World War I strategy was dominated by the "Spirit of the Offensive", where generals resorted almost to mysticism in terms of a soldier's personal "attitude" in order to break the stalemate; this led to nothing but bloody slaughter as troops in close ranks charged machine guns. Each side developed an alternate thesis. The British under Winston Churchill developed tank warfare, with which they eventually won the war. The Germans developed a "doctrine of autonomy", the forerunner of both blitzkrieg and modern infantry tactics, using groups of stormtroopers, who would advance in small mutually covering groups from cover to cover with "autonomy" to exploit any weakness they discovered in enemy defenses. Almost all the blitzkrieg commanders of World War II, particularly Erwin Rommel, were stormtroopers in World War I. After the Treaty of Brest-Litovsk, Germany launched and almost succeeded in a final offensive. However, the new tactics of autonomy revealed a weakness in terms of overall coordination and direction. The March offensive, intended to drive a wedge between the French and British armies, turn on the latter and destroy it, lost direction and became driven by its territorial gains, its original purpose neglected.