Stormtroopers

Stormtroopers were specialist soldiers of the German Army in World War I. In the last years of the war, Stoßtruppen ("Shock troops" or "Thrust Troops") were trained to fight with "infiltration tactics", part of the Germans' new method of attack on enemy trenches. Men trained in these methods were known in Germany as Sturmmann (literally "storm man" but usually translated as "stormtrooper"), formed into companies of Sturmtruppen ("assault troops", more often and less exactly "storm troops"). The infiltration tactics of the stormtroopers are still in use today, in one form or another. Other armies have also used the term "assault troops", "shock troops" or fireteams for specialist soldiers who perform the infiltration tasks of stormtroopers.

Ever since introduction of breech-loading infantry rifles there had been a growing realization that the days of close order infantry assault were coming to an end. For a time up to the turn of the 19th century armies tried to circumvent the problem by moving into range in dispersed formations and charging only the last metres like the French did in the Second Italian War of Independence, the Austrians in the War of 1866 against Prussia or the Germans against the French in the Franco-German war of 1870–71. The advent of the machine gun and the adoption of hydraulic-recoil artillery was a further setback for close order and the showing of the Boers in their war against the British fanned an enthusiasm for Boer tactics, e.g. open order tactics reliant more on achieving fire superiority and moving when enemy fire was ineffective than positioning oneself for the final bayonet charge.

In the first part of the war, the standard assault on a trench line consisted of a lengthy artillery barrage all along the line, attempting to smash the enemy positions, followed by a rush forward of infantry in massed lines to overwhelm any remaining defenders. This process either failed, or at most gained only a short distance, while incurring enormous casualties, and the armies settled into trench warfare.

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