isaac-deutscher-the-prophet-armed-trotsky-1879-1921

WAR AND THE INTERNATIONAL
Almost from the first weeks of hostilities he forecast, against
prevailing expert opinion, the prolonged and bloody stalemate
of trench warfare, and ridiculed the hopes which Clausewitz's
German epigones were placing on the offensive power of their
army. 1 He did not share, however, the characteristically French
illusions of a purely defensive strategy and a war of attrition. He
pointed out that their conception of defence would impel the
French repeatedly to undertake the most costly and futile
offensives, and that a war of attrition would be more, not less,
bloody than ordinary warfare. He explained the military stalemate
as the result of an equilibrium between the economic
resources ofthc hostile coalitions. This approach, which we can
only baldly summarize here, enabled him over the first three
years of the war to forecast with rare accuracy the course of
successive military operations. \Vi th the prospect of a relentless
strategic deadlock he connected the vistas of revolution, for he
expected that the stalemate of trench warfare would drag on
almost indefinitely, sap the foundations of the old society, and
driv.e the peoples to despair and revolt. Sometimes, it is true,
he expected a development of strategy and technology which
would break the stalemate, but not before very late in the war;
and he came close to adumbrating the invention of the tank. 2
Y ct, on the whole, the nightmare, for so long only too real, of the
self-perpetuating mutual slaughter of equally balanced forces
overshadowed his military thinking; and it would still do so
even in the last year of the war, when, as we shall see later, it
would cause him to make important errors of judgement.
Even while he was surveying with detachment the course of
hostilities and eagerly absorbing military theories, his mind
was gripped by the tragedy of Europe, bleeding and distraught.
1
L. Trotsky, Socliinenya, vol. ix, pp. 7-15.
2
On one on.:asion he forecast that after the v:ar the military leaders would
forget or neglect this new weapon which would decide the outrom(" of the war.
He thus came very near to predicting the neglect of the tank by the British and
French Ct"neral Staffs on thf· eve of\\'orld \\"ar 11. Ibid., p. tqo. In a sarcastic a-;idt·
he dismi ... sed ir1 advance thr illusion ,,fa ~fagin11t I .inc a' it \\a'> brginning t 1·1111-r~1·
fnm1 the French expt-rienci~ in \\'urld \\'ar I. 'The triumph uf the Ftt:t1