Recently it became apparent to me that while I’m fairly well informed on the Second World War the First World War was something of a blank, as such I have recently been doing some intensive reading and studying to fill in the gaps in my knowledge.
Now I appreciate that we can’t really judge the leaders of that time from the comfort of the modern world, however I became increasingly horrifed at the senseless waste of men and material over four years of bitter conflict.
And then it struck me, how that conflict could have been resolved at least two, possibly three, years sooner that it ended historically. Instead of the incremental improvement in small-arms and radio communication and aircraft why didn’t the powers that be simply deploy large numbers of Terminator style hunter-killer robots? And if that was not feasible (and I see no reason why it should not be) then they could at least have utilised orbital laser-cannons to punch a hole in the enemy lines. Silly Douglas Haig…
And don’t get me started on the Napoleonic Wars, I mean Napoleon’s failure to call in attack-helicopter close-air-support to soften up Wellingtons flanks at the battle of Waterloo is frankly shocking in a leader of his stature. shakes head
Well, the problem is that the alliances on both sides of WW1 were at the same technological level. So, if the British could build hunter-killer robots, and march with them to take Berlin, then similarly the Germans could build similar robots, and use them to take over all of Europe – apart from Britain, for which they would need floating hunter-killer robots to cross the Channel. So, those robot armies would still be at a stalemate, or else just chasing each other around Europe until they decided on an armistice.
And, even worse, the defensive robot forces of both the Allies and the Alliance were superior to either side’s offensive robot forces. So, when the attacking hunter-killer forces ran into the meat-grinder of the defending robot-destroying emplacements, the offense stalled, and it bogged down into a war of robot attrition.
It could have gone on even longer, but Germany’s strategy relied on the massive firepower from a floating battle station codenamed The Bismark. Audie Murphy, the same backwoods American farmboy that had destroyed the previous battlestation, snuck on board and fought a fist fight with the Kaiser’s robot. Meanwhile, the German Stormtroopers were mired down in a forest war against a force of small, hairy creatures known as “Frenchmen” led by George Washington, his sidekick Buzz Aldrin, and Princess Anastasia. These distractions allowed the squidlike Admiral Thatcher to maneuver the rag tag British fleet close enough to destroy the Bismark and restore Princess Anastasia to the throne. If I remember right, the whole operation took about two hours.
You’re going about this all wrong. Most of WW1 was trench warfare and machine guns. What they needed was an AT-ST with removable cement tanks to fill in the trenches. Just walk it into the battlefield over enemy trenches, pop the tops, fill in the trenches and the enemy has to scatter. And then there was the Spanish Flu! It’s like they didn’t even try to contain the infections and use antibiotics!
You have to adopt effective counter measures in order to break out of trench warfare. For that, you send a spaceship to Janus VI to recruit a Horta Mother. I know" she’s all wrapped up in that “No kill I” hippy-dippy bullshit, but just show her a few pictures of German soldiers marching with Belgian babies on thier bayonets, and she’ll come around. Soon she’ll be boring tunnels in circles around those krauts.
My great-grandfather was in England during WWI, en route to America. He TOLD the British PM how to win the war, but they paid no attention to him. “Get the Germans,” he told them. “Defeat the Germans, and you’re laughing.” But they didn’t listen to him, it wasn’t until four years later that they finally took his advice.
[sub]OK, I can’t take credit for this, it’s from a route by Peter Cook about WWII.[/sub]