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Concept
Stormtroopers (Imperial Germany)
Summary
Stormtroopers (Sturmtruppen or Stoßtruppen) were specialist infantry soldiers of the German Army. In the last years of World War I, Stoßtruppen ("shock troopers" or "shove troopers") were trained to use infiltration tactics – part of the Germans' improved method of attack on enemy trenches. The German Empire entered the war certain that the conflict would be won in the course of great military campaigns, thus relegating results obtained during individual clashes to the background; consequently the best officers, concentrated in the German General Staff, placed their attention on maneuver warfare and the rational exploitation of railways, rather than concentrating on the conduct of battles: this attitude gave a direct contribution to operational victories of Germany in Russia, Romania, Serbia and Italy, but it resulted in failure in the West. Thus the German officers on the Western Front found themselves in need of resolving the static situation caused by trench warfare on the battlefield.
Analyzing the events, two concepts can be identified with which an attempt was made to find a solution to the problem. The first was the belief, mainly held by Erich von Falkenhayn, that tactical action alone, the mere killing of enemy soldiers, was a sufficient means to achieve the strategic goal. The second was the idea, emerging from experience of countless "limited target attacks" and forays into the trenches, that combat had become such a difficult task that operational considerations had to be subordinated to tactical ones. Promoter for this last thesis was General der Infanterie Erich Ludendorff who, having become de facto commander of the Imperial German Army after the German defeat at Battle of Verdun, gave decisive support to the development of assault battalions as a solution to resume maneuver warfare.
The creation of these units was the first, and perhaps most innovative, attempt by the German army to break out of the impasse of trench warfare.
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