The Legend of Hutier Tactics

German Troops Gathering in St. Quentin
for Operation Michael

In Hutier Tactics, infiltration attacks began with brief and violent artillery preparation of the enemy front lines in place of the traditional week's long barrage. The new artillery purpose was to suppress enemy positions rather than destroy them. The new artillery preparation would shift to the enemy rear area to disrupt lines of communications, artillery, logistics, and command and control nodes. The goal was disruption at the critical moment. The resulting confusion would degrade the enemy's ability to launch credible counterattacks, concentrate fires, and shift units to fill gaps or block penetrations.

Light infantry led infiltration attacks. They would evade and bypass frontline fortified positions, thus identifying gaps in the front line. The infiltrating light infantry units would "pull" the larger, more heavily equipped, units through. More heavily armed units would follow and attack the bypassed and isolated enemy strong points. Other follow on forces would enter the gaps to reduce the strongpoint and precipitate the collapse of the entire front. These infiltration attacks relied on surprise and speed. 

Source: Armchair General

General Oskar von Hutier

Many English-language and French accounts of World War I such as the example above speak of "Hutier Tactics" as a German secret weapon that nearly won the war in Ludendorff's spring offensive of 1918. When Ludendorff launched his spring offensive on 21 March 1918. . . he achieved surprising success. The German Second, Seventeenth, and Eighteenth Armies broke through the Allied lines on a 100-kilometer front. Especially spectacular was the advance of General Oskar von Hutier's Eighteenth Army, which gained ten kilometers on the first day, 12 on the second, eight on the third, and eight again on the fourth. When this operation came to an end on 4 April, Hutier's army had crushed General Sir Hubert Gough's Fifth British Army, had taken 50,000 prisoners and had come close to driving a wedge between the British and French fronts. Hutier's army had moved forward a total of 38 kilometers, an astounding drive.

The second German attack on 9 April, and the third launched on 27 May, were equally astonishing. For example, on the opening day of the second offensive, German troops advanced 20 kilometers, the longest surge made on the western front since the beginning of trench warfare. The impact of these German successes was tremendous. To many contemporaries, as well as to later historians, it seemed that the recipe for mobile warfare had been found. The victories of the Eighteenth Army were praised not only by the German Emperor, who decorated Hutier with the Pour la mérite, but also by the Allies, and especially by the French.

The Paris magazine L'Illustration in June 1918 called Hutier "Germany's new strategic genius."1 Later that month the New York Times Mid-Week Pictorial presented the portrait of Hutier along with such generals as Ludendorff and Below, with the remark that Hutier was" one of the most successful of the German commanders." Several days later the Army and Navy Journal said of Hutier:

The enemy has worked out elaborate logistic features in his offensive of the present war which enable him to station his assaulting troops at a great number of points, twenty, thirty and possibly even fifty miles behind the intended point of attack. To General von Hutier in his March offensive. . . is ascribed the successful inauguration of the new method. . . If this method is correctly ascribed to von Hutier's attack, the crushing and sustained effect it produced upon Gough's Fifth Army gives proof of its formidable nature.

Hutier's successes made headlines, and military writers and historians came to·accept him as a genius. Commandant Desmazes of the Military School at Saint-Cyr wrote in 1920: "The battles against the Russians (Sereth and Riga). . . had been the laboratory for a new tactical doctrine fostered by General von Hutier, the Army Commander. . . and by Colonel Bruckmuller, who commanded the army artillery under General von Hutier." Major W. H. Wilbur, who would be a US general officer in World War II, said in his thesis at the Command and General Staff School in 1933: "In the offensive of March 21st, the Germans put into effect a new tactical doctrine. . . (that was) highly successful." Wilbur gave credit for this to Hutier and referred to it as the "new scheme for rupturing the enemy line."

[However] despite widespread emphasis on the Hutier tactics by French, American, and British authors, the German accounts of World War I present no evidence whatsoever of Hutier as the innovator of a tactical doctrine. Ludendorff himself makes no connection in his memoirs between Hutier's Riga campaign and the tactics of 1918. All that Ludendorff says of Riga is: "Supported by higher commands General von Hutier. . . made with his chief of staff, General von Suaberzweig, thorough preparations for the undertaking. The passage was successful. The Russians had evacuated the bridgehead. . . and with few exceptions, offered but slight resistance."

Crossing a Canal During the Third (May) Spring Offensive

General Wilhelm Balck, writing on the development of tactics in the First World War, says nothing of Hutier tactics. Nor does he credit Hutier as an innovator of a specific technique. Nothing is to be found in the German Army's official publication of documents. The same applies to an official publication of lessons of the great war. And in a later official survey, Hutier is treated only as a troop commander. Other German studies are similarly silent. An authoritative and detailed analysis as late as 1938 makes no mention of the Riga operation or of Hutier Tactics or of the influence of Eastern Front and Caporetto experiences on the Ludendorff offensive A German research historian examined the works of more than thirty German officers who participated in the actions in which the Hutier tactics were employed. . . concluded that "A special Hutier tactics or a so-called Hutier tactic in the presently available German sources [is] nonexistent."

Unfortunately, Hutier's diary was destroyed in World War II, and no document in the German military archives indicates his stand on the matter. It is likely that Hutier, along wit h many other army and corps commanders, contributed to the new tactics. Although it is difficult to credit the individuals involved in these innovations, one thing is certain–Hutier did not invent the tactics. They resulted from an evolutionary process in which many persons participated. If a single individual is more responsible than the others, it is Ludendorff himself, for he made the decision to collect, analyze, and formulate the use of these efficacious ideas.

Ascribing all this to Hutier was the work of the Allied Press and particularly the French. It is reasonable to assume that the other media carrying the news considered the French Headquarters a reliable source insofar as a contemporary combat report can be reliable. Subsequently, American works would cite principally French sources to support their statements about "Hutier tactics." Combining the press reports with the prestige of the post-World War I French Army, we may reasonably suppose that it was the French who originated and propagated the legend. Why the French made Hutier a hero is a matter of conjecture. . . Perhaps the French had to rely on incomplete and inaccurate information from the front and therefore made an educated guess as to the origin of the successful German tactics. But to think that the Germans themselves would refuse to credit a hero if one actually existed, is absurd, for they too had to keep up morale. "Hutier tactics" must be relegated to the status of historical legend.

Source: "The Hutier Legend" by Dr. Laszlo M. Alfoldi, Parameters, 1976, No. 2