9 - Logistics

Summary

The First World War marks a watershed as the first true, modern war, and the processes developed to resupply the soldiers that fought it laid the groundwork for many of the things, such as fresh mid-winter grapes in northern hemisphere supermarkets. The British Empire's position as the world's paramount maritime power provided the Allied powers with tremendous flexibility and staying power. The scope of the Eastern Front meant that all operations had to deal with the relative dearth of transportation infrastructure. The Great Powers involved in the First World War managed to move vast quantities of materiel efficiently enough and for a long enough period to bring modern, industrialized warfare into being. For good or ill, the logisticians of the Great Powers met the challenges thrown at them with considerable success and laid the groundwork for the logistic changes of the ensuing century.