IGCSE History

• Home
• Introduction to IGCSE
• The Road to Affluence: USA 1917 - 1941 (A9)
  • 1917 - 1929
    • The impact of the First World War
    • Immigration
    • Henry Ford and mass production
    • Farming in the 1920s
    • The Stock Market Boom
  • 1929 - 1941
    • The Wall Street Crash
    • The Depression
    • The policies of Hoover
    • Roosevelt and the New Deal
    • Reactions to the New Deal
• International Relations 1919-1939 (A8)
  • Collective Security
    • The Versailles Settlement
    • The Foundation of the League of Nations
    • Strengths and weaknesses of the League of Nations
    • Successes and failures of the League of Nations
    • Locarno and the Kellogg-Briand Pact
  • Appeasement
    • Manchuria
    • The Disarmament Conference
    • Abyssinia
    • Hitler and the League
    • Appeasement in action
• Revolution in China 1949 - 1996 (A14)
  • 1949 - 1976
    • China under Mao
    • Reform under Liu and Deng
    • The reasons for the Cultural Revolution
    • The impact of the Cultural Revolution
    • China 1971 - 1976
  • 1976 - 1996
    • The defeat of the Gang of Four
    • China under Deng Xiaoping
    • Reforms of the economy
    • The Democracy Movement
    • China in the 1990s
• South-East Asia 1945 - 1900 (A15)
  • Indo-China
    • The end of the French Empire
    • Vietnam 1954 - 1965
    • US involvement in Vietnam
    • The unification of Vietnam
    • Laos and Cambodia
  • South-East Asia
    • The struggle for control of Malaya
    • The creation of Malaysia
    • Singapore
    • Suharto and Indonesia
    • Sukarno and Pancasila
• Conflict and Crisis is the Middle East 1946 - 1996 (A16)
  • Unit overview
  • 1946 - 1967
    • The creation of Israel
    • The impact of the war of 1948 - 1949
    • The Suez Crisis
    • Superpower involvement in the Middle East
    • The Six Day War
  • 1967 - 1996
    • International terrorism
    • The war of Yom Kippur
    • The Palestinian Liberation Organisation
    • Lebanon and the occupied territories
    • Successes and failures from Camp David to Oslo
• The First World War (B4)
  • The Schlieffen Plan
  • Deadlock on the Western Front
  • Gallipoli
  • The Somme and Passchendaele
  • The War at Sea
  • The defeat of Germany
• The USA 1917-1929 (B7)
  • The Roaring Twenties
  • Advertising and consumerism
  • New forms of entertainment
  • Prohibition
  • Gangsterism
  • Hollywood
• China under Mao Zedong 1949 - 1959 (B10)
  • The creation of the Communist State
  • Land Reform
  • Communist society
  • The First Five Year Pan
  • The 100 Flowers
  • The Great Leap Forward
• The Changing Nature of Warfare (C3)
  • Unit overview
  • Warfare at the beginning of the 20th Century
  • Land warfare
  • Sea and aerial warfare
  • Atomic and nuclear weapons
  • Warfare at the end of the 20th Century
• Links

Land warfare

The First World War resulted in rapid and significant changes in the tactics and weapons of land warfare. The failure of Germany’s Schlieffen Plan, the attempt to knock France out of the war quickly by invading through Belgium, led to trench warfare and three years of stalemate, 1915-17, and hardly any movement. Trenches became ever more complex and difficult supported by machine guns which accounted for 90% of Allied victims at the Battle of the Somme, in 1916.

Commanders on both sides lacked the imagination to break this deadlock. Cavalry attacks were totally ineffective. Instead they used the mass infantry attack across no-man’s land. Weight of numbers would achieve a breakthrough. This resulted in very heavy casualties on both sides. As late as July 1917 the British commander, Sir Douglas Haig, used mass attacks at Ypres in the hope of breaking the statemate.

Gradually, however, there came a realisation that machines rather than men might achieve a breakthrough. This brought the development of several new weapons, some more successful than others. The Germans were the first to use poisonous gas at the 2nd Battle of Ypres, April 1915. The Allies soon retaliated. To begin with, gases were lung irritants released from cylinders when the wind was blowing in the right direction. Later gas shells were introduced. Other gases attacked the nervous system or caused various degrees of paralysis. Then in 1917, the Germans used mustard gas, an acid which burned the skin and caused blisters.

Gas was unsuccessful because the wind in France generally blew in the direction of the Germans, which prevented them using it very often. Also, as the war went on, the Germans began to run out of chemicals.

Both sides developed and employed bigger and more destructive field guns. On land they were used to maintain a constant bombardment of enemy position before an attack. At one stage, the Germans had over 20,000 such guns. Such bombardments did not break the stalemate. The shells created huge craters in no-man’s land, making life for the attackers more difficult.

The most effective new weapon was the tank, the original invention of Ernest Swinton, and army officer and engineer. They were able to cross no-man’s land and the trenches far more successfully than the infantry or cavalry. They were first used during the Battle of the Somme, in July 1916, but were too slow and unreliable with many breaking down. It took nearly two years for the Allies to use tanks effectively, as an initial battering ram to punch a hole in the German trenches followed by a swift infantry attack. They proved decisive in the Allied success of July-November 1918.

The Second World War also led to change both in tactics and weapons. Machines, not men, would decide the outcome. Adolf Hitler, the German dictator, was determined to avoid static trench warfare characteristic of the First World War. Instead he developed the Blitzkrieg or ‘lightening war’. This was not new. During the German offensives of spring 1918 Ludendorff, the German commander, had used new tactics involving lightly equipped ‘storm troops’, trained to attack in small groups. Initially, this proved very effective as the Germans drove back the British up to 50 kilometres in places.

Blitzkrieg used similar tactics. The aim was to paralyse the enemy by devastating use of the most up-to-date technology and clever military tactics. Motorised vehicles, tanks and air power were co-ordinated by radio communications as they pushed deep into enemy territory. Reinforcements would then follow the advance forces and take secure control of the territory captured.

It was based on two weapons – the aeroplane and the tank and depended on surprise, speed and weight of forces. Bombers attacked enemy airfields and communication centres. This was to prevent any resistance from enemy aircraft and to slow down enemy reinforcements. Parachutists were dropped behind enemy lines to capture bridges and other important targets and further disrupt communications. Dive-bombers moved ahead of the tanks and attacked enemy strong points. Tanks then broke through weak points in the enemy lines and travelled fast across country and outflanked the enemy front lines. Finally motorised infantry followed up to mop up resistance.

It proved devastatingly effective during the first two years of the war as Hitler’s armies easily and quickly overran Poland, Denmark, Norway, Belgium, Holland and France, ably assisted by the weaknesses of the enemy, especially the French, who had planned for another static war by constructing a series of huge fortresses on the border of Germany known as the Maginot Line. Hitler’s armies simply by-passed the Maginot Line by making a daring advance through the Ardennes region of Belgium in May 1940.

At first Blitzkrieg was very effective in the Germany invasion of the Soviet Union of June 1941. In the first three months the Germans destroyed the USSR’s air and tank forces and advanced great distances. However, ultimately it proved unsuccessful due to a combination of the huge distances involved, the impact of the severe Russian winter and the strong Soviet resistance.

The Second World War confirmed the importance of the tank as a valuable tactical weapon in traditional infantry engagements and a potential winner when used in great numbers to break through or outflank the enemy’s lines. Early German Panzer mark II tanks which spearheaded the Blitzkrieg attacks needed speed and manoeuvrability and were only 10 tonnes in weight and armed with 20mm guns. Four years later, the Germans were using Tiger Mark II tanks weighing 68 tonnes and armed with 88mm guns. They needed tanks with thick armour plating and powerful guns to fight against the Red Army in Russia.

The Russian campaign emphasised the importance of the tank. In July 1943, the Germans launched an attack on the Russians at Kursk. In the greatest tank battle in history, the Germans were defeated mainly due to the highly effective Soviet T34 tanks.

The conflict in Vietnam of the 1960s and early 1970s was to be dominated by another form of land war, guerrilla tactics. This time superior technology and firepower was enough to secure a US victory. The Viet Cong, led by Ho Chi Minh, were heavily outnumbered and outgunned by the US and South Vietnamese forces in open warfare. Ho Chi Minh, however, had seen Mao Zedong use guerrilla tactics to achieve a communist victory in China in the 1940s. The principles were simple: retreat when the enemy attacks; raid when the enemy camps; attack when the enemy tires; pursue when the enemy retreats.

Guerrilla warfare proved to be a nightmare for the US army. Guerrillas did not wear uniform. They had no known base camps or headquarters. They worked in small groups with limited weapons. They were hard to tell from the peasants in the villages. They attacked and then disappeared into the jungle, into the villages or into their tunnels.

The Viet Cong were very effective in wearing down the US soldiers and wrecking their morale. US soldiers lived in constant fear of ambushes and booby traps. Ho Chi Minh realised the importance of keeping the civilian population on his side. The Viet Cong fighters were expected to be courteous and respectful to the Vietnamese peasants. They often helped the peasants in the fields during busy periods. However, they could be ruthless and were quite prepared to kill peasants who co-operated with their enemies.

Similar tactics were employed in Afghanistan by the Mujaheddin, rebel tribesmen who opposed the Soviet invasion of 1979. Hopelessly outgunned by the Soviet armed forces, the Mujaheddin retreated to the mountain and waged a guerrilla war against the invaders. This was very effective and tied down over 100,000 Soviet soldiers. They successfully attacked Russian supply routes and shot at their planes. By 1988 they controlled over 75% of the country.

Sea and Air Warfare

Big guns!