# WWI: Why did the general keep throwing their troops into meatgrinders? **URL:** \ **Category:** Great Debates\ **Created:** [August 15, 2017, 8:48pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/wwi-why-did-the-general-keep-throwing-their-troops-into-meatgrinders/793742 "2017-08-15T20:48:11Z")\ **Posts on this page:** 16\ **Page:** 3
**Author:** ![Bert\_Nobbins](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/b/aeb1de/32.png) [@Bert\_Nobbins](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Bert_Nobbins)\ **Post date:** [August 17, 2017, 2:54pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/wwi-why-did-the-general-keep-throwing-their-troops-into-meatgrinders/793742/41 "2017-08-17T14:54:51Z")
> [@Whack-a-Mole](#): > > These things were everywhere. In the Battle of Passchendaele the churned up ground made for exceptionally muddy conditions. So much so that soldiers would get stuck and, literally, slowly sink down to their deaths over the course of hours. Often if someone tried to help they’d get stuck too so soldiers would just pass by within feet unable to help. Do you have cite for this? This is ordinary mud we’re talking about here, not some sort of magical super-quicksand. ---
**Author:** ![Corry\_El](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/c/ecae2f/32.png) [@Corry\_El](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Corry_El)\ **Post date:** [August 17, 2017, 4:23pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/wwi-why-did-the-general-keep-throwing-their-troops-into-meatgrinders/793742/42 "2017-08-17T16:23:04Z")
> [@Whack-a-Mole](#): > > 1. What battles in WWII had the same level of sitting in a trench with your dead and shit and piss and rats and flies? Not just that it happened but how long did they have to endure those conditions? > > 2. Remember the western front was mostly static so you got to stay in the same shithole for a looong time. You can find similar horrors in WWII. Can you find ones that lasted as long and for as many people as it did in WWI (the western front was pretty big)? Was there anything like the moonscape created by artillery and poisonous gas in WWII that matched WWI that soldiers lived in? > > 3. Armies dealing with mud is super common. Nothing new there. What is new in WWI and not repeated is soldiers dying in mud that acted like very slow quicksand. A story is related in “Blueprint for Armageddon” where soldiers passed some poor guy stuck in the mud a bit past his knees in the morning and when returning in the evening he was up to his chest or chin (I forget) and begging for someone to shoot him. Did that happen in WWII? Or any other war you can think of? > > 4. The eastern front in WWII was unreal in the number of troops it consumed. The Allies experienced nothing remotely close to it. First I think your answers now clearly tend to distinguishing WWI in the social/political history of the western Entente countries. That might be valid. Distinguishing it in the characteristics of warfare per se, overall, not as valid. 1. Consider Japanese forces on the defense in WWII, more horrific suffering on average. Also in fact defensive stands on the Eastern Front, both sides at various times, were quite horrible. 2. You’re exaggerating if imagining the opponents on the Western Front in WWI stayed in _exactly_ the same positions for the whole time. The Front shifted, just not a lot for the most part. Also the flip side of highly static warfare, which also persisted for many months on various WWII fronts, was improved creature comforts. Not all trenches were hell holes, and the Germans in particular did a lot to create relative safe and comfortable places for troops behind the very forward output lines, the complements of which were rotated. The Anglo-French didn’t do as elaborate a job of that, but troops weren’t sitting next to rotting corpses for months, that happened during active periods of days. 3. Sure, all kinds of wars through history. The mud point is the weakest one. 4. But again if we’re speaking of the evolution of warfare, we aren’t specifically speaking of just the western part of the Entente/Allies. Warfare in the 1940’s was often quite similar to that of 1918. The organization and equipment of 1940’s and 1918 infantry divisions in most armies was quite similar, etc. There was a big evolution during 1914-18 in that regard. But warfare of the '40’s often resembled especially the second half of WWI, because there hadn’t been enough change in technology that it wouldn’t often. ---
**Author:** ![blindboyard](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/blindboyard/32/2833_2.png) [@blindboyard](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/blindboyard)\ **Post date:** [August 17, 2017, 4:34pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/wwi-why-did-the-general-keep-throwing-their-troops-into-meatgrinders/793742/43 "2017-08-17T16:34:22Z")
Simply, it didn’t happen. They threw their troops into an endless set of variant meat grinders. They invented tanks, chemical weapons, rolling barrages, storm troopers, and so on. Specific attacks were often launched for specific purposes, such as drawing enemy troops away from other parts of the line. > [@Whack-a-Mole](#): > > But why put troops (lots of them) into the grinder? The British, by virtue of their navy, had an effective stranglehold on Germany. It wasn’t a fast death but it was coming for Germany. If the goal was to see who could outlast the other then France and Germany had the advantage. > > Shore up the lines then sit and wait them out. No need to squander soldier’s lives on fruitless attacks (Passchendaele was a special kind of bad in a war filled with insane levels of bad). Would you want to be the general who went into the staff meeting and suggested, to the people who thought the war would be over by Christmas, that they ought to just hold the line for the next four, five, maybe eight years, and hope that the blockade would eventually cause a collapse of German morale and mutiny in the ranks of the Wehrmacht? \ ---
**Author:** ![Whack-a-Mole](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/whack-a-mole/32/141_2.png) [@Whack-a-Mole](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Whack-a-Mole)\ **Post date:** [August 17, 2017, 5:13pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/wwi-why-did-the-general-keep-throwing-their-troops-into-meatgrinders/793742/44 "2017-08-17T17:13:42Z")
> [@Bert\_Nobbins](#): > > Do you have cite for this? > > This is ordinary mud we’re talking about here, not some sort of magical super-quicksand. Sure. From Dan Carlin’s podcast, [Blueprint for Armageddon V](https://youtu.be/6B_KWjVPepE?t=14834): > [@](#): > > Far more treacherous than the visible surface defenses with which we were familiar, such as barbed wire; deep devouring mud spread deadly traps in all directions. We splashed and slithered, and dragged our feet from the pull of an invisible enemy determined to suck us into its depths. Every few steps someone would slide and stumble and, weighed down by rifle and equipment, rapidly sink into the squelching mess. Those nearest grabbed his arms, struggled against being themselves engulfed and, if humanly possible, dragged him out. When helpers floundered in as well and doubled the task, it became hopeless. All the straining efforts failed and the swamp swallowed its screaming victims, and we had to be ordered to plod on dejectedly and fight this relentless enemy as stubbornly as we did those we could see. > > It happened that one of those leading us was lieutenant Chamberlain and so distraught did he become at the spectacle of men drowning in mud and the desperate attempts to rescue them that suddenly he began hysterically belaboring the shoulders of a sinking man with his swagger stick. We were horror struck to see this most compassionate officer so unstrung as to resort to brutality and our loud protests forced him to desist. The man was rescued but some could not be and they sank shrieking with fear and agony. > > _~ Private Norman Cliff, 1st Grenadier Guards, To Hell and Back with the Guards, quoted in Peter Hart, The Great War: A Combat History of the First World War._ > > \ > > One of our men was unfortunate enough to step out of line and fell into one of these mud holes. We managed to loop a rope securely under his armpits but it was useless. The poor fellow now knew he was beyond all aid and begged me to shoot him rather than leave him to die a miserable death by suffocation. I am not afraid to say therefore that I shot this man at his own urgent request. > > _~ Bryan Cooper: Ironclads of Cambrai_ Also: > [@](#): > > The main attack went in over low-lying land veined by water courses. Constant shelling had churned the clay soil and smashed the drainage systems. The heavy rains which coincided with the opening assault, on 31 July, produced thick, clinging mud, which caked uniforms and clogged rifles. > > It eventually became so deep that, in many places, men, horses and pack mules drowned in it. The shell holes filled with water. With each new phase of the offensive, fresh rain fell to add to the misery. > > SOURCE: [BBC NEWS | Special Report | 1998 | 10/98 | World War I | Passchendaele: Drowning in mud](http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/special_report/1998/10/98/world_war_i/203397.stm) It is not difficult to find stories about this with a quick Google search if you want more. ---
**Author:** ![Whack-a-Mole](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/whack-a-mole/32/141_2.png) [@Whack-a-Mole](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Whack-a-Mole)\ **Post date:** [August 17, 2017, 8:56pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/wwi-why-did-the-general-keep-throwing-their-troops-into-meatgrinders/793742/45 "2017-08-17T20:56:06Z")
> [@Corry\_El](#): > > The mud point is the weakest one. See post #44 above. Did that happen in WWII? ---
**Author:** ![griffin1977](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/g/977dab/32.png) [@griffin1977](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/griffin1977)\ **Post date:** [August 18, 2017, 12:48am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/wwi-why-did-the-general-keep-throwing-their-troops-into-meatgrinders/793742/46 "2017-08-18T00:48:58Z")
> [@Bert\_Nobbins](#): > > Do you have cite for this? > > This is ordinary mud we’re talking about here, not some sort of magical super-quicksand. The [mud](http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/special_report/1998/10/98/world_war_i/203397.stm) in Paschendel was absolutely worse than almost any battle I’ve heard described (the spring mud on the WW2 eastern front was certainly a factor but I’ve not heard descriptions of mass attacks there in conditions anything like Paschendel, due the mobile nature of the war) There is a reasonable case to be made that it was the mud that doomed the offensive more than anything else. The mistakes of previous western front offensives had been largely solved, it was the weather conditions that were the deciding factor (the German offensives the following year only succeeded when the weather was agreeable to offensive actions) ---
**Author:** ![Onyerbike](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/onyerbike/32/5402_2.png) [@Onyerbike](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Onyerbike)\ **Post date:** [August 19, 2017, 8:44am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/wwi-why-did-the-general-keep-throwing-their-troops-into-meatgrinders/793742/47 "2017-08-19T08:44:35Z")
You have a bunch of industrial giants within close proximity to each other and whose many homelands could not be neutralized to any significant degree to stem the flow of men or supplies to the warfront. Machine guns and better than ever cannon was just the icing on the bad, bad cake. What the hell was the kaiser thinking anyway? I don’t see how Russia was remotely worth it to fight anyone at all much less thru four years of an on and off again slaughterfest against the rest of Europe. Even in a situation where France is taken quickly that just leaves them with a never ending insurgency fed by the UK that they also have to trade against in a naval war they are not going to win. ---
**Author:** ![Sailboat](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/sailboat/32/461_2.png) [@Sailboat](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Sailboat)\ **Post date:** [August 22, 2017, 1:47am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/wwi-why-did-the-general-keep-throwing-their-troops-into-meatgrinders/793742/48 "2017-08-22T01:47:33Z")
While it’s fashionable to berate the generals for being stupid and hidebound, and largely correct, it bears emphasis that they were trying to achieve breakthroughs – or simply trying to be seen as “doing something” to support their allies – by using a very cheap, easily replaced resource. Their citizens. It’s obvious to us in hindsight that that was their most _precious_ resource, and it was obvious to parents and civilians and some politicians at the time. But none of those people got to influence the decisionmaking very much. So the generals broke the back and the heart of a generation, devastated Europe culturally and spiritually as well as economically and demographically, and got some medals. ---
**Author:** ![Melbourne](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/m/b5e925/32.png) [@Melbourne](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Melbourne)\ **Post date:** [August 29, 2017, 2:30am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/wwi-why-did-the-general-keep-throwing-their-troops-into-meatgrinders/793742/49 "2017-08-29T02:30:59Z")
One reason the British threw men into death was that the French were close to collapse. The British needed to demonstrate to the French that they too were willing to take massive casualties: they weren’t just suggesting that the French keep fighting on French soil while the English watched and cheered. The suggestion, repeated above, that tanks won WW1 is, of course, ridiculous, on a par with the suggestion that the Americans (or the Canadians, or the Australians) won WWI. WWI was won by the collapse of the Germans, caused by the economic failure of Germany, caused, as much as anything, by the economic blockade, enforced, as much as anything else, by the English navy. The German army was still strongly embedded in secure defensive positions: they were not supported with food, ammunition or weapons. They had already lost the war, but held on in hope of a political breakthrough – in particular they really wanted the USA to come in on the German side. When the Americans came in on the English side, all hope was gone. The political and economic collapse of Germany while the soldiers were still in a strong defensive position contributed to the “knife in the back” theory, that the German soldiers would have won the war if it hadn’t been for treachery at home. ---
**Author:** ![mlees](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/m/ba8739/32.png) [@mlees](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/mlees)\ **Post date:** [August 29, 2017, 2:42pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/wwi-why-did-the-general-keep-throwing-their-troops-into-meatgrinders/793742/50 "2017-08-29T14:42:03Z")
> [@Whack-a-Mole](#): > > What battles in WWII had the same level of sitting in a trench with your dead and shit and piss and rats and flies? Not just that it happened but how long did they have to endure those conditions? > > Remember the western front was mostly static so you got to stay in the same shithole for a looong time. You can find similar horrors in WWII. Can you find ones that lasted as long and for as many people as it did in WWI (the western front was pretty big)? Was there anything like the moonscape created by artillery and poisonous gas in WWII that matched WWI that soldiers lived in? The siege of Leningrad. > [@](#): > > Armies dealing with mud is super common. Nothing new there. What is new in WWI and not repeated is soldiers dying in mud that acted like very slow quicksand. A story is related in “Blueprint for Armageddon” where soldiers passed some poor guy stuck in the mud a bit past his knees in the morning and when returning in the evening he was up to his chest or chin (I forget) and begging for someone to shoot him. Did that happen in WWII? Or any other war you can think of? Yes, though on a smaller scale (in terms of men deployed). There are battles in the tropical areas of the Pacific theater, where disease and mud took a terrible toll on the combatants involved. (Burma, New Guinea, Bataan, for example) The Japanese nicknamed Guadalcanal “the Island of Death”. Towards the end of the island hopping campaigns, the Americans resorted to the tactic of sealing the Japanese inside the tunnel complexes the defenders dug out on Pelileu, Iwo Jima, Okinawa. Sitting in the dark, slowly suffocating or starving. Just as gruesome as slowly sinking into the mud of Flanders, IMO. I have no idea what the conditions were like in mainland China. Are there many English language operational history books covering that theater that someone can recommend? ---
**Author:** ![griffin1977](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/g/977dab/32.png) [@griffin1977](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/griffin1977)\ **Post date:** [August 29, 2017, 11:35pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/wwi-why-did-the-general-keep-throwing-their-troops-into-meatgrinders/793742/51 "2017-08-29T23:35:58Z")
> [@Sailboat](#): > > While it’s fashionable to berate the generals for being stupid and hidebound, and largely correct, it bears emphasis that they were trying to achieve breakthroughs – or simply trying to be seen as “doing something” to support their allies – by using a very cheap, easily replaced resource. > > Their citizens. > > It’s obvious to us in hindsight that that was their most _precious_ resource, and it was obvious to parents and civilians and some politicians at the time. But none of those people got to influence the decisionmaking very much. So the generals broke the back and the heart of a generation, devastated Europe culturally and spiritually as well as economically and demographically, and got some medals. But with the odd exception that is not how WW1 generals thought. They weren’t (usually) attempting to make sure their opponents expended their human resources before they did. They were attempting to achieve a tactical victory over their opponents on the field and break out of the stalemate. And they continued to as the OP said “throw their troops into the meatgrinder” long after it was obvious that that victory was not going to happen. ---
**Author:** ![Aspidistra](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/aspidistra/32/3894_2.png) [@Aspidistra](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Aspidistra)\ **Post date:** [August 29, 2017, 11:53pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/wwi-why-did-the-general-keep-throwing-their-troops-into-meatgrinders/793742/52 "2017-08-29T23:53:05Z")
> [@DesertDog](#): > > If you want the answer in infinite detail, [The Great War](https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCUcyEsEjhPEDf69RRVhRh4A) channel on YouTube has been covering a century after the fact what went on, week by week. In addition there are an equal number of “specials” where they have a summary of a big battle, biographies of prominent people, innovations, etc. > > As others have pointed out, there were changes; they just were ineffective. Thank you for sharing that link - that’s a fascinating and informative channel. Apart from anything else, it really puts the trenches into perspective when you see, for instance, the spectacle of the Austrians getting more than half a million of their men killed \*simply from freezing to death \*, by marching them I’ll-equipped into the mountains in the middle of winter. ---
**Author:** ![msmith537](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/m/d9b06d/32.png) [@msmith537](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/msmith537)\ **Post date:** [August 30, 2017, 8:14pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/wwi-why-did-the-general-keep-throwing-their-troops-into-meatgrinders/793742/53 "2017-08-30T20:14:05Z")
> [@Aspidistra](#): > > Thank you for sharing that link - that’s a fascinating and informative channel. > > Apart from anything else, it really puts the trenches into perspective when you see, for instance, the spectacle of the Austrians getting more than half a million of their men killed \*simply from freezing to death \*, by marching them I’ll-equipped into the mountains in the middle of winter. Maybe a better question is how did generals manage to maintain a “meatgrinder” for the duration of the war? That is to say, after you send a quarter or half million or so soldiers to their death in a overwhelming display of tactical, strategic and organizational ineptitude, how do you prevent the remaining millions from rioting and mutinying en masse? ---
**Author:** ![drewder](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/d/57b2e6/32.png) [@drewder](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/drewder)\ **Post date:** [August 30, 2017, 8:44pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/wwi-why-did-the-general-keep-throwing-their-troops-into-meatgrinders/793742/54 "2017-08-30T20:44:53Z")
> [@msmith537](#): > > Maybe a better question is how did generals manage to maintain a “meatgrinder” for the duration of the war? That is to say, after you send a quarter or half million or so soldiers to their death in a overwhelming display of tactical, strategic and organizational ineptitude, how do you prevent the remaining millions from rioting and mutinying en masse? Some did, the French went on strike basically at one point and of course the Russians killed their leaders and left the war. Sent from my SM-G955U using Tapatalk ---
**Author:** ![Latro](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/l/a87d85/32.png) [@Latro](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Latro)\ **Post date:** [August 31, 2017, 5:46am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/wwi-why-did-the-general-keep-throwing-their-troops-into-meatgrinders/793742/55 "2017-08-31T05:46:09Z")
> [@msmith537](#): > > Maybe a better question is how did generals manage to maintain a “meatgrinder” for the duration of the war? That is to say, after you send a quarter or half million or so soldiers to their death in a overwhelming display of tactical, strategic and organizational ineptitude, how do you prevent the remaining millions from rioting and mutinying en masse? Good propaganda and control of the media. ---
**Author:** ![Bookkeeper](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/bookkeeper/32/281_2.png) [@Bookkeeper](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Bookkeeper)\ **Post date:** [September 2, 2017, 11:09pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/wwi-why-did-the-general-keep-throwing-their-troops-into-meatgrinders/793742/56 "2017-09-02T23:09:21Z")
After the initial German advances, Germany only had to defend the territory it had already taken. A successful defence would eventually end in a negotiated peace which would be in Germany’s favour. The Western Allies were obligated to try and recover the occupied territory - politically, they could not allow 90% of Belgium and the French industrial heartland to be enemy held without any attempt to drive the Germans back. For most of the war, the Allies were the attackers, and the Germans attacked mainly to improve their defences. (At one point the Germans even retreated from part of the front to form a better defensive line.) Their 1918 offensive was a desperation move driven by Germany’s deteriorating strategic position, while Verdun was a mutual idiocy of both French and Germans to out-grind their opponent. The big problem for the Allies was that evolution in artillery and machine guns had swung the balance heavily in favour of the defence once the trench lines were established in France. For the most part, it wasn’t a case of just throwing men into a grinder over and over and over. Both sides regularly introduced new weapons and new tactics to try and break the stalemate. Eventually, the armies on both sides figured out what to do - the 1918 German offensive used tactics similar to the WW2 Blitzkrieg of bypassing strong points to penetrate into the rear areas (quickly petering out due to poor German mobility and supply capability), while the British counter offensive used very much improved artillery and infantry co-ordination, communications, and supply to finally get the breakthroughs and mobility that had been the goal from the beginning. [Previous page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/wwi-why-did-the-general-keep-throwing-their-troops-into-meatgrinders/793742.md?page=2)