pioneered in the construction of their Hindenburg Line in the winter of 1916–17. But
what no one succeeded in achieving was a sustainable breakthrough and break-out. The
Germans came closest with their mighty ‘Michael’ offensive of 21 March 191 8 , but even
that tactically impressive success was brought to nought by the systemic inhibitors in the
military context of the time.
On balance, military command on both sides performed competently or better,
given the limitations of feasibility. The problem was that the generals had been given a
task – to deliver decisive military victory – that was beyond them and their military
forces except by means of protracted combat. The war was won in the only way that was
possible: by a process of military attrition that came to be managed competently.
The fourth myth asserts that modern firepower was either ignored or misassessed by
the armies that went to war in 1914. But the historical record shows that, far from
ignoring modern firepower, European armies had been debating the tactical crisis caused
by rapidly evolving firepower for more than sixty years. The crisis pertained to the need
to find an answer to the question: how can soldiers advance, take the offensive, in the
face of modern weaponry? The problem was first demonstrated in the Crimea, when
Anglo-French minié rifles (and Enfield rifles with minié ammunition) massacred Russian
infantry columns. It was illustrated repeatedly in the American Civil War, with the third
day at Gettysburg serving as a prime example of the general impracticality of frontal
assaults, and was revealed in 1 8 66 when Austrian infantry melted away under the rapid
fire of Prussia’s breech-loading needle guns. The Franco-Prussian War told the same
story of bloody repulse, when infantry or cavalry relied upon dash and spirit rather than
manoeuvre and supporting fire. The arrival of the machine-gun in the 1 88 0s, and of
recoilless, quick-firing artillery in the 1 8 90s, made the tactical crisis yet more chronic.
So, the strange notion that military professionals somehow had failed to notice, or at least
take due account of, the revolution in firepower that the Industrial Revolution effected is
as absurd as it is totally untenable.
The difficulty did not lie in recognizing the problems but in identifying pragmatic
solutions. The Schlieffen–Moltke Plan was one solution: avoid the tactical impasse by
sweeping operational manoeuvre. The Germans, under Schlieffen’s guidance from 1 891
to 1906, developed a fondness for operational envelopment. Alternatively, one could
attempt to rely on high morale on the part of the attacking infantry, and high speed in the
assault as they moved across the killing zone on the offensive. The Japanese Army had
shown in the war with Russia of 1905–6 that élan and a willingness to take sacrificial
losses could sometimes triumph over modern weapons. By and large, though, military
professionals concluded that the only practical solution had to lie in new infantry tactics
favouring dispersal, the use of cover, and flexible movement by relatively small bodies
of soldiers acting independently. Measures such as these, among others, were debated
extensively and intensively before 1914. When war came, the unforgiving conditions of
the continuous Western Front rendered the tactical crisis terminal for a while, rather than
merely chronic. The armies of Europe were not collectively stupid. They were confronted
with a tactical challenge to which there was no clever solution ready at hand in 1914.
Myth number five about World War I is the belief that the most senior soldiers of
the great powers harboured what has come to be known as the ‘short-war illusion’. There
is no doubt that in 1914 many soldiers and probably most civilians did subscribe to
the view that the next war between the great powers would be short, a matter of months
World War I: controversies 81