Winners, Losers, Heroes & Strategies

How many plans did Germany have besides the Schleiffen? If there was just one plan then it makes sense that Germany had been just itching to try this plan out for years and was just looking for an excuse to invade France again. Willy just wanted to live up to his predicessor who whooped France in 1870-71.

If you think about it, France really hasn't been too spectacular since Napoleon.

Kaiser Willy said that it wasn't the French he was worried about but those tenacious English.

France lost in 1870-71
France got clobbered during WW1 by the Germans. I'd like to know the casualty ratios of the French
and Germans who were directly in opposition to each other. In my opinion England carried WW1.

And France was destroyed in WW2 in a very short period.

Vietnam they faired no better. Of course the US got whooped pretty good by the Vietnamese too.

Hey, on the subject of strategies. Where would you place the English tactic of the "Rolling Barrage"? I think it was the one tactic that most broke the German lines, not giving them enough time get out of their bunkers to defend themselves properly.

Vickers,
The Vietnamese never beat the U.S. militarily, they did it politically. They also were able to turn the U.S. populace against the war. They broke the back of the French Army at Dien Bien Phu, They tried to do the same thing at Khe Sahn in 1968 and got their butts whipped. Same NVA General Vo Nguyen Giap led both sieges. About the rolling barrage... ineffective at 3rd Ypres and Passchendaele due to the rain and mud. In fact they are still finding the 'dud' rounds to this very day. No... what beat the Germans was the Naval blockade, because it turned the populace of Germany against the Kaiser and the government due to the fact that they were starving. The troops were already sick and tired of years of static trench warfare and the butchery that it led to. As for the amount of French and German losses, the French and Germans lost 800,000 men combined at Verdun in 1916. So my point is nobody really won if you look at the way the war was fought and the aftermath. For comparisons the U.S. lost 58,000 troops killed in Viet Nam in ten years of fighting. The British including (Canadians, Australian, and New Zealand) lost 70,000 in 4 short months of 3rd Ypres. 'In all the campaign reduced the BEF by the equivalent of 10 to 12 divisions out of a total strength of 60.' Robin Prior & Trevor Wilson 'Passchendaele- The Untold Story'. The irony of it all is that the ground the BEF fought and bled to wrest from the Germans, was all recaptured by the Hun in only 3 days in March of 1918. Tell me again how effective Britian was please?
VBR,
Jim

[Matt Witt]

Jim:
Take a deep breath and try reading my post again. Nowhere does it say the Generals were brilliant strategists or tacticians. What it (fairly obviously) says is that they were out of their depth. Faced with tremendous advances in firepower rates, weights, and accuracy, they were forced to rely on the only training and experience they had. Unfortunately that training was in the warfare of the 19th century. Your example of the Somme is apt: it is a description of fairly standard tactical employment of infantry in a period predating massed artillery, machineguns, or even repeating rifles. Its typical of a period where the bayonet was a primary weapon. Read about the Napoleanic or Crimean wars where men fought in open lines (such as the heroic Thin Red Line of Balaclava) and where the formation of a defensive "box" of men, standing entirely in the open, was a well regarded defensive tactic. That is the mindset the Generals brought with them. It didn't make them butchers or evil. It simply left them with nowhere to go. They were in a war in which the horse, the only effective means of mobility available, and the only means by which to return to the more mobile formations of the past, had been rendered obsolete (it was too "soft" and slow a target) by the advances in firepower. Short of surrender, what were their options? Do nothing at all? True, there would be no casualties, but I doubt Belgium or France were interested in ceding their countries to Germany. Sit back and wait for the blockade to strangle Germany? Not likely to happen soon; after all, it was only the massive expenditures of resources imposed by the constant high tempo of combat operations which gave it any effectiveness whatsoever. So tell us the solution, without relying on the benefit of hindsight, which so eluded some of the best military minds of their time.

As to your rationalization that Germany was the belligerent state ("as they had a stronger military force at the time than a lot of the other participants did") , how interesting. Let's see. That means that China would have been the belligerent state when invaded by Japan (China's Army was larger), and the US was the "belligerent" at Pearl Harbor and during Desert Storm because the US armed forces were clearly larger than either of our opponents' in those wars. My, you've certainly developed a simple means to determine whose fault any given war is. Just count the troops and whoever has more is "at fault"! In reality, the prelude to war is a complex weave of diplomacy, internal politics, conflicting national interests, and, usually, errors in diplomatic judgement. In MOST wars any attempt to affix "blame" is a meaningless, and ultimately self fulfilling, exercise.

[Matt Witt]

Like Rittmeister, my personal ROEs prohibit review or direct response to Jim A's posts. I'm afraid, in view of my previous post, it will be necessary to courtmartial myself upon return to the 'drome.

Matt,
As far as the theory about Germany having a military machine that war better than most of the other European countries is correct, their fleet rivalled the British fleet for supremacy. The Kaiser had spent the years from mid 1890's to just prior to the outbreak of hostilities to ensure that his fleet was = to or greater than the British. The German army at the time of WW1 was better equipped than most of their contemporaries and France and Russia both feared going to war with Germany. However when the war came, the French siezed on it as a chance to get back the territories of Alsace and Lorrain that they ceded to Germany when they lost in the Franco-Prussian war of 1870. Russia had a huge army but how well were they supplied, and why the the mutiny of the Sailors at Stevastopol in 1917?
England had a large contribution in the war effort to be sure but they really didn't start any major operations until the Somme.
As far as the Generals in the first world war fighting with 19th century values, it's true because they only taught frontal assault. But then I guess professor, that the slaughter of the British horse calvary at High Wood July 15th 1916 by the Child of the 20th century (the machine gun), should have evoked some change in tactics even for the slowest of them, don't you think professor? To have your army march across no mans land in rank and file by order is not the act of butchery. Martin Middlebrook author of 'First Day on the Somme' cites at length one Karl Blenk, a German infantryman who was manning the trenches in front of the village at 7:30 that morning: " When the English started advancing we were very worried; they looked as though they must overrun our trenches. We were very surprised to see them walking, we had never seen that before. I could see them everywhere; there were hundreds. The officers were in front. I noticed one of them walking calmly, carrying a walking stick. When we started firing, we just had to load and reload. They went down in their hundreds. You didn't have to aim, we just fired into them. If only they had run, they would have overwhelmed us." Perhaps that should've clued somebody in, eh professor?! Yes the Generals all had a case of Clue Deficit Disorder, and the criminality of it was that they were allowed to use the same tactics over and over again with similar results. Perhaps that's why Siegfried Sassoon in his poem 'The General' has the line "He did for them all with his plan of attack". With the prepositional discretion of the British- "did for them all" means "had them killed". BTW Siegfried Sassoon was a British poet of the 1st World War who fought in France at Arras. Another British soldier/poet of the 1st World War Isaac Rosenberg who was killed in battle in 1918 wrote in his poem 'Break of Day in the Trenches':
The darkness crumbles away-
It is the same old druid Time as ever.
Only a live thing leaps my hand-
A queer sardonic rat-
As I pull the parapet's poppy
To stick behind my ear.
Droll rat, they would shoot you if they knew
Your cosmopolitan sympathies.
Now that you have touched this English hand
You will do the same to a German-
Soon, no doubt, if it be your pleasure
To cross the sleeping green between.
It seems you inwardly grin as you pass
Strong eyes, fine limbs, haughty athletes
Less chanced than you for life,
*Bonds to the whims of murder,*
Sprawled in the bowles of the earth,
The torn fields of France.
What do you see in our eyes
At the shrieking iron and flame
Hurled through still heavens?
What quaver-what heart aghast?
Poppies whose roots are in a man's veins
Drop, and are ever dropping;
But mine in my ear is safe,
Just a little white with the dust.
If it wasn't murder then why could their own troops see it and not they?!!
Don't tell me, let me guess, they were doing such a bang up job that they couldn't hear the screams of the dying.

VBR,
Jim

Professor,
In response to your remarks about my thinking that the Chinese and the U.S. at Pearl Harbor were belligerents on the basis of size of the military.
Well obviously you don't know much about the difference between the U.S. Navy and the Imperial Japanese fleet in 1941. So I'll take the time to explain it to you. The Japanese attacked Pearl Harbor due to the embargoes that the U.S. had placed on them for buying oil and steel. They felt that they were forced into war, and they wanted to knock out the Pacific fleet in one decisive stroke. The U.S. Pacific fleet was still a battleship fleet because of clinging to old theories about the power of the capitol ships of the line. The Japanese were far sighted enough to know the advantages of Naval air power and the mobility of carriers. The U.S. had 2 carriers in the Pacific the U.S.S. ENTERPRISE and the U.S.S. LEXINGTON. The Japanese had 6 Aircraft carriers in their fleet, the KAGA, AKAGI, HIRYU, SORYU, SHOKAKU, and ZUIKAKU. So tell me professor, in your 'learned' opinion who had a stronger fleet?
Also if the Chinese army was that awesome then why did the Japanese kick their butts for 3 years until American aid helped turn the tide?
The statement you've made about Germany not being a belligerent is really strange. The ball really didn't get rolling until they decided to jump in on Austria's side. Had they not have, the Austrians would not have fought Russia and more than likely backed down. So obviously Germany must've had enough military might to counterbalance the threat to Austria.
Your comments oh wise one.
VBR,
Jim

[Andrew_Smith]

Matt,
I find it very hard to believe that Haig was taught in his early militay career to "use up" mens lives like he did at The Somme, Fromelles, Pozieres etc. As Jim stated that even the slowest of minds would realise that those high casualty rates could not be sustained.

Haig then went ahead and butchered more men because he wanted to end the war before the U.S. got to France, what a butcher, to kill so many brave men to satisfy his ego, he was nothing more than a murderer.

So many Australians who had lived through that other brilliant piece of English strategy, Gallipoli, lost their lives on the Western Front, the following is an extract from a Private Williams written in 1918;

"On the way out I looked at some of the Australian dead. There were some people at home whom I wished could see them too. Each one of a group of three wore the brass A on their red and black colour patches which denoted that the wearers had served at Anzac on Gallipoli, and above the cuff of their right sleeve were the red chevrons of 1914 service. A sergeant....had a golden wound stripe on his left sleeve and one other wore a similar badge. We covered with their waterproof sheets these three men of the peerless First Australian Division and went on our way with heavy hearts."

It was not only the Australians that suffered Haig's bloodlust it was all the "colonials", they were mainly used as shock troops, and most of them knew it. Surely this lunatic would have learnt some sort of new stratagy by 1918. A whole generation wiped out by Haig's military genius.

To try and defend this man by way of using his antiquated battlefield stratagies is verging on the ridiculous, he did nothing more than try to fight a war of attrition, and then tried to win the war before a former colony entered the war and helped to win it.

First of all I said germany committed MANY atrocities in WWII.

Secondly: the three most important military events from WWI were 1. The use of armor by the British. 2. The use of infiltration tactics bt the Germans 3. The use of airpower by all warring natons and 4. The use of U-Boats by the central Powers. Other than those innovatons, the generals of any army left a lot to be desired.

WWI was a graet tragedy to the world. Serbia and Austria deserve prime responsibility with Germany, Russia and France close behind. The American entry into the war was more like the straw that broke the camels back. The fresh enthusiasm of the American doughboys pushed over gremanys 1918 house of cards.

[Matt Witt]

Andrew:
I do not accept your basic premise that Haig's motivation, nor that of any of the ranking officers in any of the Armies, was found in a malicious desire to see men die. Were most of them unimaginative? Perhaps. Big egos? Of course. You don't reach that rank or level of command without being certain that you are right all the time. Such confidence in one's own capabilities is essential in an effective leader at that level. But I still haven't heard any realistic options as to how the war should have proceeded instead. In fact, I haven't heard any options at all. Furthermore, it worked. The war was brought to a conclusion on the Allies' terms. Your quote, while poignant, shows nothing other than war incurs casualties. It could just as easily have been written by a soldier in the Armies of Alexander, Hannibal, Caeser, Napolean, Wellington, Rommel, or MacArthur. Death in battle is never welcome or fair, but it is part of war. The question is whether the casualties were "excessive' in light of the various combatant nations' goals. That was a POLITICAL decision, not a military one, and the decision was made by each nation (except Russia) to continue the war through most of 1918. Its been said that the Generals always try to refight the last war. It was that tendency, coupled with the tremendous advances in firepower and the loss of tactical mobility, both of which made the "last war's" tactics nothing less than suicidal, which resulted in the horrible losses, not a malicious desire on the part of the leadership to see men die.

[Andrew_Smith]

Matt,
Haig himself said that he wanted the war over by the time that the U.S. reached France, as for tactics well the Germans showed that new tactics could work. The last push mid 1918 was a mini version of the 1940 Blitzkrieg, except that the did not have tanks, they used specially trained troops to cut barbed wire at night then used specially trained assualt troops to push back the allied lines, if they had fresh troops to back up the initial push, and if Germany was not in a state of civil disorder at home, they may have won the war by the time the US arrived

Getting back to Haig again it is documented that he supported a war of attrition, he knew that the allies had more troops and that numbers would eventually win him the war, even if it did go into a new decade.

As for excessive casualties Australia only had a population of 3 million at the out break of the war, 1 in 3 families was directly involved in WW1 and with a casualty rate of 227,000 killed and wounded I think we went beyond what would be called acceptable casualties. Maybe you think France's casualty rate was acceptable at 3.9 million or Russia's at 6.6 million or perhaps Great Britian and her domains (including Australia) at 2.8 million acceptable or if you just wish to count the allied dead with over 4.7 million lives lost, these figures were far from acceptable. Even Germany Austria and Turkey lost over 3.6 million dead. As for it being political all wars are political even the wars that are said to be based on religion. Australia's army of the time was completely volunteer, we supported and trusted Britian and her Generals only to have our young men butchered by men like Haig. Some of the 59th Battalion mutinied at Perrone, when after being relieved after 6 days intense fighting, and finally getting some sleep they were called out again, and there were other incidents.

One of the 59th wrote soon after the war:

"Drunk with success the British High Command continued to hurl decimated Australian Battalions into the thick of the bloody conflict...in order that a group of mad militants might appease their
inhuman appetite for blood and glory," but nearly all the troops in full pride, drove themselves on. They knew they were being used as shock troops, if not for Monash we would largely be wiped out."

As you missed the point behind the last quote I hope that you see this one. It was not the fact that young men died it was the fact that they were being butchered.

Going back to my earlier point on Australia's casualties, we only had 416,809 men enlist in the entire war, so with 227,000 casualties again it does not take a genius to work out that we had done more than our fair share, I don't know of any General that would be happy with over 50% casualties, oh sorry I forgot about Haig who once said that he would accept casualties as high as 80% if it would win him the war. Military Leader no!!!....... Butcher yes!!!