ORIGINAL: Bossy573
It is difficult to remove the combatants from their times but the blatant disregard for the value of human life in the face of the predominance of rapidly industrialized warfare is almost unimaginable. Morons like Haig, Falkenhayn, Joffre, etc., cannot, IMHO, be sheilded.
Ugh. Still seventy-five years after David Lloyd George began to butcher the good name of men like Douglas Haig, this stupid and ill-informed mindset still continues. We can look back upon the First World War and its horrible losses with a jaded hindsight, knowing full well the mistakes that were made, not so for those commanders. It took a certain kind of man to lead and command in that war, hard men that we thankfully need few of these days. To say men like Haig didn't value human life is preposterous, his personal journal from the war is riddled with statements that will quickly back my point up. (I unforuntely do not have the journal with me anymore, but do have several choice quotes that I used in a paper this year)
Haig, Joffre, etc. needed to conduct offensives throughout the war that were sure to cause thousands of casualites, first in order to eat up the enemies reserves and then launch what would hopefully be a decisive strike elsewhere in the line. The fact that this didn't manage to happen until 1918 is not the fault of the generals, but the equal stature of the combatants as well as the technology of the time grossly favouring the defense instead of the offensive, particularly in the form of communications, etc. I would suggest you stop reading the false and patently untrue books which kowtow the regular "lions led by donkeys" line, and start reading some more objective tombs.
ORIGINAL: CSL
Haig, Joffre, etc. needed to conduct offensives throughout the war that were sure to cause thousands of casualites, first in order to eat up the enemies reserves and then launch what would hopefully be a decisive strike elsewhere in the line.
This is the line which fed to the public after the catastrophies that were the Somme, Paschendale, Loos, etc., etc. These were designed to be war winning offensives, not a giant Verdun on Germany. Haig continued his offensives long after they had been stopped cold and essentially sent his men to die with no hope whatsoever of acheiving his initial planned breakthrough. He did this, IMHO, out of a simple refusal to admit failure, not through any long range plan to bleed Germany white. And the numbers are clear: the human toll simply did not figure into his thinking.
On the other hand, and this is, IMHO, even more despicable, this is exactly what Falkenhayn attempted to do at Verdun. His logic, taken to its conclusion, would have been "we have 1 soldier left, you have none. We win." How is this at all defendable, even in the context of his times?
I think many historians have misinterpreted Falkenhayn's strategy for the Battle of Verdun. He did not simply mean to trade lives in an effort to bleed France white first; his plan was to threaten an objective that France would be compelled to defend. After the initial German advance, the plan was to let France bleed herself white trying to take back the lost territory in order to diminish the threat to Verdun. As it turned out though, once the initial German advance got going, it continued through the momentum of the attack. It seems that it was very difficult to stop some German Generals making a successful advance. This just wasn't the mindset that had been established in the German military officer corps. Thus the battle degenerated into a bloody attrition. Through poor communication with his own forces, Falkenhayn failed to impose his will on his own forces an thus lost controll of the battle. Also, the Generals from all countries, didn't opperate in a political vacum. Their decisions were heavily influenced by the the political considerations of their own nations, which was as it should have been.
I certainly agree that many costly mistakes were made by all political and military leaders from all belligerents, but other than the scale of casualties, which the modern industrial economies made possible, WWI was not much different than most other wars.
Much like the American Civil War, technology had to catch up to make decisive offensive action a reasonable proposition. Given time, the tactical and operational problems were solved to a large degree, but as long as there was no way in which to exploit a breech in the line that was any faster than the speed of marching Infantry, the breech could always be sealed before any significant rupture of the front could take place.
Also, the density of forces on the Western Front compounded the already difficult problems for any offensive. On all other fronts, there was much operational maneuver with decisive results, even using the pre-war tactics.
"The fruit of too much liberty is slavery", Cicero
ORIGINAL: CSL
Haig, Joffre, etc. needed to conduct offensives throughout the war that were sure to cause thousands of casualites, first in order to eat up the enemies reserves and then launch what would hopefully be a decisive strike elsewhere in the line.
This is the line which fed to the public after the catastrophies that were the Somme, Paschendale, Loos, etc., etc. These were designed to be war winning offensives, not a giant Verdun on Germany. Haig continued his offensives long after they had been stopped cold and essentially sent his men to die with no hope whatsoever of acheiving his initial planned breakthrough. He did this, IMHO, out of a simple refusal to admit failure, not through any long range plan to bleed Germany white. And the numbers are clear: the human toll simply did not figure into his thinking.
On the other hand, and this is, IMHO, even more despicable, this is exactly what Falkenhayn attempted to do at Verdun. His logic, taken to its conclusion, would have been "we have 1 soldier left, you have none. We win." How is this at all defendable, even in the context of his times?
And you are a fool if you believe the Somme was ever meant to truely be an offensive designed to breakthrough to the German rear. It was designed to be a wearing out of German reserves, along with the added benefit of shifting German divisions away from Flanders where Haig wanted to conduct his real offensive in 1916. Due to Verdun Haig had to place extra forces along the Somme while also conducting it with a fraction of the troops Joffre had promised him. The fact that the offensive lasted so long was mainly due to the fact that French pressure demanded the British conduct a large offensive to take slack off their forces in Verdun.
Plus, one must also place a large portion of the blame not upon Haig alone, but upon the fact that the British Army, had expanded to numerous times its previous size, therefore having a lack of regular officers, staff officers, and any number of other important pieces of the military puzzle. The fact that the regular army took such a beating in 1914 didn't do anything to help this. And in regards to the wave tactics which were imployed, I will quote Gordon Corrigan from his book Mud, Blood, and Poppycock in length:
Critics of the Somme make much of what they see as insistence on parade ground precision, with men being ordered to walk and keep in line. This had nothing to do with ceremonial parades, but was a perfectly sensible rule to ensure that control was not lost, that men were not shot by their own side, and that they all arrived on the objective together and in a fit state to engage the enemy. Scorn is also poured on the need for the attacking infantry to carry packs weighing sixty pounds. This is one of the enduring myths of the First World War, and derives from an imperfect reading of Field Service Regulations. In fact, it was everything that the man carried and wore that weighed sixty pounds: the uniform he stood up in, the boots on his feet, his weapon and its ammunition. In the attack large packs were left behind, and the small pack contained only the essentials for the operation. That said, each man still had to carry his entrenching tool, extra rations, two gas helmets, wire cutters, 220 rounds of ammunition, two grenades and two sandbags, while ten picks and fifty shovels were taken by each leading company." This was no light burden, and the follow up troops, coming immediately after those who carried out the actual assault, carried a great deal more. It is one thing to capture ground, quite another to hold it. Once into a German position the objective had to be consolidated and held against the inevitable counter attack. This meant that the existing defence works had to be turned round to face the other way, wire obstacles had to be constructed and communications had to be established. Ammunition, grenades and digging implements had to be there, to say nothing of signals cable, water and food, and there was no other way of making all this immediately available to the infantry than by having them carry it with them.
ORIGINAL: CSL
And you are a fool if you believe the Somme was ever meant to truely be an offensive designed to breakthrough to the German rear.
Easy on the personal jibes there friend. [:)]
There is no question that the British battle-plan at the Somme was, in part, designed to relieve some of the pressure on the French at Verdun. However, the original idea was a joint British-French attack to tear open the German lines, roll it up and set cavalry free into the German rear. Haig did plan on a war winning offensive. It is only after the plan had clearly failed in its objective that an attrirional spin was put on it.
Defending battle tactics in the face of 60,000 casualties in one day doesn't seem viable IMHO.
ORIGINAL: CSL
And you are a fool if you believe the Somme was ever meant to truely be an offensive designed to breakthrough to the German rear.
Easy on the personal jibes there friend. [:)]
There is no question that the British battle-plan at the Somme was, in part, designed to relieve some of the pressure on the French at Verdun. However, the original idea was a joint British-French attack to tear open the German lines, roll it up and set cavalry free into the German rear. Haig did plan on a war winning offensive. It is only after the plan had clearly failed in its objective that an attrirional spin was put on it.
Defending battle tactics in the face of 60,000 casualties in one day doesn't seem viable IMHO.
Wikipedia!
nfantry tactics
Prior to the battle Rawlinson's staff published the Fourth Army Tactical Notes, an instruction pamphlet setting out the recommended assault tactics to be used by the infantry. The notes specified that battalions should advance in waves with two platoons per wave on a 400 yard front which left about 5 yards between each soldier. A battalion would therefore advance in eight waves (two per company) plus additional waves for the battalion HQ and stretcher bearers. The advance would be carried out at a steady walking pace of 50 yards per minute.
Soldiers in the leading waves were required to carry about 70 lb (32 kg) of equipment; rifle, bayonet, ammunition, two grenades, entrenching tool, empty sandbags, wire cutters, flares, etc. The later waves would also be burdened with the necessary paraphernalia for consolidating the captured trenches such as barbed wire & stakes.
Viewed with the benefit of hindsight, these tactics were clearly misjudged. The reasoning behind them was that the intense artillery bombardment was expected to destroy the German garrison so that all that was required of the infantry was to walk over and take possession of the objectives.
Many commanders approached the battle with great optimism. The pre-battle speech delivered to the 8th Battalion, King's Own Yorkshire Light Infantry — which would suffer 539 casualties on the first day — included:
"When you go over the top, you can slope arms, light up your pipes and cigarettes, and march all the way to Pozières before meeting any live Germans."
Though these flawed tactics have been blamed for the failures of the first day, they were not universally adhered to by the attacking divisions. It was left to the individual commanders to decide on the method to be used. Many units moved out into no man's land before zero hour so that they could rush the German trenches as soon as the barrage lifted. Whether a particular unit's attack succeeded or failed depended not so much on the infantry tactics but on how well the wire had been cut, the intensity of the German defensive barrage in no man's land and whether or not the defenders could swiftly bring their machine guns into action.
ORIGINAL: Bossy573
There is no question that the British battle-plan at the Somme was, in part, designed to relieve some of the pressure on the French at Verdun. However, the original idea was a joint British-French attack to tear open the German lines, roll it up and set cavalry free into the German rear. Haig did plan on a war winning offensive. It is only after the plan had clearly failed in its objective that an attrirional spin was put on it.
Defending battle tactics in the face of 60,000 casualties in one day doesn't seem viable IMHO.
Yes, Haig did want a war winning offensive during 1916, but it was NOT to be at the Somme. It was to be in Flanders, as he was to do in 1917. Any sort of potential breakthrough at the Somme was to be made largely with French troops, something that largely was forgotten as Verdun started. And the "attritional spin" as you call it, was not placed after the battle was begun. By mid-June the battle around Verdun had forced Haig to abandon any pretense of a breakthrough, writing to his Commander of the Fourth Army : "The Third And Fourth Armies will undertake offensive operations on the front Maricourt to Gommecourt in conjuction with the French Sixth Army astride the Somme, with the object of relieving pressure on the French at Verdun and inflicting losses on the enemy..." Clearly no aims of a war winning offensive there, weeks before the first infantry went forward.
Moreover, the British forces COULD NOT by any means preform more than the simpliest battle tactics at the time, its organization was still shot from the horrendous losses taken earlier in the war in open warfare. While these officers and men had been replaced in body, their professionalism was still sorely lacking, as Corrigan states, "With only two or three officers and perhaps half a dozen NCOs with any experience in a battalion of 1,000 men, only the simplest of tactics could be deployed - the battalions were just too inexperienced for anything more complex. " The loss of twenty-thousand dead, and another fourty-thousand injured was not the result of incompetance on the first day, or the mindless shuffling forward of British forces. If anything, the losses suffered on the first day were the result of a variety of factors, including the aforementioned lack of officers, as well as the lack of heavier shells (something that British industry could still not make enough of), and the most importantly a lack of communication between units which did not allow the generals in charge to conduct the battle as they saw fit. With both a lack of control from above, along with the extreme inexperience of junior officers and NCOs, it is not a question of battle tactics, but a pure inevitability that such losses would be suffered.
"There is little doubt that Haig’s ambitious strategy on the Somme was impracticable from the outset. It involved a wide front of attack (20 miles), and deep penetration to the third line of defences – up to 5,000 yards -and a possible ‘breakthrough’. Haig over-ruled the more realistic tactics of the Fourth Army commander, General Henry Rawlinson, who proposed the less ambitious. but more likely efficacious, ‘Bite and Hold’ tactic. Haig’s persistent attempts, egged on by Joffre, at making his faulty proposition work by his literally ‘At all Costs’ approach was, ultimately, the genesis of the unsatisfactory climax. This emerged from months of intense and costly fighting for, at best, a seven-mile advance. His claim, when the fighting finally died down, that he had ‘relieved Verdun and worn down the German Army’ was not convincing then and, perhaps, is even less so now."
George Coppard was a machine-gunner at the Battle of the Somme. In his book With A Machine Gun to Cambrai, he described what he saw on the 2nd July, 1916.
"The next morning we gunners surveyed the dreadful scene in front of our trench. There was a pair of binoculars in the kit, and, under the brazen light of a hot mid-summer's day, everything revealed itself stark and clear. The terrain was rather like the Sussex downland, with gentle swelling hills, folds and valleys, making it difficult at first to pinpoint all the enemy trenches as they curled and twisted on the slopes.
It eventually became clear that the German line followed points of eminence, always giving a commanding view of No Man's Land. Immediately in front, and spreading left and right until hidden from view, was clear evidence that the attack had been brutally repulsed. Hundreds of dead, many of the 37th Brigade, were strung out like wreckage washed up to a high-water mark. Quite as many died on the enemy wire as on the ground, like fish caught in the net. They hung there in grotesque postures. Some looked as though they were praying; they had died on their knees and the wire had prevented their fall. From the way the dead were equally spread out, whether on the wire or lying in front of it, it was clear that there were no gaps in the wire at the time of the attack.
Concentrated machine gun fire from sufficient guns to command every inch of the wire, had done its terrible work. The Germans must have been reinforcing the wire for months. It was so dense that daylight could barely be seen through it. Through the glasses it looked a black mass. The German faith in massed wire had paid off.
How did our planners imagine that Tommies, having survived all other hazards - and there were plenty in crossing No Man's Land - would get through the German wire? Had they studied the black density of it through their powerful binoculars? Who told them that artillery fire would pound such wire to pieces, making it possible to get through? Any Tommy could have told them that shell fire lifts wire up and drops it down, often in a worse tangle than before."
The study of this struggle is just like an accident investigation. The only certainty is the car was in perfect operating condition until the moment of impact and that it is now a mangled wreck. Everything else is the subject of reasoned investigation, and, ultimately, educated speculation. Good History is almost always story telling buttressed by "evidence." The only certainty is the event itself.
When this bad boy hits the shelves, CSL, I hope you will engage in a PBEM game. [;)]
ORIGINAL: Bossy573
When this bad boy hits the shelves, CSL, I hope you will engage in a PBEM game. [;)]
If he doesn't, I will. [:D]
I'm very curious as to what casualty figures will be like in the game with various strategies. There is so much maligning of Haig, be interesting to see if the game models Haig as being a dumbass or if seven figure casualties are the way it goes.
I hope the casualty figures are reasonable and not a bit of fluff tacked on for a laugh! I wanna see how I match up with Rawlinson and Haig when it comes to my deep and abiding respect for human life. [:D]
Operation Iceberg. Anyone ever hear of it? Anyone have any ideas as to its relationship to the direction this thread has taken?
Allow me.
Operation Iceberg was the US invasion of Okinawa. You know, the last great battle of WWII...
Anyway, by the time we landed on Okinawa we had learned significant amounts about modern warfare, and island-hopping and fighting and how to defeat our foes with overwhelming firepower. We had utter air dominance, un-parallelled fire-support (to include battleships in direct fire mode), and technology on our side.
Despite this, Okinawa degenerated into nothing more than a battle of frontal assaults against prepared positions.
What the hell??? Our generals must have been idiots! They had not a clue! They didn't value the lives of their men! Donkeys leading lions!
So, why did this happen? (It may shed some light onto what bleeding happened in the Great War).
http://www.militaryhistoryonline.com/wwii/okinawa/default.aspx
http://www.army.mil/cmh-pg/books/wwii/okinawa/index.htm#contents
I'm very curious as to what casualty figures will be like in the game with various strategies. There is so much maligning of Haig, be interesting to see if the game models Haig as being a dumbass or if seven figure casualties are the way it goes.
I hope the casualty figures are reasonable and not a bit of fluff tacked on for a laugh! I wanna see how I match up with Rawlinson and Haig when it comes to my deep and abiding respect for human life. [:D]
You're on! [:)]
Human life is one thing, electrical impulses on a hard drive another. My boys are going over the top whether the bleeding hearts like it or not. [:D]
There is so much about this game I am curious about. For example, will it deviate a bit and allow for the German player to go straight at the Russians? How will it transition from the mobility of the Schliffen plan to trench warfare? What role, if any, will commanders play? VERY intersted to start hearing some snippets from above.
Okinawa saw 8,000 US ground personnel dead against 107,000 Japanese.
Total American battle casualties were 49,151, of which 12,520 were killed or missing and 36,631 wounded. Approximately 110,000 Japanese lost their lives with 7,400 more being taken prisoner.
Yes, 5,000 of the American dead were naval personel, 8,000 ground personel were killed. If you are into a numbers game, the kill ratio of dead was better then 10 to 1 the overall casualty ratio about 4 to 1 (excluding cililians, in which case it would have been close to 10 to 1 as well).
Of course, there is no comparison to be made between Okinawa and The Somme as the Japanse fought, almost without exception, to the death.
Please don't get me wrong on this. I am no flower child preaching the utter evil of any type of conflict. I just think The Great War is fascinating in the extreme and one of the big reasons why is the men who directed and commanded during it were overmatched by circumstances. This led to the most uneccessary and avoidable carnage in history. IMHO of course. [;)]
There are comparisons to be made between Okinawa (and other island hopping battles for that matter) and the conduct of operations on the western front in WWI (not just the Battle of the Somme).
1. To defeat/dislodge the enemy from his position, one must attack him.
2. In the absence of flanks, one must attack frontally in order to achieve #1 above.
3. The most advanced and best coordinated fire-support in the world does not guarantee anything, in particular when directed at an enemy who makes use of incredibly well prepared positions.
4. Counter-attacks by the defenders can be extremely costly in terms of casualties.
I think that the Allied Campaign up the boot of Italy in WWII is a good comparison to some of the fighting in WWI. Sometimes there are simply no easy paths to victory. War is deadly.[X(] Justified or not, WWI was not the kind of war that almost every general had expected to fight. I think the mindset of the vast majority of military leaders expected something similar to the Franco-Prussian War, since this was the last major war between major powers in Europe. Military minds are usually backward thinking and look to past examples in order to extrapolate future events and outcomes. The problem of course is that in those years of peace, while military thinking has no updated examples or chooses to ignore what few examples there are, technology marches forward.
Given time and massive casualties, tactical solutions where arrived at, but this didn't solve the operational/strategic problem of turning tactical/operational success into decisive results. With no mobile combat force available to exploit any breach in the enemies line, it was relatively easy for a defender to plug up the hole before the attacker could exploit any success. Even the most devastating operational successes in WWI; such as Caporetto and Tannenburg; did not lead to strategic success. It was only after nations were exhausted through massive casualties, revolution, or blockade that decisive results were achieved. I just don't think there was a solution to the problem other than national exhaustion, hence the attritional slaughter which coalition wars almost always come down to.
"The fruit of too much liberty is slavery", Cicero
Germany's central position and excellent rail network only added to the problem you describe.
I'll counter my own argument by looking at the French stratigic and tactical doctrine of the Second World War. It was specifically designed to avoid excessive casualties at almost any cost. The result was missed opportunties, lethargy, plumetting moral and, ultimately, total defeat.
And there are those who will argue that Monty's strategy in North Africa was the only one which was guaranteed to succeed, i.e. attritional battles against a numerically inferior foe aimed at his gradual, and total, annhilation. Certainly not pretty, but the success is unquestioned.
Churchill was probably on the right track strategically with the Gallipoli venture. Turkey and Austria were far more vulnerable than Germany in the long run.
I agree about Turkey and Austria, but they weren't as much of a soft underbelly as was supposed. The opinion was that Turkey simply needed one swift kick and the whole rotten structure would collapse. Events proved otherwise of course. Even suffering through such horrible catastrophies as the fight against Russia in the Caucasus's and the grind throughout the Middle east, Turkey was able to hold out to the end. Austria as well was able to sustain the war effort after repeated drubbings by Russia and even Serbia, as well as the drain in Italy. It is amazing that either of these two countries could remain in the war as long as they did.
I think the comparison between the American Civil War and WWI are informative and appropriate. Here you had a much stronger North in all catagories of national strength, opposed to an agrarian and much weaker South. Yet it still required four years and massive casualties for the North to subdue the South. I believe the reasons for this are much the same reasons that WWI developed as it did. Most leaders, both political and military, expected a short war. Military leaders who had little or no experience cammanding such large masses of men. Advances in technology that made the battlefield much more lethal than anyone had previously experienced, thus requiring the attempt to adapt tactics to the new reality through bloody trial and error; and never really being able to overcome the difficulties. Combat finally evolving into trench fighting that more resembled siege operations than the expected Napoleonic battlefieds, in the case of Civil War generals, and Franco-Prussian War battlefields in the case of WWI generals, had expected. Finally ending only after a long attritional grinding down of the enemy through bloody battles and naval blockade.
The only real complaint that I would feel comfortable making against some leaders of WWI, is that they ignored the hints of the future through a disdain to study the American Civil War, Russo-Japanese War, and the Boer War and to take heed of some of the lessons that could have been learned from those experiences. It is the sad fact that military experience is a very fleeting commodity that without constant practice, is quickly lost, with the need to be learned again through bloody trial and error.
It will indeed be very interesting to see if we, with all of the benefits of hindsight, can achieve decisive results within four years. It is my opinion that if the game engine is modelled in a historicly accurate way, that victory will only be possible by having the last man standing with the last cartridge in his breech.
"The fruit of too much liberty is slavery", Cicero
It will indeed be very interesting to see if we, with all of the benefits of hindsight, can achieve decisive results within four years. It is my opinion that if the game engine is modelled in a historicly accurate way, that victory will only be possible by having the last man standing with the last cartridge in his breech.
I am very curious about the game engine myself. Presumably it should in some way generally force you towards what actually happened. I notice looking at the maps that there isn't much behind the front lines, what would happen if the British did amphibious assaults on Wilhemshafen or something? IRL mines and torpedo boats were a serious worry so that wasn't a serious possibility, but it seems to me that aggressive attempts to outflank navally may well work if the drain at the front line is so great you don't have any troops minding the back door. Also depends on how quickly you can move forces around I guess.
And then there is the question of whether you might get Somme-like situations where you have to attack with attrition as a goal, to relieve pressure elsewhere.
I'm sure the developer(s) have these questions all answered but I'm very curious to see how it will be. It will presumably be quite different from most other war games, as the nature of the conflict was so different from the typical war game scenario.
I agree, it should be very different than what most of us have experienced in computer wargames. No forty kilometer armor thrusts here I'm betting.[;)]
Jackie Fisher proposed shipping a British Army to the Baltic to either threaten the Northern German coast or land them in Russia to add their weight there, but of course the Western Front generals didn't want to release any troops from their commands for such "silly" business. Some naval leaders also didn't like the prospect of sending the Grand Fleet into the High Sea Fleat's own back yard. Jutland would seem to prove their worries justified.
That would be one major risk of a German Eastern strategy. If Britain still ended up joining the war early, even without a German attack on Belgium or advance into France, the Germans would be faced with a strong and mobile force that could threaten their coast. That or the British could run riot in the Mediteranean and make Gallipoli look like a minor skirmish. I think Turkey would not last long with a completely free British army.
I would also imagine that France would be forced to attack in the West in order to help take some pressure off of Russia, in the case of a German Eastern strategy. It will be very interesting to see how people deal with these issues.
"The fruit of too much liberty is slavery", Cicero
Well, presumably attrition will be more of a factor in strategy than in the typical wargame. I can't think of many games out there where attrition is an express strategy per se, they are usually very maneuver focused - after all, its usually moving counters around on a map. If this models static warfare, then presumably the counters won't be moving around on the map in this game very much, and it'll be more of a numbers game - bleeding the opponent and guessing which units are reinforced and which are weak, I guess? Though the war did go through attritional and non-attritional stages, so even harder to model I guess.
I think one of the reasons I'm so interested in this title is that it will truly be, I hope, a breath of fresh air with vastly different gameplay from other games. I'm used to how napoleonic/ACW war works in wargames. And WW2. This hopefully will be something else again. [:D]
I suppose Gallipoli was an attempt to "outflank navally", so that was historically attempted without much success. The Bulgarian "outflanking" in 1918 wasn't exactly the finest hour either, though it did get results in the end, but possibly that was just a part of the general collapse of the Central Powers?
