Lions led by Donkeys

another famous quote "Politics are too serious to let it to Generals" Clemenceau during WW1

 

Politics are also too serious to let it to politicians (at any rate the ones we see nowadays on both sides of the aisle).

 

Doesn't ANYBODY read John Terraine anymore????

Terraines' many works, (Including "The Smoke and the Fire", "White Heat", and "Douglas Haig-The Educated Soldier"), shead more than a little light on this old war horse.

The alliance kept attacking on the Western Front for MANY good reasons, reasons that still stand the test of time...

1/ You cannot win a war by sitting on the defensive. At some stage you must get out of your position and move forward.
2/ The greater majority of the German Army was on the Western Front. "The Motor of the War" as Terraine call it. This made the whole debate of "Westerners v the rest" as something of a dry debate. Allied stategy was tied to the Western front by geography and logistics, nothing more.
3/ "Allied Strategy" was really "FRENCH STRATEGY" in the Great War. France had by far the majority of troops on the Western Front, and her commanding Generals, were naturally premminent. The startegy of the British Army was to support the operations of the French AT ALL COSTS. It was that simple. The first 'big' offensive (on the Somme) was in response to French appeals for help for VERDUN. The first day of the battle of the Somme was also the 153rd day of the Battle of Verdun. Kitcheneer had expanded the 'New' Army with offensive operations in mind, and because there was not the time or resources to train everyone like the "Old Contemptables" of 1914.
4/ Artillery was the major weapon of the ground war, but the techniques for both dominating the battlefield to silence the enemy guns, AND to deliver the greater majority of your munitions in a useful manner had yet to be achieved. The British Army achieved both of these things with artillery by late 1917. The French did not approach the problem scientifically, and the Germans were simply outclassed, after spending most of the early and middle war periods dominating the battlefield with their artillery. At Verdun, they threw away their advantages , both on the ground and in the air, by the limited scope of the offensive itself, and the very novelty of the methods. They did not use their substantial initial superiority in aircraft, for instance, to make any attempt to shut down the "Sacred Way. Falkenhayn had to plead with the Crown Prince to LIMIT the troop movements on the ground and "....let the 'mincer' do the work." All in vain, for the Crown Prince was trying to win at Verdun the old fashioned way, (by taking territory). He was not interested in 'limited' operations....he was after a big victory to enhance Imperial prestige, something Falkenhayn had trouble restraining him do do. In vain, Erich preached economy of troops, citing lack of resources to be strong everywhere. The Crown Prince went ahead anyway, and Verdun turned into to a ghastly confrontation on a front of only 8 miles.

John Terraine spent the majority of his prefessional writing career educating people about the reality of the Great War. It's epitaph, for hime was simple...."Nobody knew..."

He also spent a considerable portion of this same career sucessfully defending the career and actions of Douglas Haig.

If it wasn't Haig, it would have been someone else, doing pretty much the same thing. The generals of the day could not make up for the lack of technological gadgets that made troop control very problematic in 14-18. Once the infantry formations had 'gone in" after the barrage waas lifted, the commanders on the ground and in the rear were essentially 'in the dark', with no real way of influencing the events until the next set-piece attack. Look around at other countrie. They faced the same set of problems, and had no answers for the immediate time. All would have been removed had they not been 'offensively minded. The classic example of this is Conrad von Holtzendorf of Austro-Hungary. Conrad's plans were fine, maybe a little complex for the level of training of his troops. Had he sat on the defense, he would have performed a lot better, but sitting in prepared positions was not the way to win.

Only OFFENSIVE could do that.

And this is why there were so many of them.

John Terraine will restore your view of the Great War, and you'll be able to see it just as the protagonists of the day did, rather than through the eyes of those who also experienced WW2.

 

1/ You cannot win a war by sitting on the defensive. At some stage you must get out of your position and move forward. Yes, but as many Tommies and I can quote from many a frontal attack the horror of the Tommy and his views....you don't get out of your position and attack in line....towards machine guns...A little thought process from those at the back may have stopped many futile frontal attacks. Most of the 2nd war British general staff, and tactical commanders like Monty are quoted stating their own views on battles they were to fight would not re enact the stupidity of war one.

 

Stop attacking and you lose your job, ending up in a military prison, or, in extremity, a firing squad. The trouble with the weapons of the day was that too much blind faith was placed in artillery to recreate the effects observed during testing on training grounds like Aldershot. There was no "Crash Action" as we know it, and artillery simply limbered up into position, followed by an immense ammunition and stores train, and fired for all they were worth until counter battery fire silenced them, (rare), or they moved forward, (even more rare. Most artillery wore out their barrel sleeves before either of these aforementioned occurances happened. To much faith was placed in the results, and it was assumed that more artillery equalled more destruction. Not the case. The initial barrage at Verdun was described as a "Storm breaking." The concentration of over 1,500 heavy and light guns were aimed at specific targets, and all fired at the same target at the same time. This produced a 'hosepipe' effect, as positions were systematically reduced by a sledgehammer, back and forth, over and over. The effect was stunning to behold, and engendered a false confidence. After the order for the attack to proceed was given, it was really a matter of 'wait and see..' Reports filtered back, some wildly inaccurate, some wishful thinking. Always, enough troops survived to delay the assaulting troops, and the defenders could reinforce by rail faster than the attackers could feed troops into any ground gained.

This was not new.....Robert E. Lee had made the same assumptions on the third day at Gettsburg. The 150 gun bombardment was meant to pulverise the defenses, and Pickett and Pettigrew's divisions rolled forward with what they believed to be 'adequate' preparation. But old sweats like Longstreet knew better. He knew that the assault was doomed.....

This same scenario was repeated time and again throughout the Great War.

And what, exactly, do you do if your assault force gets continually wiped from the map when your job depends on you following your orders? What do you do when the home front clamours for and end to it all, an end that can only be achieved by attacking?

You keep attacking....that is what you do.

If you don't, your replacement most certainly will.

I urge you all to read John Terraine and other like him for a bit of sober reality. It's the only way you will put yourself in the shoes of the people of the day, and see things as they saw them, from the perspective of 1914-18, rather than with all the lessoons of the inter war experiments and the second conflict. People of the day were also hardened to sacrifice, much in the manner of Rudyard Kipling's only son, and the Imperial angst they went through to get him to the battlefield at his request. Kipling's boy died attacking a trench system, and Rudyard spent the rest of the war trying to piece together exactly how from the survivors of this assault. At no stage did the Kipling's believe that the sacrifice of their only son had been in vain. Quite the contrary.

There were MANY families like the Kiplings in 1916.

 

Maybe look to the fighting of the last year or so, mate. 'The 100 days' in particular.
Things became incredibly fluid & mobile as the trench-fighting began to lose it's relevance.
Many early forms of the 'better' kind of C20th tactical & Strategic warfare were executed with some panache by the same blokes so often branded as Donkeys. Even though the Political end of the war was perhaps inevitable anyway around the time Germany had retreated across the Marne, her Army was still soundly beaten in the field over the next few months by superior doctrine & command.

When WW2 leaders referenced 'the stupidities' shown in WW1, they may have been referring to frontal assaults against entrenched positions of the early/mid years (and isn't hindsight a wonderful thing), but many of them learnt the more skilful side of their craft during Ludendorff's 'black days', and the more successfully subtle approach to rolling up flanks rather than battering away in the very same conflict.
WW1 is often presented as nothing but the entrenched opponents banging their heads against each other, and it isn't anywhere near a wide enough view of the 4/5 year situation.

~A

 

Dear Volga Boatman

You have several interesting points, however, I have some doubts .

Lee at Gettysburg lost by an offensive action; Meade was fighting defensively. In a greater sense, I think, you can argue that it was offensive actions by the South that pretty much lost their war. Antietam, Atlanta, Gettysburg were terrible blows to a force with finite resources.
Sitting on the defense was how the French restored the morale of the shattered troops during the mutiny of 1917. This was very nearly the end of the war, brought on by a futile attack. The failure of the "Peace Offensive" is often cited as the cause that German morale fell in 1918.

The Western Front was the chief killing ground, no doubt. But it would be wrong to dismiss the other fronts as unimportant. Both the Battles of The Marne and Verdun were affected by the withdrawl of German troops to fight in the East. This was an on-going headache for the Germans, as Brusilov demonstrated. (Good read on this subject is "The Ally" by Ward Rutherford, 1975). BTW - I've often wondered how this whole subject played out in Stalin's head in 1942.
Additionaly, I 'm not sure but didn't the Austrian Front in the Balkans cave in about the time the German Army was having it's "Black Day" ? Who would stop that allied advance? The war was over on more than one front.

The French generals set the policy on the Western Front, but this was not a 'given'. This was a political thing since Llyod George disliked and distrusted his own generals and supported the idea of French leadership.

Verdun was really an interesting concept. Find a spot where you have an advantage, where the enemy will not retreat, and attrition him away. Verdun was never the objective (until the French proclaimed it so), the French Army was.The French were to attack with the British at the Somme, but cut back their participation due to the Verdun losses. This was in line with German thinking to destroy the French Army, then the British. (BTW - This idea of beating the allies one at a time is why the American entry was so important. Not being a jingoist... just the fact that Russia was gone, Italy was being supported by a very weak France, Britain had spent her youth in Flanders; but now there was a new enemy with alot of resouces joining the Allied cause.) However, it was not to go Germany's way. The powers in Berlin took 3 or 4 divisions over Falkenhayn's objections and sent them to help Conrad in the South. Other units were taken to bolster the Somme and Russia. In the end the German Army bled as much as the French.

On Haig, very correct. "If it wasn't Haig it would have been someone else doing pretty much the same thing."
On Conrad, Lemberg, the Serb Campaign of 1914, Brusilov... enough said.

Artilley is a very subject because it so clearly demonstrates how flustrating this could be. They could blast enemy lines to bits, chewing up the earth, until their effective range was reached. Then they could not be moved foward over the chewed up ground. Enemy artillery then had control of the field and infantry was stopped. It never honestly broke all the wire and quieted all the machine guns in WW1. It blew up the first trench lines advancing the offense. Then it stopped further attacks aiding the defense. When all is said and done... really hellish.

 

On reflection I can think of several wars won by the defense. The broken siege at Vienna against the Turks, many broken sieges for that matter (often with great loss due to disease-the real killer), and some other small fights at a place like, oh, Cre'cy, or maybe Agincourt. Those last 2 bear some resemblence to WW1 in alot of ways (mud, locale, mass fire vs large frontal attacks, new technology & tactics -- a new thread?)

 

Alan Allport on WW2T linked to this excellent essay:
BBC - History - World Wars: The Western Front: Lions Led by Donkeys?

The final paragraph of which:

I could not agree more with.

~A

 

I think the quote goes back longer than WWI: "An army of deer led by a Lion is more to be feared than an army of lions being led by a deer." Chabrias, 410-375 B.C., Athenian General

 

Or as I prefer, a snide piece of 1960s pseudo-intellectual BS, along with the naive idea that there was no warfare in Britain before the Romans arrived.

 

On a side note... I find it a bit odd that Haig's sister led an anti-war movement during the war. And they remained close until much later in life.

 

Readable/balanced Haig Article:
http://www.thehistoryblog.co.uk/blog/douglas-haig-time-for-a-reappraisal/