Machine Gun in World War - 1: Impact on Battle Strategies and Scenario

International Journal of History and Research (IJHR) ISSN (P): 2249–6963; ISSN (E): 2249–8079 Vol. 10, Issue 1, Jun 2020, 7–16 © TJPRC Pvt. Ltd .

MACHINE GUN IN WORLD WAR - 1: IMPACT ON BATTLE STRATEGIES AND SCENARIO

AMITABH SAH Indian Revenue Service (IRS) Officer Posted in Delhi, India ABSTRACT

Among the weapons which made the maximum impact in the combat efforts and outcome, the machine gun can be rated as one whose introduction to the battlefield drastically changed the strategies and tactics used by all militaries in the future. Its biggest and most visible impact was in forcing the armies of all powers into the trenches. Further the supremacy of the cavalry had gone and the impact of scientific and industrial developments had become paramount in conflicts. The machine gun came to represent the use of technology applied to weaponry

KEYWORDS: Initial Impact of the Machine Gun & Evolving Impact on the Battlefield

Received: Oct 21 2019; Accepted: Nov 11, 2019; Published: Dec 23, 2019 ; Paper Id.: IJHRJUN20202 Original Article INTRODUCTION

The World War I, which started on July 28, 1914 and ended on November 11, 1918 is a landmark war in the history of mankind. It was not just the spread of the war and its ferocity which engulfed the civilian population in an unprecedented scale which made it in a different league from the earlier great conflicts, but for being the symbiosis of military and civilian technology in a holistic manner which defined the progress in technology in a new manner. The soldiers who fought the war in harsh, trench conditions and braved wreckage and carnage so unwaveringly for so long, brought out a different saga of human spirit and resilience. The casualties at the end of the war was a staggering 9 million soldiers dead and 21 million wounded.

Hiram S. Maxim is credited with inventing the first automatic machine gun in the United States in 1884. Maxim’s machine gun was completely self-powered in which multiple bullets would get dislodged as a result the energy released in the firing cartridge with just one pull of a trigger. This was a path breaking technology of that time. It released an initial 600 rounds per minute, which was a damaging number for any opposing army for a great many years to come. The size and weight of the initial machine gun was a limiting factor but that did not stop it from doing its job and doing it well.

www.tjprc.org [email protected] 8 Amitabh Sah

Initial Impact of the Machine Gun

One tends to look at the Franco-Prussian War (1870–71) and the Russo-Japanese war of 1904–05 as the two most significant wars that influenced military theorists in the period preceding the World War -1. In the Russo-Japanese War, the Japanese used the Hotchkiss machine guns in ample numbers and this revealed their impact in the following two ways:

• that, if used in defence, the machine guns resulted in the digging of trenches, and • that a far larger offensive force could be decimated with the use of the machine guns.

World militaries were aware of these outcomes, but they tended to view the battlefield developments as proof of Russian military weakness and not the result of the inherent defensive power of the machine gun or the inevitability of trench warfare.

Machine guns had also, time and again, demonstrated their deadly impact in some colonial clashes around the world. However the European military theorists maintained that “just because machine guns had cut down Zulu Dervish cavalry did not mean they would be effective against naturally “superior” white troops.” They were still in the belief formed primarily by the manifestations of the strategies followed in the Franco-Prussian War of 1870–71. This war occurred in Europe and had been won using classic manoeuvre and encirclement tactics. It became the archetype for all of the European powers-particularly France and Germany-on how to conduct a successful military campaign. All European militaries envisaged a highly mobile offensive as the key to success in future battles. However a Polish writer named Jean de Bloch had, in his book “Future War and its economic consequences”(popularised as ‘Is war now impossible”) in 1898 argued that

• “New arms technology (e.g. smokeless gunpowder, improved rifle design, Maxims) had rendered maneuvers over open ground, such as bayonet and cavalry charges, obsolete.

• A war between the great powers would be a war of entrenchment and that rapid attacks and decisive victories were likewise a thing of the past.

• Entrenched men would enjoy a fourfold advantage over infantry advancing across open ground.

• Industrial societies would have to settle the resultant stalemate by committing armies numbering in the millions, as opposed to the tens of thousands of preceding wars. An enormous battlefront would develop. A war of this type could not be resolved quickly.

• Such a war would become a duel of industrial might, a matter of total economic attrition. Severe economic and social dislocations would result in the imminent risk of famine, disease, the "break-up of the whole social organization" and revolutions from below .”

Although his prediction turned out to be remarkably accurate, the professional militaries of the time dismissed his claims, citing once again the importance of troop morale and offensive spirit being of utmost importance in deciding the fate of war. The militaries also tended to undermine the work of Jean de Bloch by arguing that the overall message was bad for morale. The inability to accept his theories meant that the armies learnt by trial and error and the ensuing results were catastrophic and completely unforeseen by the military leadership.

Impact Factor (JCC): 4.3084 NAAS Rating: 2.90 Machine Gun in World War - 1: Impact on Battle Strategies and Scenario 9

There is a thinking that the tactical and strategic significance of indirect (e.g., artillery) fire had greater impact in the battlefield in this war; or that the development of the armoured tank and military aircraft had more potential in shaping future battle outcomes. It is known that the machine guns did not cause as many casualties in the war as artillery fire did. But there is no denying the fact that they played a large role in determining the nature of combat, predominantly the trench warfare. The machinegun was perhaps the most potent weapon available to the infantry. Their firepower certainly converted the attacks on organized enemy positions enormously lethal and costly. The rapidity and hail of fire unleashed by Machine guns helped to tilt the balance in favour of the defenders and in this manner fashioned the stalemate of trench warfare. In the last phase of the war, the deadlock of trench warfare was also somewhat broken with the availability of more portable light machine guns as it gave the infantry the ability to cover its own attacks. Thus, both in attack and defence, the employment of machine gun had a large impact on the battle outcomes and lives of the soldiers at the front.

How the Machines Evolved

When the World War - 1 started, the machine gun was generally a fairly simple device and not the feared one it later became. But even at this time, all the major combatants were aware in fair measure of its lethal prowess and had provided their armies with machine guns on somewhat similar scales of issue. Russia, Germany and Britain used guns based on the Maxim system , while France and Austria-Hungary used indigenous designs – the Model 1907 "St Etienne " and the Schwarzlose respectively. However all these Machine guns were basically very heavy and distinctly unsuitable for use by rapidly advancing infantry troops due to portability issues. The guns generally weighed somewhere in the 30kg-60kg range - frequently without their mountings, carriages and supplies. These were more often than not, positioned on a horizontal plane tripod, and would entail a gun crew of four to six operators. In theory 400-600 small-calibre rounds per minute could be fired. Subsequent advances in technology during the course of the war almost doubled this figure. By this time the rounds of ammunition were fed via a fabric belt or a metal strip.

The truth in this matter however was that the machine guns in practice at the beginning of the war had a tendency to rapidly overheat and thus got broken down unless some sort of cooling mechanisms was employed; they were consequently fired in short rather than sustained bursts. Cooling mechanisms usually were of two types: water cooled and, progressively more as the war developed, air cooled. In case of the former Water jackets were provided (which held around one gallon of liquid) and for the latter air vents would be built into the machine gun.

Water cooled machine guns would still overheat relatively quickly (sometimes within two minutes), with the consequence that large supplies of water would need to be on hand in the heat of a battle - and, when these ran out, it was not unknown for a machine gun crew to solve the problem by urinating into the jacket.

Despite all the cooling mechanisms employed, machine guns still jammed frequently, especially in hot and searing conditions or when used by less experienced operators. As a result the machine guns would often be grouped together to sustain a stable and unwavering defensive position. Estimates of their equivalent, accurate, rifle firepower varied, with some estimating a single machine gun to be worth as many as 60–100 rifles.

The Evolving Impact on the Battlefield

At the start of the war, the old military text-book strategies of the 19 th century existed in the conduct of the war. This meant that the attacks were linear in nature when the armies advanced. Each battalion advanced shoulder to shoulder with a

www.tjprc.org [email protected] 10 Amitabh Sah screen of skirmishers out front. After the main force had made contact with the enemy, reserves were thrust into the battle in order to fill the gaps created by casualties. The advancing force had two objectives:

• to suppress enemy fire and • inflict sufficient causalities in order to make the opposition waiver.

Then, as per the existing dogma, a bayonet charge would deliver the final blow as soon as the enemy began to waiver. Thus “Victory would result, therefore, not from superior tactics, or even superior weaponry, but from the imposition of superior will”.

This dogma was based on pre-war theories which didn’t account for the machine gun. As the war progressed, the machine gun found greater role in the battlefield. By 1916, the machine guns had, two years into the war, proven their worth.

Often the initial battles, which were not fought from trenches, have been forgotten. In these early battles the impact of the machine gun was felt most ruthlessly on the attacking forces. The largest number of losses during the war had occurred in these early battles. “The enormous losses in August and September 1914 were never equalled at any other time, not even at Verdun where the total number of French casualties (killed, wounded, or missing) was 329,000”. The power the machine gun gave to a single man made the offensive doctrine of the European powers in the 19 th century obsolete, thereby forcing the armies on the Western Front into trenches as the soldiers on both sides had no other option but to dig in.

British, French & German response to the Machine Gun in 1914

Procurement and deployment of modern machine guns was never a priority for the British Army. In fact it was the Royal Navy which first tested the Vickers medium machine gun. The British Army only introduced it in 1912 as a weapon first issued to the cavalry. However the Vickers gun was to serve throughout the war in the British Army, though in the initial days of the battle they relied on the lesser performing Colt machine gun, as the newer Vickers guns were not made available. The colt was air cooled and tended to heat up rapidly. In the eventuality of a stoppage, it had practically to be taken to pieces to have the stoppage remedied. As the war progressed it was superseded by the mobile Lewis gun for all offensive actions and front line work, and, by Vickers as a defensive weapon. Vickers proved to be a much more reliable gun and was in place as the primary medium machine gun by mid-1916.

It has been agreed by most commentators that even when the weapons had been accepted, the British Army was unable to find the most appropriate way to utilize them. There were noteworthy differentiations between the Vickers and the Lewis machineguns. The Vickers was a tripod mounted, belt fed machine gun similar to the Colt machine gun that it had substituted and was similar in weight to it. It was water cooled, which allowed the gun to maintain a high rate of fire. The Lewis, on the other hand, was a much lighter weapon. It was bipod mounted, magazine fed weapon, which was air cooled. It could not give sustained fire, as the barrel could overheat. The Lewis’ magazine held a mere forty-seven rounds, while the belts used by the Vickers could be linked together creating a steady stream of ammunition fire. The tripod mounting enabled the Vickers to fire at a higher angle, which made it appropriate to use in machine gun barrages. A much greater area could be covered by the Vickers as iIts tripod gave it a greater range of motion. The Lewis gun on the other hand had the advantage of being carried into the combat because of its lower weight, which translated into increased mobility.

Impact Factor (JCC): 4.3084 NAAS Rating: 2.90 Machine Gun in World War - 1: Impact on Battle Strategies and Scenario 11

The models of machine gun which the French used during the war included the St. Étienne Mle 1907, the Hotchkiss M1914, and the Chauchat.

The French St. Étienne Mle 1907 was a gas operated air-cooled machine gun which was extensively utilised early on in the First World War. The French supplemented and ultimately replaced this gun with a superior weapon made by Hotchkiss of Paris.

The efforts of the French to acquire a machine gun at the onset of the war resulted in “Chauchat” which resembled bicycle parts. The Gladiator Company which produced Chauchat, was a manufacturer of bicycles, motorcycles and cars in peacetime. It epitomised the capability and capacity of the civilian industry to chip in to wartime production and be a part of the war effort.

The Chauchat, which had a bipod to prop the barrel up, filled substantial firepower into its light body. It was a simple, user friendly gun with a side open magazine which allowed the user to make out the ammunition he was left with.

However, the Chauchat was difficult to handle comfortably in combat and not a very reliable machine for the following resons:-

• The metal aiming sights were poorly designed and tended to shoot low and to the right.

• A clean, well-maintained Chauchat would jam after firing 300 rounds under perfect conditions, while in the dirt and the mud of the trenches of the Western Front, it would jam after 100 rounds.

• It had long and uncomfortable, feeble and long bipod legs which unnecessarily exposed the shooter to enemy fire.

• The a side open magazine which worked well in clean, controlled conditions allowed mud and dirt to get into inside and jam the gun.

The Chauchat could be said to be an inefficient and uncomfortable gun in war conditions. Still it could not be replaced, as the French could not find an appropriate replacement.

German Enthusiasm for the Machine Gun

The German Army had a paltry 12,000 machine guns at the start of the war in 1914. However in a very short period of time this number ballooned to become 100,000 guns as the Germans swiftly grasped the potential value of machine guns on the battlefield. By 1917, The German Army strategies and formations were all centred around their machine guns. The bulk of the German small arms ammunition production was relatable to machine guns. The German army demonstrated the worth of the machine gun by creating detached machine gun companies in support of the infantry battalions. The MG08 machine gun and its successor, the MG08/15, which appeared in early 1917, became the most common German machine gun. The prolific growth in machine gun use by the German army can be gauged from this fact that on the early battles in Marne in 1914, the Germans deployed 3.5 machine guns per kilometre of front; whereas in the same area in 1918, the figure per kilometre was 31.5. During the autumn of 1918, machine guns formed the core of every German defensive deployment.

The Germans also produced what commonly is regarded as the first genuine sub-machinegun – the Maschinenpistole 18 (MP18). Created by Theodor Bergmann and his design team, work on the MP18 began in 1915, but it did not enter full production until 1918.

The MP18 was able to fire at a rate of 450 rounds per minute, and it carried a 32-round magazine while weighing www.tjprc.org [email protected] 12 Amitabh Sah less than 5.5 Kgs when it was fully loaded. The MP18 was thus able to provide the short-range firepower that was vital in the crucial attack strategies.

Tactical Superiority of Machine Gun Centric Forces

Since the early days of the world war-1 the German army was occupying significant areas of France and Belgium. During the period of stalemate all through the middle phases of the war, the allied forces sought to reclaim these territories and various attempts were made to this effect. To resist these attacks, the German army had selected the positions for their trenches, and they naturally chose terrain that favoured the defence. However even after repeated failures to dislodge the Germans from their entrenched positions, the Allies stuck to their now obsolete doctrine of attacking with overwhelming forces against the Germans with the expectation that a blend of weight in numbers and offensive spirit would compel the required breakthroughs in the German lines.

All these attempts ended in abject failure.

The Germans had always retained a superiority of numbers over the allies in terms of the placement of machine guns in the battle arena. And these machine guns would be deployed by the German Army in such a way that all parts of the “no man’s land” were exposed to the fire of several machine guns. This course of action having overlapping machinegun fire for a chosen area was predominantly successful for the reason that if a particular machine gun was knocked out of the battle, the guns to the right and left of it could still manage to cover all of the space between the trenches. It further implied that the attacking force was subjected to persistent fire at all times from distinct positions, thus making it very hard and tricky for an offensive assault to achieve cover. The barbed wire, which was a regular element in the “no man’s land” and was used by both sides to slow and wear down an attack, would enable the channelizing of the enemy into areas (called “kill zones”) where they could effortlessly be eliminated by the well directed fire power of the machine gun.

Thus the battlefield scenario was that the attacking armies now had to run across in an open but uneven and often potholed ground, and cut through immense quantities of barbed wire, before reaching the enemy trenches, even as they were continually and constantly under machine-gun fire. Once the barbed wire had been breached, the aggressor army would naturally mass at the opening, which would then present a still further attractive target to the overlapping machine gun fire. This hopeless front line situation unsurprisingly, failed to break the deadlock.

The British and the French then came with the strategy of destroying the German positions with their superior supply of artillery munitions. The idea was to bombard the German lines hoping that it would destroy the front-line defenders as well as the barbed-wire obstacles thus allowing the attacking Allied armies to move ahead and seize the enemy trenches. Artillery, however, failed to destroy the barbed wire or sufficiently kill the defenders in the front-line trenches. Although they produced many casualties, they did not result in significant gains. This was exemplified in The Battle of the Somme (July to November, 1916), was typical of this approach of the British which aptly exemplified the futility of the frontal assault. During this battle, the British falsely believed that they could overwhelm the defensive might of the German tranches and machine guns with artillery alone. After the artillery barrage, when the infantry began their attack, they found that the German wire was intact and the German trenches were well defended. When the assault began, the Germans emerged from the bunkers, positioned their machine guns, and proceeded to mow down the advancing British infantry.

Impact Factor (JCC): 4.3084 NAAS Rating: 2.90 Machine Gun in World War - 1: Impact on Battle Strategies and Scenario 13

The most successful efforts to overcome the supremacy of the machine gun came not from technological advances but from tactical changes. The German army was more progressive in tactics, having learned much by watching the continuous ineffectual results of Allied offensives. In 1915, “German divisions got smaller; this was seen as proof that Germany was running out of men, but in terms of firepower-which was the relevant measure-the existing divisions were becoming more and more powerful as machine guns replaced rifles.” More importantly, the German military began a long process of revising its tactical doctrine. The process would result in the development of modern small unit tactics and offered the most successful countermeasure to the supremacy of the machine gun, which ironically had been so successfully utilised by them to their advantage.

Breaking the Deadlock – New Machine Gun Tactics of WW-I Storm Troops The new German doctrine by 1918 called for an active defence, which meant that limited attacks should be made even while holding a defensive line. This was made possible by the use of light machine-guns which could be carried by the troops during an assault. In this new strategy, which became the classic penetration module for infantry units around the world in subsequent decades, troops would advance in a series of short dashes, wherein each unit would advance in turns, then take cover and provide covering fire for the next advancing unit.

The Germans then created the elite infantry group called Sturmtruppen or storm troopers which effectuated this tactic of active defence to its logical and potent conclusion. All storm troopers were provided with light machine-guns and these were also equipped with abundant hand grenades. The concentrated power of both these weapons facilitated the storm troopers to breach the Allied lines during the spring offensives of 1918.

Shaping the War

The Storm Troops were given greater ability to conduct tactical experiments and develop offensive tactics. The result was a sharp contrast to the grand offensives launched by the Allies. The Germans began operating in battalion or company-size elements using hand grenades as a primary weapon (thus the origin of the word panzergrenadier). The goal was to move with small units under the cover of darkness or by using a short artillery barrage. German tactics worked because the Germans decentralized decision making downward. In order to execute these actions, the soldiers had to be better trained and able to operate with minimal leadership. The result was the formation or modern small unit tactics and the increased role of NCOs.

The innovation in the tactics and formations did not stop with the capture of the enemy forward trenches. The task of securing the trench line was also sought to be ensured. It was recognised that these troops would be most vulnerable to a counter-attack immediately after their capture of the enemy trenches, when the defenses still faced back toward their own lines. At this time hurried adjustments were made, shifting firing steps and defensive works to confront the adversary army and these storm troops were connected to their own side’s defensive network. In this process too the machine-guns were hurried to the front, first the lighter machine-guns, but once a position was secured, heavy machine-guns could also move up. These then provided the cover needed to repulse any counter-attack, while infantry settled in and rebuilt the captured defences.

The Germans demonstrated their evolving small unit Storm Troop tactics in a number of engagements in 1918, which involved taking small territories to limit causalities. Once territory was gained in one area, the attack was shifted to

www.tjprc.org [email protected] 14 Amitabh Sah another section while follow-up formations occupied the ground the storm troopers had taken, who would continue to move into their enemy’s vulnerable rear. These little gains would add up to significant territorial gains for the Germans. The new machine-gun-based tactics turned the war back into one of movement. For three years, machine-guns had ensured static battles. In the final months, they brought the movement back.

The Germans came very close to victory using decentralized tactics in the 1918 offensive. With victory in the east over Russia, the Germans found themselves with a numerical superiority on the Western Front. The strength of their position was only temporary as the U.S. was now entering the war, and the Allies would soon (and once again) outnumber the Germans. In March 1918, the Germans gambled on one last offensive in an effort to win the war-the Kaiserschlacht (Kaiser’s Battle.) Unlike all of the previous failed Allied assaults against the German trenches, the Germans would achieve a significant territorial gain. “By the time the Strom Troops led the great German offensive of March 1918, German infantry tactics had changed beyond recognition.” The tactics of the Strom Troops were continually being refined and disseminated throughout the army. “ The Landwehr troops learned to fight in platoons and sections, rather than lining up each rifle company in a traditional skirmish line. For the first time, NCOs found themselves given a real job of leadership- making their own tactical decisions .” The change placed an emphasis on short artillery bombardments (Sturmreifschiessen), the empowerment of small unit leaders, and bypassing strong points would be further refined after the Great War and would become the foundation of blitzkrieg (lightning war) tactics of World War II. The result was an overall improvement of the entire German army’s ability to defeat the machine gun’s domination of the battlefield.

Ultimately, the German’s tactical refinements came too late in the war. Despite their initial successes in the offensive of March 1918, the German army was unable to advance much further after one week. They had achieved the greatest gains in territory since the stalemate began in late 1914. But in doing so, they incurred 239,000 casualties during the advance while the newly arriving American numbers in May rose from 430,000 to 650,000. The gamble had been lost, and the German top brass realized that defeat was inevitable. There is a certain amount of irony in the fact that it was the German army that found the key to the breakthrough in the trench warfare, but they would ultimately end up on the losing side in the War.

CONCLUSIONS

The machine gun was the most crucial of all the technical progressions as well as alteration in battle strategies which were initiated throughout the World War-1. In the beginning of the war none of the European militaries could figure out the impact which the machine gun would compel in their tactics. It was assumed that the influence of the offensive action that would be crucial in determining the course and consequence of the war. However this strategy of reliance on old military text-book strategies of the 19 th century of greater offensive spirit and the imposition of superior will, was continually demonstrated as erroneous and mistaken, in several battles resulting in considerable loss of life for negligible territorial gain or military achievement. Finally, the execution of the small unit mobile tactics, which were paradoxically developed by the Germans, the end losers in World War-1, and not the grand offensives of the Allies, which offered the best way out of the imbroglio of the trench warfare imposed by the machine gun.

Thus the machine gun was the vital weapon of the World War-1, and its deployment in the battlefield changed the way wars would be fought by militaries in this war as well as in the future combats.

Impact Factor (JCC): 4.3084 NAAS Rating: 2.90 Machine Gun in World War - 1: Impact on Battle Strategies and Scenario 15

REFERENCES

1. Duffey, Michael (2004-03-27). "Feature Articles: The Causes of World War One". First World War.com. Retrieved 2009- 05-06.

2. Christopher Chant (1986), The New Encyclopedia of Handguns

3. Ian Westwell (2008), World War I

4. MAJ JACK R. NOTHSTINE, (2016) The Development of the Machine Gun and its Impact on the Great War

5. MP, J., & PK, M. Prospects of cattle feed industry in India and strategies for utilizing the market potential: a study in Kerala with a focus on factors influencing buyer behaviour.

6. Holger H. Herwig, The Marne, 1914, The Opening of World War I and the Battle that Change the World (NY: Random House, 2009)

7. Alan Kramer, Dynamics of Destruction, Culture and Mass Killing in the First World War (NY: Oxford University Press, Inc., 2007), 77.

8. Gary Sheffield, War on the Western Front, In the Trenches of World War I (NY: Osprey Publishing, 2008), 96.

9. Said, N. E. H. Politeness Strategies in Algerian Requests.

10. Tony Ashworth, Trench Warfare 1914-1918, The Live and Let Live System (NY: Holmes & Meier Publishers, Inc., 1980), 240.

11. Llewellyn Woodward, Great Britain and the War of 1914-1918 (London: Methuen and CO LTD, 1967), 139.

12. Dorothy and Thomas Hoobler, The Trenches: Fighting on the Western Front in World War I (NY: G.P. Putnam and Sons, 1978).

13. Eric Morris, Weapons and Warfare of the 20th Century, (Hong Kong: Mandarin Publishers Limited, 1975), 99.

14. Olubunmi, O. A., Timothy, I. O., Alabi, A. O., & Israel, O. T. (2014). Competitive strategies of selected quantity surveying firms in Nigeria. International Journal of Management, Information Technology and Engineering, 2(11), 1–18.

15. William Weir, 50 Weapons that Changed Warfare (Franklin Lakes, NJ: Career Press Inc., 2005), 126.

16. Nadaf, Y. B. R., & Nadaf, S. M. (2014). green marketing: challenges and strategies for Indian companies in 21st century. International Journal of Research in Business Management, 2(5), 91–104.

17. Winston Groom, A Storm in Flanders, Tragedy and Triumph on the Western Front (NY: Atlantic Monthly Press, 2002), 98- 102.

18. Simon Forty, World War I, A Visual Encyclopedia (London: PRC Publishing Ltd., 2002), 369.

19. John Mosier, The Myth of the Great War, How the Germans Won the Battles and How the Americans Saved the Allies (NY:Harper Collins Publishing), 148–9.

20. Ian Ousby, The Road to Verdun (NY: Doubleday Publishing, Inc., 2002), 48.

www.tjprc.org [email protected] 16 Amitabh Sah

AUTHOR PROFILE

Sh. Amitabh Sah is an Indian Revenue Service (IRS) officer posted in Delhi. He completed his graduation from Delhi University with mathematics as his subject. He is also a post graduate in History and has a deep interest in military history. He is particularly passionate about battle strategies and tactics followed by the major powers who fought in the world wars. The evolution of arms and armaments during the two world wars have always fascinated him. This fascination has enabled him to maintain his interest in this field and devote time beyond his busy official schedule to his passion for military history.

Impact Factor (JCC): 4.3084 NAAS Rating: 2.90