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Yeah, they totally faked the most violent war in history.... If you've done any research at all, you know that it happened. The remaining trenches, the loss of life, the destruction of property.... To deny the reality of the Great War requires utter blindness.
The moon landing? Seriously? Are you one of /those/ people? Conspiracy theorists are the scum of all nerds, and I hope you know that.
Yeah, they totally faked the most violent war in history.... If you've done any research at all, you know that it happened. The remaining trenches, the loss of life, the destruction of property.... To deny the reality of the Great War requires utter blindness.
The moon landing? Seriously? Are you one of /those/ people? Conspiracy theorists are the scum of all nerds, and I hope you know that.
Hey new-meat...I think maybe it was a satirical statement? The man you are responding to knows his history sh*t. Did you really create a membership and resurrect a 4 year old thread to add your above words of wisdom?
Honestly, the trenches wouldn't have been all that terrible if not for the mortars, potato grenades, and other explosives, as well as gas techniques, all of which wrecked havoc upon such Stone Age methods as trench warfare. It was the technology of the time, coupled with the ancient tactics that everyone hates. If we could've done without one or the other, the war would've been better, but as said earlier, they can't use amazing tactics, when the opponent's trenches are as good as endless.
This is a rather superficial examination of the war and intricacies of the trenches.
Quote:
Originally Posted by Potential_Landlord
Why did none of this apply to the Franco-Prussian war 1870-71 then? Muskets were even more powerful and actually the French Chassepot rifle was much more powerful than the Prussian rifles. Yet they won in a war of movement, overcoming the better muskets and trenches whatsoever. The lesson from the Franco-Prussion war was to forget about anything in the Civil War and do the opposite.
The Franco-Prussion War was mainly a case study in two things:
1. Mobilization
2. Use of modern artillery.
1. The Prussians had a vastly superior system for mobilization. They were able to rapidly call-up and organize their forces, allowing them to more quickly concentrate their forces for the war and deilver them to the field in far better fighting condition than the French.
2. The Prussians used modern steel breech-loading artillery, namely the Krupp 6-pounder. This allowed them to outrange and outshoot the French artillery. The Prussians overcame the French defenses by quickly massing their artillery which would bombard the French guns from beyond counterfire range. Once the French guns were immobilized, the artillery moved forward to provide direct fire support to the advancing infantry. This was use of artillery as an offensive weapon versus artillery as more a static defensive weapon.
These advances were quickly incorporated into military planning and army structure throughout Europe. The primary differences when WW1 rolled around which made the battlefield more static had to do with two new weapons:
1. The modern smokeless powder bolt-action rifle.
2. The machine gun.
1. The modern rifles made it possible for infantry to fire directly at gun crews at site distance driving them off the field and forcing them to fire indirectly. This made artillery less effective against other artillery and defensive positions.
2. With artillery incapable of direct fire against open enemy positions, machine guns were able to decimate any infantry assault. The fire power and area denial of the machine gun allowed units to occupy more space along the front.
Quote:
Originally Posted by DiogeneOfSinope
Yeah, they totally faked the most violent war in history.... If you've done any research at all, you know that it happened. The remaining trenches, the loss of life, the destruction of property.... To deny the reality of the Great War requires utter blindness.
The moon landing? Seriously? Are you one of /those/ people? Conspiracy theorists are the scum of all nerds, and I hope you know that.
Great second post....
Quote:
Originally Posted by Dd714
Hey new-meat...I think maybe it was a satirical statement? The man you are responding to knows his history sh*t. Did you really create a membership and resurrect a 4 year old thread to add your above words of wisdom?
It seems that for whatever reason(s), they continued a Napoleonic approach to a modern problem. The Maxim machine gun and it's variants should have taught them in the first 3 months that they should change tactics.
Gas? Sure....ridiculous amounts of artillery, absolutely...frontal assaults? Are you out of your mind??...the only flanking could have occurred by sea or by very careful land-based flanking maneuvers. Seems that if your guys are getting cut down like wheat going forward, only sustained artillery would be effective more from a mental stand point than anything else.
No one is able to take weeks of bombarding without some psychological incapacitation...they did find out by 1916 that death from above was useful...bombing, in it's most primitive form was being used AND escalated.
When one is being pounded into submission and forced to huddle in mud and frontal assaults seem impossible, where would one look? Up of course. And with fighters coming on in ever increasing numbers one would think they would have simply increased the bombing abilities exponentially as a complimentary strategy to frontal assaults....kind of hard to use machine guns effectively when gas, incendiary, and conventional bombing was raining down on your head? It couldn't have hurt...that coupled with wagon wheel straffing would have been pretty frightening for the defenders...throw in a tank or two and you see where it's going.
They never needed to penetrate the entire line, just focus on certain points, press the attack and THEN flank down the line til complete. Oversimplifying it I know but, you get the idea.
Short of that, frontal assaults are just plain murder.
A question, Is it true that Kitchener said...."I do not know what is to be done. This is not War!" when commenting on how to resolve the trench stalemate then in place. This is early 1915, prior to Gallipoli landings or Fisher's Baltic scheme.
I have a good memory and recall reading that quote exactly as you see it above.
It seems that for whatever reason(s), they continued a Napoleonic approach to a modern problem. The Maxim machine gun and it's variants should have taught them in the first 3 months that they should change tactics.
Gas? Sure....ridiculous amounts of artillery, absolutely...frontal assaults? Are you out of your mind??...the only flanking could have occurred by sea or by very careful land-based flanking maneuvers. Seems that if your guys are getting cut down like wheat going forward, only sustained artillery would be effective more from a mental stand point than anything else.
No one is able to take weeks of bombarding without some psychological incapacitation...they did find out by 1916 that death from above was useful...bombing, in it's most primitive form was being used AND escalated.
When one is being pounded into submission and forced to huddle in mud and frontal assaults seem impossible, where would one look? Up of course. And with fighters coming on in ever increasing numbers one would think they would have simply increased the bombing abilities exponentially as a complimentary strategy to frontal assaults....kind of hard to use machine guns effectively when gas, incendiary, and conventional bombing was raining down on your head? It couldn't have hurt...that coupled with wagon wheel straffing would have been pretty frightening for the defenders...throw in a tank or two and you see where it's going.
They never needed to penetrate the entire line, just focus on certain points, press the attack and THEN flank down the line til complete. Oversimplifying it I know but, you get the idea.
Short of that, frontal assaults are just plain murder.
Ultimately the goal was to achieve the breakthrough at a specific point with the end goal being to interrupt the enemies supply line forcing the remaining units to retreat or be cut-off and whither. Achieving the breakthrough is what was difficult and required innovation both stategically, tactically and technologically.
The hard part was the sheer size of the front and the incredible depth of the defenses. The sheer number of soldiers involved allowed for a depth of defense that had never been seen before. Attacks needed to be spread out to allow for adequate supply and to prevent the enemy from simply using their reserves to plug the one area of localized attack.
You can't think of this as akin to the Napoleonic Wars, the ACW or even the Franco-Prussian War. Take the Battle of Leipzig, the largest in the Napoleonic Wars and you would need to inflate the scale over tenfold to even begin to approach the scale of WW1. In that context and crammed onto a front only 440 miles long.
To use another analogy think of the entire Western Front as being nothing more than a large scale Siege of Petersburg.
This is a rather superficial examination of the war and intricacies of the trenches.
The Franco-Prussion War was mainly a case study in two things:
1. Mobilization
2. Use of modern artillery.
1. The Prussians had a vastly superior system for mobilization. They were able to rapidly call-up and organize their forces, allowing them to more quickly concentrate their forces for the war and deilver them to the field in far better fighting condition than the French.
2. The Prussians used modern steel breech-loading artillery, namely the Krupp 6-pounder. This allowed them to outrange and outshoot the French artillery. The Prussians overcame the French defenses by quickly massing their artillery which would bombard the French guns from beyond counterfire range. Once the French guns were immobilized, the artillery moved forward to provide direct fire support to the advancing infantry. This was use of artillery as an offensive weapon versus artillery as more a static defensive weapon.
These advances were quickly incorporated into military planning and army structure throughout Europe. The primary differences when WW1 rolled around which made the battlefield more static had to do with two new weapons:
1. The modern smokeless powder bolt-action rifle.
2. The machine gun.
1. The modern rifles made it possible for infantry to fire directly at gun crews at site distance driving them off the field and forcing them to fire indirectly. This made artillery less effective against other artillery and defensive positions.
2. With artillery incapable of direct fire against open enemy positions, machine guns were able to decimate any infantry assault. The fire power and area denial of the machine gun allowed units to occupy more space along the front.
Great second post....
lol, how I missed CD.
Thanks for your detailed explanations. The gist is that the two major warfare inventions post the Civil War cancelled each other out to favor trench warfare in WW1. Nobody could have known or concluded this from the Civil War experience though. It is pure hindsight bias to deduct WW1 from the Civil War.
The Franco-Prussian war occurred after the Civil War and it wasn't really fought like the latter stages of the Civil War, so it's not unreasonable to see how European WW I generals wouldn't have learned many of the lessons of the Civil War, although from my understanding, the use of the railroad during the Civil War was something studied intently by the French, Germans and Russians.
Yeah, they totally faked the most violent war in history.... If you've done any research at all, you know that it happened. The remaining trenches, the loss of life, the destruction of property.... To deny the reality of the Great War requires utter blindness.
The moon landing? Seriously? Are you one of /those/ people? Conspiracy theorists are the scum of all nerds, and I hope you know that.
I think Grandstander was just being sarcastic to the poster he was quoting. He knows there was a Civil War - he talks about it all the time.
The American Civil War demonstrated rather conclusively demonstrated that the rifle made the tactics of Napoleonic warfare obsolete for all time. Every European country had observers on both sides of the line, so when WWI arrived why were European Armies still prepared to make frontal attacks in formation against fortified troops with rifles and machine guns?
The original op.
I agree with this, it is kind of strange. Others have mentioned some reasons but I will just add that I simply think the European great powers did not pay enough attention to how people ran their affairs outside their own continent. Europe was the center of the world back then. So how North Americans, Africans or Asians fought their wars did not have much of an impact as say for example, if the American Civil War happened in Europe itself.
On the other hand, you would think that generals, admirals, military planners etc. would study every single scrap of information they could about warfare and how newer and better equipment might change it. You would think they would study it anyway - its their full time job after all.
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