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The German 1918 Offensives - A Case Study in The Operational Level of War (Hardcover, New)
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The German 1918 Offensives - A Case Study in The Operational Level of War (Hardcover, New)
Series: Strategy and History
Expected to ship within 12 - 17 working days
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At the tactical level of war the Germans are widely regarded as
having had the most innovative and proficient army of World War I.
Likewise, many historians would agree that the Germans suffered
from serious, if not fatal, shortcomings at the strategic level of
war. It is at the middle level of warfare, the operational level,
that the Germans seem to be the most difficult to evaluate.
Although the operational was only fully accepted in the 1980s by
many Western militaries as a distinct level of warfare, German
military thinking well before the start of World War I clearly
recognized the Operativ as a realm of warfighting activity between
the tactical and the strategic. But the German concept of the
operational art was flawed at best, and actually came closer to
tactics on a grand scale. The flaws in their approach to operations
cost the Germans dearly in both world wars.
Through a thorough review of the surviving original operational
plans and orders, this book evaluates the German approachto the
operational art by analyzing the Ludendorff Offensives of 1918.
Taken as a whole, the five actually executed and two planned but
never executed major attacks produced stunning tactical results,
but ultimately left Germany in a far worse strategic position by
August 1918. Among the most serious operational errors made by the
German planners were their blindness to the power of sequential
operations and cumulative effects, and their insistence in mounting
force-on-force attacks, instead of attacking key Allied
vulnerabilities.
The Allies, and especially the British, were exceptionally
vulnerable in certain elements of their warfighting system. By
attacking those vulnerabilities theGermans might well have achieved
far better results than by attacking directly into the Allied
strength. Specifically, the British logistics system was extremely
fragile, and their rail system had two key choke points, Amiens and
Hazebrouck. During Operations MICHAEL and GEORGETTE, the Germans
came close to capturing both essential rail centers, but never
seemed to grasp fully their operational significance. The British
and French certainly did. After the Germans attacked south to the
Marne during Operation BLUCHER, they fell victims themselves to an
inadequate rail network behind their newly acquired lines. At the
operational level, then, the respective enemy and friendly rail
networks had a decisive influence on the campaign of March-August
1918.
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