World War 1 - were generals really that stupid?

Factual Questions
61

There were major issues with amphibious landings, but the bottom line is that even if the Allies landed behind the German lines, that would only be a temporary advantage; the Germans would quickly be able to throw up a defensive line, and there’s a new sytem of trenches in place.

Remember that the amphibious landings of Normandy and North Africa depended heavily on combined forces - co-ordinated by radio. In WWII, there were portable radios that individual infantry men could carry with them in battle. In WWI, a “portable radio” meant a unit that sat on a table.

As others have commented, the lack of communications always hampered an offensive break-through in WWI, because the commanders lost contact with the troops as soon as they were past a certain point. It then became impossible to coordinate the attacks, move the troops to hit a threat, and so on.

Plus, the troops would be moving on foot - they weren’t mechanized. That made a break-through very difficult to turn into a major advance.

The communications in the WWII landings were also crucial to coordinate the naval support, and the air support. That would have been completely lacking in a landing in occupied Belgium in WWI.

There are also technical issues. Air power was not as strong in WWI as it was in WWII, and range of aircraft wasn’t as great - and the coast of occupied Belgium was farther from Britain than the Normandy beaches. Could the RAF have provided much in the way of air support? I don’t know, but it seems that they would have been much more strained in the Belgian situation in WWI than they were in Normandy in WWII.

And the landing craft. The WWII craft were specially designed, using engine technology from the 30s and 40s. Could Britain have produced such specialty craft in WWI? I don’t know, but again I wonder if they could. Was the engine technology there for such small craft in WWI?

Then there’s also the factor that the defenders would have had the advantages of communications and transport. The Germans controlled the Belgian railways and telegraph lines, and could also use radio to some extent, so they would be in a much better position to coordinate the defence than the Allies could coordinate the offence. And, they would have had the advantage of short lines of communication for both their infantry/artillery and their air support, much shorter than the Allied aircraft could have had. Although the infantry weren’t mechanised, the Germans could have used the Belgian rail system to deliver troops close to the front, even if they had to march to the front itself.

And finally, the basic reason for the defensive stalemate: the machine gun. It gave a tremendous advantage to the defence. Even if the British and French could have successfully landed on the Belgian coast and started moving inland, it wouldn’t take much for the Germans to start setting up defensive positions. They would have been hastily constructed, true, but it didn’t take much of a defensive position to put machine guns into operation. There’s no reason to believe that just because the Allies landed amphibiously, they wouldn’t run into the same advantage for the defenders as on the Western Front. Once that happened, the Allies would have to resort to defensive measures, and then there’s a new trench system coming into existence, running east-west across northern Belgium, instead of north-south across Belgium and France.

And then, there’s the geographic factor: the trenches ended at Nieuwpoort, Belgium, which is on the western end of the Belgian coastline; that’s where the “Race to the Sea” ended in late 1914. Even if the Allies got a toehold on the other side of the trenches,they would be in northern Belgium. They wouldn’t be anywhere near Germany, but rather up against the Netherlands. That doesn’t help put much pressure on Germany, unless the Allies were prepared to violate Dutch neutrality, which seems highly unlikely. Plus, fighting one’s way across the Netherlands would give the Germans plenty of time to prepare their defences on the Dutch-German border, or even inside the Netherlands, as a pre-emptive strike.

62

Where would these amphibious landings be, that would change the course of the war? There seem to be only two obvious candidates: on the coast of occupied Belgium, or on Germany’s North Sea coast between the Netherlands and Denmark.

As outlined in my previous post, I just don’t see it, even for a landing in northern Belgium. And the difficulty in landing in Germany, on the other side of the Netherlands, would be even greater, with much longer communication lines for the Allies, little in the way of air support, and tremendous difficulties in using landing craft, not just to cross the Channel, as in the Normandy landings, but to cross the North Sea.

And, even if the landing goes without a hitch, what’s to stop the Germans from bringing up machine guns, five miles inland, and digging in? Yes, they’d have to pull the manpower from elsewhere, so there would be a re-distribution of German troops which may give some greater advantage to the Allies on either the Western or Eastern Fronts, but so too the Allies would be re-distributing their men, taking some from the Western Front to mount the invasion.

Overall, it strikes me that even a succssful landing would quickly develop into a stalemate, just like on the main front.

63

An aside on how “fighting the last war” not always a bad idea: there was the First Mons, when the Germans were turned back by what they thought was machine gun fire, but was actually the “mad minute:” British soldiers trained to hose off as many as six 5-round clips in sixty seconds.

The “last war” they were fighting was Isandlwana, where the British had been wiped out trying to hold off the Zulus, with single-shot rifles that often jammed.

64

And don’t forget the German navy. After Jutland it was still a force to be reckoned.

65

Incidentally, I would say that this is one of the ways that the High Seas Fleet assisted Germany. The British were masters of attacking from the sea and had been for more than two centuries. That was one if the great advantages of British sea power. They could land at a time and place of their choosing and cause strategic consequences out of all proportion to the size of the landing force.

Yet for this you need uncontested command of the sea and the High. Seas fleet ensured that the British would not have that in the seas close to Germany.

66

Each era of war had its technology and tactics, and it took a while to figure out what no longer worked. As pointed out…

In Crimea and then the Civil War, trenches were becoming an established defense tactic, but could be overrun with sufficient manpower. By WWI, machine guns and artillery were much more advanced - a machinegun nest was more effective than a bunch of country bumpkins with repeater rifles and bad boots. The artillery of Crimea could be taken by a detemined cavalry charge, if you were willing to take casualties.

After WWI the mechanized divisions became more effective- tanks could overrun trenches; but air power which did not really do much in WWI was another deciding force. Don’t forget the transport infrastructure we take for granted - lots of paved roads, reliable automobile engines, plentiful fuel supplies - these were rare in the WWI days. Ditto command by telephone or telegraph - still developing, hard to maintain in war conditions.

IN the Seven-Day War, the tank forces were the deciding factor - the better mechanized armour of the Isrealis was a major help in capturing the Sinai and other territories. By the Yom Kippur war, hand-held guided anti-tank missiles could take out a tank from quite a ways away. It took a shift in tactics to recognize and react to the danger. (apparently the Egyptian soviet rockets were wire-guided. The tank had the short opportunity to locate the launcher and shell him before the missile hit. Toward the end of the war, apparently quite a few Israeli tanks were driving around with a dozen or more guidaing wires draped around the turrent from rockets that missed).

The future - who knows? MAD is the ultimate outcome. However, drones, antiaircraft missiles, cruise missiles… Mass attacks against civilian industry… The civilian industrial supply chain is vital to a modern army. Makers of engines, ball bearings, fuel refineries, even food supplies are obvious targets - not to mention bridges, roads, airfields, and command-control. (Think of the Saddamizer, the bunker buster that could take out a 50-foot deep concrete bunker.) the current though is that one side will have relative ontrol of the skies very quickly, and rom there it’s just a war of attrition to grind down the other side.

Iran-Iraq was interesting that both sides started with supplied modern weapons, but did not have the internal economy to sustain the tech. they gradually wore down to WWI level technology - trucks and stationary artillery, trenches and machine guns. Neither side had the depth of tech to maintain an air force, or a decent tank force. Normally these are proxy wars, and the airlift keeps the supplies coming - but neither side had any great friends willing to do this.

When you watch a Bear-Stearns or Goldman-Sachs selling garbage as an investment for several years while more and more voices in the market were saying “this can’t go on. It’s gonna crash!” It is a surprise that generals can be as blind and stupid in some situations as corporate management, when allegedly both are picked for being the best and the brightest?

67

Thanks for the replies on the amphibious flanking idea; I had no idea that Operation Hush (not as cool a title as Overlord, but still) was floating around at the time. Sounds like it was pretty untenable due to technological limitations and the German navy’s strength. I had thought that rather than diving into Germany they would instead target the flanks of the trench system to cause an opening; although you’d still have whatever German reserves in the area to fight through.

A shame aircraft technology hadn’t been invented slightly earlier; paratroops would also have rendered a static trench line pretty obsolete.

ETA: Apparently Winston had the same idea! I guess after Gallipoli his credibility was at a rather low ebb.

68

If the war would have lasted just a bit longer, it might have happened. Billy Mitchell was toying with the idea.

69

Yes, and as someone in a previous post has also said the same thing.

Pretend you have 1000 men on your team and the enemy has 1000 of their own. Your men are about equal in skill/ability to his. Now put you both on opposite ends of a hallway in which only about 2-3 men can stand abreast and fight.

There is no way you are going to out maneuver your enemy or ‘punch a hole’ and exploit. You are just going to have 2 mobs throwing fists and kicks at each other until one side gives up from exhaustion.

How many causulties will the winner take? Not that much less than the loser. So territory taken will be small until the end and causualties about equal.

Western Europe was like that. You had huge amounts of men on a short front. The only thing you could do was bash at each other until one side won and causalties will be huge and about equal until near the end.

World War II was different because armies could maneuver and attackers could ‘poke a hole’ and exploit with armor and aircraft. IN WWI attackers moved at the speed of foot while defenders had trains. In WWII the attacker could even attack the trains/logistics/enemny movement through aircraft that was slim to none in WWI.

So…you are an Allied WWI General given complete control. So you sit back and wait until the blockade takes effect? Well, the Germans will attack YOU and, guess what…you lose about the same number of men as is still a bloodbath.

If the Germans don’t attack? Cool! you think…However, the Russians are getting pounded and you are sitting on your fat arse…what are they supposed to do and think? They can’t take on Germany all alone - heck - since you not attacking the Germmans can even send MORE men East to pound the Russians. It won’t be long until the Russians say "Screw this we lost because of our so called ‘allies’ not pulling their weight so let’s make peace with Germany.

Now it is 1915-1916 and Russia is out of the war. Italy decides Central Powers look pretty good after all and honor their previous alliance with them and join them. Turkey is even more pumped up and maybe some other countries are thinking Central Powers look pretty good to join while the U.S. sits back and goes…well if the Brits and French won’t fight to save Europe, why should we?

WWI Generals do seem a but stupid…but don’t forget that they needed to do something and had limited options.

They probably weren’t as dumb as you think…just in unfortunate circumstances.

70

It’s more than that. Simply arriving in the enemy’s rear area (by a hopefully unexpected means) does not solve the fundamental problem - what do you DO when you get there? Both sides had occasional breakthroughs in standard trench warfare that went nowhere, there’s no reason to expect that because they arrived there by sea instead of land that it would go any better. In fact it’s worse because the landing forces are** known by the enemy **(who can see your boats coming and going) to have NO unexpected reserves to throw into the fray. And the possible scale of these landings - a division or at a stretch two - is risible compared to the scale of the forces deployed on the Western front.

The Germans, not being stupid, were exactly as aware of the options available on the coast as were the British, and you. So they prepared for it, knew when it was coming, and launched spoiling attacks (the German Army’s signature move in WWI and WWII) to interfere with it even getting under weigh. The core issue with attacks on the Western Front was that the enemy usually knew you were coming and could take appropriate counter-measures (which is why short sharp unexpected attacks later in the war worked better) - this is even more true when you are coming by sea.

The British, also not being stupid, knew that it would only succeed or even help if it was an unexpected factor that suddenly appeared in the rear of a larger offensive that the Germans feared might have some chance of success. One or two divisions unexpectedly appearing in the rear of yet another attack that had only gained 100 yards of mud would cause the Germans no problem whatsoever.