Except they weren’t fruitless. The destruction of the German army was the only way the war was going to be won. And Haig destroyed the German Army.
You see, sitting back on the defensive wasn’t really an option. The Germans were in possession of large swathes of Belgium and France. They didn’t need to attack. And British offensives were also necessary to prevent the collapse of the French army - the Somme, for example, saw the British army constantly asked to shoulder more of the burden. It did it with an undertrained, inexperienced army. Britain did not have the huge pools of reservists on which to draw, as it did nto have conscription before the war. Germany also had the advantage, being the occupier, of being able to pick where it would draw its lines, and thus could magnify its defensive advantage.
The Somme, while hideous, was a victory. As was Third Ypres. Without that drain on German manpower, the war would have been lost.
Its perfectly legitimate to argue that the cost of winning the Great War was way too high. But politicians decide to fight wars. Generals just decide how to fight them. Given the army that Haig had, and the army he faced, in the terrain he was presented, there really wasn’t much of an option. Haig did endorse new methods of fighting reasonably quickly (such as the creeping barrage). But I don’t buy into the Liddel Hart mantra that the British Army could have effectively used the German stormtrooper tactics of 1918. It didn’t have the training or NCOs (having always been more reliant on commissioned officers than the Germans).
Some would say the blockade won the war, and the Germans were essentially starved into submission.
There may be a degree of truth in the opinion that Allied political leaders would not have tolerated more of a waiting game on the part of their armed forces as an alternative to the fruitless frontal attacks. It’s a pity though that someone like Haig didn’t stand up and acknowledge that these tactics were horribly destructive and useless. But then he might have been sacked and not wound up with a huge financial settlement from the government after the war.
Mutiny was rampant in the French army after the disaster of Nivelle’s offensive moves, and big stretches of the Western Front were essentially undefended (it would have been interesting if the Germans had realized that). The French army was reconstituted as a somewhat effective force after reassurance was given to the rank and file that offensives like the Somme were a thing of the past.
I never thought I’d see the day when I actually defended Patton.
Messina, when captured, was virtually empty and no blame for this can be passed on to the field commanders, Generals Patton and Montgomery. The failure to prevent the escape of Axis forces was entirely due to the total incompetence of Allied High Command in theatre level planning (Eisenhower, as Supreme Commander and Alexander as his Deputy).
Allied High Command failed to make any provision to interdict Axis forces with naval and air power so as to prevent the blindingly obvious possibility of an escape of Axis forces in Sicily across the Strait of Messina to the Italian mainland.
Page 26 of the report on the Sicily campaign at this army history LINK includes the following:
I have to disagree. The blockade is what eventually won the war; German society collapsed before the German army did. The German Army took as much damage as it did because as the economy began to sink, the military leaders were forced to launch attacks in hopes of winning the war militarily before they lost it economically - they failed. The fact that the German Army and Navy were still largely intact was the reason German militarists would later claim to have been “stabbed in the back”.
But from a practical point of view, sitting on the defensive was the best strategy the Western powers could have followed. If neither side attacked, Germany would eventually lose. If Germany attacked, they would lose more men than the French and British would lose fighting on the defense, so that would hasten a German defeat. The only way that France and Britain could lose the war was if they kept attacking and broke their own armies before the Germans were forced to surrender by the blockade. And foolishly, this is the strategy the western high command (including Haig) attempted to follow. They just got lucky that blockade managed to win the war before they were able to lose it.
I almost don’t know where to begin on how wrong this statement is, but Aquila Be covered a lot of it. Just to add to it, a very large problem with strategic direction of the campaign as a whole rests with Alexander and his hands off approach on leadership. Patton was not racing Montgomery for Palermo, a simple look at ["]The Invasion Plan](File:Map operation husky landing.jpg - Wikimedia Commons) shows how absurd such a race would have been, with Patton landing west of Montgomery and Palermo in the NW corner of Sicily. There also was no overall plan to cut off the German and Italian escape through Messina; and the blame again lies squarely on higher commands than Patton or Montgomery. Patton did conduct a couple of short order and quickly planned amphibious landings on the north coast of Sicily in an attempt to cut off the German retreat to Messina which in the end cost more than they were worth.
Patton also never had to fight the Germans later in Italy; his next field command was in France 1944 in charge of 3rd Army.
Patton gets blamed for a lot of things he never actually did; Montgomery is also highly underrated and oft maligned for things he didn’t do in American pop history. There was no race to Messina between Patton and Montgomery in a far too belated attempt to cut off the Axis retreat from Sicily outside of Patton’s own mind. Montgomery actually suggested to Alexander that Patton’s 7th Army was in a position to attempt it while his own 8th Army was not, and it was the logical thing to do. Montgomery was perhaps not the best general to come from the UK, but he was very solid and competent as a general. His ego largely got in the way of his place in history - kind of like Patton.
Well, in the WW2 vein, my vote for most incompetent general is Mark Clark; his tenure in charge of US and eventually all Allied forces in Italy is just filled with his vanity, incompetence and Anglophobia. Clark actually did fuck up a planned attempt to cut off and annihilate all of the German forces in Italy during Operation Diadem by suddenly ordering US VI Corps to change the direction of its advance 90 degrees and head for Rome rather than continuing with its intended role of encircling the retreating Germans and preventing their escape. Feeding his own ego to be the liberator/conqueror of Rome meant far more to him than successfully prosecuting the war.
How many American generals aside from Mark Clark have the dubious claim of his own soldiers calling for a Congressional investigation of his incompetence after WW2? Well, answer is Clark and no one else
I was going to norminate Percival for surrendering the British Empire in SE Asia to the Japanese. However, I’m a little more sympathetic after reading his Wiki page. Perhaps he was incompetent, but probably didn’t deserve to be called “most incompetent of all time”.
I agree with Little Nemo’s analysis. The Germans were going down in 1918 regardless, after what was essentialy a continent-wide siege. I’d go so far as to say they would have lost even if America hadn’t joined the war in 1917.
NB i’m not denigrating the sacrifice and aid that America gave.
Just that the power of the defensive had gained such ascendancy at that time, that the final german offensive of 1918 would have been stopped anyway. Followed by, as in actual history, a subsequent collapse.
Re WWI, we should not forget General Vladimir Sukhomlinov, Russian Minister of War at the outbreak of the conflict, who assured his superiors that the Russian Army was ready to fight (it was badly prepared) and eventually got canned and imprisoned for incompetence and treason (some historians, not including Barbara Tuchman have subsequently been a bit kinder to him).
Sukhomlinov seems to be best remembered for the Sukhomlinov Effect, which holds that the best-dressed military in a conflict is the side likeliest to lose.
Except that it did win the war. The Germans were still in Belgium and France when they surrendered. So obviously driving the Germans back into Germany was not necessary for victory.
Er no, the Germans were busy being chased out of France and most of Belgium when the surrendered. The British were advancing in some sectors at a rate of 5 miles; a day.
As **AK84 **has already said, sitting on the defensive would not have won WW1. Without the ongoing attacks from the Entente powers Germany and Austria could have sat indefinitely on their gains. It was the needs of their war economies that turned local difficulties into a famine. With time to consolidate their occupation of the Ukraine and no threat of Allied attacks they could easily have fed themselves.
Also, the idea that “If Germany attacked, they would lose more men than the French and British would lose fighting on the defense” is just wrong. When Germany attacked Verdun in 1916 French losses exceeded German, similarly during the March Offensive in 1918 Anglo-French losses were greater than those of Germany… Absolute numbers are hard to come by but it is clear there was no advantage in casualties to the defender. With 20th century weapons and large armies of comparable strength and morale, you suffered massive casualties whether attacking or defending.
The other trouble with the “stand on the defensive” theory is that there was no way in the world France was going to accept German occupation of their key industrial regions, presumably for year upon year, nor the subjugation of a significant portion of their population by a pretty nasty military regime. They were bound to fight and the British – as the junior partner until 1916/17 – were bound to conform.
Haig was no Alexander the Great but his strategic concept was sound and – the ultimate test of a General – he was not the one that had to cross the front line under a white flag to surrender. As to tactics and un-necessary casualties, if you are going to use that as a measure of a General’s incompetence, you have to judge every General of the First World War, British, German, Russian, Austrian, French and even American as incompetent. This might be true but it seems unlikely that an entire generation of senior military men were more stupid than their predecessor and successors. More likely they were doing as well as it was possible to do in enormously challenging circumstances.
Returning to the OP, very difficult to pick out one General where it was real incompetence rather than bad luck or circumstances by I think my vote would go for Percival in Malaysia and Singapore. The Japanese defeated several other Generals and armies in 41/42 but the manner of Percival’s failure was truly awful.
This is the armistice line. It’s true that the Germans had been pushed back some but they still held most of Belgium and some portions of France. At no point had they pushed back into Germany. Arguing that Germany would never be forced to surrender as long as it held French and Belgian territory is refuted by history - Germany still held French and Belgian territory on the day it surrendered.
Except it would have been absolutely politically impossible for any Allied general or leader to propose simply sitting and waiting four years to starve Germany out. Not when it was only in hindsight that going on the offensive was futile. Not when you had propaganda about the evil Hun committing massacres in Belgium (exaggerated but based on a kernel of truth). Not when yet more of France was under German occupation (the French had never let go of thinking of Alsace-Lorraine as French territory.) Not when German submarines were inflicting a counter-blockade that imposed real hardship on Britain. Not when a “sitzkreig” would have minimized the pressure on Germany and made blockade that much less effective. Not when continued fighting on the Eastern front would still have resulted in the collapse of Russia in 1917 and the loss of an ally against Germany. It was simply politically impossible. No one proposing a seige could have remained in a position of power to enact it.
Following up AK84’s point, the German High Command told the politicians to ask for the Armistice because the German army was shattered in October/November 1918. The German army had been ground down by the losses in the battles of 1914 to 1917 followed by casualties of the March Offensive and Ludendorff’s increasingly futile follow up attacks but it was shattered by the 100 days offensive led by the BEF (the British Expeditionary Force - British with massive contributions from the Australians and Canadians) from August 1918.
By this period the defensive was not in the ascendancy. Both sides knew how to break into defensive lines and the Allies had the resources to keep attacking and the Germans had no way of stopping them. The Germans were still in Belgium and France at the Armistice but if they had not surrendered they would soon not have been - hence the end of the war. The idea that the army was betrayed by the civilians was a story put out by the defeated Generals to save their own face.
As I’ve said, I disagree. Haig’s (and Foch’s) strategic concepts were unsound in my opinion and if the Western cause had depended solely on their actions they would have lost the war.
Their mistakes were arguably forgivable in 1914 when they were first confronted by the differences between their theories and reality of modern war. But the war then went on for several years and they refused to learn anything from their mistakes. They kept trying to launch the same kinds of attacks despite repeated proof that these attacks wouldn’t work. And alternative ideas were suggested but Foch and Haig refused to consider any of them.
The Western powers won World War I despite Haig and Foch not because of them. The fact that they happened to be on the side that won does not reflect any credit on them personally. Others have discussed the flaws of Civil War generals like McClellan, Custer, Burnside, and Sickles - all of whom were on the side that won the war.
Among those would be the Germans themselves. The feeling that the Army had NOT actually “lost” WWI was very strong in Germany in the inter-war years and led directly to Hitler’s successful rise to power.
The frontal attacks on the Western Front destroyed the flower of Western Europe for a generation. The national spirit of most European countries was drastically different after the war, leading to the rise of totalitarianism, almost entirely because of devastating casualties (and their social repercussions). Europe’s pre-eminence began to fade immediately after the war and has never been regained. Almost nothing justifies all but wrecking your civilization, and “earlier German defeat” isn’t enough.
The Somme was, perhaps, the single worst day for Britain in its history – in exchange for agony and an indelible record of incompetent leadership, they started an irreversible decline.
I believe that if we could go back in time and give them a “do-over,” they’d find the attacks unnecessary, and damn the consequences of not attacking.
There are several problems with this. First, you say their strategic concept was unsound but you have not come up with an effective alternative. You suggest sitting on the defensive and waiting for the blockade to work but AK84, Lumpy, and I have all given reasons why this was not possible or would not have worked and I do not know of any reputable historian who has suggested it would have been the correct solution.
You have to ask what does staying on the defensive mean? Presumably you see the British attack on the Somme in 1916 as a terrible mistake but the timing and scope of the attack was in direct response to the German attack on the French at Verdun. Should the British have said, “No, we’re on the defensive. We’re not going to attack and take the pressure off you.”, letting the French continue to bleed? You can’t win a war by sitting back and waiting for the enemy – particularly an enemy like the Germans at the peak of their power in 1915/16 – to choose where and when to chew you up.
This is just wrong. Ignoring for a moment the fact that Haig and Foch were not the Commanders in Chief of their respective armies for the first half of the war, it is nonsense to suggest any of the Generals refused to learn. If you think the tactics of 1918 were anything like those of 1914 you need to go back and learn a bit more about the war. All commanders were desperate for anything than might help them break the stalemate: artillery bombardments, gas, tanks, creeping barrages, predicted artillery shoots, infiltration tactics, etc, etc. It was in 1917 all these developments came together and both sides learned how to mount a successful attack. What they still did not have was a means of turning a break through into a rout as they did not have effective wireless communications to lower level commanders – battalion and below – nor did they have fast and reliable tanks. Despite this the Allies in late 1918 were advancing and the German army could not stop them. The Germans, after four years of attrition, no longer had the reserves to keep plugging the gaps the Allies bit into and through their lines. The Hindenberg line was breached and there was no time to prepare any further fixed defensive lines.
I was going to post a lot, then read that Marcus F has said everything I wanted to say, pretty much.
It is amazing how much people forget the French in WW1. How the French were meant to supply (top of my head here) half of the troops for the Somme offensive, but this number was reduced and the British sector increased (thus reducing the artillery concentration available) as the effects of Verdun grew more and more desperate. The Russians also, IIRC, launched repeated offensives in areas they did not wish, at times they did not wish, in order to relieve pressure on the French. At the Somme, Britain’s army was essentially untrained and unblooded. Unfortunately, commitments of an alliance required that it be thrown into the sausage grinder before it was ready.
The war probably should not have been fought by Britain at all. But given that it was, and it wasn’t Generals who decided that, it could only be won in one way. In the West, by bleeding the German army out. When politicians like Churchill and Lloyd George interfered, they shat the bed in a big way - look at the Dardanelles catastrophe, for example. Even had it worked, it would have had no strategic benefit for the Allies. World War 1 was won in the mud of Flanders. World War 2 in the snow of the Soviet Union. Both wars required the might of the German army to be engaged, ensnared, and destroyed. And both times, because of early German success, it took immense amounts of Allied manpower and casualties to do so.
ETA - By WW2, I mean the war against Nazi Germany. It’s not my intention to minimize the importance of the war against Japan.
