mastering the all-arms battle, plus Luddendorff losing his nerve, plus troops transferred from the Eastern Front bringing Bolshevik ideas with them, plus the prospect of the Americans being able to make a substantial contribution (which only started to happen in September), plus mutiny in the Navy at the idea of a Death Ride which just might improve Germany’s bargaining position at the peace conference but nothing else, plus war weariness after being told that one more push would do it and it didn’t. Tanks weren’t a panacea and the German Army reckoned it had got the measure of them. Germany hadn’t lost yet, but it was clearly going to loose and it was time to stop the war (not surrender which they did not do) before things got any worse.
He’s talking about Operation Michael and the subsequent offensives that nearly sent the Brits into the sea and almost broke the French.
To expand upon the above-- WWI was kind of a hotbed of innovation. Better landmines and constantly evolving artillery, lots of different kinds of tear gases and poison gases and delivery methods for those gases, better rifles, grenades, and machine guns, the very first use of airplanes for both reconnaissance, bombardment, and finally air superiority, and the development of tanks. The war saw the last effective use of horse cavalry and the first effective use of modern mechanized cavalry. The trouble was that defensive military technology like trenches and fixed machine-gun emplacements had outpaced offensive technology. It was incredibly hard to gain ground, and incredibly easy to defend it.
You’re looking back with the benefit of hindsight and from the point of view of a political leader, not a general. You know that the Somme was a total waste of life, but at the time, it was the largest assault imaginable and the generals, in their expert opinion (and they were experts) believed that they might be able to successfully break the German lines and thereby gain a flank to exploit. An attack on that scale hadn’t been tried before or at least not very many times, and they really did believe it might be different this time. In addition, the generals did not have the authority to surrender or begin negotiations for a ceasefire. That’s not what a general’s job is. They were ordered to fight the war to the best of their ability.
I guess the naive question is… after the Somme, if the Somme was the high water mark of over-the-top-mass-trench-attacks, did they STILL keep trying the same thing, or was enough enough?
Another somewhat interesting question is, if the OP’s characterization of WWI generals is unfair, why that image is one that is so easy to fall into?
With regards to the Somme, bear in mind that the battle that was planned was significantly different from that which was fought. During planning, the Germans attacked Verdun, to deliberately force the French to defend a prestigious position and bleed themselves white - the German objective was to win the war through slaughter, as they already held enemy territory.
So the French begged the British to come to their aid by drawing off German reinforcements from Verdun, and so the date of the Somme offensive was brought forward considerably for this reason. This meant, among other things, that new secret weapons that were planned to turn the tide (such as tanks) weren’t present in sufficient numbers to make a difference.
The British military doctrine that was ascendant was that of bite and hold: mount an offensive with overwhelming numbers. In the first assault, generally, there was some success, due to the enemy not having had time to railway reinforcements into the sector. But then you keep attacking to keep them off-balance: kill those reinforcements, keep them off-balance, and maybe they’ll break, maybe they’ll retreat, but above all keep them out of the ability to counterattack and take what you’ve gained.
For much of the time in the major battles of WW1, from the generals’ perspective, knowledge of the battlefield always suggested ‘we’ve taken this, and here we seem to have almost taken this, and despite huge losses it looks like the enemy’s lost more, and reports are coming in that the enemy’s stretched thin to breaking. If we just throw in more troops here, maybe this time they will break.’ And oftentimes, it was the case that the defenders were hanging on by a thread, and if they attacker had made one more push, they might have taken that all-important objective.
The danger is looking at everything with hindsight. From our perspective, sure, the losses far outweighed the gains, but from the perspective of those at the time, given their knowledge, their technology, their communications, and the pressure they were getting from superiors and allies, one more push would work this time.
Yup. And I’ll expand on my post. Operation Michael did not introduce any new weapons or even tatics, but refined those that existed. Decision making on the battlefield was decentralized, with NCOs and junior officers making decisions where to attack instead of just carrying out prebattle orders. The lengthy prebattle shellings of 1915-17 were replaced by short but far more intensive shellings concentrated on strong points. Attacks were spearheaded by elite troops heavily armed with machine guns and mortors and they coordinated much better with artillery; contrast that with the Somme where the attacking troops were often left uncovered by their artillery. Operation Michael was a big victory for the Germans, but by that time only a knockout blow could save the Germans.
So why did the Allies start succeeding in the autumn of 1918? Mix of factors: the huge supply of American troops could not be countered by exhausted, unreplaceable German troops; the new German lines weren’t nearly as fortified as the old ones and thus easier to attack; and generals traded single big offensives for smaller ones that could exploit temporary German weaknesses.
It is said that rather than give the command to charge, Roosevelt said, “Follow me!”
A lot of frontal attacks succeeded, in the short term. There’d be a big assault, several trenches overrun, etc. Then it would peter out. It’s very hard to move reinforcements, supplies, artillery, etc., forward to keep up the pressure. Operation Michael was one of the more successful one of these breakthroughs that still bogged down.
I think that a lot of the feeling was that if they just planned a bit better, got their ducks in a row, etc., the next assault would really succeed. E.g., when tanks came into play, they really made the initial assault go much better. But then they would break down and the usual stalemate, or even retreat to original lines, would happen. So: more, better tanks! That’ll do it.
One really old fashioned idea that persisted way too long was that soldiers had to move in good size groups to keep control of them. Late in the war, some units found that small infiltrator patrols could move fairly far into enemy territory and make things a lot easier for the following assault. Done on a large scale early in the war would have changed things drastically. But having a few soldiers here-and-there operating on their own wasn’t considered a proper way to maintain command.
Plus, there were some really horrible generals that just threw lives away by the thousands. The old system of gentlemen-officers was just awful.
It’s not so much the idea that the tactics of “conventional war” are obsolete, but rather that with some combination of the US being overwhelmingly powerful and drastically increased globalization and global trade, it’s unlikely that wars between nation states are going to be at all common for the foreseeable future.
Instead, we’ll see a lot of this asymmetric war between nation-states and extra-national entities like the US vs. the Viet Cong, Al Qaeda or the Taliban. Or the Russians vs. the Chechen separatists.
However, if nation-states do come to blows again, it’s entirely likely that they’ll fight it the same old way more or less- tanks, helicopters, airplanes, etc… Various sorts of drones and unmanned vehicles will change things if the wars involve rich and technologically capable nations, but if say… Pakistan and India go at it, it probably won’t involve too many drones or anything much more advanced than say… the year 2000 for the most part.
I don’t know, I’m not so sure. It could be that way but I find it difficult to see the use of charging up a hill when you could be hitting command and control and communications centers. I have no idea.
I see it in Africa where it is civil wars and the terrain is what they want but in a war between powerful nations I think the purpose is to defeat the enemy by whatever means.
As for generals who kept repeating the same failed tactics over and over, Haig gets (and deserves) a lot of the blame (why did the British government settle such a huge fortune on this guy as a “reward for services”??), but there were plenty of other dumbass leaders on both sides.
Supposedly Foch continued his belief in the failed French “strategy” of unlimited offense (with plenty of élan) even after the war was over. Nivelle went ahead with his big, costly offensive even after the salient he was going to attack was eliminated (screwing up the plan beyond recognition, not to mention that it was obvious to the Germans what he was going to do). And Falkenhayn had the great idea to “bleed the French white” at Verdun (which he did, but the Germans also suffered in the range of 700,000 to 975,000 casualties themselves).
I’ve also heard it said that political leaders of the time would’ve had no patience with generals who failed to keep up the fighting, even if it was fruitless (and they didn’t want to be sacked), so they had to hope tweaking their battle plans would somehow make them successful.
(bolding mine)
Not quite. The Stormtruppen tactics were introduced earlier on the Eastern front. It was their first use on the Western front.
General Haig was an idiot. he was a “political” general, who owed his position to wirepulling…and the fortunate (for him) death of General Grierson, early in the war. Grierson had bested Haig in army maneuvers, and surely would have prevented Haig from assuming total command.
That said, the WW1 generals were under tremendous pressure to achieve a “breakthrough”-that is why they repeatedly tried horrendous frontal assaults-even after experience had shown them to be futile.
For the allies, it would have been smarter to just wait the Germans out-the British naval blockade of Germany was very effective (Germany was experiencing famine by 1918).
Ahh, the ol’ Zapp Brannigan style warfare:
“You see, Killbots have a preset kill limit. Knowing their weakness, I sent wave after wave of my own men at them, until they reached their limit and shut down.”
So you think the Belgian government in exile should just have said, “Well, that’s it,we’ve been conquered and should just accept that we’re part of the German Empire.” And that France should equally have just accepted that they’d lost a substantial portion of their territory and population, and just sign them over to Germany?
[Quote=Habeed]
Why couldn’t they agree to stop fighting once the lines become mostly static, and hundreds of thousands of people were dying?
[/QUOTE]
It’s not the job of generals to decide when to stop fighting - that’s the role of the elected government.
Finally, the tactics of the Allied generals did succeed - they won the war of attrition. It was Germany which sued for an armistice.
The tactics of old are not completely dead. I believe that a great deal of the Iran-Iraq war was fairly static, with trenches, human wave attacks (by the Iranians), and the Iraqi tanks dug in as artillery. The war for Eritrean independence was, I think, largely a static affair as well. And horse cavalry charges were a feature of the early part of the US war in Afghanistan.
I doubt these would be a part of any conceivable contemporary “great power” war, though who knows.
I really do think there was a lack of ability among the generals. They started the war with a fixed strategy - break through and launch a offensive at the enemy’s capital. And they never really fundamentally wavered from it.
There were some new ideas tried. But the top generals saw these as just tactical gestures that would allow them to implement their original strategy. They never considered changing the strategy itself. That’s why some good ideas that could have changed the course of the war - gas, amphibious landings, tanks, infiltration tactics - faltered in the execution. A new plan would start working and the generals would see it as an opportunity to use their old plan. Read any history of the war and you’ll be struck by the times when some general had a clear opportunity in front of him and didn’t see it.
While you are correct that it was the naval blockade that eventually brought Germany to its knees, I don’t think waiting out the war (like an early phoney war!) would have been in any way feasible. Politically, the Germans had the advantage: nowhere in Europe had they lost any territory (yes, they lost their colonies, but few cared), while France and Belgium (and Russia) had lost large swathes of territory and France was determined to take Alsace-Lorraine. That demands extreme aggression.
You can’t win a war by not fighting. It saps your soldiers’ morale.
WW1 - the only winning move is not to play…
I wonder if any of those who feel the generals were incompetent may have any alternative ideas to win WW1?
My suggestion would have been to take one of the ideas I suggested above and committed to it. Don’t simply poke at it in a half-hearted way. Commit some resources to following up on its success if it succeeds.
Look at the early gas attacks. The Germans launched a major gas attack against the British lines near Ypres in April 1915. And it worked great; the British lines broke and a five mile hole opened up in the front.
And then what happened? Nothing. The Germans didn’t have any troops ready to advance through a hole in the front. By the time they could bring troops to the area, the Allies had been able to mostly recover and form a new line.
I’m not saying the Germans should have launched a major offensive in the expectation the plan would work. But they should have at least considered the possibility the plan would work and had the troops on hand for a major offensive.