The Owen Gun War Crime Trial
The Owen Gun War Crime Trial
They Did Not Care About The Colour, This Is What Every Australian Soldier Wanted For Christmas in 1941. The Owen Gun.
Why is a Rifle a Rifle and not a Gun? Well a Rifle has rifling within their barrel that spins the bullet, Where a Smooth bore musket or a shot gun has a smooth cylinder called the bore inside the barrel of the gun.
Does a handgun have rifling? The answer is invariable ‘yes’. However, even though both revolvers and pistols (semi-automatics) have rifling they are both handguns. Maybe the terminology ‘Rifle’ has stuck to long arms because with rifling they are more accurate than a shotgun or a hand gun.
A Sub Machine Gun is called a Gun, but it has rifling and all Machine Guns have rifling, but are always referred to as a gun. Artillery began as smoothbore cannons and have always been referred to as a ‘Gun’. Generally, all artillery has rifling except for some modern tank guns which are smoothbore and fire fin guided projectiles which only protrude after they leave the muzzle then guiding the missile to the target. Most Mortars are smoothbore but are generally referred to as Mortars and not Guns, even though they are really guns. If you get stuck on the meaning of a word or are interested use the link to Glossaries attached to this site.
To listen to a story or to read a book, the writer, either has to presuppose that the reader or listener has the required background knowledge to understand where the scene is set or supply that information himself. When the story or book is set, not just in other places ,but in other times of history the writer has to inform the reader on what were the norms and standards of those times . So that the reader can form an opinion on the characters, placing the players behaviour in the balance, judging for themselves on the guilt or innocence of the parties.
To advance the truth we have to ask several questions
“Why was a Sub Machine gun urgently needed by Australia in World War Two?”
And
“Why did Britain and Australia (The Allies) lose the first 2 ½ years of World War Two?”
And
“Why did the Allies win the last three years of World War Two?“
3D Cutaway of the Owen Gun, with a 33 shot Magazine they can supply the mobile firepower needed.
The quick answer to all questions is “Firepower”.
To explain the answers to all questions in a short synopsis, which will be expanded with more complete information in the following pages;
Is that, the enemy had superior equipment and tactics not just in air superiority but in infantry tactics. They had made much better use of the lessons taught so expensively in the last few months of World War One.
General Oskar von Hutier had conceived and trained the “Stormtrooper” tactics called “deep infiltration’;
which Germany and Japan had practised to perfection between the World Wars.
The Static Lines of Defence.
Britain and Australia planned to fight World War Two with the same infantry tactics of World War One, static lines of defence. France had spent nearly its whole defence spending on the static ‘fixed in concrete’ Maginot line. Australia had been planning the Brisbane Line since 1912 and intended to rely on it again in 1942.
All British and Australian (Allies) land forces were under equipped, (under gunned) to counter “Deep Infiltration” tactic, the only tactic which could combat or counter this tactic was superior section/ rifle squad fire power. The full development of ‘Deep Infiltration’ was called ‘Blitzkrieg’.
The Allies (Britain and Australia) armies smallest military unit was the section or Rifle squad of eight men. They were equipped with the Lee Enfield .303 Rifle. Their Generals considered that the riflemen were the main arm and supported them within by a two man team operating a Light machine gun, a Bren or a Lewis gun. The Bayonet was the only official close quarters defence. When the enemy were in your trench it was too late for grenades. The British and Allied Generals still had an ingrained idea, from the last Century of the ‘Thin Red Line’ and thought that a bullets only purpose was to keep the enemies heads down until the men could get in close with the bayonet. Then the enemy were supposed to run away and disperse. It was nonsense in World War One and it was nonsense in World War Two. In confined conditions such as trenches, dugouts, fox holes, jungle redoubts, there was no room to use a six foot long pike. This was the combined length of the Lee Enfield Rifle and its 1907 pattern bayonet.
Authors Note
My Grandfather spent four years on the Western Front, when he had to go, ‘Over the Top’, he left his rifle (of which he was very fond)& bayonet behind and took a short entrenching shovel sharpened on three sides. It was like a battle axe, he and many others found it much more suitable for the medieval hand to hand combat of the trenches. It could be used to stab or chop. It could not get stuck and need life costly time removing it.
In these almost primeval underground trench battles imagine the effect of one man with a sub machine gun at a range of ten feet, game over.
One of my favourites MG34, these are very fast powerful machineguns over 1000 rounds per minute of 7.92 x 57 Mauser.
The New Tactics
The Germans and Japanese instead organised their sections to support their main arm the machines guns and equipped each section with two belt fed light machine guns such as the MG 34 and the MG42 .They also equipped the section with at least two sub machine guns such as the MP 38 or the MP 40 (sometimes more) and invariable a man with a sniping rifle. They were highly mobile units which had more firepower than a company of allied riflemen of the World War One era. This section could carry out the “Deep Infiltration” attack by using the technique of “Fire and Movement”. One part of the section could move, to outflank or surround the enemy while receiving covering fire from the other part of the section that would be using at least one light machine gun and sub machine guns to lay fire on the enemy positions as soon as the moving part of the section stopped and commenced fire. Then they would move in on the other flank, once both sections were close enough, they would rush into the positions using as much firepower as they had. Firearms which could be swung around in confined conditions were ideal.
Australians With the Owen Gun. Mobile Firepower.
Success Once the Balance of Firepower Was Corrected.
Once the Australian and British equipped their sections/rifle squads with this additional firepower they could defend themselves on all sides against “Deep Infiltration”. They could set up the light machine guns where they could use the best fields of enfilade fire, and the sub machine guns being more mobile could defend the rear and flanks from close quarter attack.
Once this additional firepower was utilised and well practised in defence, the tables were turned. The Allied troops needed little incentive to ‘return the compliments’ and take their enemies tactics and firepower to the offensive. Once this was achieved, they never suffered another major reverse.
Why Were Owen Guns Held Up? Why Were They Not Issued In 1941?
Yes, They Could Have Been Supplied in Early 1941.
Before this could happen Australia young soldiers had to wait 2½ years suffer 20,000 deaths 40,000 wounded and have 12,000 men captured in Malaya and put to work in the Japanese death camps. Not all of these casualties were due to that lack of firepower, but as when a murderer is on trial do we hang him for one murder, or ten murders or a thousand murders, it has no bearing on the guilt itself, one is too many. Every man is important, his life is the only one he has.
FOR WHOM THE BELL TOLLS
No man is an Iland,
intire of it selfe,
everyman is a peece of the Continent,
a part of the maine;
if a Clod bee washed away by the Sea,
Europe is the lesse,
as well as if a Promontorie were,
as well as if a Mannor of thy friends or of thine owne were;
any mans death diminishes me,
because I am involved in Mankinde;
And therefore never send to
know for whom the bell tolls;
It tolls for thee… By Jonne Donne
One man’s loss of life is enough to hang for.
Personnel Survival.
This is why the men on the ground were desperate for Owen Guns, as more importantly than the tactics, or winning the war, the single significant difference was the sub machine gun, the enemy had them and our men did not. They all knew that the Sub Machine gun was the significant factor for their own personal survival and the survival of their mates.
Britain and Australian fighting men knew that they were ill equipped and felt they were treated as cannon fodder by their leaders, during the early years of World War Two once this was rectified, nothing could stop them.
The Beginnings of Deep Infiltration.
Towards the end of World War One infantry tactics altered, this change was further developed during all the wars between the World Wars such as the Spanish Civil War and Japan’s invasion of China. Both Germany and Japan used these wars to test new equipment and infantry tactics.
In World War One from October 1914, to March 1917, on the Western Front, position warfare became more and more rigid, immovable, and futile. To “attack” meant to lose twice or three times as many men as your opponent, with no considerable gain in ground, and no decisive effect on anything except your own cannon-fodder. The armies were locked in a solid continuous line of trenches, in which they were pounded and obliterated by an even heavier hail of shells.
A bayonet charge at firepower like these Maxim Model 1908 would be suicide.
The Treaty of Brest-Litovsk, when Russia defeated by Germany, allowed Germany to concentrate on the Western Front defended by the Allies of Britian’s Commonwealth, France, and a small contingent of Belg’s. Ludendorff, the co-dictator of Germany and supreme military commander, insisted on occupying Russia. This huge mistake tied up over one million troops in Russia and Romania. Another million troops and 3,000 artillery pieces were shipped to the Western Front, to the field of Flanders. From November 1917 to March 1918, German strength on the Western Front increased from 150 to 208 divisions and included 13, 832 artillery pieces.
Defence In Depth.
At this time in the war, military formations of the belligerents were similar. German divisions consisted of about 10,600 men, British 12,000, and French 13,000. The newly arriving American divisions were over twice as large at 28,105 men. Eventually, these American troops would be vital in saving the Allied cause and winning the war.
By this time in the war, a complex system of trenches and machine gun posts arranged in depth had evolved. All battle trenches were connected together with communications trenches which led to the rear areas. In front of the trenches were deep belts of barbed wire. The British defence system was based on a captured German manual. (Information on the “British” always included their allies, the Anzacs, Canadians, and Portuguese.) The British copied the letter and not the spirit of the German system. The British believed the machine gun supported the infantry while the Germans more realistically believed the infantry supported the machine gun. The new defence system had a Forward Zone manned by one third of the available troops. Two to three miles back, and manned by one third of the infantry and two thirds of the artillery, was the Battle Zone of a depth of 2,000 to 3,000 yards. The balance of all forces were in the Rear Zone four to eight miles behind the Battle Zone. This system was not as efficient as the German system which allocated two thirds of the troops for counter attacks. France was nearing the end of its manpower resources, so the artillery was their most important arm. The French wisely held their front lightly and kept most of their troops in the main position out of artillery range.
The attack during which the First Artist Rifles left their trenches and pushed towards Marcoing near Cambrai. Of the eighty men, sixty-eight were killed or wounded during the first few minutes. John Nash (1893-1977) was one of the twelve spared by the shellfire. The painting was from his memory.
The certainty of not coming back alive.
” As soon as our line, set on its jolting way, emerged, I felt that two men close by had been hit, two shadows fell to the ground and rolled under our feet, one with a high-pitched scream and the other in silence like an ox. Another disappeared with a movement like a madman, as if he had been carried away. Instinctively, we closed ranks and pushed each other forward, always forward, and the wound in our midst closed itself. The warrant officer stopped and raised his sword, dropped it, fell to his knees, his kneeling body falling backwards in jerks, his helmet fell on his heels and he remained there, his head uncovered, looking up to the sky. The line has promptly split to avoid breaking this immobility.
But we couldn’t see the lieutenant any more. No more superiors, then… A moment’s hesitation held back the human wave which had reached the beginning of the plateau. The hoarse sound of air passing through our lungs could be heard over the stamping of feet.
– Forward! cried a soldier.
So we all marched forward, moving faster and faster in our race towards the abyss. “ Henri Barbusse, Le feu (Fire), Paris, Flammarion, 1916.
The Shock Troops.
From March 1917, to March 1918, positional trench warfare was still in full flower, but some of the factors that caused its partial decay, or its change into a new shape, became apparent. One factor was the tank, another more important, was a new method of defence, which inevitably developed into its opposite, a new tactical method for infantry advance. The defensive method was known as “elastic defence” or “defence in depth”; the second developed from it, and was adopted because of this success, it was called the tactic of “infiltration in attack.”
What brought about victory was simply a rethinking of tactics in conjunction with the new technologies.
This was the outcome of the ‘Storm Troop’ infiltration tactics evolved on the Russian Front and later transplanted to the Western Front.
In our minds we have the picture of serried lines of advancing troops, marching with hunched shoulders as to ward off the rain or drizzle, which was in reality bullets, marching over No Man’s Land. Everybody’s mental picture of World War I, eventually was changed replaced by small parties of highly trained and motivated shock troops, amply armed, moving independently of each other, utilising ground and cover, and pouncing on weak spots, thus forcing the gate ajar to admit the more regimented units which followed.
The Stormtroopers attacking after the position has been shelled by Gas.
The breakthrough came when someone thought of a different method of pushing the assault forward.
Practice On The Russian Front.
General Oskar von Hutier
In September 1917 the German Army sought to capture Riga from the Russians; they had attempted this before and had been bloodily repulsed, but Riga was the Queen of the Baltic and would be a great morale booster for the Germans, if it could be taken. It would be a considerable setback to the Russians if they lost it. The Russians, of course, had no intention of parting with it and had prepared an immensely strong defensive position. The German attacking force was numerically inferior, and thus all the book solutions said that an attack must fail. The officer in charge of the attacking force, the German 8th Army, General Oskar von Hutier, had radically different ideas.
Von Hutier devised the technique of infiltration; instead of throwing solid lines of men against the defences, small independent groups would move stealthily across No Man’s Land, probing the defences, ease their way in where the line was weakest, and then fan out behind to take troublesome redoubts from the rear. This was to be done with the assistance of artillery fire, but not the blunderbuss approach of week long bombardments and rolling barrages. Von Hutier’s artillery commander was Colonel Bruchmuller, another man who had an independent mind and was prepared to abandon the textbook approach when it appeared to be wrong. Instead of formal programmes, Bruchmuller’s control of artillery stressed flexibility, and an approach tailored to suit the problem in front of him. He would use rolling barrages, concentrations, smoke, gas, shrapnel in combinations and permutations, placing concentrated fire on specific targets such as communications networks, headquarters, rallying points, quite arbitrarily and in a manner which rapidly disoriented his opponents.
Bruchmuller produced 750 guns and 550 mortars to accompany von Hutier’s approach to Riga, which had to begin by crossing the Dvina river. The guns were split into two groups, IKA (Infanterie Kampfzug Abteilung) and AKA (Artillerie Kampfzug Abteilung). IKA guns were for infantry support and were provided with ammunition in the proportion of four fifths high explosive and one-fifth gas. AKA guns were for countering Russian artillery and headquarters areas, and used a proportion of one-quarter explosive and three quarters gas.
The battle began at 0400 hours on 2nd September with all the guns hammering the Russian artillery positions, three batteries of 15cm howitzers being specially detailed to bombard command posts and communications points. At 0600, the AKA continued their pounding while the IKA group turned their attention on to the Russian infantry defending the river line. This bombardment continued until 0910 hours, shifting from target to target and from explosive to gas and back again in a bewildering sequence, all the time at hurricane intensity. At 0900, the AKA group joined in, each AKA battery leaving one gun to “stoke up” the gas clouds enveloping the Russian artillery targets.
At 0910, all the guns switched to a massive rolling barrage which dwelt on the Russian infantry positions until the German assault troops had crossed the river, and then rolled forward into the defensive zone. After it came von Hutier’s troops in small parties, probing, bypassing, enfilading and enveloping.
The operation was a complete success and vindicated the theories of von Hutier and Bruchmuller. German’ casualties were relatively light, mainly confined to engineers and pioneers operating the river crossing. The intense bombardment and the concentration of gas entirely unnerved the Russians, many of whom fled, and within 24 hours Riga was safely in German hands.
Operation Michael
As a result both von Hutier and Bruchmuller were removed from the east and sent to the Western Front, where their tactics were repeated to give the Germans their astonishing success in the offensive of April 1918.
German General Ludendorff drew up plans (codenamed Operation Michael) for a 1918 general offensive along the Western Front. This Spring Offensive sought to divide the British Empire and the French armies in a series of feints and advances. The German leadership hoped to strike a decisive blow against the enemy before significant United States forces could be deployed. Before the offensive even began, Ludendorff made what may have been a fatal mistake by leaving the elite Eighth Army in Russia and sending over only a small portion (a million men) of the German forces from the east to aid the offensive in the west.
Operation Michael opened on 21 March 1918, with an attack against British Empire forces, towards the rail junction at Amiens. It was Ludendorff’s intention to split the British Empire and French armies at this point. German forces achieved an unprecedented advance of 60 km. For the first time since 1914, manoeuvre had returned to the battlefield.
Each offensive was preceded by the concentration of vast numbers of troops and artillery. In Operation Michael, 69 German divisions were massed against 32 British divisions, and in some places the British were outnumbered four to one.
In the Lys Offensive, 9 German divisions attacked 3 British divisions. Twenty two divisions were massed against five in the Second Battle of the Marne. Artillery was massed in levels never before seen. For comparison, in 1915 at Loos, artillery pieces averaged one per 60 yards. In the 1918 Operation Michael, one gun was placed on average every 12 yards. Continuing this trend, the Soviets in World War II massed artillery one gun per every 3 yards.
In contrast to earlier offensives, artillery bombardments were brief and shocking. The enemy artillery was first eliminated with shells and poison gas. Enemy headquarters, communication centres, and supply depots were targeted. Forward trenches were then devastated, machine gun posts being prime targets. Trenches of the Battle Zone were then bombarded. During Operation Michael, the British massed 30% of their troops on the front line. Instead of the desired effect of stopping the attack with overwhelming firepower, the troops were annihilated by artillery fire. In the sector of the XVIII Corps, only 50 of 10,000 front line troops survived the bombardment and subsequent attack.
1918 the first mass use of the Sub Machine Gun.
The German stormtroopers attacked immediately after the bombardment. In contrast with the standard infantry units used at the beginning of the war, the men were equipped with a wide variety of weapons, not just the standard bolt action rifle. Wire cutters and explosives engineers created gaps in the barbed wire belts. Grenade throwers, flame throwers, machine gunners, and mortar crews infiltrated enemy positions. Three or four waves of infantry followed. The attacking troops had no fixed objectives and left pockets of resistance for supporting troops to deal with. Success, not failure, was reinforced. The stormtroopers carried with them the first widely used sub-machine gun, the MP-18. The new sub-machine gun was light and easy to handle, and had much greater firepower than a rifle. It could be swung into action quickly in the confined conditions of the trenches and dugouts. Infiltrating troops often advanced beyond artillery range, leaving their flanks vulnerable. Since most artillery was too bulky to be brought forward in the attack, light trench mortars and machine gunners protected the flanks. The great German offensives were also supported by air power. Seven hundred and thirty German planes were massed against 579 Allied planes in Operation Michael.
The new word was “deep infiltration.” This means that their army does not attack strung and in a line. It maintained contact all the time between its advanced units and its main forces. It does not hit like a fist, but like long probing fingers with armoured finger nails. Each separate claw seeks a weak spot; if it can drive through this weak spot, it does not worry about its flanks, or about continuous communications with the forces following it. It relies for safety upon surprise, upon the disorganisation of its opponents due to the fact that it has broken through to the rear of their position and left them exposed to mopping up operations.
A Trench after it has been attacked. Not a pretty sight.
British and French trenches were defeated using these novel infiltration tactics. Up to this time, attacks had been characterized by week long artillery bombardments and continuous front mass assaults. However, in the Spring Offensive, the German Army used artillery briefly and infiltrated small groups of infantry at weak points, attacking command and logistics areas and surrounding points of serious resistance. These isolated positions were then destroyed by more heavily armed infantry. German success relied greatly on this tactic.
The front line had now moved to within 120 kilometres of Paris. Three super heavy Krupp railway guns advanced and fired 183 shells on Paris, causing many Parisians to flee the city. The initial stages of the offensive were so successful that German Kaiser Wilhelm II declared March 24 a national holiday. Many Germans thought victory to be close; however, after heavy fighting, the German offensive was halted. The Germans had a brilliant new stormtrooper tactics that avoided the trenches and sent small units on preplanned raids deep behind the lines to control and communication centres. That worked very well but the Germans, lacking tanks or motorized artillery, were unable to consolidate their positions. The British and French learned that they had to fall back a few miles and the Germans would be disorganized and vulnerable to counterattack. By the standards of the First World War, Operation Michael was a great success. The Germans penetrated 40 miles, took 975 guns, and inflicted 300,000 casualties, but eventually the German attacked stalled from exhaustion.
Deep Infiltration
The Allies had spent the years 1915, 1916, 1917 bludgeoning themselves on the German defences with little to show for it. The Germans spent the winter of 1917/1918 retraining their Army in what was now widely accepted as the best new way to conduct positional warfare.
The basic battlefield unit was no longer to be the company or battalion, but the squad. Each squad was no longer just a group of riflemen, but a combined arms formation of machine gunners, grenadiers and flamethrower troops supported by a few riflemen.
The von Hutier tactics (infiltration tactics) called for special infantry assault units to be detached from the main lines and sent to infiltrate enemy lines. They were supported by shorter and sharper (than usual for WWI) artillery fire missions targeting both the enemy front and rear, bypassing and avoiding what enemy strongpoints they could, and engaging to their best advantage when and where they were forced to, leaving decisive engagement against bypassed units to following heavier infantry. The primary goal of these detached units was to infiltrate the enemy’s lines and break his cohesiveness as much as possible. These formations became known as Stosstruppen, or shock troops, and the tactics which they pioneered would lay the basis of post-WWI infantry tactics, such as the development of present day fire teams.
Not Needed By the Allies.
This new way of thinking was only vaguely recognized by the Allies, who during the three years of trench warfare had increased the battalion firepower from two Medium Vickers Machine Guns with additional Lewis Light Machine Guns, but who did not re-train their men in a way which extracted the greatest advantage from these new weapons. The Allied failure to see the real change behind the German actions was to curse them for the rest of the war and to ensure that they started the next war so far behind the eight ball, that it took two and half years of military disasters before they could learn and turn defeat into success.
Technological Advances Ensured German Success.
The Light Machine Gun
One of these, which had appeared well before von Hutier’s success, was the light machine gun. The original machine guns used in the early part of the war were almost all based on the Maxim design, heavy water cooled belt fed weapons requiring two or three men to move and operate them. These were ideal for defensive positions, where they could sit on their tripods behind a breastwork and spew out bullets for hours on end without stopping for anything, but to have a new belt inserted into the breech or cool water in the tank. This sort of weapon was a liability in the attack; the three or four men carrying the gun, tripod, water can and ammunition made an obvious group which became a prime target for snipers. Their speed of advance was slow, and they took time to set up their gun and commence firing once their objective was reached. What was needed, as General Haig himself pointed out in the summer of 1915 when he was Commander, First Army, was “A lighter machine gun, with tripod and gun in one part… “
The answer was already there, in the shape of the Lewis Gun; developed in America but totally ignored. It had been put into manufacture in Belgium and Britain and supplies began reaching the British Army in France in July 1915. This firearm could be carried by one man, was fed from a flat drum magazine containing 47 cartridges, or a larger 72 round magazine and could even be fired from the hip while advancing. The idea was taken up by other combatants and such designs as the Light Hotchkiss, the Bergmann, the Chauchat, the Dreyse and the Madsen appeared in large numbers throughout the remainder of the war.
The light machine gun, then, allowed the infantry to take its fire support along in the assault and it eventually came to overshadow the heavy machine gun.
The Sub Machine Gun
Von Hutier’s “Storm troops” needed something even more portable; his tactical theory demanded heavy firepower from every man, much more than could be easily delivered by a conventional rifle. Every man could not carry a light machine gun, from considerations of weight, bulk and ammunition supply. Something different was needed, and this led to the sub-machine gun. Due to the fact that in the attack neither side could ever get enough machine gun ammunition (.303 or 8 mm Mauser ammunition) to supply the light machine guns and the Germans realised that at close range less than 100 yards or mainly less that Sub Calibre Ammunition 9 mm Parabellum or 7.62 x 25 Mauser pistol ammunition would kill or disable any opponent. More relevantly more of the ammunition could be carried by the one man operator, and as it was smaller and lighter, more of it could be man carried to support him. Additionally the smaller sub-machine guns could be swung around and bring fire to bear in the confined circumstances of trenches and dug outs.
Bergmann MP 18 showing how to load the helical magazine and strip for cleaning.
The first sub-machine gun had been under development since some time in 1916, however there was no official military demand for it, since no military mind had visualized such a weapon. Hugo Schmeisser, chief designer for the Theodor Bergmann Company of Berlin, was a far seeing man who began work, he was sure that once he had an operating weapon the army would find a use for it. The resulting “Bergmann Maschinen Pistole 18″ was an extremely simple weapon which fired standard 9mm Parabellum pistol cartridges (1250 fps with 7 ½ inch barrel) from a 32-shot helical”snail” magazine inserted into the side of the gun. It could be quickly changed. It fired at a rate of about 400 rounds per minute and was sighted for a maximum range of 200 m (220yd) though in practice it was to be used at much shorter distances. Weighing less than 9 pound 4 ounces unloaded, it was only 81cm (32inchs) long, a handy and easily operated weapon which gave the individual soldier immense firepower. Armed with these weapons the Storm Troopers of von Hutier’s 18th Army on the Western Front made savage inroads into the Allied lines in the spring of 1918. The Allies did not adopt the sub machine gun, it was too late in the war for them to organise and tool up factories to manufacture them. Nonetheless, they were well aware of the possibilities of infiltration and once they had absorbed and contained the German advance, they, in their turn, moved on to the offensive, using the Lewis and other light machine guns in the same sort of tactics, only they had more of everything now the American had arrived. That a frontal attack could now succeed where for four years it had failed was simply due to the German advance having disrupted and melted their tight defensive line and allowing the Allies the opportunity to move forward. Once the wedge had been inserted, assisted by tanks and concentrated artillery fire, the German line began to crumble and suddenly mobile warfare returned to the Western Front.
A Stormtrooper of 1918 vintage, getting his photo taken so he can send it home to Mum.
The new assault tactics had broken the stalemate, it had won battles but lost the war.
In the next war, tanks and other armoured vehicles allowed decisive exploitation of the infiltration breakthrough, deep into the enemy’s rear areas. The sensational methods of blitzkrieg had their roots in the stormtrooper tactics of 1918.
In the post-WW1 years, as the armies of the world were run down from their wartime strength and lapsed into their normal peacetime obscurity, the lessons of the war were reviewed; some were learned, many were forgotten. The weapons which had appeared were also reviewed, and more notice was taken of the hardware than of the theories which had accompanied it. Although much of the wartime equipment had to stay in use for economy’s sake, the soldiers and the designers saw that virtually everything in use in 1918 was obsolete, and that new weapons would be needed for the future. Of course the Allies did not know what they were, so blundered on regardless.
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