He is frequently but mistakenly credited with having created the stormtrooper tactics of small, rapid forces, which he employed to great effect during the Michael offensive.

He moved his troops to an unexpected sector in the Russian lines, and using a heavy bombardment prepared by Georg Bruchmüller and a surprise crossing of the Dvina River, took the city.

[8] The tactics he employed—surprise and encirclement—were essentially standard German Army doctrine; his infantry attacked in company-strength skirmish lines after crossing the River Dvina, much as they would have done in 1914.

[7] In March 1918, during Operation Michael at the start of the German spring offensive, Hutier employed the new infiltration tactics that had been developed over the preceding three years on the Western Front.

[1] Later in June, Hutier directed an offensive toward Noyon, which made initial gains but broke down in the face of stiff Allied resistance.

For the rest of the war, Hutier's Eighteenth Army fought on the defensive while the Allies launched a strategic counter-offensive that culminated in Germany's total defeat by November.

Like his overall commander and cousin, Ludendorff, Hutier long maintained that the German Army had not been defeated in the field, but was "stabbed in the back" by domestic enemies on the home front.