Things went wrong in mass because the Allies completely over-estimated the effect of shelling the Germans, and completely under-estimated the capabilities of the German defensive structure, which was far superior to the trench system on the Allied side.
On thing any reasonably competent modern General should take back would be a knowledge of the idea of reinforced concrete. That idea could be used to protect allied troops, and to train staff officers about the effectiveness of German reinforced concrete.
One problem, as alluded to above, was that at the local command level, some officers would still be thinking that the German lines were in the same shocking state as the English lines, and that walking the troops across would be a sane attack formation.
This was clearly the case even fairly late in the piece, where some sections of the line had no plan other than to walk the troops across after heavy shelling.
By the way, there was a comment in the other (old) thread about the in-effectiveness of British shrapnel, based on a misunderstanding stemming from a British TV documentary. An exploding shrapnel shell is not (very) dangerous. It is just designed to spread out the shrapnel. The danger comes from the shrapnel flying down at you at high speed, not from the spreading charge.
Modern anti-personnel shells use a different principle, but WWI shrapnel was lethal – to people standing out in the open, or in exposed trenches.
The difference in the strength of the British trenches and dugouts compared to the German ones was not really down to a lack of reinforced concrete - a lot of German dugouts were deep in the chalk and did not need concrete to make them strong. It was a difference in mindset: the Germans were on the defensive and aimed to stay where the were for a long period, the British and French aimed to advance from their present positions so did not invest in the deep defences.
Its a very bad reading of history that Hitler fell short of destroying the RAF “but not by much”. The Luftwaffe never came remotely close to defeating, much less destroying the RAF in the Battle of Britain. The Luftwaffe was taking worse losses than it was inflicting, wasn’t able to destroy RAF fighters and pilots faster than they were being produced, and in any case if worst came to worst the RAF was prepared to retreat to bases outside of Southern Britain and beyond the range of German fighters until a German invasion attempt came. Even if things had gone incredibly well for them, the Luftwaffe was simply incapable of destroying the RAF unless the RAF allowed itself to be destroyed, and an invasion of Britain remained in the realm of fantasy for numerous other reasons even if the RAF had been entirely defeated.
As to why the Kaiser didn’t commit the navy he had spent all that money on to wipe the British fleet from the seas, the German High Seas Fleet was at a severe disadvantage to the British Grand Fleet. They could not fight a battle really of their own choosing; due to geography they were easily held in the North Sea by distant blockade and would be intercepted should they attempt to sortie. All that money bought a fleet that while powerful was sufficiently weaker to the Royal Navy that it was going to lose any straight up decisive fleet engagement and everyone knew it. A good rule of thumb is that the strength of a battle line is the square of its numbers, and the High Seas Fleet was badly outnumbered. At Jutland it faced 28 dreadnaughts with only 16 of its own and 6 pre-dreadnoughts to try to shore up the numbers.
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Even if things had gone incredibly well for them, the Luftwaffe was simply incapable of destroying the RAF unless the RAF allowed itself to be destroyed, and an invasion of Britain remained in the realm of fantasy for numerous other reasons even if the RAF had been entirely defeated
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The Royal Navy being the bigger hurdle. Even with 100% air superiority the Germans couldn’t have managed a forced entry invasion without first decisively defeating the RN, and that was unlikely to happen.
Tactics by the end really weren’t all that different than what was seen at the start of WWII. Infantry tactics had developed quite a bit. German infantry attacks in 1917 were able to break open huge chunks of the line. They just couldn’t exploit across no-man’s land faster than an enemy falling back on their rail lines could reinforce to stop things. For that matter, most German Infantry units at the start of WWII weren’t all that different than late WWI units (similar weapons, marching to battle, horse drawn resupply, etc). Artillery tactics grew enormously. Air tactics progressed from basically nothing to development of close air support and heavy long range bombing capabilities. Combined arms tactics using armored forces were developed.
It’s not so much more modern tactics as combining the tactics with better technology that produced what seems to be different about WWII. Knowing better tactical solutions earlier might have some effect, or at least reduce losses during the learning phase. It wouldn’t produce the mechanized assests or improved communication that would give modern flexibility.
Not necessarily - all an invasion (and the subsequent beachead) would have needed would have been an open “corridor” through the North Sea for the landing ships and the logistics to pass through unmolested.
Diverting the whole or most of the U-boot force from its depredations in the Atlantic to open and maintain this corridor **might **have been doable in those early months of the war when it was still “Happy Times” for the bubbleheads - no radar, no ASDIC, no Huff Duff, Enigma still kinda cryptic (but also kinda not), and the RAF in dire straits. Also Günther Prien still breathing. Every last factor that historically led a 7% survival rate among German submariners weren’t in play during the Battle of Britain. Provided the Germans won or drew that latter one obviously.
Of course, then the problem becomes “Britain receives tens of thousands of tons of war materials and weapons unchecked while we dick around in bloody Lincolnshire”, but you can’t have everything mein Führer.
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At Jutland it faced 28 dreadnaughts with only 16 of its own and 6 pre-dreadnoughts to try to shore up the numbers.
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And yet they sort of didn’t lose that one, didn’t they ? Didn’t win, but didn’t lose.
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You would have ended up with the same conditions - trenches, barbed wire, machine guns and artillery (always the artillery!) - and the same inability to breakout and exploit. Check out Gallipoli in WW1 and Anzio in WW2 for the problems of associated with amphibious operations against an organised defence.
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Well, maybe (although depending on the surprise and rapidity of the invasion, it might also lead to “pulling a Dunkirk” on the pointyheads in the trenches of Belgium), but the trenches and barbed wire would then be in Germany itself, and maybe even in the Ruhr. Which is significant, since that’s where all the artillery came from.
Besides, as a Frenchman I’m inherently OK with letting the blowing up of shit happen over there rather than down here
Yes, that’s what the war historians/journalists thought when they examined the lines. The engineers knew better.
Clearly, the Germans were in a strong defensive posture, and their lines were not in attack formation.
But their trenches and dugouts were better engineered, shelling was ineffective because of the better engineering, and the general staff did not appreciate that:
reinforced concrete, like the Haber process, was a new technology.
The High Seas Fleet retreated back to port rather than decisively engage the Grand Fleet at Jutland as there was little doubt as to what the outcome would have been had they decided to try to trade broadsides between the battle lines. Scheer ordered the battle line of the High Seas Fleet to execute a 180 degree turn in unison so that the lead ship of the column now became the tail end of the column at 18:33, exactly three minutes after making contact with the main battle line of the Grand Fleet. That he had no idea until it was opening fire on him that the British battle line was even at sea didn’t help, and neither did the fact that it was crossing his T.
Without wanting to have this thread turn into an Operation Sea Lion hijack, this was completely undoable. U-boats hated operating in the shallow waters of the channel for a reason, and they are instruments of sea denial, not sea control. U-boats could inflict some losses on the Royal Navy at a heavy cost to themselves in the channel, but they absolutely could not prevent the RN from operating at will in the English Channel. The Home Fleet needn’t even sortie; the light elements stationed at channel ports throughout the Battle of Britain consisting of light cruisers, destroyers and smaller vessels were more than enough to destroy any German invasion fleet. The invasion fleet that was primarily to consist of Rhine barges that could only make 2-3 knots, meaning a one-way trip to the invasion beaches for the ones coming from the farthest ports would take 30 hours. They would also founder and sink in anything above Sea State 2, which is produced by the wash of a destroyer moving at speed. The RN wouldn’t even have to fire to sink the German invasion fleet, they could just sail close to it and they would sink it. There’s a good page here with some of the more comical elements of the infeasibility of Sea Lion.
Yes, German trenches and dugouts were better engineered but this was not down to the Entente powers lack of knowledge of reinforced concrete. The process was not that new - developed mid to late nineteenth century in France - and it was certainly used pre-war in fixed fortifications: by the French in the forts around Verdun and the British in the Coast Artillery batteries built to defend the Forth and Cromarty bases in 1913-14 (probably elsewhere - they are the ones I know about). They did not use it in the trenches because they didn’t want to, not because they did not know how.
While applauding the thought of the war being fought in Germany itself rather than France or Belgium an amphibious attack on Denmark could never reach the Ruhr and would make little difference to the balance of forces in the West. Say the Royal Navy could land and supply 10 divisions across the North Sea (a pretty big assumption given the long sea crossing and the lack of specialist ships and landing craft), by 1916 the Germans had 175 active divisions, 125 on the Western Front. You don’t need to move many of these to bottle up the invasion force.
You don’t need 10 divisions. The thing is that when you control the oceans, you can land a force anywhere next to the water at a time of your choosing, and have strategic consequences out of all proportion to the size of the landing force. If a British Army/Royal Marines taskforce lands inside Germany, its going to take time for the Germans defenders to muster up troops and transfer them to the location that they needed to go to defeat the attackers, all the while, the landing force is building up strength and moving inland.
This is pretty much what the UK did in the Napoleonic war, land a force on the coasts of Europe and force Boney to react to it. Unfortunately, in WW1, the existence of the "High Seas’ Fleet meant that the British could no longer do this, at least not without forcing a major actions against the Germans.
Oh yes, Sea Lion was ridiculous - I was thinking more of a “real” invasion fleet (using repurposed merchant vessels for example, rather than dinky e-boots), across the North Sea, from Kiel to whatever bit of the British east coast might look convenient, invasion, for the purpose of.
As you say, U-boots weren’t happy in the Channel (or the Med. for that matter, the Gibraltar strait being a notable high point of sphincter puckering).
Unfortunately not true. Landing a small force anywhere is strategically useless in WW1. Germany can move troops and supplies to the landing zone overland a lot quicker than the invaders can be built up by sea. The decision in the war is made where the bulk of the German army can be worn down and defeated - in WW1 the Western Front, in WW2 the Eastern Front. That is the underlying logic of 20th century industrial warfare - peripheral operations are of only limited use.
In fact the same was true a hundred years earlier - yes, the Royal Navy could land forces anywhere but the decision came when the Grand Army was destroyed on land post-1812.
Amphibious operations against Germany in the North Sea (including Denmark) would have stood no chance. By using railroads the Germans could move and supply many more troops much faster than the UK could by sea, ships being slower, having less carrying capacity, and, for the UK, having further to travel. The Germans might also have been able to employ 15"+ railroad guns to decisive advantage against enemy ships and beachheads. Then there are mine fields, and then there is the German fleet which surely could be deployed to advantage against an enemy fleet saddled with the dual mission of landing troops and also protecting them against hostile fleet action (No hostile fleet was in being at Galipoli).
Absence of railroads makes it difficult to draw a convincing analogy here. Also, the only decisive ship-borne UK land action vs Napoleon prior to his initial abdication occurred in the Iberian Peninsula, and eventual victory there was enabled more by French reverses elsewhere (viz esp. Russia 1812) and by local popular support than by the advantage of control of the sea.
The problem being that no matter how you do it, you have to continuously support it, and there was no way that the Germans could logistically support an invasion without decisively dealing with the RN first. If they couldn’t do that, then they couldn’t do an invasion. Even Goering, who famously said he could support the troops in Stalingrad via air resupply (it failed miserably) didn’t put forth that the Germans could even consider doing this for a full blown invasion of England. It just wasn’t in the cards.
At any rate, I also don’t want to hijack the thread about WWI to discussions, no matter how interesting, about WWII.
A bit of a hijack, but thanks for putting my mind at ease about something. A while back I saw a (rather poor) History channel on WWII fortifications. The narrator claimed that the Germans had discovered reinforced concrete in WWII and referred to it as one of Hitler’s “secret weapons.”
At the time I found it absurd, but of course I don’t know when reinforced concrete was invented, so all I had was my BS Meter.
Just goes to show how crappy the Hitlery channel really is.
