Georg Bruchmüller

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Georg Bruchmüller
Imperial German Army
Years of service1885–1919
RankColonel
Battles/warsWorld War I
Awards
Order of the Iron Crown, 3rd class (Austria)
Military Merit Order, 3rd class (Bavaria)
Hanseatic Cross (Bremen)
The Honour Cross of the World War 1914/1918[1]

Georg Bruchmüller (11 December 1863 – 26 January 1948) was a German artillery officer who greatly influenced the development of modern artillery tactics. He was nicknamed Durchbruchmüller, a combination of the German word Durchbruch (breakthrough) with his name.

Early life

Bruchmüller was born in Berlin into a middle-class family. He studied physics at Berlin University; when he left in 1883 he became a three-year volunteer in the Imperial Army.[2] Two years later, he was commissioned into the Fußartillerie (foot artillery), the branch of the German army armed with heavier guns, howitzers and mortars, designed principally for siege warfare, which now was assuming a role in field operations.

In 1897 and 1898, Bruchmüller served as a battery commander in Fußartillerie-Regiment Nr. 3 in the Fortress of Mainz.[3] Next, he commanded a battery in the Lehr-Bataillon (Demonstration Battalion) of the Royal Prussian Fußartillerie-Schießschule (Foot Artillery Firing School) in Jüterbog from 1901 to 1902. During this time, he worked with one of the instructors at the Fußartillerie-Schießschule, Hauptmann Arthur Bilse, a heavy artillery specialist. (Bilse, when General der Fußartillerie 15, was killed in action on New Year's Day 1916, at Les Baraques France.)[4] In 1908, Bruchmüller was promoted to major and assigned to write the tactical manual for foot artillery. In 1913 he was thrown from his horse and subsequently suffered a nervous breakdown. He was medically discharged as a lieutenant colonel, but with major's pay.[5]

World War I

At the beginning of

Lake Naroch Offensive from 18 to 30 March 1916. For the counter-attack, Bruchmüller persuaded the commander of the Tenth Army, Generaloberst Hermann von Eichhorn, to centralize the artillery command. Bruchmüller planned the leading of the infantry attack with a creeping barrage, which contributed to the German victory, for which he was awarded the Pour le Mérite
, Germany's highest military award, in 1917 (one of only four senior artillery officers to receive this honor during the war).

The French and British used prolonged bombardments before an infantry assault, to try to destroy the defenders, like the seven-day barrage opening the

Kerensky Offensive
.

Surprise was essential for creating maximum disruption, so Bruchmüller adopted the Pulkowski Method,[7] for bombardments without the customary registration fire. The position of each gun was surveyed.[8] Knowing the muzzle velocity of the gun, taking into account variables like air temperature, wind velocity and direction, using tables provided by mathematicians, and pre-registering guns on firing ranges, it was possible to fire fairly accurately at targets on the gunnery maps. The Germans concealed their attack preparations but their initial target data had to be precise. (The British had fired from the map in their assault at Cambrai on 20 November 1917.)[9]

Bruchmüller commanded the artillery of the 8th Army (General

Heeresgruppe Deutscher Kronprinz in the Third Battle of the Aisne and the Second Battle of the Marne. The artillery fired from the map in darkness and the infantry advanced at first light.[12] Ludendorff cited him as an example of "the decisive influence of personality on the course of events in war".[13]

British military historian

B.H. Liddell Hart said that Bruchmüller was "the greatest artillery expert of the war."[14]

Post-war

Bruchmüller was not eligible for the post-war Reichswehr, because the Versailles Treaty prohibited heavy artillery, and he was retired in 1919 as a full colonel. He wrote several books on artillery that were translated into English, French and Russian. In 1939, on the 25th anniversary of the Battle of Tannenberg, he was promoted to major-general on the retired list.[15] Bruchmüller died at Garmisch-Partenkirchen in 1948.[citation needed]

Citations

  1. ^ Zabecki. Steel Wind. p. 155.
  2. ^ Zabecki, 1994, pp. 27–31
  3. ^ PA, 1898, nopp
  4. ^ PKM, 1902, nopp
  5. ^ Zabecki, 1994, p. 28.
  6. ^ Broad, 1922, pp. 222–241.
  7. ^ Zabecki. Steel Wind. pp. 49–50.
  8. ^ Zabecki, 1994, pp. 49–50
  9. ^ Kloot, 2014, pp. 152–154
  10. ^ Sulzbach, 1981, pp. 49–50.
  11. ^ Zabecki, 1994, p. 78.
  12. ^ Zabecki, 2006, p. 216.
  13. ^ Ludendorff, 1919, p. 239.
  14. B.H. Liddell Hart, Reputations Ten Years After, p.201, Little, Brown
    , 1928.
  15. ^ Zabecki, 1996, p. 144

Cited works

Further reading

External links
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