•Result
•Immediate
success at platoon/company/battalion level coupled with ultimate
failure at corps/army level.
•
•Why
•Ludendorff violated his own concept by his tendency to
use strategic reserves to reinforce against
hardened resistance—hence, at the strategic level, he
seduced himself into supporting failure not success.
•Exhaustion
of combat teams leading the assault.
•Logistics
too inflexible to support rapid/fluid penetration and deeper exploitation
of breakthrough.
•Communications
too immobile to allow command to quickly identify and reinforce
successful advances.
•Elastic
zone defense, when used, (as developed by the Germans and practiced
by Pétain) that emphasizes artillery and flank attacks against penetrations
when they stretch beyond their own artillery support.