A breakthrough occurs when an offensive force has broken or
penetrated an opponent's
defensive line, and rapidly exploits the gap.
Usually, large force is employed on a relatively small portion of the front to achieve this. While the line may have held for a long while prior to the breakthrough, the breakthrough marks a relatively small time-frame where the pressure on the defender leads him to "snap" in a very short time span.
As the first defensive unit breaks, the adjacent units suffer adverse results from this (spreading panic, additional defensive angles, threat to
supply lines
Military supply-chain management is a cross-functional approach to procuring, producing and delivering products and services for military materiel applications. Military supply chain management includes sub-suppliers, suppliers, internal inf ...
). Since they were already pressured, this leads them to "snap" as well, causing a
domino
Dominoes is a family of tile-based games played with gaming pieces, commonly known as dominoes. Each domino is a rectangular tile, usually with a line dividing its face into two square ''ends''. Each end is marked with a number of spots (also ca ...
-style collapse of the defensive system. The defensive force thus evaporates at the breakthrough point, giving the attacker the option to rapidly move troops into the gap, exploiting the breakthrough in width (by attacking enemy units at the edge of the breakthrough, so widening it), in depth (advancing into enemy territory towards strategic objectives), or a combination of both.
Terminology
The
OED records "break through" used in a military sense from the
trench warfare
Trench warfare is a type of land warfare using occupied lines largely comprising Trench#Military engineering, military trenches, in which troops are well-protected from the enemy's small arms fire and are substantially sheltered from artille ...
times of 1915, when the ''Observer'' used the phrase in a headline.
The Online Etymology Dictionary dates the metaphoric use of "breakthrough" - meaning "abrupt solution or progress" - from the 1930s,
shortly after
Joseph Stalin
Joseph Vissarionovich Stalin (born Ioseb Besarionis dze Jughashvili; – 5 March 1953) was a Georgian revolutionary and Soviet political leader who led the Soviet Union from 1924 until his death in 1953. He held power as General Secreta ...
popularized the
Russian equivalent (russian: перелом, translit=perelom) in a pep-piece on the "
Great Breakthrough" published in November 1929,
dense with military jargon and encouraging industrialization during the Soviet Union's first
Five-Year Plan.
[
]
See also
*
Penetration (warfare)
*
Breakout (military)
References
Sources
*
Carl von Clausewitz
Carl Philipp Gottfried (or Gottlieb) von Clausewitz (; 1 June 1780 – 16 November 1831) was a Prussian general and military theorist who stressed the "moral", in modern terms meaning psychological, and political aspects of waging war. His mo ...
, ''
On War
''Vom Kriege'' () is a book on war and military strategy by Prussian general Carl von Clausewitz (1780–1831), written mostly after the Napoleonic wars, between 1816 and 1830, and published posthumously by his wife Marie von Brühl in 1832. ...
''
*
Heinz Guderian, ''Achtung, Panzer!''
Military strategy
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