Stormtrooptactic in the Swedish army - Part 1: Short presentation of the stormtroopers and the tactic

When reading about World War One sooner or later the reader will find expressions such as stürmtrupp , stosstrupp and stosstrupptaktik. Also sooner or later the reader would see a picture of a German soldier who around his neck wears a canvas bag full with hand grenades. For more information about the stormtroopers I recommend the books of Martin Samuels (Command or Control? Command, Training and Tactics in the British and German Armies 1888-1918) and Stephen Bull (German Assault Troops of the First World War: Stosstrupptaktik. The First Stormtroopers).

Picture of a stormplatoon. The soldiers are equipped with hand grenades in canvas bags and shorter version of the Muaser 98 rifle, the Mauser 98k carbine.

During the WWI the armies in general were struggling with efforts to make warfare more mobile. Trench warfare demanded huge amount of human and material resources, more than the armies had planned for before the war. In German army the ambition to make the offensive warfare more effective and to achieve easier breakthrough through enemy lines resulted in development of “stosstrupptaktik” later even known as “stürmtruppstaktik”.

In March of 1915 tests with a special ”Sturmbattalion” started in order to develop new tactics for attack against entrenched positions. The tests continued later during the autumn and led to results where infantry became equipped with own support weapons in order to be able to combat different types of targets typical for trench warfare such as pillboxes. Also the changes affected the usage of attack formation during combat. The thick firing-line attack formation, which was hard to lead and also obstructed the use of support weapons, was replaced by sparse advance with minor groups.  

Almost one year later since March of 1915 the first manual for the Stürmbattalion was published (Anweisung für die Verwendung eines Stürmbatallions). According to the manual the stormtrooptactic was based on attack by smaller squads of stormtroopers attacking the most vulnerable positions in the defence in order to achieve a breakthrough.  After the breakthrough was achieved the rest of the infantry would continue the attack by “sweeping through” the rest of the defences. The attack can be described in four steps:

 

 

1.    A short but intensive ”stürmfeur” (artillery storm fire) against enemy’s entrenched positions.

2.    The first attack wave consisting of stormtroopers attacks in sparse formation with assignments to achieve breakthrough.

3.    A second and eventually a third attack wave is sent consisting of regular infantry who “cleans up” the rest of enemy’s defence.

4.    After a desired breakthrough has been achieved and new ground gained the troops start adoption for defence in new entrenched position or zone.

 

It was on the Eastern front where the tactic was fully developed and used in a larger scale for the first time. Main principles was to infiltrate the enemy’s defence by attacking its weakest points with light-armed and self-supplied units. A famous name regarding the tactic was General Oskar von Hutier who was one of its main developers and who had success for the German army’s attack on Riga in September 1917.

The stormtroopers differed from the regular infantry by necessity to pass higher selection process and training demand. They were also were equipped with carbines, huger amount of hand grenades, flame-throwers, light machine-guns, light infantry canons, light mortars and other. The original thought was that stormtroopers should be used as training units for training of the ordinary infantry. But this idea became through time hard to achieve due the lack of time and resources. Instead the stormtroopers were sent to the frontlines to reinforce other units. At the end of 1916 every army stationed at the frontlines had its own storm-unit in various numbers of personnel and at the beginning of 1917 it was published in training manuals for infantry that every infantry company would have its own stormplatoon. Finally according to the manuals (Der Angriff im Stellungskrieg) from beginning of 1918 it was decided that all soldiers in the German army would receive stormtroopers training and usage of support weapons while the special storm-units would be dissolved. Also according to the manual who was actual until the end of the war the main principals for attack were highlighted: high training performance, good leadership, usage of main effort and surprise during attack and maintaining fast assault tempo.