World War I was a cataclysmic conflict that forever changed the face of warfare. The staggering casualty figures and protracted stalemate of trench warfare were made possible by the lethal technology fielded by the belligerents. Perhaps no weapon was more influential in this regard than the machine gun. Rapid-firing, devastatingly effective, and widely-deployed, machine guns transformed combat and came to symbolize the mechanized slaughter of the Western Front. This article will explore the history, deployment, and impact of these fearsome weapons in The Great War.
Early Machine Gun Development
The concept of a rapid-firing gun dates back centuries, but it was not until the latter half of the 19th century that the first practical machine guns were developed. In 1862, Richard Gatling patented his famous Gatling Gun, a hand-cranked weapon with multiple rotating barrels that could fire up to 200 rounds per minute. This was followed by other early designs like the Gardner gun and Nordenfelt gun, which saw limited use in colonial conflicts but suffered from reliability issues and were not widely adopted.
The true progenitor of modern machine guns was the Maxim gun, invented by American-British inventor Hiram Maxim in 1884. Maxim‘s design used the recoil energy of each fired cartridge to load the next round, allowing for sustained automatic fire. Trials showed the Maxim could fire 500 rounds per minute, equivalent to the firepower of about 30 conventional rifles. Its reliability and performance were far superior to earlier manual machine guns. The Maxim was adopted by the British Army in 1889 and quickly spread in various forms to other European militaries.
On the eve of WWI in 1914, all major European powers had some form of Maxim-derived machine gun, such as the German MG 08, Russian PM M1910, and British Vickers. However, tactics and doctrine for these new weapons had not kept pace with their rapid development. Most militaries still viewed machine guns as specialized artillery pieces or defensive supplements rather than integral infantry weapons. Few foresaw the dominant role they would play in the coming conflict.
Deployment and Doctrine
When WWI began in August 1914, the belligerents deployed their machine guns piecemeal and in relatively limited numbers. The British Expeditionary Force (BEF) that landed in France had a mere two machine guns per infantry battalion, while the German Army had about 12,000 MG 08s in total, just a fraction of their millions-strong forces. These guns were typically positioned defensively in the rear and reserved for dire situations.
However, the opening months of the war quickly demonstrated the unprecedented killing power of machine guns. In a sign of what was to come, the British and French suffered massive casualties in the Battle of the Frontiers when their massed infantry assaults were cut down by German machine gun fire. The "Old Contemptibles" of the BEF were effectively wiped out as a fighting force. At the First Battle of Ypres in October 1914, just 5 German MG 08 teams inflicted 54,000 casualties on British forces.
With the "Race to the Sea" and onset of trench warfare in late 1914, both sides began deploying machine guns in increasingly dense and fortified positions. The standard became to place machine gun nests every 250 yards along the frontline trenches, each with interlocking fields of fire. These guns would be positioned behind multiple lines of barbed wire, fronted by ground cleared of any cover, and protected in concrete-reinforced pillboxes. British officer John Glubb described the tactical mindset as "No trench system was considered even tolerably complete without a continuous belt of barbed wire 5 feet high and 30 yards deep and machine gun emplacements at every angle."
*A British Vickers machine gun crew wearing gas masks, 1916. Source: Imperial War Museum Q 4379*
Each machine gun was typically crewed by a team of 4-6 men. This included the gunner who aimed and fired the weapon, assistants who helped reload ammunition belts, and runners who ferried messages, ammunition, and water to cool the gun. Stationary guns were aimed using iron sights and the gunners used a technique called "traversing and searching" to systematically sweep the entire field of fire.
One infamous tactic was the "Devil‘s Paintbrush", a method of walking the fire of a machine gun back and forth along a line of advancing troops. Canadian Captain John Coray Henry‘s Vickers gun team used this method to repeatedly defend their position, raking hundreds of German attackers with continuous fire. By the end of the war, Henry‘s gun was credited with firing over 1 million rounds.
As the war ground on, the defensive power of machine guns grew even more formidable as tactics evolved. Both sides developed sophisticated artillery-observation techniques to direct indirect machine gun barrages against enemy positions. Heavy machine guns like the Russian PM M1910 were placed in the second line of trenches to provide longer-range suppressing fire over the heads of friendly troops. The Germans also became adept at using light machine guns like the MG 08/15 to provide mobile fire support for trench raids and counterattacks.
Impact and Casualties
The dominance of the defensive machine gun was the single greatest contributing factor to the grinding attrition and staggering casualties of WWI. Erich Ludendorff, Chief of the German General Staff, stated "The machine gun rules the battlefield". This was borne out by the catastrophic losses suffered in failed offensives on both sides.
During the Battle of the Somme in 1916, the British Army suffered over 57,000 casualties on the first day alone, the bloodiest single day in its history. 19,240 men were killed, the great majority cut down by German machine guns as they advanced across No Man‘s Land. Over the next 4 months of the offensive, British and French forces suffered over 600,000 casualties and advanced only 6 miles.
*Graph showing British casualties on the first day of the Battle of the Somme. Machine gun fire inflicted the majority of the 57,470 casualties suffered that day. Image: Martin Elvery.*
A similar fate befell the Germans when they launched the Spring Offensive in 1918. Despite initial gains, the Germans eventually outran their artillery support and fell victim to Allied machine guns. In the words of historian Martin Gilbert: "The machine gun was a major reason why the Allies were able to stop the German advance in the spring of 1918. Once the first waves of storm troops had moved beyond the range of their supporting artillery, they were mown down in their thousands by the Allied machine guns."
Overall, it is estimated that World War I resulted in over 9 million military deaths and 21 million wounded. A significant portion of these casualties can be attributed to machine guns. In his postwar memoir, German officer Ernst Jünger wrote vividly about the deadliness of machine guns:
"We stood on the brink of a war whose nature and limits could not be foreseen…Grown up in an age of security, we shared a yearning for danger, for the experience of the extraordinary…Trench fighting was to transform this vague notion into a firsthand experience, honing it to a weapon of penetrating intensity, whose purpose was to destroy not only the body but the soul…The new turmoil reached its apogee at those points where the storm of steel was densest: at the Maxim machine guns."
Evolution and Countermeasures
Faced with the dominance of the machine gun, the belligerents sought ways to restore mobility and offensive action to the battlefield. One response was to develop lighter, more portable machine guns that could keep pace with advancing troops. The Lewis Gun used by British and American forces weighed 13 kg and could be carried by a single soldier. The French Chauchat was even lighter at 9 kg. While less powerful than heavy machine guns, these weapons gave the infantry a crucial source of mobile automatic fire.
*A British soldier with a Lewis gun in 1918. The Lewis was lighter and more mobile than the Vickers gun. Source: Imperial War Museum Q 9675*
Another innovation was the use of infiltration tactics, where small, coordinated units would bypass strongpoints and attack the flanks or rear. Rather than frontally assaulting machine gun nests, these storm troopers sought to get in close and destroy them with grenades or flamethrowers. Infiltration required extensive training and unit cohesion to pull off successfully.
The tank was the most dramatic attempt to break the stalemate of trench warfare. First deployed by the British in September 1916, these armored vehicles could advance against machine gun fire and suppress enemy positions with their own cannons and machine guns. While mechanical unreliability hampered early tanks, they pointed the way towards combined arms warfare. During the Battle of Cambrai in November 1917, a British force of 378 tanks broke through the Hindenburg Line and penetrated 6 miles. It was a glimpse of what was to come 20 years later.
Legacy and Conclusion
Machine guns had a profound effect on the conduct and outcome of World War I. Despite some initial success in the opening battles of 1914, offensive operations quickly bog down into static trench warfare as the defensive firepower of machine guns exacted an enormous toll. Subsequent offensives racked up heavy casualties for meager territorial gains, turning the Western Front into a protracted war of attrition.
The horrific impact of prolonged machine gun fire on soldiers‘ psychological well-being also cannot be overstated. Many broke down from the cumulative stress of constant exposure to the sights and sounds of mechanized slaughter, a condition known as "shell shock." Famed novelist and veteran J.R.R. Tolkien later wrote that his Dead Marshes from The Lord of the Rings were inspired by "the machine gun bullets [that] spattered down the stagnant water" of Passchendaele in 1917.
By the end of the war in 1918, the scale of machine gun deployment had increased dramatically. The British Army went from 2 guns per battalion in 1914 to 36 guns per battalion by 1918, while the German Army increased its machine gun corps from 12,000 MG 08s to over 100,000. This was a testament to the centrality of the machine gun in WWI combat.
The experience of the First World War accelerated the development and adoption of rapid-fire weapons. Lighter, more reliable machine guns like the Bren and MG34 were widely used in WWII, while heavier guns were adapted for use as anti-aircraft and vehicle mounts. Today‘s militaries continue to employ the spiritual descendants of the Maxim and Vickers guns in the form of squad automatic weapons and vehicle-mounted guns. The machine gun remains an indispensable part of the modern arsenal.
In conclusion, World War I was a transformative event that saw the rise of the machine gun as the dominant military technology. These rapid-firing weapons denied the offense, enforced the defensive stalemate, and racked up enormous casualties on all sides. They left an indelible stamp on the collective psyche and continue to influence warfare down to the present day. In the words of historian John Ellis: "In the English language the phrase ‘machine gun‘ possesses a terrible power….we should never allow familiarity to blind us to what it really represents."
Sources:
- Ellis, John. The Social History of the Machine Gun. 1975.
- Gilbert, Martin. The First World War: A Complete History. 1994.
- Jünger, Ernst. Storm of Steel. 1920.
- Hutchison, Graham Seton. Machine Guns: Their History and Tactical Employment. 1938.
- Sheffield, Gary. Forgotten Victory: The First World War: Myths and Realities. 2001.
