Cannon fodder

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Cannon fodder is a colloquial , disparaging term for the deployment of soldiers . In a war they are ruthlessly used by their own leadership against the hostile effects of weapons , as it were as inferior " human material " and mostly in the interest of "superordinate" tactical or strategic goals. The occurrence of high losses must be foreseen in advance and will be accepted.

In German usage, the term finally established itself at the time of the First World War , mainly because of the dominant role of artillery in trench warfare and the material battles of the years 1914 to 1918. Metaphorically , the soldiers are referred to as the “fodder” of the enemy cannons or weapons. The term applied in particular to the infantry , as they had to bear the brunt of the battle and, as a "battle-deciding" weapon type, had a correspondingly large scope. It was primarily affected by enemy fire. In addition, the soldiers of the infantry were usually less qualified than members of special technical troops and therefore appeared “more expendable”.

Word origin

In particular, the further development of artillery and its ever more massive use led to an enormous death rate among the first waves of attacks when attacking enemy positions over open terrain. Around this time, the phrase food for powder ("(shooting) powder feed") came up in English-speaking countries, cynically referring to soldiers who were sent to certain death. In the first half of the 19th century , the German loan transfer "cannon fodder" arose from the English food for powder .

History before 1800

In warfare , poorly equipped and inexperienced units have been deployed in a targeted manner for centuries, which were supposed to exhaust the opposing troops in a first wave of attacks and reduce their stocks of arrows and bolts before the regular units attacked. Convicts , slaves or mercenaries were often used for this purpose . During the siege of Constantinople in 1453, the Ottomans initially had poorly armed foreign mercenaries storm the walls of the city, fighting them only to drain the endurance of the besieged. In the English Civil War , so-called “ Forlorn Hope ” companies were deployed, made up of volunteers and entrusted with extremely dangerous tasks. They drew enemy fire on them, which, among other things, revealed gun positions. They should also get the enemy to blow up mines prematurely. The Forlorn Hope units can therefore be classified as "cannon fodder".

Although cannons had been in use since the 14th century , the term “cannon fodder” only emerged when industrialization had fully penetrated warfare. However, the war tactics were only hesitantly adapted to the new weapons technology. In the Thirty Years' War , for example, the so-called lost heap was used with the Landsknechten , who fought in front of the actual association to break a breach or to stop the attacking enemy and disorder.

History in the modern age

With the introduction of conscription , beginning in France at the turn of the 19th century, the commanders had large numbers of often poorly trained soldiers at their disposal during the Napoleonic Wars , who could also be replaced quickly and cheaply. After 1815 there was initially a longer period of peace and a departure from the mass army. With the further development of weapons technology as a result of the ever more rapid industrialization and innovation , in view of an enormous population growth and the implementation of the conscription system in the last third of the 19th century, the loss rates in wars increased enormously, a development that already began with the Crimean War of 1854/56 and the Clearly heralded the American Civil War of 1861/65. Combat tactics were initially used in these wars that had hardly been modified since the Napoleonic era.

In the battles near Fredericksburg , Chancellorsville , Antietam and especially in the Battle of Gettysburg in 1863, there were repeated and unsuccessful attacks by line formations on opponents firing from covered positions. The infantry formations fired volleys at each other from a distance of a few dozen meters , which has resulted in heavy losses since the advent of precise rifles with rifled barrels. After four years of civil war, around 600,000 deaths were counted on both sides.

Before 1914, disputes such as - on a smaller scale - the Boer War 1899–1902 and in particular the Russo-Japanese War 1904/05 allowed some conclusions to be drawn about further developments. The development of the machine gun by Hiram Maxim was also decisive .

During the First World War from 1914 to 1918 the term was actually developed. Especially on the western front in France and Belgium, which had remained almost unchanged for years , enormous amounts of artillery and millions of soldiers were concentrated in relatively limited spaces. From 1915/16 the material battle developed there . As a result, units suffered heavy gunfire losses on the way to the front. The term “cannon fodder” was fitting for the concept of the attrition battle . The enemy was supposed to be gradually worn out by the permanent, massive use of military equipment and soldiers, whereby it was assumed that the enemy losses would be significantly higher or that the enemy would be more difficult to bear than his own side. This was the mark of offensives between 1915 and 1917 in the Artois , near Verdun , on the Eastern Front , on the Isonzo , on the Somme , Aisne and in Flanders . Most of the losses were almost the same on both sides, but overall the Allies lost more soldiers than the Central Powers . However, the personal superiority of the Entente 1918, which was additionally strengthened by the USA , was decisive for the war decision, even if it came close to a Pyrrhic victory for France .

For the fighting on the German Western Front , the soldiers came up with new words such as “steel bath”, “blood pump” and “Maas mill”. The philosopher and war veteran Ernst Jünger gave his war memories in 1920 the title In Stahlgewittern .

During the Second World War , the concept of punitive companies was again increasingly taken up, which was practically by definition “cannon fodder”. The Soviet Red Army deployed such companies, which were mostly extremely poorly equipped and were supposed to force the German Wehrmacht through their hopeless attacks to use up ammunition. There were comparable units on the German side, such as the 999 Penal Battalion . In the First Gulf War (1980–1988), too , the military leadership of Iran sent insufficiently equipped and trained recruits to certain death against Iraq , in order to be able to roll over the enemy positions simply through the mass of their own attackers. However, without lasting success, as was particularly evident in the Battle of Basra .

See also

literature

Web links

Wiktionary: cannon fodder  - explanations of meanings, word origins, synonyms, translations

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ Cannon fodder . In: Brockhaus Konversations-Lexikon 1894–1896, Volume 10, p. 98.
  2. ↑ Cannon fodder . In: Heinrich August Pierer , Julius Löbe (Hrsg.): Universal Lexicon of the Present and the Past . 4th edition. tape 9 . Altenburg 1860, p. 281 ( zeno.org ).