On catching up belatedly with some very old threads on here (it's been a bad few weeks) I was much taken with Clarky's material on visiting some of the Great War battlefields, and with the responses from others. We all seem to have found the accounts heartfelt and moving, and yet there is one element that sits less comfortably with me.

My own experience of battlefields of the Great War came a long time ago, before such visits were as familiar (or easy) as they are now. In fact, much though it pains me to say so, less time had then passed since the fighting than has subsequently since the visit. I was with my grandfather, a decent, honest, gentle and thoughtful man who had grwon up a farmer's boy near Middleton in Teesdale. In 1912 he joined the Territorials as a cavalryman, and went to France in 1914. Having taken part in a cavalry charge, his outfit then waited in reserve for nearly two years ready to exploit the big breakthrough that never came (which must have helped his survival prospects). However, he was then dismounted and fought as an infantyryman in the trenches of the Western Front through the terrible years of 1916 and 1917 (which clearly didn't). After the Austrian rout of the Italians at Caporetto in late 1917, his division was sent to Northern Italy to shore up that front, and there he remained until November 1918.

Granda was deeply moved by the war graves and memorials of Flanders, and we spent a couple of days searching the countryside for villages that meant nothing to me, but whose names could reduce him to tears. We repeated the experience later along the Piave Valley, the only time when I saw real anger in him, as he remembered the loss of his comrades caused by the Italian Army and its leaders running away. In the short years left to him (he died in 1962, a delayed victim of the 80-a-day cigarette ration), I tried to work out what it all meant to him. He had plenty to say about comrades good (French) and bad (Italian), about respected enemies (German and Austrian), and about the hardships and loss. He never once doubted what he had been fighting for: the survival of an ally against an invader that was as close to its capital as say Middlesbrough is to Newcastle.

Just before he died, I was introduced to the 'Lions led by Donkeys' theory, originally popularised by the late Alan Clark, that now dominates our thinking on the Great War from 'Oh What a Lovely War' to 'Blackadder', and asked him about it. He was puzzled. The gist of what he said was: "If our generals were so stupid and the enemy's so smart, how come I spent as much time shooting at them attacking across open ground as they did at me doing the same?"

Later, I found that others shared his view, for example John Terraine, and that it was backed up by the casualty figures. For example, the Austrian Army lost the highest proportion of its force mobilised, at a shocking 90%; the German Army was fifth of the combatants at 67%, the British Empire eighth at 34%. The heaviest daily casualty rate suffered by the British Army over a whole battle was not on the Somme but during the German offensive of 1918 - when we were on the defensive. Terraine's view is that since the industrial revolution gave us machine guns, lethal artillery and barbed wire, such casualties are inevitable when one nation's main force takes on the main force of another. The story is the same from the American Civil War to the Second World War, where casualties on the Eastern Front easily eclipsed those of the Great War. We have a distorted view of this for two reasons: the shock of the first day of the Somme, when we were catapulted into becoming a main combatant for the first time; and the uncomfortable and unwelcome truth that we never opposed the main body of the German Army in the Second World War.

Why do I think that this is important? If the horror of the Great War (and the others of the industrial age) are the product of stupid, out of touch patrician generals, then people might believe that they could be avoided by better (or cleverer or more professional or more egalitarian) leaders. The German Army in 1940 was probably the best and most professionally led in recent times: they lost 6 million by 1945. The Soviet Army at the same time was probably the most egalitarian (well communist anyway): they lost 20 million. If my grandfather was right, we should not be fooled: the slaughter cannot be avoided by clever (or even average) leadership, it's an inevitable feature of modern full-scale warfare. Don't misunderstand this point folks, it might be the most important lesson any of us learn.

-- Anonymous, October 11, 2000

Answers

DR....Wars, but more particularly battles, throughout history have been fought in a way where the man on the ground...the foot soldier..is and probably always will be expendable. And the fear these men have in letting down their mates..being seen as a coward etc etc drives them on to do absolutely stupid although heroic things...i.e stand and face 2000 Zulus....charge towards a battery of Russian artillery or climb out of a dirt trench and run at a zillion well hidden Turks.

It's this kind of dicipline than actually won "us" more battles and wars than we lost..and maybe even saved lives in the long-run.

-- Anonymous, October 11, 2000

Not sure any lives would have been saved LR. All winning a war ever does is preserve the victors' lifestyle - at the temporary expense of the losers'.

-- Anonymous, October 11, 2000

Winning battles saves lives if it means the War will end sooner...surely?

-- Anonymous, October 11, 2000

Dr. Bill,
Many thanks for your valuable contribution to this absorbing debate - and for providing your Grandfathers considerable experience and valuable insight.

I've come to this subject only recently and am keen to learn more. All I would add at this juncture is that if in my visit report/reactions I gave the impression that I felt the Allies held a monopoly on poor leadership then that was clearly mistaken and was certainly not my intent.

At my present level of understanding - inevitably dominated by hindsight - I still find it difficult to intellectually accept that the level of casualties occasioned in WW1 were 'inevitable' - even though history, as you suggest, indicates otherwise.

My limited research to date has highlighted several instances were different battle tactics to the "the established norm" were infinitely more successful. However, and for whatever reason - blind stubbornness or inadequate consultation and/or communications - these examples of tactical excellence were largely ignored, or only very belatedly incorporated. There was a staggering resistance to learning from mistakes, which were perptuated again, and again, and again, and.....

In addition, there was vehement resistance from the Generals to incorporating new technology into their strategic and tactical planning. Even when the devastating capability of the machine-gun must have become blindingly obvious after the first few engagements, there was concerted British resistance to adequately equipping our infantry with the same weapon.

Subsequently, the emergence of the tank as a potent, indeed potentially pivotal, battlefield weapon was strongly resisted until its demonstrated capability became incontrovertible. There was even a recorded instance where the PM, Lloyd George, intervened to reinstitute an order for the construction of 1,000 tanks that Haig's staff had connived to have cancelled.

At my present level of understanding I cannot escape the conclusion that the inflexibility, intransigence - and in many instances sheer incompetence - of military leadership contributed massively to the level of casualties. Having said that, it may well be a logical extension of the same argument to go on to suggest that the rigours of the war situation make this an inevitable consequence. Someone has to 'lead', and unless by sheer chance a truly outstanding military strategist just happens to come along by chance, then terrible mistakes will be made by those who are actually doing their very best in the prevailing situation.

I believe this is the gist of your argument - that we must NEVER allow ourselves to be fooled into accepting we could avoid the carnage of these awful conflicts simply by virtue of what we might be lead to believe is a more enlightened military leadership than existed in the past. That view I would support 100%.

-- Anonymous, October 11, 2000

Can of worms well and truly open now. Must agree with Clarky that I was not aware of any claim that it was only the British who were ill-led in WWI, but fully understandable that it was from the British and Commonwealth perspective that this issue was approached.

You have raised some fascinating points here, particularly as to whether "better" tactical direction would have simply led to greater bloodshed, and you use the higher casualty figures from the Second World War as proof of this. I cannot help but feel that this is disingenuous, seeing as how WWI and WWII are not nearly so similar as they appear to be on the surface. Yes, they are the two World Wars, they involved most of the same combatant nations and many of the unfortunate individuals involved featured in both. However, WWI was the last of the old European land wars, which were almost a gentleman's club where the members would regularly send armies into one another's territory to force a minor adjustment to a boundary here, or either instigate or cancel a payment of tribute there and often replace a monarch with one more palatable with the winner. WWII was an altogether different beast with one party wishing to sweep away entirely the gentleman's club and assume direct control of the entire land mass of Europe. There was no intention of adjusting the balance and redistributing the pieces in the "Great Game", this was harking back to the methods last seen adopted by the Romans with the added spice of genocide.

The fact that WWI is remembered as the worst example of slaughter despite WWII clocking up the highest casualty level is that the terrible loss of life suffered in WWI was concentrated over such a small area. Despite the lessons that should have been learned during the Franco-Prussian, American Civil and Boer Wars, the land armies in Europe changed none of their tactics and continued in the belief that you would win by concentrating more men in the line than the enemy and bludgeoning your way through. This meant that a war of attrition was inevitable with both sides taking it in turns to lose tens of thousands to "break the deadlock". Feeble excuses can be made about the failure to understand the significance of the machine gun due to its failure to impress in the Franco Prussian war where it was considered so top secret that the French only released the operators' manual to the gunners as the Prussians stormed their lines, so its first employment had been a disaster.

Add to this the fact that although conscription had been used before, it had not been seen on this scale outside of Napoleonic France, and this new army of civilians found themselves fighting a war without a great sense of purpose. It was the system that had been trusted to prevent another war which caused it. France and Russia agreed a mutual protection policy against Germany and Austria. If Russia attacked Austria then Germany would attack France - the thinking being that a war on 2 fronts couldn't be won so France would have to be removed to allow the Germans to help the Austrians. Likewise Russia was duty bound to attack Austria if Germany invaded France. Everyone thought this was a great idea because it meant that it would enforce peace (like the nuclear stalemate) since nobody could win this huge war which would result from a minor one. Sadly, nobody thought about what would happen if some mad Serbian shot the Austrian Arch Duke and Russia would step in to protect the "slavic people" from reprisals. Britain hoped to act as a broker and thought that siding with France would convince the Germans to back down from the grand plan of automatically invading France - fat chance. You therefore had the horrible reality of a pointless war being fought by an enormous number of people given no choice as to whether or not they got involved. It is difficult to remember that despite the enormous number of volunteers at the start of hostilities when it was "all going to be over by Christmas", the enthusiasm to join up rapidly lost its novelty, hence the "Your Country Needs You" campaign.

WWII was clearly very different. It's not just that people were killed over a wider area (even I can see that that isn't really an improvement to those killed), it is the pattern of casualties that is so revealing. For the first 2 years of the war German casualties were incredibly light compared to those of WWI and the territory conquered was simply enormous. Had the gentleman's club still been in operation, France would have been paying reparations, Britain would have sued for peace and the Soviet Union would have surrendered and agreed to pay some form of tribute. However, nobody had that "luxury", this was Total War, an ideological struggle, a fight to the death, so the fighting continued. With the shift in the balance of power, German casualties rocketed. Once the full power of the USSR, the manufacturing might of the USA and Britain all began pressing, with no thought of stopping and agreeing terms with Germany, the inevitable outcome was going to be the awesome casualty lists of actually defeating a nation state utterly with no quarter asked or given on the Eastern Front.

Wherever superior tactics were put into practice, casualties were light compared to territory gained (think of the early Japanese gains in the Far East and Burma, the Blitzkrieg in the West, the fall of Tobruk (both times), the Allied drive across France) and the awful losses synonymous with WWI were largely suffered on the Eastern front and were caused more by the removal of the option to surrender than by the tactics employed.

The few occasions on which different tactics were applied during WWI they were devastatingly effective. Have a little read of the infiltration tactics employed by Rommel in Italy to see how he used small numbers of men to incredible effect (earning himself the Pour le Merite) or the storm troop tactics which were introduced on the Western Front before the end. Small groups of highly armed German troops would crawl as close to the allied lines as possible and storm the forward trenches without a preliminary bombardment. The element of surprise was vital, and grenades were intended to catch the allies still in their bunkers. A box barrage would be laid around the sector being attacked to stop reinforcements coming to the aid of those attacked, and once the allied machinegun posts were out of action the rest of the German troops would dash across to start rolling up the trenches to either side. Tremendously successful. Almost achieved a complete breakthrough but had to settle for stalemate since they no longer had the resources to back it up. Had they used these tactics in 1914 then Dunkirk would have come 26 years early. As it was, they just adapted the principles to suit Armour and knocked the stuffing out of everyone from 1939-42.

The World Wars may have lots in common, but I wouldn't suggest having a plankton eating competition with your fellow mammal the blue whale.

-- Anonymous, October 11, 2000

Bill, many thanks for this. I'm afraid the most modern history I studied at any serious level was the Norman invasion, with the Bayeux Tapestry being my special subject so I couldn't comment on your conclusions. However, I read a most interesting book on the FWW recently which concluded that British Intelligence wilfully passed on wrong information so that those on the front line would happily embark on what turned out to be suicidial missions merely so that it could appear back home that there was some momentum.

-- Anonymous, October 11, 2000

Yet more breathtaking writing - sometimes the level of interest and knowledge on this BBs just knocks my socks off! Fantastic discussion.

-- Anonymous, October 11, 2000

Wow Douggie...the most MODERN history you are boffed-up in happened nearly 1000 years ago!! You've MISSED so much sweety :-)

The Britsh Empire The Idustrial Revolution The Treble

Harold was a bit of a twat anyway :-)

-- Anonymous, October 11, 2000

Clever fuckers aren't they ;))

-- Anonymous, October 11, 2000

Please, Please, Please, do not take this the wrong way, I contributed to the original clarky thread and appreciate Dr Bills addition and this is not meant to trivialize any of what has been said.

Next time you are dealing with the Civil, or as it is called in Oz, Public Service, please remember these stories.

A lot of the people working there are just like these foot soldiers, with incompetent managers playing the part of Officers.

I know some of the clerks are thick and some enjoy their "power", but most want to do the right thing but are not allowed.

-- Anonymous, October 11, 2000

Well, I predicted that I would get a response from Softie, but not necessarily the others - thanks folks, fascinating reading. And an unexpected first for me, agreeing with LR for once. Some of you know that I spent some time in Kosovo just after the bombing ended, and as a result have a fine sense of just how comforting it is to know that just round the corner there is a Para with a squad automatic weapon, prepared to stand and use it (even if it is held together with rubber bands).

Softie says that generals didn't learn from the lessons of previous wars, and of course they didn't - but how were they supposed to pick out the 'right' lesson? At least one of the wars you mention - the Franco-Prussian, to which I could add the Austro-Prussian - "proved" that exactly the right way to win was to mass dense linear formations to exchange fire until one broke. The Germans had fantastic success with stosstruppen infiltration - yes, I read Infanterie Grieft An in my pursuit of my grandfather's link with Caporetto - but only until counters were found. This has been the history of every new solution, including the tank, that was supposed to break the deadlock. The fall of France and the Western Desert were the exceptions - the true face of WW2 was the Eastern Front. Trenches, mines, artillery, the "meat grinders" of Stalingrad, Kursk and Orel, where attrition was all, would have been horribly familiar to my grandfather and his comrades. Why did the Germans so stupidly forget that they had the answer to it all already? Because the answer to the answer had been found, and their generals had to fall back - as they always do - on using masses of "expendable" men to win the war of attrition. So maybe I couldn't win a plankton-eating contest with a blue whale, but the blue whale is still contrained by having to stop every now and again to breathe, just like I do.

The point of referring to the other combatants in the Great War was twofold. First, most of the ill-informed comment (from which I absolutely exclude anybody here) was that it was just the British, who foolishly continued to attack into the sights of the German MGs while they stayed in their trenches and mowed our lads down. Second, it seems a little odd to me that just for those four years EVERYBODY had an outbreak of collective utter stupidity (other than to think that there was anything really worth fighting for that is) before gratefully returning to a better way of fighting that was always there to be seen (but which mysteriously resulted in even more mud, blood and lives the next time).

Whilst I agree with a lot of what has been said, I remain far from convinced that if we were stupid enough to try it, we would have the tactices or the "chivalry" of the Western Desert - but please let's not have a bet on it.

-- Anonymous, October 11, 2000

Just as a small diversion from the topic, did anyone here the news article this week about the English gardeners who take care of the war graves in France. It appears that their wages are being cut - I just wondered why? In the great scheme of Government Expenditure, I am assuming that it must just be a drop in the ocean - and, of course, money well spent - am I missing something?(:o|

-- Anonymous, October 11, 2000

Clarky - I meant to respond on a point or two you made, but lost my wat somewhere. Sorry.

You should read The Smoke and the Fire by John Terraine (Sidgwick and Jackson 1980), very likely out of print but I can loan you a copy if you like. I'm not saying that he is right about everything, or will necessarily convince you (he clearly doesn't Softie, who I respect very much as a historian), but it is an alternative view. He uses a mix of sources to debunk some myths, including the one put about by Liddell Hart, who had an axe to grind, that the value of machine guns was wilfully ignored by the British. The TOE for a British infantry battalion began with the same number as the Germans in 1914 (two), was doubled by 1915, and rose to 32 by March 1918. The Machine Gun Corps was founded in October 1915, and numbered almost 250,000 men by the end of the war. From 1914 to 1918, Vickers, Lewis and Hotchkiss manufactured 239,840 machine guns between them. As Terraine says, someone must have appreciated them.

Tanks worked as a surpise weapon, and the tragedy was that the surprise was frittered away in a 'small' battle. Nevertheless, within four days of their first British use, the chief villain of everybody's piece, Haig, was pressing for 1000 to be manufactured. Despite serious efforts, hardly any were available, most broke down before they achieved anything useful, and the Central Powers soon dicovered that if they stayed put and fired artillery shells at them over open sights, they could be quickly knocked out. It's fair to say that the anti-tank gun (we're talking counters to the new answers again) arrived within a few months of the tank. Result: neutralisation of the new idea, despite enthusiasm, back to the drawing board again.

The stosstruppen tactics were far more important than tanks, even with the machines of the next war, but they too lost their impact after nearly winning the Great War for the Germans. They were the product of a few very smart thinkers, including Rommel, but it doesn't seem quite fair to lambast everybody else on both sides for not being up to his level. Myself, I would rather reserve criticism for the analysts who had plenty of time in the 1920s to reflect on the lessons of the Great War, but who came up with earth shatteringly barmy ideas like the army composed entirely of tanks or the strategic bomber that would always get through and would render infantry unnecessary - and then castigated the wartime leaders for lacking their own penetrating vision. Which is where, I think, some of this all started from.

-- Anonymous, October 11, 2000

Not being a historian, I find this discussion very facinating. Remind me to update you folks on the benefits of a binary recursive tree next time we meet. To be honest, this sort of discussion just goes to remind me of how lacking my own education was. Now, as for music.............

But to be more serious for a moment..., can I ask if we could have really expected to do much different without the significant benefit of hindsight? I'm afraid to say, much of what I have read (enlightening as it is) only seems to comment on hisory: who has the answers?

-- Anonymous, October 11, 2000

Screach, "If history teaches us anything, it's that history teaches us nothing at all". :-)) Lanky, LOL. I've always had a weakness for the useless - I loved Latin, too.

-- Anonymous, October 11, 2000

Moby Bill has overturned my jolly-boat :-( I've run out of harpoons and the water is cold. Can't disagree with you Bill, you are quite right: if everybody changes their tactics then you are back to square one. Perhaps the real issue was the unwillingness to learn demonstrated by so many in WWI which was in stark contrast to the tactical flexibility displayed by the Wermacht in WWII. The use of combined arms and their constant refining of techniques and unit composition (tinkering with the mix of panzers and attached infantry and artillery complement) was literally years ahead of the Allies who were only able to stop them in 1943 through weight of numbers, and would only partially alter their tactics enough to beat them tactically by 1945.

The malaise in tactical thinking in Britain is perhaps best demonstrated in the misreading of how the Germans were beating us. The myth grew up that it was because the German tanks were technically superior to our own. Not true. They were all badly armoured and the much-maligned British 2 pounder was no less able to pierce armour than the German 37mm and short-barrelled 50mm guns in use at the time. What we continuously failed to realise was that the Germans approached combat in a completely different way to us.

Everyone remarked on the soft-skinned vehicles that accompanied the German panzer units without ever considering why. The simple fact was that they were towing the German anti-tank guns who would unlimber when contact with British tanks was made and wreak terrible havoc when we charged forward like a pack of fools. Anti tank guns are small, hard to hit, enjoy great visibility and have a far greater rate of fire than their tank-borne comrades with a crew of 2 squashed in a steel turret. Since our tankers would report engaging panzers who would then withdraw, we thought we were doing well and would advance onto the waiting guns, but never drew the conclusion that it was not the panzers brewing us up.

We still had the Great War mentality. If he had tanks we would counter them with more tanks. If he had infantry we had to mass our own infantry to stop them. If he had artillery we would mass our guns to engage in counter-battery fire. Each element was used to cancel out its opposite number and God marched with the big battallions. The Germans, on the other hand, considered it more like paper-scissors-stone. You used your tanks to squash unprotected infantry, your artillery to knock out the enemy tanks and your infantry to storm forward and neutralise enemy guns. Fundamentally different points of view, ironically both drawn from watching the British tanks in WWI.

Returning to those British tanks being picked off by bemused German anti-tank gunners, the one thing that was different in the panzers, was that they carried High Exlplosive ammunition precisely to knock out enemy guns (more chance of knocking out the crew with a wide scattering of shrapnel from shell-casings than to hit the tiny target of the gun itself with solid armour-piercing shot). There was nothing to prevent us providing HE ammo for the 2-pounder (the German 37mm had it and that was smaller bore) we just hadn't thought that we would need it, despite noticing that our tanks would roll over enemy positions but were unable to neutralise them if the enemy didn't oblige us by surrendering or running about in the open.

Likewise we have the embarrassment of the British 94mm anti-aircraft guns which we refused to release for an anti-tank role since they were quite clearly labelled anti-aircraft guns. The fact that the Germans had been knocking seven bells out of our tanks since Arras in 1940 with their 88mm anti-aircraft guns was never considered relevant to the debate. The Germans, however, had manufactured 100,000 rounds for use with captured pieces since they prized them so highly. Exactly the same "everything by the book", "you're not paid to think, you're paid to do what you're bloody well told" mentality which had strangled British tactics in WWI prevailed in WWII. It was only with the advent of American-made tanks with their mix of ammunition types that we started making any headway with armoured tactics and yet we still insisted on trying to attack the German tanks with our own with the same slaughter from German AT guns.

This all supports your view that a method is only good until the counter is found when attrition becomes king again, as it always depended on the opposition using outmoded countering tactics for you to achieve success. You mention Kursk and Stalingrad as examples of what happens when the enemy learns to counter your tactics. However, both of these campaigns flew in the face of all German military doctrine. Attacking a city with mobile forces has to rate as one of the most glaring misapplications of armour you will ever find probably matched only by that of attacking a salient head-on after giving the opposition months to prepare and making no secret of your intentions. Yet these are both examples of High Command showing the same level of contempt for the fighting soldiers as anything in WWI. The architects of German tactics found themselves on the reserve list for daring to mention that these operations were ill-advised. You find Hitler ordering both attacks against all advice and simply brooking no argument at all. Having removed everyone with the temperament to stand up to him, he had only Halder and his other yes-men to contend with.

When the initial assault on Stalingrad failed virtually every general in Army Group South requested to pull back to the Don line and wait for the Spring. Obviously the political need to take the city named after Stalin overrode all common-sense (especially after announcing that it had fallen), and whilst you can blame Adolf's lackey Paulus for not taking a stand and disobeying his orders by withdrawing before it was too late, you could hardly say that the operation was supported by the German military the way that the High Commanders of WWI had stuck to their peculiar tactics against all the prevailing evidence that they were unsuitable.

Likewise with Kursk, Manstein and Guderian had favoured pulling back to the Dnieper and forming a barrage against all Soviet attacks while they had the strength to do so. They had halted the Soviet juggernaut after Stalingrad by keeping their mobile forces as "fire brigades" who would move quickly to crush any Soviet mechanized forces who penetrated the front lines. This was the classic counter to their own Blitzkrieg and allowed the Germans to destroy vast numbers of Soviet units with sustainable (what do you mean "That sounds like expendable to me"?) casualty rates. Naturally Hitler refused to let anyone take "a single step back" and insisted instead that they go on the offensive. Again, this was not what the commanders wanted or would have chosen to do, but was imposed on them. The fact that the bomb plot was borne out of the fiasco showed just how concerned the Generals were at the conduct of the campaign and only the Russians ever voted with their feet in WWI about the leadership on display.

I fully recognise that there were a host of other issues involved with that, not least how people who find that they have backed the wrong horse might well want to switch bets in mid-race (ask the Italians!), but that is another whole debate in itself, which I will happily join in with, but fear that we will be kicked off the bbs once and for all :-)

Suffice to say that I attribute that enormous casualties of 1943-5 to a stubborn enemy utilizing (for the most part) exceptional defensive tactics against an Allied army which was stubbornly committed to wiping them out whatever the cost, and no tactics could have changed the eventual loss of life with the possible exception of nuking the Wolfschanze when Hitler was in residence. I see that as wildly different from ordering troops to walk slowly across no-man's-land for the umpteenth time to where the artillery had once again failed to destroy the barbed wire. The fact that the 2 occasions on which something different was tried in WWI the result had been significant gains with vastly reduced loss of life only makes it more vile. None of the above changes the fact that no loss of life should be acceptable in a difference of opinion, but if I had to choose a war with a cause worth fighting for, I reckon the defeat of Nazi Germany would always come out on top.

-- Anonymous, October 12, 2000

Thar she blows! Avast behind! The great white Barton...

Softie, I can't disagree with more than a single word of what you have said. I think that the whole point is that counters are found and armies get sucked into hugely inappropriate battles because they have to (last four words should be in bold italics, can't be wotnotted to find out how but at least I don't end up leaving them switched on for ever!). The Germans from 1939 to 1942 were something else, the best since Wellington's lads won a penalty shoot-out up the road at La Haye Sainte. But even the Germans ended up slugging it out toe to toe in the most unsubtle way possible on the Eastern Front, however much there were excuses for Stalingrad and the others.

Which leaves the troops walking slowly across no-man's land, a haunting and shocking image, but in itself just as much a one off as Stalingrad. No attack other than the Somme was made without stressing the need to move as quickly as possible across the open ground, and - later - to take advantage of cover where available. That was a late development, because experience told both sides that once a soldier "went to ground" he wouldn't get up again under fire. The first hand accounts make it clear that new methods were being sought all the time, albeit unsuccessfully. The Germans had used exactly the same relentless frontal linear attack to bring the French to the point of collapse at Verdun, which was the very reason for the Somme, to stop the Germans attacking Verdun. Contemporary records show the French begging the British to attack, to relieve the pressure on Verdun - not quite the image of grateful defenders being happy to continue just mowing down anything that moved in no-man's land.

I think that the problem here is that we are applying the wisdom of 20-20 hindsight. You KNOW that there was a better way just waiting to be discovered (albeit briefly until the right response was found). Therefore, continuing with the old tactics seems criminally stupid. But ever since the musket became effective, about 1700 or so, battles had been fought by massing lines (or occasionally columns) against each other, right through the introduction of the rifle and then the machine gun. Grant and Lee couldn't see a better way, hence Gettysburg, Antietam and the rest. von Moltke and all his contemporaries couldn't see a better way, hence Sedan (not to mention Magenta and Solferino, two battles so bloody they gave their name to shades of red). Falkenhayn, Hindenburg, Ludendorf, Haig, Rawlinson and Gough couldn't see a better way, hence Verdun, the Somme and Ypres. Finally, a genius called Rommel found the better way (which lasted for the last year of that war and the first two of the next), and suddenly all the rest are idiots for not spotting it earlier. Nope, sorry, that's the one bit I can't quite buy.

Softie mate, I defer to your knowledge of WW2 every single time, and thanks for a compelling analysis of the Eastern Front. But I think there's a little more to the Great War than you suggest, at the very least an alternative view. However, maybe we'd better take this up in another forum, or we'll be accused of callously expending thousands of words in a futile attempt to move General Haig's drinks cabinet a few feet closer to Berlin. ;-))

-- Anonymous, October 12, 2000

"a genius called Rommel found the better way and suddenly all the rest are idiots for not spotting it earlier. Nope, sorry, that's the one bit I can't quite buy.

This is where we ideologically diverge I'm afraid Dr. Bill.
"Better ways" were constantly under the "Idiots" noses. Unfortunately, they didn't have the wit, wisdom or common sense to effectively utilise them. In many cases they were simply too autocratic and arrogant to even seek a better way, and IMHO just because this was part of their breeding shouldn't excuse their consequent grotesque failings.

There is, of course, rather more too it than this. The WW1 variety of Idiots were the residual vestiges of a ruling aristocracy whose predestined career paths were into either politics or the military - whether or not they were intellectually and emotionally equipped for senior office.

At the outset of the Great War such career aristocrats dominated the senior levels of both 'branches'. It was only when Lloyd George became a 'half-time substitute' as Prime Minister that politicians began to seriously question the military course of the War and the growing casualties, and begin to actively participate in decisions impacting the course of the hostilities.

The senior British Military 'Idiots' of this period were largely cavalry officers - by training, background and instinct. Their desire to maximise the use of the cavalry in its historic role of bursting through the enemy lines and creating massive confusion and chaos, burned bright in the tactical thinking/planning of this genre of senior officer and contributed them to undervaluing, and at least initially, underutilising and/or misusing emerging technology.

Despite all the lessons one might have expected Field Marshall Haigh to have learned during the conflict, as late as 1926 he wrote "I believe the value of the horse and the opportunity of the horse in the future are likely to be as great as ever. Aeroplanes and tanks are only accessories to the men and the horse, and I feel sure that as time goes on you will find just as much use for the horse - the well-bred horse - as you have ever done in the past".
"The well-bred horse" indeed! After four bloody years on the Western Front had our military leader not learned anything?

-- Anonymous, October 12, 2000

woops- sorry! (Bold OFF to you!)

-- Anonymous, October 12, 2000

Whoa Clarky, don't hold back there, just tell me what you REALLY think!

The Great War was generally held to be the death knell of the Empire, which was of course founded on the principles of a ruling class as you say. Mind you, that was practically everybody else's system at the time, so I'm not quite sure what the point is. We should perhaps reject the achievements of just about every military leader from Ashurbanipal to Wellington (but not Zhukov) because they weren't too hot on social equality? Being the product of a class system, however much you and I might hate that system (and I do it professionally), doesn't automatically make you stupid, arrogant, or any of the other epithets you use. Any more than being the product of a communist (so theoretically more egalitarian) system automatically makes you a good soldier, or even more caring of your men - just look at the Soviet Army's performance from 1941 to 1943. For Heaven's sake, they got their men to 'clear' minefields by marching through them.

You say that the Great War British Army was dominated by cavalry generals, who were obsessed with creating the breakthrough for cavalry to exploit. Of the senior commanders from Kitchener down to Army Commanders, 1914 through 1918, in origin 4 were artillerymen, 8 cavalrymen, 14 infantrymen, and 1 an engineer. One of the cavalrymen, Robertson, was the first man ever to rise from trooper to general, which rather flies in the face of the aristocratic idiot theory. 8 out of 27 cannot meaningfully support your contention that "the senior British idiots were largely cavalry officers...".

In 1914, Britain put 31 cavalry regiments into the field, plus some yeomanry that joined later. At the same time, Germany fielded 110 cavalry regiments, and France 89. Later, many were dismounted, including as you may recall my grandfather's regiment (he was a trooper too, by the way, but didn't quite make general). Hardly a British obsession, then. Yes, some regiments were kept mounted through 1916, but let me ponder on exactly how critical you would have been if a sizeable gap HAD been achieved - but there was no mobile force left to exploit it? Here's a quote from a British soldier being grateful that the enemy had no cavalry available:

"It was a crowning mercy that they had no cavalry. How many times during the retreat did we thank heaven for this! The sight of a few mounted men in the distance would at once start a ripple of anxiety... Cavalry was the one factor which would have smashed the morale of the defence in a twinkling".

Care to date it? It's 1918, during the German offensives that spring which so nearly won them the war. Maybe they would have if they had had cavalry there?

Lloyd George, who you use to support the argument, was a VERY biased comentator. He was of course a politician, not averse to being selective with the truth when it suited him, and he had a large axe to grind on the conduct of the war. I doubt that you will find many military historians, or indeed old soldiers, who would say that close political interference in the conduct of a war was EVER a good thing. Certainly, Lloyd George was seeking to justify the notion that he was the one exception to this rule. Haig may have been no better than average, although he did better than many in 1918, but he was in very good company - less as well as more aristocratic and multinational - in failing to beat Rommel to the revolution in infantry tactics. He was also far from alone in seeing a future for the horse in the 1920s. Whilst your quote sounds pretty laughable, I would say that the term "well bred" when applied to horses - as dogs - doesn't actually have the connotation you attribute to it, and remember that the vaunted German Army of 1941 took more horses into Russia than it did trucks.

There IS another take on this Clarky, and you really should read Terraine if you are going to rely on Lloyd George. And bold off to you too!

-- Anonymous, October 13, 2000

Dr. Bill,

I could willingly pick up several debating points and continue this fascinating discussion; however, I feel I need to recognise that your breadth of knowledge of the key issues is far wider than mine, and based on a greater number of diverse information sources.

I have certainly gained respect for your knowledge of the subject, and was not consciously trying to be a smart-arse in my last post. I have undoutedly formed firm views of the conduct of the conflict on the Western Front - but must recognise that these have been formed from a limited number of information sources, in addition to my own observations on the ground.

Accordingly, I feel I should retreat to a more defensible position, reassess my situation, restock & refuel, and prepare a new offensive - but on my own terms rather than the oppositions. Then - "hasta la vista, baby!!"

BTW - many thanks for offering to loan me John Terraine's book. However, I have located a copy at my local library and have reserved it. I'm really looking forward to reading it.

-- Anonymous, October 13, 2000

Cheers Clarky, enjoy the book.

When you've read it, you may well still think they were idiots, but maybe with slightly more feel for the difficulties they faced.

John Keegan's "The First World War" is a good, dispassionate military historian's view, I think.

-- Anonymous, October 14, 2000