Attacks with Limited Objectives
The German Army of World War I
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During the first year of trench warfare, German formations on the Western Front conducted a large number of “attacks with limited objectives” [Angriffe mit begrenzten ziele]. As their name suggests, these were offensive operations, launched on the authority of the generals commanding particular infantry divisions and army corps, aimed at the capture of specific pieces of ground. The purpose of these enterprises was the improvement the defensive positions held by German forces on the Western Front, thereby allowing them to hold those positions with smaller forces. These economies, in turn, made forces available for service on the Eastern Front.
One of the first of these “attacks with limited objectives” took place on 30 October 1914, near the village of Vailly, in the valley of the Aisne River. This attack, which was carried out by the German III Army Corps, served to eliminate one of the bridgeheads that the French Sixth Army had established on the north bank of the river. The chief of staff of III Army Corps, Colonel Hans von Seeckt, argued that the reduction of these positions would greatly simplify the German defense of this river line, to the point where it could be held by second-line formations. This, in turn, would make it possible for the III Army Corps, a first-class formation composed of young, thoroughly trained men, to be employed elsewhere.
In the course of twenty-five hours – thirteen of which were devoted entirely to a preparatory bombardment – III Army Corps managed, not only to eliminate the French bridgehead, but to capture 1,500 French soldiers as well. Two days later, the same formation conducted a similar attack against a second bridgehead, thereby widening the portion of the north bank of the Aisne that was in German hands.
Not all of the German “attacks with limited objectives” in the valley of the Aisne met with as much success as the one at Vailly. On 12, 13, and 14 January 1915, for example, III Army Corps carried out a much more ambitious undertaking against the Vregny Plateau, a piece of high ground that overlooked a substantial stretch of the Aisne Valley. Here, the French had made good use of the two months that followed their defeat at Vailly, building three successive lines of firing trenches and an impressive infrastructure of communications trenches, dugouts, and observation posts. They also made use of the thick woods that covered much of the plateau to hide thirty or so field guns and two battalions of chasseurs, light infantrymen who specialized in fighting in rough terrain.
To further complicate matters, the ground over which the Germans would attack sloped down into the valley of the Aisne. This meant that, as they advanced, the Germans would be exposed to the fire of the French heavy artillery units on the far bank of the river. (On the many spurs that were formed by the undulation of this slope, the advancing Germans were exposed to artillery fire on two or three sides.)
Notwithstanding these difficulties, the III Army Corps managed to take the objectives that defined the attack against the Vregny Plateau. In doing this, they also captured several thousand French prisoners and all of the field guns that had been hidden in the woods. The cost of this success, however, was high. Between the close combat in the woods and the fire of the French artillery, the attacking German units took heavy casualties. One infantry battalion lost 135 of its 800 or so members. (Of these, 30 were killed and the rest seriously wounded.)
Over the course of 1915, the vast majority of the “attacks with limited objectives” undertaken by German forces on the Western Front were crowned with success. That is, the Germans usually managed to capture the terrain that they set out to capture, and to do so at an acceptable cost in casualties. This success was made possible by the possession of large numbers of large caliber, short-barreled artillery pieces capable of tossing large high-explosive shells on top of the fortifications that sheltered enemy troops.
The most common of these heavy Steilfeurwaffen (“steep fire weapons”) was the 150mm heavy field howitzer, an artillery piece that could fire a 40 kilo shell out to ranges in excess of 6,000 meters. There were three models of this piece. The oldest model of heavy field howitzer, one adopted in 1893, lacked an on-carriage recoil mechanism. (German gunners compensated for the absence of such a device by anchoring their Model 1893 pieces to platforms made of wood, metal, or concrete.) The model of 1902 used a simple on-carriage recoil mechanism, which allowed the piece to be fired from any reasonably hard piece of ground, and a range of 7,450 meters. The newest model, that of 1913, had been fitted with both a sophisticated on-carriage recoil mechanism and a longer barrel. It thus enjoyed both a higher rate of fire and the ability to reach out to 8,600 meters.
At the start of the war, the German Army mobilized 320 batteries of 150mm howitzers, each of which was armed with four pieces. In the course of the first year of the war, this force was modernized by the introduction of large numbers of the factory-fresh weapons of the latest type. As these Model 1913 pieces arrived at the front, the older pieces that they replaced were used to create new batteries. At the same time, 150mm howitzers that had been assigned to fortresses also made their way to the front.
The 150mm heavy field howitzer had two great virtues, characteristics that combined to make it a particularly effective means of attacking trenches. The first of these advantages was the size of the shell that it fired, which was big enough to carry nearly five kilos of high explosive. The second was inherent accuracy, which was such that shells fired simultaneously from all four pieces of a properly registered battery would land in a very neat row. Because of these characteristics, a battery of four 150mm howitzers could reliably obliterate a 200-meter length of a standard firing trench by firing ten or so high explosive shells apiece. (For the older model of 150mm howitzer, the firing of these ten shells would take about twenty minutes. For the newer models, which were provided with on-carriage recoil systems, this task could be completed in five minutes.)
Of similar accuracy, but much greater size, was the 210mm siege howitzer that German soldiers called der Mörser (“the mortar”). Firing a shell that weighed 120 kilograms, this weapon also came in three models. The models of 1910 and 1906 were thoroughly modern pieces, with on-carriage recoil systems and relatively high rates of fire. The model of 1899 was an old-fashioned weapon that, like the 150mm howitzer of 1893, was difficult to employ unless it was anchored to a platform.
While 150mm howitzers enabled German field armies to deal with lines of riflemen protected by trenches, the 210mm Mörser gave them the means to deal with fortifications of a more resilient sort, whether concrete bunkers or shelters that had been built into the stone cellars of villages. This was a capability that became increasingly important as French, British, and Belgian commanders improved the positions that they had occupied in the autumn of 1914, turning simple trenches into sophisticated defensive positions.
For delivering large high-explosive shells at close range, the German Army of the first eighteen months of the war was well supplied with short-barreled artillery pieces of an entirely new type. Known as Minenwerfer (“mine throwers”), these mortars had originally been developed to clear obstacles (such as fences strung with barbed wire) in front of the concrete forts that guarded the French and Belgian frontiers. Once position warfare set in, the characteristics that made Minenwerfer so effective in their original role proved extremely useful. In particular, they proved an excellent means of inflicting damage to dugouts, trenches, and obstacles located on the forward edges of British, Belgian, and French positions.
At the start of the war, the German Army fielded two types of Minenwerfer. The smaller of the two, which would eventually become known as the “medium mine thrower,” fired “mines” that, weighing 54 kilograms, were a little larger than the shells used with the 150mm howitzer. Similarly, the larger of the two types of Minenwerfer, the “heavy mine thrower,” fired mines that, at 97 kilograms, were somewhat smaller than the shells employed with the 210mm “mortar.” (In the language of artillery officers of the early twentieth century, a “mine” was a projectile that had relatively thin walls and a relatively large charge of high explosive.)
The great limitation of the Minenwerfer was their short range. The 170mm model could send its mines no further than 750 meters and the 250mm model had a maximum range of 560 meters. At the same time, the fact that the charge that tossed these mines into the air was so small meant that they could be made with much thinner walls than howitzer shells of the same size. Thus, while high explosive accounted for less than 16 percent of the weight of a howitzer shell, it made up somewhere between 51 percent (for the 250mm mine) and 69 percent (for the 170mm mine) of the weight of the projectiles fired by Minenwerfer.
At first, German commanders employed small numbers of Minenwerfer to supplement the fire of their heavy howitzers and, in particular, to bombard targets that, for reasons of terrain or proximity to friendly troops, were hard for other artillery pieces to reach. By the spring of 1915, however, there were enough Minenwerfer on the Western Front to permit a dozen or more of these weapons to be employed in each “attack with limited objectives.” This made it possible for Minenwerfer to relieve howitzers of the task of bombarding the most forward parts of an enemy position, thereby permitting the simultaneous bombardment of forward trenches, supplementary works, and hostile artillery batteries.
The first year of trench warfare also saw many attempts by French forces to conduct “attacks with limited objectives” of their own. As a rule, however, these were not nearly as successful as their German counterparts. Indeed, of the small percentage of these attacks that managed to take the objectives set down for them, all but a handful were only able to do so at a very high cost in casualties.
The chief reason for the failure of so many French “attacks with limited objectives” was the composition of the French heavy artillery. Where the heavy artillery park of the German Army was well supplied with short-barreled weapons of recent vintage, its French counterpart was largely composed of long-barreled guns of types that had been adopted for service in the 1870s. The smallest of these heavy guns was the 95mm Lahitolle (Model 1875), which fired a shell that weighed 11 kilograms. The largest was the 155mm de Bange (Model 1877), which employed a projectile weighing 40 kilograms. The most common, and thus the workhorse of most French bombardments in 1915, was the 120mm de Bange (Model 1878), which made use of a shell that tipped the scales at 18 kilograms.
Though they were extraordinarily reliable, these French heavy guns suffered from three important defects. First, they lacked on-carriage recoil mechanisms, and so were plagued by low rates of fire. Second, they fired their shells along flat trajectories, and were thus poorly suited to the task of bombarding trenches. (Range experiments conducted in the era of the First World War concluded that, all other things being equal, shells traveling along curved trajectories enjoyed two or three times as many hits on trenches as shells fired along flat trajectories.) Third, because flat trajectories required both large propellant charges and long barrels, guns of the type employed by the French heavy artillery in 1915 were substantially heavier than mortars and howitzers of comparable calibers. In other words, when it came to bombarding trenches, a single battery of modern German 150mm howitzers could inflict as much meaningful damage as five, six, or even seven batteries of French heavy guns.
The one great advantage enjoyed by the French heavy guns was their ability to hit targets located on the forward slopes of hills. Thus, whenever the Germans found themselves on such terrain features, as they did during the taking of the Vregny Plateau, they invariably suffered greatly from the fire of French heavy guns.
Sources:
Hans Linnenkohl, Vom Einzelschuß zur Feuerwalze: Der Wettlauf zwischen Technik und Taktik im Ersten Weltkrieg (Koblenz: Bernard und Graefe Verlag, 1990.)
Robert T. Foley, Forgotten Battles: Vailly, 30 October 1914
Bruce Gudmundsson Storm Troop Tactics: Innovation in the German Army, 1914-1918 (Westport: Praeger, 1989)
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