# What did European observers learn from the American Civil War? Why didn't they learn more? **URL:** \ **Category:** Great Debates\ **Created:** [July 2, 2013, 11:59pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-did-european-observers-learn-from-the-american-civil-war-why-didnt-they-learn-more/662492 "2013-07-02T23:59:29Z")\ **Posts on this page:** 12\ **Page:** 3
**Author:** ![dropzone](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/dropzone/32/7515_2.png) [@dropzone](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/dropzone)\ **Post date:** [July 6, 2013, 3:58am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-did-european-observers-learn-from-the-american-civil-war-why-didnt-they-learn-more/662492/41 "2013-07-06T03:58:20Z")
You don’t need to use, and lose, so many men (overall in the Battles of the Somme being around a million British and French killed or wounded) to keep the enemy pinned down. ---
**Author:** ![Martini\_Enfield](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/martini_enfield/32/11123_2.png) [@Martini\_Enfield](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Martini_Enfield)\ **Post date:** [July 6, 2013, 1:49pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-did-european-observers-learn-from-the-american-civil-war-why-didnt-they-learn-more/662492/42 "2013-07-06T13:49:32Z")
> [@RickJay](#): > > You know, guys, the Civil War and World War I were not the same war. > > If you have a better idea for how to fight the First World War given the technology available at the time, let’s hear it. Technology at which point of WWI? The stuff they had in 1914 was a bit basic in many respects but it was a different kettle of fish by 1918. It’s worth bearing in mind that not all of WWI was fought in muddy trenches on the Western Front - the Palestinian and African theatres were more mobile, with cavalry and armoured cars and so on. > [@AK84](#): > > There were many more recent and relevant wars for the Euro powers to learn from. The Franco-Prussian War, the Russo-Japanese War, even the Boer War. One of the things British learnt from the Boer War was that a (slightly) lighter spitzer projectile was better for accurate, long range shooting than a heavy round-nose one. (They learnt this the hard way, with the Boers being excellent shots at long range using Mauser rifles). If you have a look at military rifles from around WWI, you’ll see their sights are graduated to ranges that just seem ludicrously impractical - 2000 yards for the SMLE Mk III and about the same on the Russian M91/30, for example. What people were expecting after the Boer War was a long-range sniping match, basically - not the trench warfare hell that the Western Front turned into. ---
**Author:** ![RickJay](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/r/bb73d2/32.png) [@RickJay](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/RickJay)\ **Post date:** [July 6, 2013, 3:27pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-did-european-observers-learn-from-the-american-civil-war-why-didnt-they-learn-more/662492/43 "2013-07-06T15:27:56Z")
> [@smiling\_bandit](#): > > The western powers could have literally done better by never attacking during the entire war. This is (simplistically) kind of true in a physical sense. Politically, it would have lost the war. The Western powers were in a state of constant argument, and one of them sitting back on their heels would have infuriated the other. There was a boatload of politics behind almost every move the Western powers made, all of it with the general design of keeping the alliance together. It’s easy for the armchair generals to talk about how dumb those old timey guys were in 1916; in context, however, the decisions they made were largely logical ones based on the military **and political** situations they were in. I’m not suggesting everything they did was brilliant, and would not deny that the war in general was utterly insane, though the insanity was well in place before the strategic decisions were being made. But pretending that anyone here in Haig or Foch’s place would have had any significantly better ideas, with the information available at the time, is just stunningly silly. It’s not even realistic to think Haig had a choice to attack in the summer of 1916; the offensive was a political decision, an agreement between France and Great Britain, and had Haig said on May 1916 “well, no, on second thought, I’m not doing this” he would simply have been fired and replaced with someone, probably Rawlinson, who would. ---
**Author:** ![Throatwarbler\_Mangrove](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/t/8c91f0/32.png) [@Throatwarbler\_Mangrove](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Throatwarbler_Mangrove)\ **Post date:** [July 7, 2013, 4:54am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-did-european-observers-learn-from-the-american-civil-war-why-didnt-they-learn-more/662492/44 "2013-07-07T04:54:58Z")
The primary killer of men in the first world war (and most subsequent wars) was artillery, and modern artillery was only invented in 1897. > **[Canon de 75 modèle 1897](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Canon_de_75_mod%C3%A8le_1897)** > > The French 75 mm field gun was a quick-firing field artillery piece adopted in March 1898. Its official French designation was: Matériel de 75 mm Mle 1897. It was commonly known as the French 75, simply the 75 and Soixante-Quinze (French for "seventy-five"). The French 75 was designed as an anti-personnel weapon system for delivering large volumes of time-fused shrapnel shells on enemy troops advancing in the open. After 1915 and the onset of trench warfare, other types of battlefield use demandi... The artillery of the ACW wasn’t much different from the artillery of the Napoleonic wars, and it wasn’t really that effective even against fixed positions. The whole oh-shit-the-world-just-exploded-and-everyone’s-dead kind of artillery fire you see in war movies just didn’t really happen with the technology of the ACW. Did you ever notice how the general uniform of the ACW period had the men wearing soft field caps? It’s a pretty reasonable choice, since there wasn’t anything you could wear on your head that would stop a bullet. Armies wore soft caps all the way up to the beginning of WW1, when suddenly everyone started dying from sharp bits of artillery shrapnel from the air hitting them in the noggin. So a year into WW1 suddenly steel helmets were all the rage. Steel helmets didn’t stop bullets, but provided significant protection against airburst shrapnel. The style of helmet with the wide brim used by the British and later Americans were designed especially for this purpose. Machine guns are one of those things that looks cool in movies and video games but really weren’t that awesome in real life. They suffered from all kinds of problems - the barrels heated up and wore out with extensive use, they used huge amounts of ammo that had to be laboriously transported on the backs of other men, and they often jammed. At best a 2 man machine gun team could put down as much fire as say, a 12 man section armed with rifles, for a while, until they ran out of ammo/wore out the barrel/broke the gun/got blown up by artillery because they can’t move as quickly. It’s a nice thing to have but didn’t fundamentally change any aspect of the game. A better question would be why the European observers didn’t learn anything from the Russo-Japanese war of 1904, where all of these things were abundantly clear. ---
**Author:** ![Blakeyrat](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/b/ecd19e/32.png) [@Blakeyrat](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Blakeyrat)\ **Post date:** [July 9, 2013, 6:44pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-did-european-observers-learn-from-the-american-civil-war-why-didnt-they-learn-more/662492/45 "2013-07-09T18:44:03Z")
> [@dropzone](#): > > This. It wasn’t just the ground war that brought Germany to the table, it was also the blockade. Just sit in your trenches and wait for famine and disease to do their job. That actually _was_ the German strategy for a long period of time. That’s why, in general, German trenches were well-fortified, permanent constructions while English and French trenches were dirt and sandbags, “because we’ll be pushing forward out of them any day now”. ---
**Author:** ![dropzone](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/dropzone/32/7515_2.png) [@dropzone](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/dropzone)\ **Post date:** [July 9, 2013, 11:46pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-did-european-observers-learn-from-the-american-civil-war-why-didnt-they-learn-more/662492/46 "2013-07-09T23:46:15Z")
I thought the German trenches were like that because they were built by Germans and the others were built by, well, Brits and Frenchmen, but I’m judging that based on cars of the '60s and '70s built in those nations. ---
**Author:** ![Latro](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/l/a87d85/32.png) [@Latro](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Latro)\ **Post date:** [July 10, 2013, 6:17am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-did-european-observers-learn-from-the-american-civil-war-why-didnt-they-learn-more/662492/47 "2013-07-10T06:17:49Z")
> [@dropzone](#): > > I thought the German trenches were like that because they were built by Germans and the others were built by, well, Brits and Frenchmen, but I’m judging that based on cars of the '60s and '70s built in those nations. There is that too. The Germans have a saying “wenn schon, denn schon”, which roughly translates to “If we have to do it, then we might as well do it right.” No use doing a shoddy half-job. ---
**Author:** ![BrokenBriton](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/b/4bbf92/32.png) [@BrokenBriton](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/BrokenBriton)\ **Post date:** [July 10, 2013, 6:35am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-did-european-observers-learn-from-the-american-civil-war-why-didnt-they-learn-more/662492/48 "2013-07-10T06:35:57Z")
> [@David\_H\_Singanas](#): > > (4) The stalemate was unbroken until General Pershing put a million soldiers in a square mile > frontal assault that punched right thru the German line. Yep, with Audie Murphy and John Wayne leading the way. Spielberg is making a movie of it with Tom Hanks playing Pershing. Screwball inventor Robin Williams invents the tank for the attack and is finally validated by the military establishment after years of being ignored. ---
**Author:** ![Latro](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/l/a87d85/32.png) [@Latro](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Latro)\ **Post date:** [July 10, 2013, 9:34am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-did-european-observers-learn-from-the-american-civil-war-why-didnt-they-learn-more/662492/49 "2013-07-10T09:34:38Z")
> [@BrokenBriton](#): > > Yep, with Audie Murphy and John Wayne leading the way. > > Spielberg is making a movie of it with Tom Hanks playing Pershing. Screwball inventor Robin Williams invents the tank for the attack and is finally validated by the military establishment after years of being ignored. Saw a film once, Italian I think, about a factory worker (early 1900’s) whose truck keeps getting stuck in the mud. Slowly, on his own spare time, by trial and error he invents tracks, as a means to overcome the problem. He finds out that he has to pay a fee for the patent that will finally get him and his family out of poverty. He cuts off two of his fingers, for insurance money. On his way to the patent office, in the city, he decides to drop in at one of those new fangled cinema thingies. Where he sees a news reel of tanks breaking through the German lines… ---
**Author:** ![smiling\_bandit](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/s/e9a140/32.png) [@smiling\_bandit](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/smiling_bandit)\ **Post date:** [July 10, 2013, 4:58pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-did-european-observers-learn-from-the-american-civil-war-why-didnt-they-learn-more/662492/50 "2013-07-10T16:58:54Z")
> [@RickJay](#): > > This is (simplistically) kind of true in a physical sense. > > Politically, it would have lost the war. The Western powers were in a state of constant argument, and one of them sitting back on their heels would have infuriated the other. If their societies were (and possibly just so) that lavish of blood, then they perhaps deserved what they got and got what they deserved. I cannot say what France and Britain would have allowed; I can say what they should have done. More to the point, there were voices then as now who urged that people abandon the err, “tactic” of mad suicidal charges, and spoke up very quickly. You can argue people refused to make wise choices; all I can do is point out that it isn’t an answer to the reality that they did not, in fact, make wise choices. Simply put, almost every attack made by the western powers was a substantial net negative, with nothing to show for it but a pile of bodies. The Germans actually came close to winning outright on the battlefield; the western powers did not and never had a prayer of doing so, and this became obvious very early on. > [@Throatwarbler Mangrove](#): > > It’s a nice thing to have but didn’t fundamentally change any aspect of the game. This… is not so. The Machine Gun had its limitations, but it was exceedingly effective at one thing: denying the enemy access to a _specific location_. And because of the nature of trench warfare, this was greatly increased in importance. You would be completely correct in terms of WW2, where the machine-gun was heavily used in standard tactics for all sides but wasn’t in and of itself indispensable because of the fluid nature of the conflict. In WW1, the machine gun could offer a very powerful defense in extremely tight quarters, which is exactly what was needed. ---
**Author:** ![dropzone](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/dropzone/32/7515_2.png) [@dropzone](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/dropzone)\ **Post date:** [July 11, 2013, 12:30am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-did-european-observers-learn-from-the-american-civil-war-why-didnt-they-learn-more/662492/51 "2013-07-11T00:30:42Z")
> [@BrokenBriton](#): > > Yep, with Audie Murphy and John Wayne leading the way. Slam John Wayne to your heart’s content, but you do NOT diss [Audie Murphy](http://www.badassoftheweek.com/murphy.html), you churlish cur! 😉 > [@](#): > > Lt. Murphy was serving as company commander in the Holzwihr forest on 26 January 1945. His unit had been completely decimated - he had 19 men left in his company that was once 128 strong - and had been assigned to hold the critical Colmar Pocket region from a German counterattack. He had two M-10 tank destroyers attached to his unit, and was expecting and additional two companies of infantry to come cover his flank. > > It was a cold, rainy morning when Lt. Murphy first noticed the battalion of German mechanized infantry heading towards his position. Three companies of Nazi soldiers and half a dozen heavy Tiger tanks were bearing down on him. Murphy radioed to HQ, only to find that the two companies of supporting infantry he was expecting to hold the flank were not going to arrive in time. Audie was alone and outnumbered, but it was his duty to hold this position and he knew what he had to do. > > He send his men back to take defensive positions behind him, and called the M-10s forward to take out some of the German armor. Within minutes, both vehicles had been knocked out like chumps. Now it was just Audie against an impossibly large force of German troops. Instead of falling back to safety like a regular, sane person, Murphy instead jumped up and manned the .50 caliber machinegun mounted one of the burning, disabled M-10s. He got on the radio with Command HQ and started calling in artillery strikes to hit the German positions. Shells rained down, taking out Nazis all over the place, but it wasn’t enough. Lt. Murphy opened up the machinegun from his completely exposed position and stared mowing down Krauts left and right. Artillery continued to pound the Germans while Murphy shot the shit out of them. Before long the German losses were so great that the Tiger tanks had to pull back because they had lost most of their infantry support. Audie continued to fire until he ran out of bullets, then dismounted the M-10 only seconds before the entire vehicle exploded. He rallied his men, and the small group of Americans charged forward and routed the German forces. The Colmar Pocket had held. > [@](#): > > Spielberg is making a movie of it with Tom Hanks playing Pershing. Screwball inventor Robin Williams invents the tank for the attack and is finally validated by the military establishment after years of being ignored. Cite? I ask because I can’t find that it exists. I suppose Williams’ wacky inventor is based on Walter Christie, but his first tank didn’t get shown until 1924. He may have been odd, but his tank suspension was used on the T-34 and most of your own Cruiser series. ---
**Author:** ![dropzone](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/dropzone/32/7515_2.png) [@dropzone](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/dropzone)\ **Post date:** [July 11, 2013, 12:38am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-did-european-observers-learn-from-the-american-civil-war-why-didnt-they-learn-more/662492/52 "2013-07-11T00:38:32Z")
I apologize for continuing that WWII hijack. After all, even Old Man Christie wasn’t born until a month after the ACW ended and his contribution to the WWI war effort was thwarted, in part because he had pissed off the US Army, a practice he continued the rest of his life. [Previous page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-did-european-observers-learn-from-the-american-civil-war-why-didnt-they-learn-more/662492.md?page=2)