ABSTRACT
What Ludendorff and Hindenburg saw on the Somme acquired a new descriptive vocabulary. It was dubbed a Materialschlacht, a battle of materiel? Shocked, they set about the reorganisation of Germany’s war industry with the zeal o f new converts, Hindenburg immediately announcing his so-called programme for doubling the production of shell and tripling that of guns. Much of this was rhetoric, and its impact on actual output was confused. But the conjunction of these initiatives with the new tactical methods evolved by German stormtroops out of the experiences of 1915-16 has led Michael Geyer to attribute to the German surpreme command the development of what he has called machine warfare.4 One of the most effective of recent critics o f the British high command, Tim Travers, has followed Geyer, using his model as a yardstick by which to compare - and to denigrate - the work of Field-Marshal Sir Douglas Haig and his confreres. According to Travers the British failed to shift from a paradigm that was manpower-centred to one that was machine-centred: new technology was grafted on to old tactical forms rather than used as the basis for a doctrinal rethink.5
