Chapter 2: Stosstruppen

Stosstruppen

Martin Samuels, Independent Academic, UK

Published (in Spanish translation) in Desperta Ferro: Contemporanea, 26

(March/April 2018), pp. 32-38

On 21 March 1918, the long-awaited German offensive on the Western Front began.
Despite heavy losses at Passchendaele, the commanders of the British Expeditionary
Force remained confident they could resist whatever attacks were made against them.
British troops were famous for their resilience in defence, their positions were heavily
fortified, and, to cap it all, they had recently adopted the defensive techniques used so
successfully by the Germans during the previous three years. Any gains made by
Ludendorff’s forces were bound to be slow and costly.

Two weeks later, the Germans had advanced 38 kilometres, inflicted a quarter of a
million casualties, and were on the cusp of rupturing the entire Western Front. Nor was
this an isolated aberration. In four subsequent offensives, the Germans repeated the
feat, leaving the British and French reeling, the war seemingly almost won. Something
dramatic had changed.

Searching for an explanation, French newspapers quickly found the culprit: General
der Infanterie Oskar von Hutier, commander of the German Eighteenth Army. His
forces had made the deepest penetration in the March offensive and taken the most
prisoners, virtually destroying the British Fifth Army, and this was in many respects a
repeat of his September 1917 offensive, which had achieved a decisive breakthrough
that seized the Russian city of Riga. In a series of articles during the early summer of
1918, L’Illustration hailed Hutier as ‘the new strategic genius of Germany’. Faced with
such brilliance, the French and British could hardly have been expected to hold their
ground.

Although for decades thereafter the French and Americans credited Hutier with the
invention of the infiltration tactics used by the Germans in 1918, the reality is very
different. Not only did Hutier himself play almost no role in their development, but the
tactics did not suddenly spring into existence in the autumn of 1917. In fact, they were
the culmination of an extended process of development, dating back to the very
beginnings of trench warfare. Central to this story were the Sturmbataillone (assault
battalions).

Origins and Development of the Sturmbataillone

The history of the Sturmbataillone began on 2 March 1915, when Erich von
Falkenhayn’s OHL ordered the formation of an experimental Sturmabteilung (assault
detachment). The unit was formed from two companies of Pioniere (combat
engineers), under the command of a certain Major Calsow. Its purpose was to test
techniques to break the deadlock of trench warfare. Like the British at the same time,
the Germans had concluded that the best tactical solution was to move light cannon
forward, ahead of the attacking infantry, under the cover of armour. Unlike the British,
the Germans intended to propel both guns and armoured shields through the strength
of men, rather than the internal combustion engine. The result was inevitable: the

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detachment suffered heavy casualties as soon as it was deployed in action in

June/July 1915. The armoured shields were immediately recognised as a failure and,
having failed to predict this during his unit’s preparation, Calsow was soon redeployed.

Reflecting on this debacle, OHL resolved to adopt a different approach. In September

1915, the assault detachment was put under Hauptmann Willy Rohr, a 38-year-old
company commander in the Garde-Schützen-Bataillon (Guard Rifle Battalion). This
battalion, along with 17 battalions of Jäger (‘huntsmen’), formed an elite corps of light
infantry without equivalent in other armies. Each battalion was a small combined arms
battle group, comprising infantry, cyclists and machine-guns, trained to operate as a
flexible reserve under corps command, providing extra firepower for the cavalry. The
aggressive and adventurous spirit of these troops had already been shown in March
1915, when Rohr’s battalion had independently formed its own assault company in
parallel to Calsow’s official unit.

Rohr immediately applied a new approach. In stark contrast to Calsow’s cautious

‘combat engineer’ technique, he adopted highly-flexible tactics, derived from the Jäger
spirit. Tested during a series of small operations during the autumn of 1915, they
proved themselves during the opening stages of the German offensive against Verdun
in February/March 1916. Such was Rohr’s success that, on 1 April, his unit was
expanded into a full battalion and, on 15 May, OHL ordered every army on the Western
Front to send small parties of men to the Sturmbataillon for training in the new
techniques. On their return, these were to become instructors, passing on what they
had learned, with the aim that every formation would establish its own assault unit,
capable of applying the tactics. The impact Rohr’s tactics had made on the German
high command was clearly immense: little more than eight months after he had taken
over from Calsow, OHL had concluded that his techniques should disseminated
across the entire Western Front.

Almost immediately, it became clear the scale of the task was far beyond the capacity
of a single battalion. OHL therefore started the process of converting four Jäger
battalions into assault units, to act as instructional schools alongside Rohr’s. In the
event, the unexpected entry into the war of Romania in August forced OHL to send
three of the battalions to the Carpathian Mountains, leaving only the renamed Jäger-
Sturm-Bataillon 3. Nonetheless, the two Sturmbataillone delivered a substantial
training programme, such that, by November, over 50 divisions had successfully
established their own specialist assault units.

Falkenhayn was replaced at OHL by Paul von Hindenburg and Erich Ludendorff on 29
August, but by this time the dissemination of Rohr’s tactics across the German Army
was already in full swing. The main contribution of the new OHL was to embed the
process in October, by instructing each army to form its own Sturmbataillon. In most
cases, these were established by the simple expedient of bringing together the assault
detachments already formed within each division. A total of 18 battalions (totalling 41
companies) were formed, most being given the number of their parent army. Rohr’s
unit, supporting the German Crown Prince’s Fifth Army, therefore became Sturm-
Bataillon 5 (Rohr), though Jäger-Sturm-Bataillon 3 retained its number, despite being
assigned to the Second Army.

Throughout 1917, these assault battalions maintained a unique character, operating

primarily as instructional schools, spreading their techniques throughout the German

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infantry, but keeping those techniques fresh and relevant through frequently supplying
small detachments to form the spearhead of local raids and minor offensives. Their
success in this task was shown by the fact that, by the summer of 1918, the tactics
had become the norm for the mass of the infantry, and were embedded in the latest
edition of Fritz von Lossberg’s Ausbildungsvorschrift für die der Fuβtruppen im Kriege
(Training Manual for Foot Troops in War). Since there was therefore no longer a need
for these specialist instructional units, they began to be dissolved: by the end of the
war, just 15 companies remained.

The Stosstrupptaktik

All of the armies in 1914 had entered the war with infantry tactics that were based on
essentially the same approach. Supported by artillery, long lines of infantry would
advance towards the enemy position in dispersed formation. On entering rifle range,
these lines would be strengthened to provide the rifle firepower needed to subdue the
defence, after which the line would move forward to seize the position, protected by
indirect artillery support. Although machine-guns were available on the basis of one
company for roughly every three battalions, they were expected to play little role in the
attack. The infantry relied above all else on linear tactics and rifle fire.

Rohr’s genius was to dispense with these concepts almost entirely. Instead, he imbued
his combat engineers with something of the adventurous spirit of the Jäger. Rather
than rely on rifle fire, he abrogated the tradition that the infantry should be uniformly
equipped and instead brought into play a range of support weapons: grenade-
launchers, light machine-guns, mortars, light field guns, and flamethrowers. With these
weapons able to suppress the defences through direct fire, Rohr’s infantrymen no
longer needed to adopt the linear formations required for massed rifle fire. Instead, he
broke them into section-sized teams, moving freely across the battlefield, using their
initiative to take advantage of the terrain in order to slip through the weak points in the
defensive system and so assault strongpoints from the flanks and rear, relying on
grenades and sub-machine-guns to provide sudden blasts of firepower.

The impact of these tactics was profound. Since the infantry no longer relied on rifle
firepower, there was no need for men to be massed in front of the defensive position.
The resulting dispersion of the troops meant that there were no thick lines to be mown
down by the defenders’ machine-guns or caught by their protective artillery barrages,
as so tragically characterised the British attack on the Somme in July 1916. Since the
attack was no longer undertaken by linear waves, but by small groups manoeuvring
across the terrain, the advance could no longer be held up by a single strongpoint.
Instead, the attackers would swarm through the gaps left in the defensive system
where individual placements had been destroyed, always seeking the weakest points
and flowing through these into the depths of the enemy position. For defenders trained
to operate in a linear system, discovering the attackers had penetrated to their flanks
or rear came as a shattering surprise. The massed surrenders of March 1918 reflect
the inability of the British troops to deal with such unexpected shocks.

The requirements of the new tactics and their consequences for the German command
and training system were equally profound. Sections of men manoeuvring
independently across the battlefield could no longer be tightly commanded by senior
officers. In a dramatic extension of the longstanding system of Auftragstaktik (mission
command), under which field officers were expected to interpret the orders given to

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them by their superiors, adapting the detail to suit the local circumstances in order to
achieve the overall mission, now subalterns and even senior non-commissioned
officers were given this freedom to apply their own initiative. The demands placed on
these leaders and their men were therefore far greater than had been required of the
line infantry. Instead of simply aligning themselves with their neighbours and following
orders, they now had to read the situation, both the terrain and the enemy forces, apply
their own initiative to when and where they manoeuvred, and cope with operating with
their flanks exposed as they infiltrated deep inside the enemy position. Small wonder
that the stormtroopers considered themselves a breed apart and that a great many of
the men originally assigned to the units had to be weeded out as unfit – when OHL
sought to convert the four Jäger battalions into assault units, over five hundred of their
men were found to be unsatisfactory, despite these already being drawn from an elite.

The extent of the shift in practice and the demands on the men applying them were
clearly enormous. As a consequence, although the tactics were embedded into the
infantry’s basic training manuals in early 1918 and the training task of the
Sturmbataillone declared complete, it is no surprise to discover that many of the
formations that took part in the great offensives of 1918 found that they were only able
to implement them to a limited extent. In many cases, the defending British and French
reported being faced with attackers adopting the traditional massed linear tactics. The
resulting casualties were enormous, playing a major factor in causing the German
advances to slow and finally halt, failing to achieve the knock-out blow Ludendorff had
desired. Nonetheless, the tactics developed by Rohr during the autumn and winter of
1915 had been adopted by all armies by the end of the war and became the basic
approach used throughout the Second World War.

Applying the Tactics

The techniques developed by the Sturmbataillone can best be understood through

examining actual operations.

For the opening of Operation Michael on 21 March, Jäger-Sturm-Bataillon 3 was

divided into four detachments: one supporting each of the three infantry divisions of
XXIII Reserve Corps of Second Army, while the fourth was held in corps reserve. The
combined arms nature of the tactics is apparent in the composition of these
detachments. The troops sent to support 18th Infantry Division comprised the
battalion’s 4th Company, 2nd Machine-Gun Company, two pieces from the Infantry-Gun
Battery, two mortars from the Mortar Company, and ten flamethrowers from the
specialist Garde-Reserve-Pioniere-Regiment. They faced the positions of the British
66th (2nd East Lancashire) Division, part of XIX Corps, around Harricourt

This detachment spent the week before the offensive in the rear areas, practicing the
operation, while their commanders undertook reconnaissance at the front. They then
moved up into position with the infantry the night before the attack. Although it was a
clear, moonlit night, the manoeuvre was completed without incident. The following
morning, movement was made very difficult due to thick fog, which reduced visibility
to just five paces. Nonetheless, the assault squads moved into No-Man’s-Land ten
minutes before the attack was due to begin. The result was that the British frontline
fell almost without a shot being fired, with what resistance there was being quickly
silenced with hand grenades. As the Stosstruppen penetrated deeper into the position,
skirting around the numerous British machine-gun nests, the fighting became intense.

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Here, the flamethrowers and grenade-launchers repeatedly proved their worth, laying
down decisive fire from the flanks and rear of the enemy positions. By noon, the
objectives for the day had been reached. A British counterattack by an infantry
company was flattened by fire from the light machine-guns, while a second attack, this
time supported by two tanks, was also quickly repulsed, with one tank destroyed by
artillery fire, the other by heavy machine-guns using armour-piercing bullets. A single
company of stormtroopers, with their integral support weapons, had enabled an entire
infantry division to penetrate the British defensive system. In the process, the
detachment had captured several hundred prisoners, at the cost of just five men killed,
40 wounded, and 30 affected by gas.

Elsewhere that morning, the men of Sturm-Bataillon 5 (Rohr) had been performing
similar feats. Like their Jäger colleagues, Rohr’s men were divided into several
detachments. Two ‘half-battalions’, each with two companies and associated heavy
weapons, supported 50th Division of IX Corps and 36th Division of XVIII Corps, in
Hutier’s Eighteenth Army, while the remainder were held back in reserve.

The half battalion supporting 50th Division faced the British 30th Division. In addition to
the 20 assault squads formed by Rohr’s combat engineers, the unit deployed
flamethrowers, machine-guns, infantry guns and mortars, giving it the support of more
than 80 heavy weapons. In addition, the Germans deployed five captured British tanks.
The firepower available to Rohr’s men was clearly enormous.

Once again, the move up to the frontline was virtually unmolested by the British, who
appeared entirely unaware of what was happening in front of them. Nonetheless, the
initial attack proved challenging, as the defenders responded vigorously and the
German infantry became disorientated in the thick fog. Although the tanks had some
success at first, overrunning several British machine-gun nests and causing the
defenders to flee, overall, however, they proved disappointing, as their crews quickly
became exhausted and the vehicles bogged down. The key lesson learned was the
need for close liaison between the tanks and the stormtroopers.

The advance therefore came to rely heavily on the assault squads. These, greatly
aided by the direct fire of three batteries of artillery, began to make progress. Suddenly,
the other half battalion broke through on their flank, as the resistance of the British 36th
(Ulster) Division collapsed. Seizing this opportunity, the combat engineers moved into
the depth of the enemy position, taking the machine-gun nests from the rear. The
severity of the fighting, and the difficulties experienced in the early phases of the day,
may be seen in the much heavier casualties suffered by Rohr’s men than by the Jäger,
with the battalion history recording 41 men killed. Despite these losses, by the end of
the day, the attack had been a dramatic success: the forward battalions of both 30th
and 36th (Ulster) Divisions had been wiped out, with most of the men taken prisoner,
and the Germans had seized important footholds in the second, or ‘battle’, position.
The line infantry were warm in their appreciation of the efforts made by Rohr’s men.

Conclusions

The Stosstrupptaktik represented a decisive break with tradition. For more than two
centuries, since pikes disappeared from the battlefield, the infantry had been a
homogenous force, with every man armed with a musket/rifle, relying principally on
the firepower from these weapons to prepare for the assault on the enemy position.

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As a consequence, formations tended to be linear and advances focused on

maintaining a solid front. Rohr threw away that rulebook. His tactics separated fire and
movement, integrating a complex suite of heavy weapons into the frontline and thereby
allowing the foot soldiers to move in small squads. As a consequence, they were able
to take advantage of every fold in the terrain to work their way through the inevitable
weak(er) spots in the enemy defences and hence assault positions from the flanks
and rear. The effect of defenders accustomed to the traditional tactics was
catastrophic, with whole battalions surrendering en masse.

The function of the Sturmbataillone was equally revolutionary. It is a truism that armies
tend to prepare for the previous war, and it is certainly true many of the replacements
sent to the front in 1915, and even 1916, found their training for a war of movement
was ill-suited to the realities of trench fighting on the Western Front. Through the
Sturmbataillone, the German Army sought to bridge that gap. Their role was not simply
to provide a pool of experts, able to lead daring trench raids, but also to pass on those
skills, kept fresh and immediate through constant practical application, to the mass of
the line infantry units. Their success in this is shown by that mission being considered
completed by the summer of 1918, with the specialist units thereafter being
progressively disbanded. In seeking an origin for this decisive innovation in infantry
tactics, which provided the basic pattern in all subsequent armies, the credit must go,
not to Hutier or even to Ludendorff, but to Falkenhayn. It was under his leadership that
the first experiments were undertaken, and it was his decision to give the
stormtroopers the dual role of assault spearhead and school for the rest of the army.

Finally, the question must be considered why the Germans developed the
Stosstrupptaktik, in contrast to the British and French, who instead relied more on
tanks and inflexible artillery bombardments. Like Rohr, they too separated firepower
and movement, but this was largely outside the infantry rather than within it. Although
the British infantry certainly gained an array of heavy support weapons and abandoned
linear formations in favour of ‘worms’, the bulk of their fire support was provided by
units outside the infantry structure, rather than these being placed within it, as Rohr
had done.

The deficiencies of the British approach were to be demonstrated repeatedly, both in

the early tank engagements of 1917 and 1918, and in the flawed ‘pure tank’ tactics
used until 1942. Since the Germans had integrated fire and manoeuvre within the
infantry, there was no obvious need to develop a tank. However, having seen the
potential offered by the new weapon, it was the Germans who made the most of it.
Drawing on the lessons demonstrated by the Sturmbataillone, the panzer divisions of
1939 were all-arms formations, building the tanks into the model originally invented by
Rohr. Here, again, this then became the basis for all subsequent armies.

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