1. The scale of the alliance is unprecedented. In the past, war alliances were mostly confined to some countries in a region. The two major military blocs in the First World War-Allies and Allies-not only participated in Europe 10 and more than 20 countries and regions in Asia, Africa, North and South America and Oceania. Secondly, the alliance is relatively stable and lasts for a long time. In the past, war alliances were usually temporary, unstable and often changed during the war.
2. Military coordination is closer. Before World War I, alliance operations basically stayed on the same goal, and few countries fought harmoniously in different strategic directions or on several battlefields. Even in combat operations, the armies of different countries in the alliance mostly fight on their own, basically maintaining the original command relationship. In the First World War, with the increasingly close political alliance between countries, the system of military alliance is becoming more and more perfect, and the military forces of all countries in the alliance are more closely coordinated in all strategic directions than before. The allies organized cooperation on various fronts, forcing Germany to be at a disadvantage in two-front operations for a long time. The allied group with the German army as the core coordinated the military actions of Austria-Hungary, Turkey, Bulgaria and other countries, so that it could use its relatively inferior war potential to confront the allied forces with huge reserve resources for four years, and caused huge losses to Italy, France, Britain and Russia several times.
3. World War I developed the pure military confrontation of previous wars into a full-scale war of politics, economy, diplomacy and psychology of the two major military alliances. As a world-scale alliance war, the victory of the war depends not only on the military victory of a certain country, but also on the overall strength of the alliance.
(2) Compared with previous wars, the war mobilization of World War I has obvious characteristics in terms of mobilization field and scale, organization and implementation, and time efficiency.
1. The field of war mobilization is unprecedented. The main connotation of war mobilization in Napoleonic era is the mobilization of armed forces. First, mobilize the standing army from peacetime to wartime, and then supplement the consumption of troops on the battlefield, or expand the scale of the war and mobilize the reserve to participate in the battle. Napoleon led hundreds of thousands of troops to gallop on the European continent for more than ten years, and a large amount of war materials and funds needed were basically squeezed out of the occupied areas by means of expropriation and robbery. When the First World War broke out, the belligerents also announced war mobilization, but at the beginning there was only military mobilization, but there was no economic mobilization. With the development of war, the field of war mobilization has gradually expanded to the economic field. The mobilization of industrial production is first caused by the shortage of military weapons and equipment. In industrial production, heavy industry bears the brunt. Then light industries such as textiles, clothing and food processing industries began to undertake a large number of war orders. Due to the mutual blockade between the warring parties, the supply of grain and cotton in many countries is tight, and agricultural production has also been brought under the control of the state. In order to raise war funds, finance and taxes have become tools for the ruling class to transfer the burden of war to the people. In order to induce the masses to support and participate in the war, all countries have tried their best to incite national chauvinism, mobilize ideologically and politically, deprive people of their democratic rights and suppress their resistance through a series of unconventional wartime laws and regulations. Therefore, war mobilization is gradually introduced into most areas of national life.
2. The organizational system of war mobilization is complex. In the past, war mobilization was single, with troops as the main mobilization and a single organizational system, and it was led by the General Staff of the Army. The war mobilization of World War I involved a wide range, lasted a long time and was complicated in organization. Among the mobilized targets, there are military, local, official and civilian. We should not only ensure the immediate battlefield needs, but also take into account the continuous mobilization of reserves. It is necessary to ensure the battle ahead, but also to maintain the production in the rear and the basic needs of the people, so that all aspects of national life can operate under the wartime system, which requires centralized and unified leadership and scientific organization and management by the government.
War mobilization has a strong timeliness. At the beginning of the war, the speed of war mobilization is an important factor to gain the strategic initiative. The Germans mobilized, concentrated and launched at the fastest speed. August 1, announced the general mobilization. By August 5th, the army had expanded from 800,000 to 3.82 million, which took the initiative in the war and quickly captured large areas of Belgium and northern France.
Russia's mobilization efficiency is poor, but it is not as envisaged by Germany, and it will not be put into operation until 45 days after the announcement of mobilization. In fact, less than 20 days after the outbreak of the Great War, the Russian Northwest Army and Southwest Army began to attack in East Prutu (1August 7) and Galicia (1August 9), which caught the allies off guard. Little Mozhi rushed to dispatch troops from the western front to rescue, thus weakening the troops attacking France.
In the process of war, whether the war mobilization is timely or not directly affects the military action. In the 19 15 war, due to the lack of war mobilization and manpower and material resources, the allied countries had to implement strategic defense, fully implement the wartime system at home, and further mobilize national strength. During the 19 17 War, due to insufficient mobilization, Germany had to turn to defensive operations, implement the "Hindenburg Plan", further promote the "total war" system nationwide, increase arms production, and alleviate the shortage of battlefield supplies.
(3) The grand strategy theory came into being. /kloc-before the 0/8th century, there was no clear distinction between strategy and tactics in military art, and "strategic" guidance and tactical command were basically integrated. After entering the19th century, with the development of science and technology, economic conditions, weapons and equipment, and the continuous expansion of the scale of military operations, strategy and tactics began to separate. Strategy is mainly the operation and guidance of the overall situation of the war, and tactics are the organization and implementation of the battle. This understanding is accepted by more and more people. However, until the First World War, the connotation of strategy was still confined to the purely military field and clausewitz's understanding of strategy. He believed that strategy was to use combat to achieve the purpose of war. According to this theory, the direct purpose of war is to destroy the enemy's effective strength. The means to achieve this goal is to fight. Napoleon's idea of deciding the outcome of a war through one or two battles has great influence on all countries. Based on the above-mentioned narrow understanding of strategy, the war planning and preparation of the high command departments of various countries before the war are centered on pursuing simple military objectives, that is, completely defeating and destroying the enemy's military forces, while ignoring political and economic objectives; They are mainly fighting short-term quick battles, and they are not prepared for long-term and lasting wars. The harsh reality of World War I forced countries to abandon their original strategic concepts. Within a few months after the start of the war, the plans of the warring countries for a quick victory went bankrupt one after another, and the pre-war reserves were exhausted. In order to continue the war, countries have to gradually turn the whole country into a wartime system. War has actually become a comprehensive contest in politics, economy, military affairs, science and technology, ideology, culture and other fields, and the grand strategy theory came into being. War is no longer just a matter for the military headquarters of various countries. In order to strengthen the strategic leadership over the war, Britain and France and other countries specially set up wartime cabinets to be fully responsible for major issues related to the war between the state and the army.
(4) During the First World War, although the campaign theory system was not formally formed, the campaign practice developed greatly, and the content and form of the campaign also changed greatly. After the outbreak of the great war, there was a brief mobile war. The basic characteristics of fighting in this period are large scale, long front and strong maneuverability. Both sides despise defense and there is a situation of attacking instead of attacking. Therefore, many battles have obvious encounter nature, but most of them failed to achieve the expected purpose. From the end of 19 14, the battlefield on the western front began to turn into positional warfare in the summer of 19 15. Positional offensive and defensive warfare became the basic operational style of the First World War. With the transformation of mobile warfare into positional warfare, more and more attention has been paid to defensive warfare. The defensive campaign at the beginning of the war was mainly fortress defense. Fortresses are usually distributed along the border. The gap between the fortresses of the fortress is very large and the depth is very shallow, so it is impossible to resist the attack of the other side. Later, trenches were built to connect multiple support points. Machine guns cooperated with artillery fire and barbed wire obstacles, which had strong stability and could carry out continuous resistance and uninterrupted counterattack. After the middle of the war, most defensive positions developed into fortified areas. Each zone usually consists of 2-3 defensive positions. With the increase of artillery firepower and range, as well as the use of aircraft, tanks and chemicals, the defense forces are further deployed in depth. The reserves are concentrated in the main direction of the enemy's attack and used to carry out anti-impact or anti-assault. The content of the defensive campaign has expanded from the initial defense of infantry and artillery to the defense of chemical weapons and the defense of tanks and air force. In the later period of the war, elastic defense appeared, emphasizing avoiding the strong fire assault of the other side and crushing the attack of the other side with strong counter-assault. 5) The most important development in the tactical field of World War I was the formation of group warfare tactics, deep echelon defense and contract tactics of various services and arms. Before the First World War, the popular offensive tactical formation of armies in various countries was formed during the Napoleonic Wars, which was a combination of dense skirmisher lines and dense columns. This tactical formation, from the beginning of the war, especially after entering the positional warfare stage, is increasingly out of date in the face of increasing defensive firepower. In order to change this situation, a new operational principle of "concentrating firepower, dispersing personnel and cooperating with small groups" has emerged, and a group combat tactic has been formed, that is, infantry troops are deployed in tanks. Fight with cluster weapons such as guns and heavy machine guns. This new tactic divides the infantry into many small clusters and carries out attacks several times with the artillery fire. The spacing between clusters has increased, but the input force density is still high. From 19 16, the attack formations of military divisions and regiments in various countries began to be arranged in deep steps, and the width of the attack front was reduced (about 2 kilometers for divisions, 0.2 kilometers for regiments I-/kloc-0, and 400-600 meters for battalions). In the later period of the war, the force density on the front of the attack was 10- 12 battalion, 150- 180 guns per kilometer. This tactical formation is undoubtedly a great progress compared with the previous tactical formation. The defensive tactics of World War I have been greatly developed. Since the beginning of positional warfare, all countries have attached great importance to the research and practice of defensive tactics. Isolated defense base points are quickly connected by trenches, forming a linear position defense with a certain depth. Military weapons are mainly deployed in the main defense direction and position points, forming a fire distribution system with machine guns as the core and artillery as the supplement. In the depth of defensive positions, there are also reserve positions to allocate reserve forces. Barriers such as barbed wire were set in front of the defensive positions. In order to enhance the stability of defense, people began to increase the tactical depth of defense and enhance the flexibility of defensive operations. In the middle and late period of the war, the defensive positions were constantly improved, with traffic trenches connecting several trench lines, and field fortifications combined with permanent fortifications. The maximum tactical defense depth is 8- 10 km, and it has many operational functions such as anti-tank, anti-chemical and anti-fire attack, which greatly improves the stability of defense. During World War I, the basic force of the army was infantry. Artillery, signal corps and engineering corps have all made great progress. In the middle of World War II, tanks and chemical weapons appeared, and aircraft began to directly support ground operations, which resulted in the contract tactics of various services and arms and got great development. During the war, artillery was the most important force to support infantry operations. In offensive operations, artillery is responsible for fire preparation, which often lasts for several days. After the attack, the artillery turned to Xu Jin for barrage shooting (sometimes double barrage shooting) to directly cover the impact of infantry. In defensive operations, artillery supports infantry operations by implementing tactical means such as fire preparation and blocking shooting. After the tank appeared, it failed to play its great role because of its imperfect initial performance. Until the end of the war, it was only an auxiliary arm of the army, mainly responsible for directly supporting infantry offensive operations. In some battles, a small number of tanks once broke into the opposing front, threatening the enemy's deep targets, showing the great development potential of tanks. 1917110/0 The battle of Cambre carried out by the British army on the western front in October was the earliest example of modern contract tactics.