canadian wwi battle and first integration of artillery, tanks, airplanes, and infantry

But the Germans found themselves overextended, and so drew back to a defensible position north of Paris. The army marched into northern France, then turned southeast in an effort to surround two French armies and pinch off Verdun from Paris. In the first month of the war, the Germans swept through Belgium without any real infantry engagements-their artillery reduced the Belgian forts to rubble, and the forts simply surrendered. They had much heavier artillery pieces and could fire them at a much higher trajectory. The Germans knew they would be greatly outnumbered, but they had a big advantage in firepower. Increasing numbers of soldiers with machine guns could mow down any infantry wielding bayonets. French doctrine posited that battles would be won by bayonets! At war’s end, casualties caused by edged weapons were less than one quarter of one percent of total casualties.

They also used mortars and heavy artillery to a greater extent than did the Allies.įrance’s army on the eve of WWI was weak because of lack of central command, underfunding, poor doctrine, and lousy tactics. They seldom if ever launched the kind of massed suicidal attacks that were standard British tactics, but rather, fought more on the defensive. The Germans suffered far fewer combat deaths than did the British because of superior tactics and training.

WWI was unusual in that it was the first war in which the majority of combat deaths were caused by artillery, not by small arms fire. Mosier avers that the striking success of the Germans in the early part of WWI should be attributed not only to the achievements of the German Army of 1914, but to an equal extent, the foolhardiness of Germany’s adversaries. He contends “the myth” that the British and French essentially won the war came about because the allied professional soldiers did not tell their respective publics, or even their political superiors, what was really happening. He concludes that were it not for the influx of money, explosives, and men from the United States, the Allies could never have won. He shows that the Germans were invariably more successful on the battlefield than either the British or the French, even though Germany lost the war. In The Myth of the Great War, John Mosier seeks to dispel several views held by historians about WWI.

Canadian wwi battle and first integration of artillery, tanks, airplanes, and infantry