7 World War I, II
Modern warfare
Introduction: education by experience
A strategic history such as this tries to avoid becoming unduly enmeshed in the details
of either policy or military tactics. It is the role of strategy to direct tactics and operations
to advance policy goals. But strategy can find itself bereft of attractive options when
tactics or policy is unable or unwilling to adapt pragmatically to unexpectedly non-
permissive political and military contexts. A narrative of 1914–1 8 can be interpreted as
a protracted and highly expensive education in the realities of modern warfare. Once the
less than cunning plans of 1914 had failed, and the military skills of the two sides
approached equality, though the Germans always retained a combat edge, victory could
be achieved only by attrition in a flankless theatre of war. This chapter emphasizes the
structure of the strategist’s problem from 1914 to 191 8. The politicians would not lower
their policy goal from the demand for victory, while the soldiers spent more than three
years solving the tactical problem of how to advance in the face of modern firepower.
They could not solve their operational-level problem of translating tactical successes
into much wider advantage, because they lacked the mobility, including mobile fire-
support, to do so. It followed that the strategist found little scope to exercise his trade.
The combination of extravagant political objectives and tactical stalemate produced the
greatest war in history to date.
This chapter opens with a chronological review of the course of the war, and proceeds
to explain how contemporary soldiers strove, with mixed success, to meet the challenges
they faced.
The course of the war
1914: the war plans fail
In 1914 the Germans attempted to wage two wars in swift succession: first, to defeat the
French; then, to turn on the more slowly mobilizing Russians. The Schlieffen–Moltke