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Full Description
Historians - if not the wider public - have long recognised that warfare on the western front underwent constant evolution and transformation between 1914 and 1918. Historians studying the British army christened this process the 'learning curve', using it as shorthand to describe how the disastrous tactics of 1916 morphed into the successful campaigns of late 1918. Yet, as this collection of essays makes clear, the learning curve thesis is too amorphous a concept, and too Anglo-centric a debate, to do full justice to the fundamental rethinking of warfare which occurred between 1914 and 1918. In order to broaden and deepen our understanding of the nature and processes of military change on the Western Front, this collection of essays engages with the latest research on the three principal belligerent armies. Taking an international approach allows the volume to demonstrate that learning was not a purely British phenomenon; that the German army were not the only innovators; and - arguably - it was French generals who brought about the real transformation of warfare in these years. Instead, a more complex picture is presented to explain the dynamic of the Western Front, the cycle of innovation and counter-innovation, and the relative input of British, French and German armies to the profound changes in warfare between 1914 and 1918. Only through such an international approach can earlier interpretations be challenged, and new explanations be put forward, arguing that the apparently static Western Front was actually one of the most innovatory military environments in history.
Contents
Foreword (Brian Bond) 1. Historiographical Introduction (William Philpott and Jonathan Boff) 2. Theoretical introduction: A Dynamic Framework for Military Transformation (1914-1918): A Determinist Approach (Tony Vines) Part One: Innovation 3. Three-Dimensional Warfare: The Invention of Aerial Combat (Simon House) 4. Coming to Grips with the Trenches: French Artillery Developments in 1915 (Jonathan Krause) 5. The British Army's Communications and Information Processing System (Brian Hall) Part Two: Learning 6. Developing the Process: A British Division's Experiences on the Somme (Stuart Mitchell) 7. Easy to Conceive, Difficult to Do: French Tank Tactics in the Great War (Tim Gale) 8. `Genius for War?': The Introduction of New German Defensive Tactics in 1917 (Tony Cowan) Part Three: Transformation 9. Two Battles at Le Cateau, 1914 and 1918: The Transformation of the British Army (Jonathan Boff) 10. Managing the Industrial Battlefield: The French Army's `Scientific Battle' (Bill Philpott) 11. Bewegungskrieg, Stellungskrieg or Something Else Entirely: German Concepts of Battle in the First World War (Robert T. Foley)
