During the era of the short-lived Weimar Republic, the Berlin publishing house of Ernst Siegfried Mittler und Sohn, sent a dozen or so editions of Truppenführung to the press. Not to be confused with the official (and, until 1935, classified) manual of the same name, this Handbook for the Leaders of Large Units and Their Assistants provided German soldiers with, among many other things, a description of the default mode of their little army, a technique that they called ‘the delaying fight’ (hinhaltendes Gefecht).
Any fight that, without leading to a decision, aims to maintain contact with or deceive the enemy by means of weakening him systematically and locally or by holding him back for a certain period of time is called a delaying fight. For the most part, this will consist of defensive operations. When the opportunity presents itself, attacks will be carried out. The delaying fight one always requires efforts to preserve ones own forces, because it is carried out within a context of local or temporary inferiority vis à vis the enemy.