The last element of the European military establishment to embrace the limitations of set piece formation was the command element. In the early phases of the War, horse cavalry was still considered an essential part of the offensive formation, but very quickly it became clear that it was too vulnerable to concentrated machine gun and artillery fire to be practical.
By then, however, it was too late to alter the broad tactical mindset, and the subsequent rapid mechanization of the War made it possible for these grandiose tactical maneuvers to be deployed on a hitherto unprecedented scale.
It was not simply the mechanization of the battlefield that made this possible, but also the support systems of railways, motorization, the industrial production of food, uniforms and equipment and the evolution of modern naval battle fleets that created an escalating standoff between two elements of a swiftly modernizing society.
The inability of either side to overwhelm the other created an arms race that ended only with the utter economic and social exhaustion of the Central Powers. Had either the senior command element adapted to these changes earlier, or had warfare been conducted on more traditional lines, there is every reason to believe that victory or defeat would have been registered a great deal earlier.
No comments:
Post a Comment