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Human wave attack is a military term describing a type of assault performed by infantry units, in which soldiers attack in successive line formations, often in dense groups, generally without the support of other arms or with any sophistication in the tactics used. The term is pejorative. In a human wave attack there is no attempt to minimize casualties; on the contrary, part of the tactic involves presenting the defender with the shock value of overwhelming numbers of attackers. This dense concentration of troops in the open tends to lead to very high casualties.
Background
What we today call 'human-wave' tactics were in fact the main tactic used by infantry in the attack prior to the development of skirmisher tactics during the Napoleonic Wars. In an era when infantry firepower was very short-range, massed unsupported attacks worked, and were not especially costly. Infantry maneuvered in very tightly-packed ranks and individual soldiers were not expected to maneuver on their own.
As firepower developed in range and lethality, infantry tactics had to change. In the American Civil War, however, attacking infantry often employed human wave attacks, resulting in very high casualties at battles such as Fredericksburg or Gettysburg.
During World War I, human-wave attacks became very common as mass conscript armies dealt unsuccessfully with the new combat environment. There was a belief that troops could not handle sophisticated tactics (though counter-evidence was available); means of communication with supporting arms were ineffective; and senior leaders did not always see the battle environment as it really was. Only towards the end of the war were skirmisher tactics, infiltration tactics, and new combined-arms approaches re-discovered or developed.
In the modern battlefield, individual soldiers maneuver as individuals and as part of very small teams, with a high degree of initiative. Their leaders have communications with supporting arms. In effect, all infantrymen are skirmishers, and there is no need for human-wave attacks except in armies with a very poor level of training.
Conventional tactics
The term can perhaps best be understood when contrasted with other types of deliberate attacks against well-defended points. In general, attacking forces will attempt to weaken the defender through the use of artillery or close air support before or while launching an infantry attack. The infantry attack may be more successful when combined with other supporting arms such as tank support, infiltration tactics, night attacks, flanking attacks, and so forth. All of these alternative tactics require some skill in planning and great skill in execution, since disparate units and weapons must be used in a coordinated manner. Often, human-wave attacks are the unplanned result of a poorly-executed conventional attack.
Human wave attacks in the modern era
Human-wave attacks are common in poorly equipped or poorly trained armies, or where the objective is of strategic importance. It is a tactic that developed out of trench warfare, where artillery or aerial attack often proved ineffective at dislodging the enemy from a firmly held defensive position. A classic example of an (unintentional) human-wave attack would be the Battle of the Somme. These attacks can develop in situations where the defensive position is very strong and the attacker's combined-arms team has been broken up, leaving no alternative.
The casualty rate is generally enormous, yet such attacks are often successful and therefore remain an accepted combat technique. When the defender is also poorly-trained or of low quality, the shock value of a human-wave attack may be enough to carry the objective.
In the modern era, human-wave attacks are often, but not always associated with mass armies of untrained soldiers. When Nazi Germany attacked Soviet Union, the Germans reported that the Red Army used the tactic against both advancing and entrenched German soldiers, sometimes using penal battalions or militia units. It is assumed that the Red Army soldiers were ordered to charge directly in a wide berth to strike every possible point in the German lines simultaneously.( see Panfilovtsy) In some battles the Soviets defeated the Germans after sustaining battle losses much higher than the German losses. During 1942 the Red Army developed into a more capable force, and used modern tactics.
In the Japanese Army, human wave attacks in the form of Banzai charges were common in the early battles of World War Two. Japanese units generally had adequate training and were skilled at infiltration tactics, but were very weak in artillery. Even in the constricted terrain of the Pacific war, however, these attacks generally failed. As this lesson was absorbed, the tactic was abandoned except as a tactic of desperation or last resort.
It is widely believed that such tactics were employed widely and successfully by the North Korean and Chinese armies during the Korean War, because to the UN troops, the enemy seemed to be everywhere. However, while massed infantry attacks were used, what the North Korean and Chinese forces actually used is more aptly described as infiltration assault, since it was necessary to sneak past the enemy and complete the encirclement before heavy fighting began. Significantly, Allied forces suffered over 600,000 casualties during three months of fighting during the Battle of the Somme, while even high-end estimates for Chinese casualties in three years of fighting estimate about one million.
During the 1950s, the Viet Minh, under the command of General Giap, enjoying the advantage of superior numbers in artillery and manpower, successfully employed the massed infantry tactics against the entrenched French garrison at Dien Bien Phu.
Human waves were also rampant in the Iran-Iraq War. Iran was the primary user of these tactics, as it had the less technologically advanced and more poorly-trained army. In some cases the troops had virtually no training. Iraq responded with biological and chemical weapons of mass destruction.
Countermeasures to such attacks may also involve extreme firepower superiority, generally of a technologically or organizationally superior nature; for example, in the Anglo-Zulu War, the British army used machine guns and organized rifle volleys to great effect against opposing forces armed only with primitive weapons and a few guns.
See also
Ground warfare | Military tactics | Military strategy | Military doctrines
"Human wave attack"