The Germans didn't aggressively pursue Tanks largely because the need for them wasn't there, and the subsequent debut of Tanks by the Allies was far from promising. Tanks were developed, by the British and French but fielded by the former first, to assist infantry in attacking enemy entrenchments, by crushing barbed wire and destroying machine gun positions with close support fire. They were essentially a response to the particular conditions of the Western Front, where permanent field fortifications, constructed in depth and increasingly more complex by the period 1916-18, presented a formidable obstacle to infantry. Artillery could blast gaps through the wire and demolish strongpoints, but these missions required great accuracy and substantial supplies of shells, and were liable to churn up the ground so terribly as to preclude any deeper exploitation.

What the Tank appeared to offer was a means of assisting the infantry both in the break-in and break-through phases of an offensive, that avoided the destruction and complex timetables of a thorough artillery plan. Unfortunately, the British attack at Flers-Courcelettes during the Somme Campaign (1916) and the attack on the Chemin des Dames during the Nivelle Offensive (1917) demonstrated the limitations of Tanks. They were loud, very short-ranged and mechanically unreliable to say the least, with most of the Tanks involved in the aforementioned attacks breaking down before seeing action. French tanks initially were very unstable and vulnerable to anti-tank ditches, due to their short and narrow bodies and tracks. Tanks of both armies also required very smooth ground in order to attain speeds greater than walking pace; while the British fire plan at Cambrai in 1917 managed to dispense with a lengthy preliminary bombardment, this also meant that destroying wire and pillboxes and other such emplacements was largely left to infantry, tanks and engineers. If enemy resistance was not hampered by the bombardment, as proved to be the case at Flesquieres, untouched German infantry, mortars, machine guns and light artillery could present a significant obstacle.

The Germans being the defenders in the West, possessed none of the needs of the Franco-British armies that produced the tank. On the Eastern Front, distances over twice that of the Western Front resulted in thinly held lines, in some cases with almost no troops as around the Pripet Marshes. Reserves were held further back, and there were none of the well-developed paved and cobblestone roads, and later networks of light railways, that made movement of troops locally so easy in the West. Once defenders had been exhausted by the attacker, a breakthrough could be exploited fairly easily, or at least significant inroads could be made into enemy territory. The best examples of these are the Brusilov and Gorlice-Tarnow Offensives in 1916 and 1915 respectively, as well as the Battle of Riga and the Tarnopol Counteroffensives of 1917 where the offensive tactics utilized by the Germans in 1918 in the West achieved maturity.

When the Germans attacked in 1918 in the West, with the so-called Spring Offensives, they possessed sufficient artillery and mortars, supplies of poison gas, and surplus infantry divisions as to make the participation of tanks in their operations completely unnecessary.