Oskar von Hutier
Oskar von Hutier was one of
Germany's most successful and innovative generals of
World War I.
Hutier spent the first year of the war as a divisional commander in
France, performing well but not distinguishing himself until the spring of 1915, when he was transferred to the Eastern Front. There, he became a corps commander attached to the German Tenth Army, and helped that force conquer large parts of
Russian-held
Poland and
Lithuania over the next two years.
After rising to army command early in 1917, Hutier began to apply the lessons learned from his three years of commanding troops, along with his study of tactics used by other armies.
Encyclopedia
Oskar von Hutier was one of
Germany's most successful and innovative generals of
World War I.
Hutier spent the first year of the war as a divisional commander in
France, performing well but not distinguishing himself until the spring of 1915, when he was transferred to the Eastern Front. There, he became a corps commander attached to the German Tenth Army, and helped that force conquer large parts of
Russian-held
Poland and
Lithuania over the next two years.
After rising to army command early in 1917, Hutier began to apply the lessons learned from his three years of commanding troops, along with his study of tactics used by other armies. He devised a new strategy for the Germans to break the
stalemate of
trench warfare. These tactics were to prove so successful in 1917 and 1918 that the French dubbed them "Hutier tactics", although the more commonly used term today is "infiltration tactics".
Hutier tactics
Hutier had noticed that in many previous battles, the conventional method of launching an attack, with a lengthy artillery barrage all along the line followed by an assault from massed infantry, was leading to disastrous losses. He suggested an alternate approach, now called either Hutier Tactics or infiltration tactics, which consisted of these basic steps:
1: A short artillery bombardment, featuring heavy shells mixed with numerous
poison gas projectiles would concentrate on neutralizing the enemy front lines, but not to destroy them.
2: Under a creeping barrage, German shock troops would move forward and infiltrate the Allied defenses at previously identified weak points. They would avoid combat whenever possible and attempt to destroy or capture enemy headquarters and artillery strongpoints.
3: After the shock troops had done their job, German Army units, heavily equipped with
machine guns, and mortars would make heavy attacks along narrow fronts against any Allied strongpoints the shock troops missed. When the artillery was in place, officers could direct the fire wherever it was needed to accelerate the breakthrough.
4: In the last stage of the assault, regular infantry would mop up any remaining Allied resistance.
Many other generals had planned attacks along similar lines in the past, dating as far back as
United States Army Colonel
Emory Upton at the
Battle of Spotsylvania Court House in 1864. Allied generals had done so on a small scale in earlier battles in
France, but Hutier was the first commander to employ them on a wide, ongoing scale.
Success
On September 3, 1917, Hutier, commanding the German Eighth Army, ended the two-year siege of the Russian city of
Riga with his tactics. He followed that success with an amphibious assault to seize Russian-held islands in the
Baltic Sea.
Although Hutier was not present, other German generals used his methods in October 1917 to win a spectacular victory over the
Italians at the
Battle of Caporetto. Hutier was awarded the
Pour le Mérite by Kaiser
Wilhelm II and transferred to the Western Front in 1918.
In March of that year, Hutier again employed the infiltration tactics in the Spring Offensive and hammered the Allied line along the gap between the
French and
British armies, advancing some 40 miles along the
Somme River toward
Amiens. The Germans took 50,000 prisoners and Hutier was awarded the Oak Leaves to accompany his Pour le Mérite.
Final Days of World War I and Retirement
Hutier's tactics were used in another major victory against the French in June 1918, but the Allies had begun to develop counters to his methods. In July, when the Germans again advanced in what became known as the Second Battle of the Marne, the American and French defenders had created a deep defensive system which the depleted and exhausted shock troop units failed to break.
Still, Hutier returned to postwar Germany as a hero. Like his overall commander and cousin, General
Erich Ludendorff, Hutier maintained that the German Army had not been defeated in the field, but was "
stabbed in the back" by enemies on the home front.
He left the army in 1919 and served as president of the German Officers' League until shortly before his death in 1934.
