A lot of literature on the First World War talks about what callous butchers Allied commanders like Haig and Nivelle were for sending thousands to their deaths in frontal assaults at Somme, Passenchandale, Verdun etc. Without giving those men a pass, what strategy could they have used? If you went back to January 1915, what would you suggest to the political leaders in Paris, London and St Petersburg? Wait for the tank to be develop? Get the USA involved sooner? A better prepared attack on the Dardenelles? Adopt better methods of frontal assaults (don’t try to conquer much at once, settle for a few miles of land)? Try an amphibious landing on German soil?
How about, learn much more quickly that German machine gun nests are fucking DEADLY?
I don’t fault Haig et al for their initial tactics; they were men of their time, and employed straightforward late 19th-century assault tactics. I fault them for not being adaptable and flexible enough to realize that if your men get mowed down by machine guns on the first charge, it’s probably NOT a good idea to keep sending them into the goddamn meat grinder.
So it’s not about tactics, per se. It’s about their personal stubbornness and failure adapt to a changing battlefield.
Well, the Germans wisely stood on the defensive on WestFront until they had developed other strategies for offense such as the v. Hutier tactics. They then went 40 miles straight in during the Spring Offensive. Which compares well with Allied gains of say, 500 yards a time, soon returned, which were the norm. Applied thought such as this by supreme Allied generals was rare.
However, due to a multiciply of reasons they were defeated, and partly since the superior resources of the Allies now enabled the use of combined arms better than earlier.
It was a good game though, and the Allies never got to fight on German soil.
Instead of trying to push back the whole front, find a few weak spots and concentrate on those. Once you’ve broken the line locally, go deep to damage/seize artillery/comms/HQ/supply/industrial centers. Don’t allocate troops according to where they’re having a hard time but according to where they’re having an easy time advancing.
One of my favorite games to play with my friends for years was "How do you re-fight WWII and change it? (Usually with the goal of a win for the Axis) eventually this led us to the inescapable conclusion that many academics have reached WWII is caused by WWI, so we started re-fighting that, but of course, the reasons go further back than that.
You ask what the political leaders could have done differently, most of what needed to be done differently needed to be done long before the war began. You needed to not set up a chain of dominoes on either side politically the could cause the assassination of one man to plunge all of Europe and most of the world into war. You needed to address Germany’s ambitions to be a world power after all the good colonies were taken. You needed to get the Aristocracy out of political power like the Kaiser and Tzar Nicholas II (who made some particularly stupid decisions). By 1915 there wasn’t much to do politically except support the military. There was a consensus in military circles that the overwhelming firepower technology had developed would mean any war would be very short. Once reality shattered that illusion, the allies groped for years trying to find an effective strategy while the central powers did a much better job of holding back until they found a meaningful way to defeat the limitations of trench warfare. Unfortunately by the time they did find a way, the tank, the allies had found it too and brought huge new resources to bear in the form of the United States.
The real changes that needed to be made were after the war. To avoid any situation that could foster the ‘stab-in-the-back’ legend that Germany didn’t really lose the war, it was stolen from them. For the English and French to listen to Woodrow Wilson (something I wouldn’t normally recommend but even a broken clock is right twice a day) and not impose the onerous terms of the Versailles Treaty that guaranteed an unstable Germany with a grudge, and to address the political ambitions of rising new powers in Asia like Japan and China. None of this was politically feasable, the war ended at the armistice because everyone on every side was damned exhausted and didn’t want any more deaths after the millions who were already in their graves. Those same countless graves insured that the British, and particularly the French were going to take more than their ‘pound of flesh’ and any political leader who suggested otherwise was signing his own resignation. The Asians were regarded as inferior, and the main question for most of the powerful nations was how best to colonize them. Allowing any Asian nation to acquire the status of a ‘world power’ would bring similar political suicide.
Yes, I’m cynical to the point of fatalism, but I do make some good points don’t I?
This just isn’t true. All the commanders on both sides kept trying different tactics to achieve a break through while minimising casualties - however callous you think the generals were, the troops were their capital and no commander wanted to throw it away if it could be avoided. Surprise artillery barrages, overwhelming weight of artillery, gas, tanks (when developed), underground mines, use of air power, etc, etc. they were all tried and all with some success but in the First World War there was no solution to the basic problem that the defender could move reserves to the front quicker than the attacker could move across the battlefield and – the real killer – there was no effective way for the attacking troops to communicate with higher command. Without communications, once the attack had started, there was almost nothing the general commanding the Division, Corps, or Army could do. If the commander does not know where or when the attack is succeeding how can he know when and where to commit his reserves – the fundamental role of the commander throughout history. Note that these problems applied to all the Armies in WW1, British, French, German, Russian, Austro-Hungarian, Italian – they all faced the same difficulties and all suffered the same casualties.
It is worth noting that mass casualties were not unique to WW1 and the much maligned generals – they were an inevitable feature of the mass warfare of the 20th century. During Operation Barbarossa in 1941, when the Germans were beating the Russians all ends up, German casualties were still over three quarters of a million in less than six months.
Again not true. The Germans did not wisely stand on the defensive from 1915-18. In 1916 they attacked at Verdun with the specific intention of bleeding the French army to death. They very nearly succeeded but ended up destroying their own army in the process. It was in the context of Verdun that the British attack on the Somme was launched. The first day was a disaster (not through stupidity but because the heaviest artillery barrage ever used, which was expected to totally destroy the defending positions, didn’t) but the battle went on for the best part of six months and made a massive contribution to the destruction of the German army and the victory in 1918.
By the end of 1917 both sides knew how to break through the front but they still did not allow a pursuit and a knock out blow - the German Spring Offensive knocked the BEF back 40 miles but it immediately recovered and launch the series of offensives - the 100 Days - that ended with the Germans asking for an Armistice - not the Allies. Part of the success of the final offensive was not to try for too much in each go. Artillery was the war winner and it needed to be brought up and resupplied between each bite - once the attackers were beyond the range of their own artillery they were very vulnerable to counter-attack.
At no time did either side in WW1 attempt to push back the whole front. Offensives were always planned with the specific aim of breaking the line at key points. As to “allocating troops according to where they’re having a hard time but according to where they’re having an easy time advancing” that was the specific problem WW1 generals had due to lack of mobile communications. Once the attackers had left their trench and gone beyond the telephone network, that was it - they were out of touch.
Going back to the OP, the main thing to remember in trying to devise the ideal strategy for the Allies to win in WW1 was that by the end of 1914 the Germans were occupying a large part of northern France. For the French, and for the first half of the war the French were the main strength on the Western Front, any strategy that did not attempt to drive the Germans out of France was inconceivable so standing on the defensive waiting for the Americans, or for tanks, or some other magic bullet, was a non-starter. In addition, to win the war the German army had to be defeated and, for the British and French, the only possible place this could be done was in France and Belgium. An effective attack on the Dardenelles might have knocked Turkey out of the war but would have have had little impact on Germany. Amphibious landings on German soil were not possible. They were a favourite scheme of Jackie Fisher in the Admiralty pre-war but the Navy soon realised there was no way of getting a major force ashore in the Baltic or Heligoland Bight without loosing large numbers of ships and even if they got ashore you would just end up with the same tactical problems of all the advantages being with the defender.
No, the strategy adopted was right and probably inevitable. Yes, there were mistakes made in operations and tactically but it was not one sided and no more than would be expected in a major conflict, particularly one unlike any fought before and at a time of rapid technological innovation.
I won’t tackle the political side of this - although I don’t accept it all - but to take one technical point, “…central powers did a much better job of holding back until they found a meaningful way to defeat the limitations of trench warfare. Unfortunately by the time they did find a way, the tank, the allies had found it too and brought huge new resources to bear in the form of the United States.” The stalemate in the trenches was not broken by the tank, the revolutionary change in 1917-18 was in the effective use of artillery as part of combined arms force. Tanks had their place but they weren’t a war winner in 1917-18 - too slow, too vulnerable, and totally unreliable. Should also point out that the British introduced the tank and the Germans subsequently copied the idea but never had or used that many of them. German tanks had nothing to do with their success in defeating Russia in 1917 or the Spring Offensives of 1918.
Marucs,
Thanks for the info. You say they knew how to break through in 1917. Was it all about waiting for the artillery to be moved up or were there other elements?
You are correct, it’s not all about the tank, but I was oversimplifying for the sake of brevity. As for their success in defeating Russia, there again we come to my favorite target for Derision Tsar Nicky
Presuming the OP to principally be asking what could have been done tactically at the time, the big answers are:
- Mobile shielding that could withstand machine gun fire
- Faster rushes
- Taking advantage of parabolic trajectories
#3 was probably the easiest since it’s just a matter of taking a small cannon and pointing it at a high angle. There wouldn’t have been a long wait to get through R&D and production.
They had mortars in WWI.
I recall reading a book about WWI that said that somewhat less than 60% of casualties were from heavy weapons, less than 40% small arms, 2% grenades and less than 1% hand to hand. Mobile shielding that can withstand machinegun fire without being a tank would be too heavy for infantry to carry.
It seems odd to me that a war that seemed to center of an overblown siege of all of Central Europe had so few senior engineers rising to the top. Had the Associated Powers seen the war as a siege, they could have adopted life-saving tactics on the fronts.
You may wish to read “Great War Generals On The Western Front” by Robin Neilands.
He makes some interesting points- I can’t say I agree with all of them. For instance he uses the line (my words) “The common thought is that all the generals were butchers- I have proven some weren’t so that myth is destroyed.”
Also he concentrates on principally the highest generals which you would assume to be the best. If he had gone a little deeper he would have uncovered a lot of less than effective generals.
However, the basic points he makes is that it wasn’t just the UK and it’s Empire that suffered heavily- Germany and it’s Allies did as well, as did France. The battlefield was changing so rapidly (such as with aircraft and communications) that it was all a learning experience and Haig could not have been expected to do much better- apart from not reinforcing a lost cause. Even then he often excuses Haig because he had to assist the French- which probably has an element of truth.
Certainly the victorious armies of 1918 were undoubtedly the most efficient in the World at the time and had learned new tactics- although they were facing an enemy who was feeling a hell of a lot of hardship from the blockade.
Paul in Qatar, Sir John Monash was an engineer who was (afterwards) widely recognised as one of the best Generals of that particular conflict. However he did have to learn his trade through some hard years.
(Please note I make no reference to Pershing simply because by the time the US Army had arrived in strength a lot of lessons had been learned and blood shed. He was doubtless a fine Administrator).
Moved from General Questions to Great Debates.
samclem Moderator
That was my point. The instant they realized that head-long rushes into machine gun fire doesn’t work, they could have started cranking out tons of artillery. This would have been an easy and effective path rather than trying to dig yourself close enough to the enemy to charge him.
A tank is mobile shielding that can withstand machine gun fire. There may be some alternative to the tank that fits the requirement, but that’s unlikely since the first thing that was developed along that line of tactics was in fact the tank.
And actually, I would suspect that it’s less an issue of weight that prevents alternatives, but issues of visibility and speed. You could put a bunch of guys behind a large metal tube and have them roll it in front of them. But they wouldn’t be able to see the enemy coming out to get them nor how much further they had to go.
This is half the problem though. The UK had very little heavy artillery or howitzers and didn’t have the industry to manufacture them immediately. (The UK had a very small Army by Continental standards). It took time to build or convert factories and even then the shell usage was horrendous.
Germany was better served by her industry, as was France- even though they relied far too much on the famour 75 mm.
Also, I have read, but can not quote , that a proportion of the ammunition for heavy guns imported from the USA was defective. (Profiteers after a quick dollar etc).
I expect there are detailed descriptions available on line but the basics were:
- Surprise - keeping good security so the enemy were not waiting for you.
- Use of “predictive bombardments”. This means being able to hit targets without having to use ranging shots by knowing the characteristics of each individual artillery piece, plus knowledge of atmospheric conditions, detailed mapping, etc.
- Using lots (very high concentrations on a limited front) of artillery in a carefully planned way - gas shells on enemy artillery positions and concentrations points, smoke if fog was not hiding the advance, carefully timed creeping barrages taking the infantry across no-man’s-land and through the enemy line. Further guns ready to interdict the battlefield and prevent counter-attacks.
- Highly trained infantry, keeping up with the barrage (trusting the gunners not to drop short) able to reach the enemy trenches before the enemy can get out of their deep dug-outs and man the firing steps. The Germans used “Storm-trooper” tactics with specially selected infantry trying to bye-pass points of resistance to get into the defenders rear area but this was not an essential element of the system - in 1918 the Storm-troopers suffered heavily when they outran their support.
- Support from the air with aircraft attacking and breaking up counter-attacking troop concentrations (remember one feature of German defensive tactics was to counter-attack at once before the advancing troops could consolidate their hold).
- For the British at least, the use of tanks to work closely with the infantry ready to take out strong points, machine gun nests etc.
The key point really is careful planning with the use of all arms as a single weapons system. For the British this started to come together in 1917 during the early stages of 3rd Ypres but really reached its culmination during the Hundred Days advance from August 1918. Generally this system served to break into an enemy position and to hold the ground taken but it did not really deal with the problem of the break-out. As you can see it relied on massive artillery support and large amounts of pre-planning to compensate for lack of two way communication between the advancing troops and HQ. Once the attack moved out of range of the friendly artillery the advantage went back to the defenders - this was the problem with the German Spring Offensives of 1918. Also, in 1918 there was still no effective arm of exploitation. The 1918 tank just was not up to it - the main British tank (the MkV) could only manage 4mph and the Whippet - designed specifically for this role - only managed 8mph! Add to this their terrible lack of reliability and Liddle Hart’s expanding torrent becomes a pathetic trickle. Cavalry could move faster but, as you would expect, were very vulnerable to machine guns and artillery.
**Cicero **has mentions Sir John Monash, the Australian Corps commander. He was a master of these types of battle emphasising very detailed planning and training so as to leave nothing to chance but so were several other British Generals - ex-infantry, cavalry, or artillery. It did not need an engineer to to make this work.
I’d be curious to meet anyone that has to read a book about WW1 to know that France and Germany took far more of the brunt of the fight than G-B and its Empire.
Oh, they are about. Maybe not saying other countries did not suffer but putting way too much emphasis on British casualties - the lost generation etc - as though there was something unique about the British experience. The First World War does have a very special place in British (possibly British and American) imagination, possibly because it is the only war where the British Army (including the Empire and Commonwealth) has faced the main body of the enemy for a sustained period and suffered mass casualties.
The million or so casualties suffered by the British Empire was unprecedented - and not repeated in WW2 - and still very much alive in the public consciousness today. The result is much debate about how bad British generals were with little thought as to whether the generals from other nation did any better and how much they suffered.
Verdun was an especial case; designed to break the French Army with a mincing machine, to some extent it worked — and the Germans knew the French rather than the British were their major foe. [ Incidentally, boasting, my French grandfather-in-law fought at Verdun. ] It was a side-issue to the general defensive posture upon the WestFront as opposed to the offensive posture on the EastFront — where, let it never be forgotten, the Kaiserarmee held more of Russian soil than Hitler ever did.
But in the end, people now tend to regard past wars as between roughly equal sides, with the best man winning. The Central Powers committed roughly half the number of men to the war compared to the Allies, and killed roughly twice as many to their own killed. Even when not factoring in the economic differences, although generally economics decide the ends of all wars, this was a stupendous result besides which success or defeat becomes indifferent.
Dr. John Laffin might prove a corrective — despite, I think, overplaying the fighting role of the Australasians and Canadians — his title ‘British Butchers & Bunglers of World War One’ could give a slight clue as to his sympathies, but he was a bracing writer.
Not all those who reached the top of Haig’s Command were that bad: I rather like ‘Wullie’ Robertson, ex-footman, ex-private, Field Marshal and CIGS for most of the war. He was nobody’s fool.