Military Review English Edition July-August 2016 | Page 83

VERDUN

achieve a strategic penetration
of their enemy’s
defenses in
order to obtain
victory through
a single decisive
battle. It quickly
became apparent to all sides
that such penetrations were no
longer possible as attacks
were launched
at enormous
costs that
were unable to
sustain more
than limited
gains in the face
of entrenched
defenders and
counterattacking reserves.4
Thus, a new
theory of warfare needed to
be devised to
account for this
novel state of
affairs.
(Photo courtesy of Wikipedia, Germany)
On the
German infantrymen with flamethrowers
German
side,
and hand grenades leave the trenches
to assault French positions at Le Mort
Kaiser Wilhelm
Homme, during the Battle of Verdun,
II placed
mid-March 1916.
responsibility
for a successful conclusion of the war in the hands of
his chief of staff, Falkenhayn. After dismissing Gen.
Helmuth von Moltke for his failures in the initial
attacks in 1914, the Kaiser made Falkenhayn head of
both the German military and the ministry of war.
While he was the subject of bureaucratic intrigue
and divested himself of the ministerial portfolio,
Falkenhayn was the architect of the German war effort
that began in September 1914 and lasted until the conclusion of Verdun.
MILITARY REVIEW  July-August 2016

The givens that Falkenhayn faced were quite
daunting: the same two-front war, superior enemy
resources that had tormented his predecessors, the
reality of a naval blockade that could starve Germany
into submission (making a prolonged stalemate a losing
proposition), and a French defensive system and suite
of technologies that precluded strategic penetration.
Without the ability to engage the enemy in a single
decisive battle, Falkenhayn determined that he would
have to fight a sequence of battles that would exhaust
his enemies’ ability to continue to resist.5
To achieve this outcome, Falkenhayn would organize his artillery into large, centrally managed organizations. He would then employ elaborate military
deception operations and extremely tight operational
security to keep his opponents off balance while he
massed his forces. When ready, the German army
would launch a massive barrage along a narrow front,
and then advance to sufficient depth to inflict maximum damage on the defending forces. However, it
would not seek a strategic breakthrough.
The purpose of these engagements was to eliminate
enemy formations in battle, not to induce the collapse
of resistance through deep penetration of enemy lines.
This approach was first implemented in the series of
battles fought on the Eastern Front in 1915, wherein
the German forces destroyed the Russian army, first
at Gorlice and then in Poland. The military effect was
stunning. The campaign was “a series of set-pie ce breakthrough battles, which cost the defenders dearly each
time they attempted to stand and face the advancing
Austro-German force.”6 The purpose was to grind the
Russian army into nothing, leaving the enemy with a residual military capability that was incapable of offensive
action. To this end, the German army inflicted “over two
million casualties upon the Russians.”7
The capitulation mechanism envisioned by
Falkenhayn differed substantially from that envisioned by German strategists of the prewar era.
In 1870–1871, the German army had destroyed
Napoleon’s forces, besieged Paris, and obtained its
desired territorial concessions and indemnities after
a series of failed attempts by French forces raised in
Paris to break the siege.8 However, Falkenhayn’s goal
was not to attack into Russia, besiege Moscow, and
dictate terms. Rather, his hope was that Russia would
accept a separate peace that enabled Germany to
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