Top Five of World War I

[Sardonic]

ORIGINAL: FrankHunter

That's why I want to know whether Germany starts the game at war with Belgium

Just read the thread and wanted to answer this. Germany does not start the game at war with Belgium so you don't have to invade it. There is a mobilization phase prior to the start so that you can deploy your forces anywhere within your borders that you like.

So we can implement the Von Wandersee plan?
Yes, I have played '1914', many times. I lived.

[SMK-at-work]

ORIGINAL: Reg

ORIGINAL: Syagrius

General Arthur Currie, commander of the best Allied toops on the Western Front: the Canadian Expeditionary Corps! [&o]

I will agree with this but I would like to expand it to include Monash, the five Australian divisions and the New Zealand division.

These ten dominion divisions and their commanders were all outstanding and became the spearhead of the British army in 1918. I would hesitate to choose between them.

Actually AFAIK the ANZAC divisions at least did the "normal" share of duty in the front lines as any other "Empire" division did.

However it would be fair to say that New Zealand at least had a smaller % of total available manpower in that division than the UK had in all it's front line troops - I've no idea about the Aussies or the Canucks. so for New Zealand we did not exhaust our manpower like the UK had, hence our division was kept up to strength.

The New Zealand division was in line at the Somme for 23 days IIRC - and took more casualties (killed and wounded, seperately and combined) in those 3 weeks than it did in 9 months in Gallipoli!

[TriumphRider]

German: Rupprecht, I believe is underrated but also Von Hutier

British: Allenby

I also think it is really hard to judge the effectiveness of these generals simply because of the volume of forces and the vastness of their operations in regards to their extremely lacking and primitive communication technology. I doubt there could have been a way to make the Great War a clean war. It was fought on a scale far greater than the ability every fighting nation had to communicate on those scales. I think this is the toughest war in history to judge generalship simply because generalship on such a scale with so horrible inadequate communications is almost impossible as we all know. Delegation only helps a little, and being on-site at a battle doesn't really do much either when thousands of men are involved and they are hundreds or thousands of yards apart

[7th Somersets]

I think this is the toughest war in history to judge generalship simply because generalship on such a scale with so horrible inadequate communications is almost impossible as we all know. Delegation only helps a little, and being on-site at a battle doesn't really do much either when thousands of men are involved and they are hundreds or thousands of yards apart

I completely agree. It is further complicated by bigger issues like tactical doctrines that cannot clearly be traced to officers within the war, or developed by officers who did not command the troops implementing them - eg the German emphasis on local initiative and immediate counterattacks that would often occur without any general's approval.

[spence]

What about Sir Herbert Plumer, British 2nd Army commander in 1917, whose troops retook Messines Ridge near Ypres in a pretty decently planned and executed limited attack (defensive casualties significantly exceeded offensive ones; a real oddity in WWI).

[7th Somersets]

defensive casualties significantly exceeded offensive ones; a real oddity in WWI

 
It was not that uncommon at the end of WW1. Huge tactical advances on all sides meant that usually the assault troops or those involved in combat operations in the early stages of fighting, came out of it better than the defenders.
 
It was usually during the follow up phases that the heavy casualties occurred.
 
If the Passchendaelle 'offensive' had have been stopped after the first few days it would have been considered a resounding success (as a bite and hold attack). Dare I mention Cambrai, Arras, The German March Offensive...

[SMK-at-work]

I disagree that WW1 was a difficult war to discern good generalship.

IMO good generalship becomes very obvious - good generals were those who actually took acount of hte conditions and realised that they were fighting seige warfare on a grand scale.

There are numerous example - the British division(s?) at the Somme who (IIRC) went over the top before the end of hte bombardment and took their objectives with almost no casualties.  Brusilov.  Hindenberg & Ludendorf at Tannenberg.  Allenby.  Ataturk - you can probably name many more.

There were also commanders who tried and thought htey had it sussed, but didn't quite get it - eg whoever came up with the planfor the British infantry to walk forwards on day 1 of hte Somme - the basis of hte plan was fair enough - if hte Germans had all been killed then it would have been fine - but they weren't, and it wasn't.  And whoever planned Passchendale without thinking about the effects of the soil, groundwater and weather - again the plan was sound and might well have worked elsewhere - but Passchendale wasn't elsewhere[:-]

[7th Somersets]

SMK,

I agree to some extent - but my point above was that it is hard to seperate ability and opportunity in the context of the war in many cases.

Consider what Allenby achieved in 1917 in Palestine... a superb feat militarily - but only made possible by the assiduous work of others before him in getting proper supply lines open. Was it his victory? - undoubtably - but (in my view unarguably) he would have had no possibility of such a resounding victory and would probably have been forced to sit in the middle east with very little acclaim at all if the ground work had not been prepared for him by others. (The commander who started this was the relatively little known General Murray).

There were good generals - as you point out the commander of the 9th Scottish Division deployed his men into no-mans-land on the 1st day of the Somme offensive. But when looking at offensive operations combined with artillery - by August, the British Artillery were able to fire creeping barrages (not widely available on or before 1st July) - an essential tool to maintaining an advance of any depth. Creeping barrages, of course only becoming available through improvements in shell production/fuzes/gun callibration and shell batching. Many subsequent successes were entirely dependent on close infantry/artillery co-operation using these 'new' methods.

A good general of course is one who makes the most of the opportunities that they are given. What would Guderian have done in WW1 had the German High Command not made the monumental error in rejecting tanks??

Regards.

[TriumphRider]

I don't know that the German's rejecting the tank was a war losing decision, by the time the tank became something of a regularity on the battlefield, the Germans had already sealed their fate. Besides, mechanized warfare was hardly what it would become, armored cars, tanks and other mechanized vehicles besides aircraft were all especially far too slow, unreliable and too few to create the kind of mechanization and movement that occured in 1939. True mobile/mechanized warfare was an impossibility in World War One: communications were far too inadequate, the vehicles simply did not exist in the numbers to make them usefull, nor as I said were they reliable or fast enough.

Look at the constant examples of major blunders on world war one battlefields caused by indecision because of a lack of real time intelligence/communication. The Germans at 2nd Ypres is a perfect example, had real-time long distance communication been adequate, the Germans may have been able to realize the damage their gas attack had done. Instead the Germans NEVER intended to break through but were merely experimenting and seeing what effects the gas would have. Had their infantry been able to report back in-time as to what had happened, everything may have been different.

I think the German's had their chance to win the war in 1916 and they didn't. Between 1915-16 the tank wasn't an issue and the German's failed to exploit the opportunities given them in those two years. They also failed on an enormous scale to manage their resources and their allies effectively.

Despite the fact that many new technologies were introduced during world war one, NONE of them (with the exception of aircraft) were ever used to such effectiveness or on such a scale to have made them war winning tools. Gas, Tanks, Flamethrowers all worked very well initially, but none were in themselves enough to win anybody the war.

I think the only technology that would have given one side a gigantic war winning advantage would have been radio that allowed vocal transmission. And of course nobody was able to develop it in time..

[SMK-at-work]

Except of course NONE of those technologies were introduced during WW1 - gas has been used befoer int the form of asphyxiating smoke, "tanks" can be seen in armoured war wagons mounting artillery and handguns in the middle ages, flamethrowers were in use by the Byzantines and Chinese pre-1000AD (and were adopted by hte German army in 1911 well before teh war).....[;)]

[TriumphRider]

Of course I meant self-propelled mechanized tanks, gas fair enough...but still never on the scale from ww I, flamethrowers by the Byzantines did not use Petrolium they used resin and they were hand cranked not pressurized so they don't count... [:'(]

[SMK-at-work]

Greek fire used naptha as one of the ingredients, which is a hydrocarbon.  I dont' see why hand-pumped vs gas powered makes the ancient ones any less of a flame thrower - shorter ranged, but still very effective at throwing flames!!  And  you stil have the Germans introducing "modern" flamethrowers in 1911. [:)]
 
WW1 saw a lot of technologies IMPROVED - such as the adding of internal combustion engines and caterpiller tracks to an armoured box - replacing the ancient horses and wheels of a war wagon to make a tank.  Also many technologies were used on a much larger scale and in new ways.
 
but the technologies themselves were usually developed or at least invented pre WW1.
 
 

[TriumphRider]

I'm just being a smartass, your point is well-taken, despite those technologies being improved and implemented on a relatively large scale, none of them were, in themselves, given their limitations, enough to give anybody a war-winning trump card. The Germans, as I said, had their chance to win the war in 1915/1916 and Gas, Tanks and Flamethrowers weren't going to win it for them.

I think the greatest argument for the CP's failure in the war was in Holger Herwig's book: The First World War. They failed to manage their few resources as effectively as the allies did, and Germany expended as much effort merely propping up its allies as it did sustaining its own war effort (and with little cooperation from Vienna). I also think, despite everybody's constant harping on allied generals (especially Haig), German generals were just as if not more incompetent than allied ones.

A good example I think is the 1918 Michael offensive. I have yet to speak to someone who does not regard it as a brilliant feat of generalship and the crowning example of infiltration tactics etc. But I think the 1918 offensives were probably the most ill-concieved idiotic and useless offensives in the entire war. I also think they failed tactically as much as they did strategically. Despite the Germans' impressive gains in territory, they still suffered almost an equal amount of casualties as they inflicted. Even more telling is the fact that the michael offensives were carried out without any real strategic objective other than the vague notion of winning the war in a last ditch offensive. Granted they attempted to roll up the British, but any initial strategic goals were quickly tossed away when the Germans decided they wanted Paris. So I guess I take back my comment about generalship being diffecult to judge. On a strategic scale, the Central Powers' generals failed totally and I think harsh criticisms of allied generals are just as dishonest as the pedestal everyone seems to have placed German ones on.

[sol_invictus]

I agree, both sides had a few "good" Generals and many "bad" ones. The war was only winable by national attrition and that was achieved by the British blockade and fresh American reinforcements when all other armies were exhausted. There just wasn't an opportunity, post-Marne, for any brilliant maneuvers that were decisive.

[jkBluesman]

ORIGINAL: Arinvald

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.

Falkenhayn was a great general as you can see if you look at his operation on the Balkan.
He was smart enough to realise that the Central Powers would loose the war, but he knew that there was politically no chance for peace in 1916, thus he developed a plan for an attack on Verdun. That he did not maintain control of his offensive and did not stop it, that was murder.