37.1 KT2 - The technology of defence, c1900-16

Enquiry Frame

The specification has four connected questions. Keep them together rather than
learning the lesson as a list of inventions.

The chronology matters:

The phrase technology of defence does not mean the weapons were designed only
for defence. The French 75 was loved because it seemed ideal for attacking troops
in the open. German heavy guns helped open the route through Belgium. Machine guns
could support attacks when used with planning. The point is that, on the Western
Front, these weapons gave the defender the greater immediate advantage because a
defender could combine firepower with cover, wire, fieldworks, reserves and shorter
supply lines.

Smokeless Powder and Machine Guns

Before smokeless propellants, black powder created thick smoke, fouled barrels and
gave away firing positions. Smokeless powder was not literally invisible, but it
produced far less smoke and could give bullets and shells higher velocity. That
changed warfare in several ways:

This is why smokeless powder belongs with machine guns. A machine gun was not just
a mechanical curiosity. It became a battlefield weapon when it could use reliable,
small-calibre, smokeless cartridges. Hiram Maxim's automatic gun, developed from
the 1880s, used recoil energy to keep firing as long as ammunition was supplied
and the trigger held. Water cooling, belts, tripods or sled mounts, spare parts
and trained crews made the gun into a defensive system rather than a single
object.

Machine guns before 1914 had already shown what they could do. In colonial wars,
European armies used them against opponents who often lacked comparable weapons.
In the Russo-Japanese War of 1904-05, European observers saw modern rifles,
machine guns, trenches, wire and artillery produce heavy casualties. It would be
wrong, therefore, to say nobody noticed the warning signs.

The harder question is why the warning did not produce purely defensive planning.
There were several reasons.

First, armies feared a slow mobilisation more than they feared casualties. The
alliance systems and railway timetables of Europe rewarded speed. If a state
waited, it might allow the enemy to concentrate first.

Second, many officers believed that technology could help the attack. Smokeless
rifles and quick-firing guns could support advancing infantry. Machine guns might
protect flanks or help hold captured ground. Artillery could break enemy morale
before infantry closed in. Firepower was not automatically read as a warning
against attack.

Third, military culture still valued offensive spirit. French doctrine is often
summed up by the phrase offensive a outrance, meaning attack pushed to the
utmost. The phrase can be overused, but it captures a real belief that morale,
speed and the will to close with the enemy could decide battle. German doctrine
also valued offensive action, though it placed more emphasis on manoeuvre,
encirclement, staff planning and artillery-infantry cooperation.

Fourth, no army had a reliable way to turn local success into strategic
breakthrough against an equal industrial opponent. Infantry could sometimes seize
ground. The problem was bringing forward guns, ammunition, reserves and orders
fast enough before the defender recovered. That problem was not fully solved in
1914.

So the pre-war impact of smokeless powder and machine guns was contradictory.
They made defence more powerful, but they did not create a shared expectation of
static war. Instead, they encouraged both fear and confidence: fear of being
caught under modern fire, and confidence that one's own firepower, discipline and
speed could make the enemy suffer first.

Artillery and War Plans

Artillery shaped both French and German planning before 1914, but in different
ways. France placed enormous confidence in the 75mm field gun, while Germany
invested more heavily in howitzers and heavy siege artillery. This contrast
helps explain the strengths and weaknesses of Plan XVII and the Schlieffen/Moltke
plan.

The French 75mm gun, introduced in 1897, was a famous quick-firing field gun. Its
hydro-pneumatic recoil system meant that the barrel recoiled while the carriage
stayed in place. Gunners did not have to re-aim the whole weapon after every shot.
It was mobile, accurate and capable of rapid fire. In a war of movement, especially
against troops in the open, it was a formidable weapon.

This fitted French thinking. Plan XVII was not a detailed script for every
battlefield move. It was mainly a mobilisation and concentration plan that gave
Joffre significant freedom once war began. In practice, it supported offensive
action towards Alsace-Lorraine and the Franco-German frontier. The French 75
encouraged confidence that fast-moving infantry, supported by rapid shrapnel fire,
could defeat German forces in the open.

The limitation was that the 75 was less suited to deep cover, fieldworks and
fortified positions. Its relatively flat trajectory and emphasis on shrapnel were
deadly against exposed soldiers, but much less effective against troops in trenches
or strong dugouts. France had heavy artillery, but not in the quantity or doctrinal
centrality Germany had developed. That mattered once the war stopped being mobile.

Germany drew different lessons from the fortress problem. The Schlieffen plan of
1905 imagined a vast movement through Belgium and northern France to outflank the
French fortress belt and defeat France before turning east against Russia. Moltke
the Younger inherited and modified this basic approach. He removed the Netherlands
from the planned line of advance, strengthened the defence of Alsace-Lorraine and
had to plan for an early attack on Liege because Belgium's forts stood across the
route.

German heavy artillery made that invasion more plausible. Heavy howitzers and
siege guns could fire high-explosive shells at a steep angle against forts and
covered positions. The best-known example was the 420mm "Big Bertha" howitzer,
used against Belgian forts in 1914. Germany also used other heavy weapons,
including Austrian Skoda 305mm mortars. These weapons helped reduce fortresses
such as Liege and Namur and opened routes that infantry alone might have taken
much longer to force.

Yet German artillery did not solve the whole problem of movement. Heavy guns could
smash fixed defences, but they were slow, logistically demanding and difficult to
keep up with fast-moving armies. The German plan required not only firepower, but
also precise rail mobilisation, road movement, horse transport, communication,
discipline between armies and enough strength on the right wing. Once those parts
began to fail, artillery could not rescue the timetable.

The comparison is useful for exam judgement:

The key point is not that France had "bad" artillery and Germany had "good"
artillery. Both had modern weapons. The difference was how each army fitted those
weapons into its expectation of the next war. France expected the 75 and offensive
spirit to support movement. Germany expected heavy artillery and manoeuvre to
bypass or destroy obstacles. Both underestimated how quickly modern firepower
would turn a temporary halt into an entrenched front.

Movement Fails in 1914

In August 1914 both France and Germany tried to win through movement. France
implemented Plan XVII, attacking in Alsace-Lorraine and seeking to regain lost
territory and initiative. Germany advanced through Belgium and northern France,
seeking to outflank the French armies and avoid a long two-front war.

Technology helped movement at first. German heavy artillery helped batter Belgian
forts. Railway mobilisation brought huge armies to the frontiers. Field guns,
rifles and machine guns gave commanders confidence that they could destroy enemy
troops caught in the open. Early campaigning was therefore not instantly static.
Armies marched, retreated, counter-attacked and shifted by rail.

But technology also made the costs of movement brutal. French attacks in the
Battle of the Frontiers ran into German firepower. Infantry advancing in visible
formations across open ground could be torn apart by rifles, machine guns and
artillery. Bright uniforms and brave morale did not cancel the effect of smokeless
fire from concealed positions. The French 75 could be devastating, but it could not
by itself make infantry invulnerable.

On the German side, the advance created its own problems. Belgian resistance and
railway demolition slowed the timetable. German troops outran their supply lines
as they pushed deeper into France. Horse-drawn transport could not fully bridge
the gap between advancing troops and the nearest railheads. Armies became tired,
hungry and short of ammunition. Command became harder as headquarters struggled to
understand what was happening across a wide moving front.

This is where the roles of Joffre and Moltke the Younger matter.

Joffre began the war associated with Plan XVII and the failed offensives on the
eastern frontier. That is a real weakness in his record. Yet his role changed
decisively in late August and early September. Once he recognised the scale of the
German sweep through Belgium, he abandoned the idea that the original offensive
could continue unchanged. He shifted forces, used Verdun as a pivot, created a new
Sixth Army near Paris and prepared a counterstroke. On 6 September, the French and
British counter-attacked at the Marne. Joffre's strength was not that he had
predicted everything correctly; it was that he retained enough control and nerve
to adjust when Plan XVII had failed.