mechanize

tr.v., -nized, -niz·ing, -niz·es.

1. To equip with machinery: mechanize a factory.
2. To equip (a military unit) with motor vehicles, such as tanks and trucks.
3. To make automatic or unspontaneous; render routine or monotonous.
4. To produce by or as if by machines.

mechanization mech'a·ni·za'tion (-nĭ-zā'shən) n.
mechanizer mech'a·niz'er n.

For more information on mechanization, visit Britannica.com.

Accomplishment of tasks with machines, mechanical equipment, or aids. Mechanization does not provide for self-correcting feedback, whereas automation does.

Mechanization was the next logical step in the substitution of chemical for muscle power once small and light enough power sources became available. Although men had dreamt of creating armoured fighting vehicles since at least the days of Leonardo da Vinci, the impact of steam power was largely limited to logistics and the naval environment, where power to weight and space considerations were not so crucial. Only the advent of the internal combustion engine allowed the dream to become reality on land and in the air, with its full expression in armoured warfare.

The first area of warfare utterly transformed by mechanization was at sea, where the pace of technological advance greatly outstripped doctrine and even the understanding of a visionary like Fisher, who thought he had to sacrifice armour to combine speed and hitting power, when within a very few years all three were successfully combined in the Warspite class of fast battleships. Mechanization opened up the third dimension in warfare by permitting the development of purposeful air power, which was well advanced before the first mechanically unreliable tanks rolled into battle on the Somme in 1916.

Between the wars mechanization stood at the forefront of the military debate. The apostles of armoured warfare, Fuller and Liddell Hart, pressed for mechanization, although they disagreed over the speed at and process by which it might be accomplished, as well as over the function of infantry in the mechanized force. Liddell Hart recognized the need for them, and sketched out the armoured infantry of the future in what he termed ‘tank marines’, while Fuller (although himself an infantryman) relegated them to duties like guarding bases or lines of communication. J. P. Harris has suggested that the British army's real problem was organizational and tactical: ‘getting the right balance between units of different arms … and getting them to work together in the right way’.

The process was complicated, in Britain, France, and the USA, by financial stringency, industrial constraints, and lack of a clear strategic question to which mechanized forces were the answer, as well as the resistance (neither surprising nor ignoble) of military culture to the most profound change since the introduction of firearms. In Britain the emphasis on imperial policing scarcely encouraged mechanization, while in France preoccupation with positional defence and the dominance of fire had a similar effect. The debate was rarely as clear-cut a collision between boneheaded conservatives and incisive radicals as is sometimes portrayed. Even in Germany, where Guderian borrowed heavily from British and French theory and practice, there was widespread recognition that emphasis on blitzkrieg would be likely to result in partial mechanization, with a two-tier army, part old and part new: this is precisely what happened. The British army that fought in France in 1940 was fully motorized—though not mechanized in the sense described by Fuller and Liddell Hart—something the German army never achieved during the entire war.

Mechanization has unquestionably had profound effects. It has largely removed the pack and draught animal from armies, and has greatly reduced the daily grind for the average infantryman. During the 20th century he has evolved from a warrior defined by the most basic means of propulsion, to (under most but by no means all tactical circumstances) a passenger in a vehicle who disembarks to fight and, in the case of armoured infantry in MICVs, may even fight mounted. That it seems to have introduced no fundamental change in the military art is suggested by the fact that the inspiration for US AirLand battle doctrine came from the Howard-Paret translation of Clausewitz, and the fact that the largely mechanized armies at the end of WW II still moved more slowly than the Mongols. But that it has changed the face of war in less than a century is beyond question.

Bibliography

• Harris, J. P., and Toase, F. N. (eds.), Armoured Warfare (London, 1990)

— Richard Holmes

v. equip (a military force) with modern weapons and vehicles: (mechanized) the units comprised tanks and mechanized infantry.

mechanization n. mechanizer n.

See the Introduction, Abbreviations and Pronunciation for further details.

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Dansk (Danish)
v. tr. - give mekanisk præg, mekanisere

Nederlands (Dutch)
mechaniseren, routine maken, van (gewapende) motorvoertuigen voorzien, produceren m.b.v. machines

Français (French)
v. tr. - mécaniser

Deutsch (German)
v. - mechanisieren

Ελληνική (Greek)
v. - μηχανοποιώ, εκμηχανίζω, καθιστώ κάτι μηχανοκίνητο

Italiano (Italian)
meccanizzare

Português (Portuguese)
v. - mecanizar

Русский (Russian)
механизировать

Español (Spanish)
v. tr. - mecanizar

Svenska (Swedish)
v. - mekanisera, motorisera

中文（简体）(Chinese (Simplified))
使机械化, 使呆板

中文（繁體）(Chinese (Traditional))
v. tr. - 使機械化, 使呆板

한국어 (Korean)
v. tr. - 자동화하다, 기계로 제조하다

日本語 (Japanese)
v. - 機械化する

العربيه (Arabic)
‏(فعل) يؤلل, يزود بآلات‏

עברית (Hebrew)
v. tr. - ‮מיכן, צייד במכונות‬

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