the war." [my emphasis] The sources given for these observations are not Soviet ones.

So the more you emphasize the role of the Luftwaffe at Kursk, the more you support my case!

You really ought to read up on the matter. Kursk was, on the onset, impossible odds. Yet the Wehrmacht inflicted massive casualties with relatively small own losses. If I am not mistaken, the level of destruction was not reached on a battlefield again until the first US-Iraq war. Of course the German offensive didn't succeed, but the Russian counter offensive didn't, either. The whole thing was a total strategic Soviet success, but operationally and tactically it demonstrated the value of a mechanized, combined-arms firepower doctrine.

And why ought I read up on the matter? Am I going to find out, contrary to what I have been led to believe, that the Germans' mastery of a mechanized, combined-arms firepower doctrine saved them from the Red Army?

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