The Death of the Ground Offensive: A Look Back on 'The Great War'

摘要

WWI was the third deadliest conflict in history with an estimated 65 million deaths. Since then, military strategists and technologists have attempted to make sense of the carnage. From this perspective "The Great War" was a test of two methods of defeat: "Annihilation" or "Exhaustion." The concepts of annihilation or exhaustion were articulated by the German military theorist Hans Delbrueck (11 November 1848 - 14 July 1929) in his four volume study of war, "Geschichte der Kriegskunst im Rahmen der politischen Geschichte" (History of warfare in the framework of political history, four volumes, third edition published in 1920). Annihilation sought the crushing of the enemy in a decisive battle, or a series of decisive battles. Exhaustion sought the defeat of the enemy through the combination of battle and manoeuvre, employing military, political and economic methods.