How the Major Powers Innovated Between World War I and World War II
The prolonged stalemate of trench warfare on the western front of the First World War directly influenced massive changes in military operations in World War II. Critical to how each belligerent implemented change was first how they digested the lessons of World War I. The major world powers digested what occurred between 1914 and 1918 differently. The differences in doctrine are perhaps most stark in different national conceptions on the ground, at sea, and in the air.
Despite the rigidity imposed by the Treaty of Versailles, the German army entered World War II as the preeminent master of mobile armored warfare. In reality, the Germans were doing little that was innovative. They believed they already had a practical doctrine in Bewgungskrieg, the war of movement on the operational level. The culture of the Reichswehr played an instrumental role in developing their new doctrine.
The seeds of blitzkrieg were sewn in the early period just after World War I because the Germans digested World War I lessons and incubated their ideas in a culture of dissent and discussion at all levels in professional journals. Under Hans von Seeckt, the German army established multiple committees to study World War I lessons. These committees resulted in improved maneuver warfare — the use of armored vehicles in conjunction with infantry, engineers, and signal corps within a single unit known as a Panzer Division that would then cooperate closely with air power to achieve battlefield effectiveness. This concept, combined with the German tradition of Auftragstaktik and the advent of modern radio communications, coordinated tanks, and aircraft to give the Germans a distinct advantage in the war’s opening stages.
German combined-arms warfare was a deliberate product of technological innovation, organizational adaptation to new doctrines, the German tradition of decentralized command, and close cooperation with other forces, especially the Luftwaffe.
On the other hand, the French turned to methodical battle and robust defensive works in the wake of World War I. Whereas Germany rediscovered maneuver, France prepared to fight the same war again, expecting the Germans to behave the same despite advances in technology. Only in 1940 did France develop independent armor formations — yet this was too late to make a difference in the French way of thinking to successfully defeat German mobile warfare.
Unlike France, Britain learned the basics of mobile warfare gradually. The British military and officers’ corps were characterized mainly by the same conservatism that afflicted the French army yet hampered by intense interservice rivalry. Despite innovative concepts of independent armored formations proposed by J.F.C. Fuller and Basil Liddell Hart in the 1920s, the British mostly abandoned them due to political disinterest and economic constraints in the 1930s.
During the interwar period, the Americans relegated tanks to an infantry support role initially, citing their effectiveness at sustaining offensives in the previous war. During the 1930s, however, the infantry and cavalry take the armored vehicle in different directions. The cavalry saw the vehicle as an augment to traditional horse cavalry, while infantry leaders never wavered from their doctrine that tanks were infantry support vehicles.
The Army entertained little discussion of armor as a separate branch, despite publications in Europe extolling the tank’s virtues for penetration and exploitation and kept it as support for infantry units. Army leaders preferred men over machines, as, in their view, the important lesson of World War I was that large armies win wars. This thought process led to a deemphasis on technology and tanks in the Ground Forces.
In contrast, Army air leaders managed to consistently edge their branch toward independence in arguing the utility of bombers and their ability to win wars regardless of ground combat. As a result, the US Army went to war with weak tanks lacking coherent doctrine, an over-reliance on heavy bombers, and no doctrine for the type of combined arms maneuver warfare their German adversaries had become so adept at performing.
One of the most important developments during the interwar period was the aircraft carrier, Naval aviation had a decisive effect on naval engagements throughout the war. The ability to launch aircraft while at sea proved an efficient use of resources. However, this capability was learned during the opening stages of the war as experimentation with aircraft carrier aviation was limited during the interwar period by resources and naval treaties that limited the size of navies. A further impediment derived from a Mahanian institutional culture that favored battleships.
Using submarines for commercial raiding was considered outside the purview of “civilized” war, and as such, in London, Berlin, and Washington, funding went to traditional Mahanian battle fleets. Each navy believed that unrestricted submarine warfare had failed in World War I, which led to reduced experimentation in new doctrine and innovation as even submarine enthusiasts saw their role as augmenting the main battle fleet. This, of course, changed during the war, as the efficacy of disrupting enemy supply lines — particularly the Germans in the Battle of the Atlantic and the Americans in the western Pacific — became evident.
In a bid to maintain relevancy with a new role, the United States Marine Corps organized and executed intense training and planning for a mission of seizing enemy naval bases for the U.S. Navy and amphibious landings. The Japanese did well in developing this technique, but as the British suffered from institutional considered amphibious operations a utility and preferred to concentrate on other avenues of development. Because the Marine Corps was a separate service and concentrated on developing this capability, it emerged from the interwar period as the best prepared to execute amphibious operations under fire.
Airpower is another critical area of development between World War I and World War II, strategic bombing especially. Each belligerent emerged from World War I enthralled with the possibilities that strategic bombing promised. Most believed that airpower and strategic bombing alone could prevent the stalemate and slaughter of World War I. This was even though air operations in the Great War showed that the bomber alone was not the panacea — it required air superiority. That war demonstrated the difficulty of precision bombing as well. Nevertheless, each developed capabilities, however, congruent with their internal culture and geographic positions.
The Germans, mainly because of their continental position in central Europe with enemies on both sides, focused development on medium-range and close-attack aircraft to support ground forces rather than strategic bombers — as a result, they did not have the typical four-engine bomber required to conduct effective bombardment.
Again reflecting their strategic and geographic reality, the British and Americans developed the technology necessary for long-range bombing — the Americans even more so because of the distances required to fly across the country and the Atlantic. Both had a belief in the efficacy of the bomber fleets alone and disdained escort fighters. As the war began, the American Air Forces adapted the best, while the British concentrated on fighters to fight the Blitz.
Nevertheless, strategic bombing represented the only means by which Britain could strike Nazi Germany in the opening years of the war.
At the onset of World War II, the Allies quickly adapted their interwar innovations to the new reality of combined arms maneuvers set by the Axis. Nevertheless, the Axis, especially Nazi Germany, failed to emphasize strategy, intelligence, and logistics combined with an inability to adapt to their adversaries’ counters to spell failure on a global scale.
