Material battle
In the military , a material battle is a combat activity that is characterized by the massive use of weapons and war material.
Enormous quantities of troops, military equipment and ammunition are provided on both sides of the warring parties. The strategic conception of the campaign moves into the background; The aim is to defeat the opponent by means of quantitative and / or qualitative superiority. When opponents of roughly equal strength face each other, material battles can take a long time; both sides can suffer enormous losses; often neither side succeeds in deciding the stalemate in their favor.
Historical
Great material battles took place in the first half of the 20th century during the First and Second World Wars . Because of the increase in population and industrialization, it was possible to produce enormous amounts of war material and ammunition, raise armies of millions and compensate for losses of all kinds relatively quickly. A war economy emerged . The mood among the soldiers and the civilian population was z. B. quite confident at the beginning of the First World War: every nation assumed to be able to successfully survive a short campaign as a victor (in Germany this confidence was based on the quick and successful outcome of the Franco-Prussian War of 1870/71 ). It soon became clear to everyone involved that the war had been given a new face and that the victims were largely in vain.
Due to the extremely high losses, for example in the Battle of Verdun , the Battle of the Somme in 1916 or the Battle of the Aisne in 1917, new paths were sought after the failure of the battles for material and bleeding. Technological progress showed a way out towards the end of the First World War with the further development of tanks and the air force . In the Second World War, with the help of these new weapons, it was possible to find new methods (e.g. the so-called Blitzkrieg concept on the German side ) to break through the enemy’s defense. During the Second World War, the material and personnel costs of the armed forces rose to new record levels (mechanization / motorization of units). Here, as later in the Korean War and the Vietnam War , the industrial and material potential of the new superpower USA became increasingly clear. In contrast, the example of the lost Vietnam War shows that massive deployments of ordnance such as area bombing with partial use of Agent Orange do not have to be decisive for the war.
The term material battle is mainly associated with the above-mentioned large-scale static battles of the First World War, which took place in a comparatively small area; the word was coined for the new phenomenon. Nevertheless, later battles (e.g. the Battle of Budapest and the Battle of Berlin (1945) at the end of the Second World War) were material battles .
Others
In material battles, logistics (main article: replenishment ) play an important role. The railway probably played an important role for the first time in the Franco-Prussian War of 1870/71: with its help, the German side succeeded in quickly bringing a large number of soldiers and equipment to the front at the start of the war. The mobilization of German troops began on July 16, 1870. On August 3, 320,000 Germans were at the border.
On March 1, 1871, there were 464,221 infantry, 55,562 horsemen and 1,674 artillery troops on French soil, as well as 105,072 infantry, 5,681 horsemen and 68 artillery artillery troops. A total of around 1.4 million men were mobilized on the German side during the course of the war, of which 1.1 million were deployed in France.
These numbers are indications of the enormous importance of military logistics even then.
The First World War was the first war in which the truck took over significant parts of the transport. It was faster than the horse-drawn carts used up until then. Field railways were built behind the fronts (see Heeresfeldbahn ).
England practiced a naval blockade against Germany from 1914 to 1918, which was made possible by the superior sea power . This led to a lack of raw materials and hunger in the German Empire . The shortage of raw materials also led to a shortage of weapons and other military equipment as well as coal, the dominant energy source at the time.
In a modification of this military meaning, the term is also used elsewhere, for example
- in motorsport for particularly elaborately designed racing vehicles
- in chess (a game with frequent capturing of the opposing pieces)
See also
Individual evidence
- ↑ LeMO on material battles in the First World War. Accessed August 17, 2013.
