WWI Generals

[josant]

Not want to open a discussion, it's just my own opinión and I'm sorry if this bothers someone.

I think that regardless of nationality all these generals were butchers who sent millions of young people to a certain death, using outdated tactics against modern weapons (mass attacks to trenches defended by machine guns and relative modern artillery, chemical weapons...)

[EisenHammer]

ORIGINAL: gradenko_2000

Haig got treated unfairly by history, as did Jellicoe (although the latter has been redeemed somewhat), when Beatty and French were the real failures.

IMO... Haig should have been relieved of command after the debacle of the battle of the Somme. And I think in the long run history will reveal the battle as a major British defeat. During the battle of the Somme the British army lost around 60,000 men on the first day of battle, for the gain of only three square miles. But this did not stop Haig. for on the second day Haig still not knowing the true extent of the casualties suffer on the first day order more attacks along the front, commenting that over 40,000 casualties ‘cannot be considered severe in view of numbers engaged’. Most of these orders could not be carried out because the dead and wounded were still choking the communication trenches. And most the fresh troops could not make it to the front.

Then the spin on German casualties started. That will carry on until one day the British finally admit that the Battle of the Somme was a defeat. Something the British had not done yet. But this is a different argument.

B.H. Liddell Hart commented that Haig was a man of supreme egoism with an utter lack of scruple who’s overweening ambition, sacrificed hundreds of thousands of men.

[Capt. Harlock]

I think that regardless of nationality all these generals were butchers who sent millions of young people to a certain death, using outdated tactics against modern weapons (mass attacks to trenches defended by machine guns and relative modern artillery, chemical weapons...)

I've heard a story (though I haven't got any confirmation) that when Pershing and the American troops were about to go to the front, the other Allied generals saw fit to give him the benefit of their hard-won experience. They told him that it was now useless to attack head-on against fully entrenched troops. Pershing replied, "Hell, we found that out at Cold Harbor." (Half a century before.)

[rodney727]

Thanks wodin will check these out.

ORIGINAL: wodin

Your men fought very well indeed. Similar to the Canadians and Anzacs, strong brave lads.

I think you'd enjoy two books I have...

Through The Wheat: The U.S. Marines in World War I by Edwin Simmons

Towards the Flame by Hervey Allen (not marines but US soldiers)

http://www.amazon.co.uk/Through-Wheat-U-S-Marines-World/dp/1591148316/ref=sr_1_1?s=books&ie=UTF8&qid=1393072996&sr=1-1&keywords=through+the+wheat

http://www.amazon.co.uk/Toward-Flame-Memoir-World-War/dp/0803259476/ref=sr_1_1?s=books&ie=UTF8&qid=1393073071&sr=1-1&keywords=towards+the+flame

ORIGINAL: Twotribes

All I know is the Marines were Magnificent.

[gradenko2k]

ORIGINAL: Orm
So what do you guys think of General Lanrezac?

One of the more underrated French generals and about as important as Petain.