I have been really interested in our discussion of the changing in tactics used in WWI. As we've mentioned in class, new technologies have made it very difficult to continue using Napoleonic Warfare tactics. Formerly, troops would line up roughly 20 yards away, and fire at one another with (mostly) smooth bore muskets. These muskets were inaccurate past a distance of ~25yards, and even at that range you would miss your target. So, even with the close proximity the soldiers were in, casualties were not catastrophic due to inaccurate weapons, fewer rounds fired per minute, and other details. The invention of the bolt action rifle was the beginning of the end of these tactics. A bolt action rifle (especially one with a clip) allowed a soldier to fire, in ten seconds, the same number of shots it formerly took him one minute to fire. The machine gun even complicated this further. With soldiers firing ~10 rounds per second, gallant charges and massive lines of troops were just no longer a viable option.
The American Civil War saw what should have been the end of Napoleonic tactics. Two specific battles, Fredericksburg and Gettysburg, were home to gallant charges against an entrenched enemy and resulted in the slaughter of thousands of men. Still, the weapons used during the Civil War were muskets, and even the casualties resulting from these charges are nothing compared to the casualties inflicted in some of the WWI battles. The addition of poison gas and tanks even further threw confusion into the tactics that were formerly used. A tank, or anything remotely resembling its capabilities had never been seen before, and thus difficulties arose in countering it.
(On a side note, J.R.R Tolkien wrote most of Lord of the Rings in the trenches of WWI)
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Its crazy how one war could bring about so many changes in tactics revolutionize modern warfare. The scariest part is how long it took for the officers and tacticians to respond and adapt. Millions of lives could have been spared if not for incompetent men blindly leading their soldiers to an early grave. With all the modern tactics and weapons brought about (tanks, machine guns, ext) I'm glad that many of the worst (poison gases and such) have not made as much of a direct transition to the battle front. Think about how horrible it would be if biological warfare was used in as commonly and casually as the guns and other firearms that came about during this period...SCARY!
ReplyDeleteIt does seems hard to comprehend that the officers continued to subscribe to obviously deadly and inefficient tactics but we must also try to understand the radical changes in weaponry and the glorification of offensive war. Furthermore, the military is also an institution that has its own particular culture and, as Isabella Hull argues for Germany, that culture could preclude accepting other strategies or accepting defeat or even redefining victory.
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