Comments by "Nattygsbord" (@nattygsbord) on "Stosstrupptaktik - Stormtrooper Tactics #tactics" video.

  1. Often the best men were selected for those units. And unlike normal army units did they have very much firepower at the lowest levels in the organization and stormtroopers were equiped everything from body armour, to submachine guns (which was a raririty back in those days) and they could carry flamethrowers and all kinds of modified weapons. And they had tactics which was basicly the opposite of the common wisdom of the day - which was bombarding an area for days or even weeks and then making large assault on the enemy positions. The stormtroopers did the opposite. They tried to use surprise attacks instead of alerting their enemy ahead of time that an attack were about to come. And stormtroopers were not shy to night fighting. But they could also fighting during the day. And before an attack they tried to make a short but very intensive and powerful bombardment which surprised and chocked the enemy, and shortly afterwards would the stormtroopers attack while the enemy was trying to recover from the confusion after the artillery bombardment. Decisions were also made by the NCOs (lower officers) who were fighting togheter with their men at the frontline - unlike ther enemies which followed orders from their Generals. And that was a huge problem when no radio existed, so it would on average take an order 8hours to get from the Generals headquarters to reach the frontline. And then it took 8 hours for the information from the frontline to reach the General. So it is needless to say that orders often became completly outdated once they reached the troops. The enemy could for example have brought forward reinforcements, prepared defensive positions and weather could have become bad so an order of an attack that was earlier sensible could later on become foolish and impossible to follow. But if you are having good commanders at the front who knows the situation, then they can decide and determine the situation instead. And that was what the Germans did. Normally they would follow orders from their Generals, but the NCOs were also free to use their common sense and make changes to their plans if they deemed them necessary. And that helped the Germans to react faster than their enemies and always be one step ahead. So I think one could say that they were a bit better than the regular infantry. But I don't think they were Rambo like elite troops. And I think their kind of warfare was a little bit revolutionary. I don't think that there is a coincidence that Germany would invent this tactic, since the Prussians had a tradidion of mission type tactics. And another reason why they discovered this new concept was that Germany realized that the odds were stacked against her. The Allies had more resources, so Germany was not likely to win a long war. Therefore it became more important for Germany to fast find new ways of quickly winning this war. So they tried posion gas, flamethrowers, uboats, zeppelin bombraids and new better tactics of course - and stromtrooper tactics became one those new superweapons. Neverhteless I do still think it is amazing that the ideas never gained more popularity after all the gigantic stipidity Hötzendorf, Haig, Cadorna, Enver Pasha, Nivelle, Falkenhayn and others had commited. It was incompetence beyond just incompetene, their behaviour was criminal in how wasteful they were with their solidiers lives and kept on repeating the same stupid mistakes that had lead to failure, over and over again........until the 287th battle of the Isonzo river.
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