I went home and dug up a book I highly recommend to anyone interested in learning more on the subject. The book is Stormtroop Tactics, Innovation In The German Army, 1914-1918 by Bruce I. Gudmundsson. He mentions the "Hutier tactics" mythos briefly in his introduction, stating that the myth crediting Hutier with "infiltration tactics" first appeared in a French magazine article. He also cites a now less well known but once popular and equally ludicrous theory among "Allied" writers which claimed that the Germans were introduced to these tactics by reading a French pamphlet written by a Captain Andre Laffargue on lessons learned fighting in mid 1915; a pamphlet they had captured in 1916/17. The insightful pamphlet really is interesting, and a couple of conclusions are similar to those drawn by German Officers in early 1915 - basically at the same time; namely bringing infantry guns up with the assault troops and launching swift assaults into enemy trenches, although that's where the similarities end.
The fact that von Hutier earned his reputation as one of Germany's most talented and able Generals is not in dispute, although his talents were put to use at the operational level and not with small unit tactics. To state that German tactics were entirely the result of one genius who drew up a plan of conquest which was then followed to the letter by his Army can only be the result of either being ignorant of or purposely misunderstanding what occured and was achieved.
It's clear that all Armies entering the war in August 1914, mainly those on the Western Front, were woefully unprepared for what the war would shortly turn into, some more so than others. Germany's decentralized command structure which allowed for and encouraged independent tactical decisions (at the junior Officer and even NCO level) made the development and success of these tactics possible in the German Army as early as 1914, not braver men or smarter Officers. All of the Armies on the Western Front had ample amounts of those.
To quote parts of Gudmundsson's final paragraph in his introduction:
'If there is a thesis to this book, it is that there is no single explanation for the transformation of the German infantry that occured during World War I ... A large number of personalities, ideas, situations, and organizational forces interacted to push the German Army toward the "infiltration" tactics" ... Sometimes actions that pushed the German Army toward the new tactics were deliberate. Sometimes they were accidental and unintended. Most of the time, however, they were mere improvisations, ways of dealing with a pressing situation that were later sewn together in that patchwork quilt that Germany's enemies called "infiltration" tactics.'[/u]
