How true is the WWI stereotype of out-of-touch generals constantly ordering millions of soldiers to march across no man's land because they couldn't understand how Napoleonic warfare was now useless, and didn't care about the fatalities?
It wasn't "useless", it was the only thing that worked.And obviously high casualties werev expected.
>>18519025Not true at all. It was way past Napoleonic warfare tactics even at the start and they did try to improve and come up with new tactics all the time
>>18519025It is more right than wrong.Not full 'lions led by donkeys'.But most leaders were inexperienced tactically and logistically lacked a substantial amount of skill at handling the massive scope of a modern war.
>>18519025>out-of-touch generalsDefine out-of-touch tho.The offciers had a pretty clear idea of the circumsrtances, they just had to find ways to deal with it.>Constantly ordering millions of soldiers to march across no man's landFirst of all it wasnt constantly.Second you're using the word "march" as if the soldiers were being culled by the enemy on purpose. Maybe you should use the word "charge".>because they couldn't understand how Napoleonic warfare was now uselessNapoleonic warfare? As in line infantry with muskets? Armored Cuirassier cavalry? Trunnions with grape shots?Come on man, not even the Prussians in the 1870 war were pretending like it was the Napoleonic war.>and didn't care about the fatalities?A this point you must be trolling.
>>18519025It was less that they didn't understand it was useless and more that they couldn't come up with anything better and throwing away their men's lives cost them less face among their peers than admitting they were unprepared and out of their depth.
>>18519025well, they needed some "experience" to figure out how to combine tactics rather than just do infantry charges with rifles. Skillful artillery bombardment plus tanks, plus machine gun squads, plus quick moving grenadiers/riflemen plus tanks worked well when done correctly, WITH, very importantly, supply lines that could move with advancing lines, worked well altogether, but it took generals a lot of trial and error to get to that point.
>>18519432The American Civil War showed that even with muzzle loading rifled muskets, entrenched troops could throw enough lead to slaughter attacking troops, and this was pre-barbed wire as well, though abatis and the tangled landscape of the South could be just as bad.
Yes, they were out of touch, but what else could they do? Unless you want to endlessly retreat and lose ground, you need to just batter the enemy with artillery. If you want to advance, you have to do meat assaults, like Russians are still trying today. The generals were idiotic but I'm not seeing an alternative where you both follow orders and outperform expectations..
>>18519954hilarious wemb. Thanks for posting. So, who does /his/ think were the best generals of WWI? To my understanding, Ludendorff was a bit more advanced than the rest as far as combining arms and breakthroughs. I'm far from an expert, so how would you sum up Joffre vs. Haig vs. Falkenhayn vs. Nivelle etc etc. Strengths and weaknesses, best and worst decisions and outcomes etc.? Without focusing too much on non-combat issues like materiel.
>>18519969 Falkenhayn was the genius who realised he only needed to hold the high ground supported by artillery, but this did not produce a victory so he got sacked and replaced by Ludendorff who wreaked the german army with his spring offensive.
>>18519481>well, they needed some "experience" to figure out
>>18520063>20% of Serbs dies in The War to End All Wars>~50% of male populationis this a good thing? I'm not familiar with Serbs.
>>18519987>Hold the highground supported by artillery>Loose anyway because UK blockade ressources, France has a better logistic and the US come in massThe Spring Offensive was the right thing to do : one last push once for all with everything you got before getting slowly grinded down.
>>18519025It's overblown. Militaries always have the tendency to "fight the last war" so to speak, as experienced officers are informed by their training & battlefield experiences of past wars. So when a new war comes around (especially after a long period of peace) there's an initial period of old tactics getting hammered by new battlefield realities and only then do militaries adjust.We're seeing this happen right now in the aftermath of Russo-Ukrainian War. Experienced Israeli troops & commanders are getting hammered by drone tactics developed from that war.
>literally invent multiple whole new types of warfare to break the deadlock and protect their men>100 years later retards ask why they were so out of touch and set in their ways
>>18519025Didn't some generals believe that attacks are always better than defense and that being on the defense makes the men lazy and undisciplined? I think I read that this was the main "philosophy" of guys like Hötzendorf and Cadorna.
>>18520778Sounds like some typical BS the powdered officer class would come up with.
This really only was in the Western Front, the Alpine Front, and the Gallipoli Campaign (maybe also in the Tikrit campaign). The Eastern Front, given how vast she was, didn't have that sort of meatgrinder, it was more of a traditional war with maneuvre and siege. The fact that the German army was held up in North Eastern France reveals that the French learnt from the catastrophic humiliating defeat of the Franco-Prussian War of 1871
>>18520778My guess is that being on the move keeps you on your toes while just standing about on the wall makes you bored, complacent, and sleepy until a raid or surprise assault catches you off guard
>>18519025I would be shocked if it wasn’t true. Incompetent leadership is the norm not the exception
>>18519025They were clueless in the way that they had no idea for a good chunk of the war on how to fight with and against rapidly advancing modern technology, not that they were ignorant of the realities they asked their men to endure. Hindsight is 20/20 of course, and war strategy isnt like a tech tree. Everytime you try to do something differently men will die rven if you win, and you have to repeat that strategy a few more times to actually see what works and what doesn’t. Hollywood and video games have sorta ruined the public perception of WW1, where most people seem to unironically believe that WW1 was fought by a officer blowing a whistle and everyone jumping out of the trench and charging across no man’s land with absolutely no plan or formation, when in reality they had to be extremely precise with where troops were, when they would enter combat, how many would theoretically be needed. Every single rifleman could get across to the other trench, but if the bombardiers are killed off theres no way to actually clear out the trench lines so they’re stuck. Or if troops advance too quickly, they the fun the risk of running into their own artillery fire, as in lack of radios and reliable communications, tbe war was mostly fought using time tables.>10:00am artillery begins>10:30am artillery fire advances by five meters every second salvo>10:35am 22nd Cheshire Rifles leave trench and advance, staying >10:50am artillery passes over enemy trench>10:55am 22nd Cheshire Rifles storm enemy trench
>>18519025>they couldn't understand how Napoleonic warfare was now uselessanon, the coalition wars happened a whole century earlier
>>18520778it was called the cult of offense
>>18519025It's inaccurate.https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FLXdm3epK5Qtl;dr, without air superiority and maybe tanks, all conventional warfare between large armies devolves into bitter trench fighting with frontal assaults. Look at the current war in Ukraine; it resembles WWI so much because neither side has air superiority.WWI generals did what was most successful with what they had. One of the few exceptions would be Luigi and the 12 Isonzos.
>>18519025>How true is the WWI stereotypeOnly very marginally.For one thing, manpower doesn't stop being a bottleneck resource just because you're a psychopath, so rarely anyone at any point in history could actually afford not to care about casualties.For another, the way they fought wasn't napoleonic at all, it was just the natural consequence of low speed high letality combat. There wasn't any real alternative short of developing new tech to change the premises, but that's not the general's job.The only reasonable bit is them being out of touch with the average solier's condition: the misery of trench life was very hard to recognize from their palace based hq.
>>18520778French military doctrine (cult) prior to the war
>>18521975I think this was the logic behind that strategy. The problem is that those generals ordered offensives even when the conditios for an offensive were really bad. IIRC they even believed that the success of the offensives was determined almost solely by the moral of the soldiers. Basically, soldiers charging a trench wouldn't be mowed down by machine guns if they didn't want to get mowed down by machine guns hard enough. So when an offensive failed, they just attributed it to the soldiers being lazy and incompetent and they didn't concern themselves with things like weather, terrain and supplies.
>>18521968French generals learned nothing. When America entered the war France wanted the fresh troops under their command to enter the same meat grinder. Believing that would tip the attrition stalemate in their favor. France lost 16% of its male population and thought oh boy lets keep doing it and the Germans will finally run out of men.
>>18519025Nah, they were actively trying to figure out how things worked.That process necessitated millions to die, even after they definitely found out that something works badly beyond any doubt. Because, you see, the implementation of the better solution generally took time, during which they had to keep on fighting in some manner anyway.
>>18519025I realized German trenches were better organize.
