This philosophy was a response to the increasing weight of defensive firepower that accrued to armies in the nineteenth century, as a result of several technological innovations, notably breech-loading rifled guns, machine guns, and light field artillery firing high-explosive shells. It held that the victor would be the side with the strongest will, courage, and dash (élan), and that every attack must therefore be pushed to the limit.
[1] The invention of
machine guns and
barbed wire as well as the subsequent development of
trench warfare rendered this tactic extremely costly and usually ineffective.