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the JJ posted:I think Hegel's talking about a more formalized 'checklist' after which a commander (not the feudal owner of the fort) could surrender and not face I think it was more a direct threat to the population: IE: surrender after your fortification is rendered indefensible (IE a breached wall/gate) but allow us to enter peacefully instead of forcing the breach and losing a lot of guys and we won't/might not sack the place. Hogge Wild posted:
There are cleaner ones yet. You gotta scour the archives for 'em, though. e: like this one: http://i.imgur.com/VmSZjUA.jpg Grand Prize Winner fucked around with this message at 10:37 on Jan 8, 2014 |
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Jan 8, 2014 05:36
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ing from their own side. E.G. 'stores were at 50%, they shelled us for 8 days, it'd been 8 months and you fucks never sent help, so... yeah we surrendered.' The return of the 
that must be the cleanest Oglaf!
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a travelling HEGEL posted:This lasted right up until the French Revolution, when a garrison commander who surrendered in the old way was executed, along with his wife, for giving in to enemies of the revolution. I'm flying solely on reading comprehension skill here, but I think this is the point Hegel was making. As Diaz pointed out, "don't make us come gently caress you up because that would gently caress us up too, just not as much" has been, well, the central point of siege warfare ever since one soldier looked at a wall and said "gently caress that I'll let the rear end in a top hat starve." Where as the confluence of 'this fort is not yours but granted to your command as part of a big state so you've got greater responsibilities than your own immediate hide here' plus the overall seriousness of 'national' armies vs. strictly professional (as in, fighting for coin, not country) was much more something that developed with the Revolution. (And the we all go read Hobsbawm.)
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Jan 8, 2014 07:07
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Koramei posted:Alternatively, you join those marauding barbarians and snowball all around the Mediterranean with your new pals 'cause you kind of hated your old rulers anyway. Might have gone like this: Warlike people suffer a famine, and attack another culture to take their food before they starve. Since they were more desperate, the other guy breaks first, generating a horde of refugees. Turns out the other guys didn't have enough food either, now you have two waves of hungry barbarians, one marginally better fed and armed. Repeat until the population drops sufficiently or they get too hungry to fight.
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Jan 8, 2014 09:49
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Didn't the Sea Peoples use straight swords that didn't show up in other cultures?
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Jan 8, 2014 09:52
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brozozo posted:Finally, a few questions of my own about WWI: This is from a couple pages back, but I finally got to the relevant part in Guns of August. Part of the problem was logistics: There were no east-west rail lines running from Russian Poland to German Prussia, and Russian and German rail gauges were incompatible anyway (a fact that would also weigh heavily in the next war), which meant that as Russian supplies reached the pre-war border, they could only be sent to the front via horse-drawn transportation. This made it very difficult to establish telephone and telegraph lines running from the front back to Russian high command, on top of the Germans destroying any telegraph/telephone stations and lines they left behind as well as evacuating all rolling stock to prevent Russians from using rail-lines without need for gauge conversion. The net effect was that the Russians could only communicate to their General Staff via radios, and they were forced to broadcast unencrypted messages because their cryptologists could not find transportation to the front either. The second time Russian cryptology was mentioned, it was supposedly in a very simple code that was broken quickly by a cryptologist attached to the German 8th Army staff. There's no explicit mention of what the code was or what cryptology was like for the Russian Army as a whole, but I would not be surprised if the Russian Army lacked formal procedures for it, either due to the general backwardness of their doctrine/technology or just during the battle as a result of the abbreviated mobilization they pulled off in order to meet their obligations with the French.
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Jan 8, 2014 12:55
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Godholio posted:I lived in England for a few years growing up. The historical things that I still remember are the HMS Belfast (museum ship docked in London), the Tower of London, Buckingham Palace, Windsor Castle, and Framlingham Castle near Ipswich. Also in that area is Sutton Hoo. A bit late, but I live in Framlingham And worked at the castle during my teenage years, if anyone has any questions.
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Jan 8, 2014 13:01
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gradenko_2000 posted:Part of the problem was logistics: There were no east-west rail lines running from Russian Poland to German Prussia, and Russian and German rail gauges were incompatible anyway (a fact that would also weigh heavily in the next war), which meant that as Russian supplies reached the pre-war border, they could only be sent to the front via horse-drawn transportation. This made it very difficult to establish telephone and telegraph lines running from the front back to Russian high command, on top of the Germans destroying any telegraph/telephone stations and lines they left behind as well as evacuating all rolling stock to prevent Russians from using rail-lines without need for gauge conversion. I recently read of an even funnier problem the Russians had: all Russian corps had their own logistics, supply and reinforcement setups with very little intercorps cooperation. Peter Englund's The Beauty and The Sorrow mentions Russian brigades marching away from the Germans towards the Austrian front, despite the Austrians having been defeated and the Germans whipping every formation thrown at them (to simplify it), because there was no intercorps cooperation and no way in hell was the corps commander borrowing a fresh brigade to another corps.
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Jan 8, 2014 13:30
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Did the mongols actually send out emissaries bearing crosses, pretending to be the Kingdom of Prestor John only to slaughter any enemy ambassadors who showed up? Cause, goddamn.
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Jan 8, 2014 16:51
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Grand Prize Winner posted:I think it was more a direct threat to the population: IE: surrender after your fortification is rendered indefensible (IE a breached wall/gate) but allow us to enter peacefully instead of forcing the breach and losing a lot of guys and we won't/might not sack the place. This might be my favorite non-porno Oglaf: http://oglaf.com/bilge/
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Jan 8, 2014 17:00
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cargo cult posted:Did the mongols actually send out emissaries bearing crosses, pretending to be the Kingdom of Prestor John only to slaughter any enemy ambassadors who showed up? Cause, goddamn. Incredibly unlikely, since the Mongols were incredibly emphatic about respecting ambassadors. Where did you hear this?
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Jan 8, 2014 17:01
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Obdicut posted:Incredibly unlikely, since the Mongols were incredibly emphatic about respecting ambassadors. I thought the Mongols established a lot of the 'rules' surrounding abassadors and the like? So yeah, sounds kinda fishy to me. Also, they were pretty cool with other religions as long as you prayed for the Khan.
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Jan 8, 2014 17:20
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Big Willy Style posted:I thought the Mongols established a lot of the 'rules' surrounding abassadors and the like? So yeah, sounds kinda fishy to me. Also, they were pretty cool with other religions as long as you prayed for the Khan. I learned this from Dan Carlin's Hardcore History, but yeah he did mention that the Mongols were pretty tolerant by the standards of the time - if there's a lot of gods out there but you don't know which one answers prayers, why not let people pray to whoever they want?
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Jan 8, 2014 17:31
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There were also some Nestorians among the Central Asian tribes that got folded into the general Mongol horde as it pushed west. A lot of people were hoping that Chiggis was in fact the mythical Prester John come to help the Crusaders.
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Jan 8, 2014 18:38
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gradenko_2000 posted:This is from a couple pages back, but I finally got to the relevant part in Guns of August. Thanks for the informative answer!
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Jan 8, 2014 19:05
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Are there any examples of fighting treatises written for ladies?
Koramei fucked around with this message at 18:25 on Feb 19, 2014 |
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Jan 8, 2014 20:28
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The question of what the European powers had learned, or failed to learn, from previous wars in the buildup to World War One tends to pop up in this thread. Well, I recently got my hands on a Swedish military publication from 1912 titled “Observations from the Russian-Japanese war” which answers just that, and I thought I’d do an effortpost on the subject. The book shows its age – unsurprisingly, for a work that’s more than a century old. The terminology and language used is endearingly old-fashioned, there’s a lot of f:s where modern Swedish would have v:s, a lot of swedified French words that are no longer in use, and in some places the authors are clearly struggling with words that (at the time) have yet to enter Swedish military parlance. For example, what we now call splitter (shrapnel) is referred to as skrot (junk). The book also uses the word fordon (vehicle), which I first took to mean motorised vehicle, but eventually realised meant horse-drawn carriage. It also clearly shows the German dominance in military matters of the time – the majority of sources for the book are from German observers, or from similar works by the German high command. Many of the Russian sources are also either German translations or – quite likely – written in German by their Russian authors. Many of the high-ranking Russian officers which feature in the book have German family names. The work concerns itself mainly with Russian actions and conditions, probably because Japanese sources where harder to obtain. Occasionally, however, it makes use of testimonies from Japanese officers. The Swedish authors come off as rather impressed with the Japanese, though it is hard to tell how much of that comes from traditional Swedish disdain for the Russians. Infantry The book starts, not with describing the training and equipment of the common Russian soldier, but rather analysing his moral and intellectual nature. The common Russian soldier is described as hardened by life of poverty, but lacking in initiative and mental fortitude. His greatest shortcomings is superstition and imagination, which makes him an easy victim for rumours and panic. A number of examples are given describing the behaviour of panicked units. One occasion stands out to me in which an entire regiment including artillery – without orders or directions - starts to randomly fire away into the dusk at non-existent Japanese. The regiment isn’t taking incoming fire and isn’t observing any enemies, yet it takes hours to get it back under control. This and many other examples seems to indicate that the soldiers weren’t really trained in what to do in sudden and unexpected contact (or what they believe to be contact) with the enemy. They should march and fire on order, and not much else. The way infantry fights is very different to modern tactics. The infantry operates in large formations. On some occasions the book notes when very small-scale movements are taking place by speaking of “half-troops”, which seems to be some 10-20 soldiers. On the attack the infantry advance in line, several hundred soldiers at once with just a few meters between them, with stops at regular intervals to fire at the enemy. The units assume attack formation several kilometres from the enemy. The fire is opened as far out as 2000 meters, and on occasion even 3000 meters. Getting within 300 meters of the enemy is considered very close, and this is also the distance at which the Russians fix bayonets and begin the charge. The book takes for granted that bayonet charges is the way infantry combat is decided, though it notes that the Russians start theirs rather early. It cites a Russian commander telling his soldiers that if he could get away with taking away their bullets and have them attack with only bayonets, he would. The book clearly notes how incredibly difficult it is to flush out infantry in protected positions, and also the devastating effect of machineguns against unprotected infantry. However, at the start of the war Russia has less than 20 machineguns in their army. The word “camouflage” has yet to enter the Swedish vocabulary, but the book notes the importance of having uniforms in discrete single colours “well adapted to the terrain”. Racial theory is also taken for granted. The book cites a Russian commander explaining that the small, mountain-dwelling Japanese naturally fared better in the hilly terrain of Manchuria than the Russians, who are a people of the steppe and should thus avoid fighting in the mountains at all costs. Cavalry The book goes out of its way to explain that the lacklustre performance of cavalry during the war is due to several factors, including the relatively small amount of cavalry involved, incompetent commanders and – on the Russian side – lacking horsecare, and that thus no conclusions can be drawn as to the effectiveness of cavalry on the modern battlefield. However, with the wisdom of hindsight it is easy to see that all the examples given in the text clearly point to cavalry being incapable of tackling even a moderately prepared enemy. In an interesting precursor to later special forces, the Russians organise so-called “ranger commands” consisting of cavalrymen handpicked for their intelligence and initiative, which are used for long-range independent recon. Artillery The power of modern artillery is clearly recognised. On several occasions the book brings up the devastation wrought on troops caught in the open by artillery – but it also notes how inefficient it is against properly prepared fortifications, and how infantry hidden in shelters can quickly man their positions again once the artillery fire stops. Indirect fire is mentioned a few times, but only as something which has been rumoured to have taken place. Most artillery battles take place with a clear line of sight to the enemy, and the crews often come under direct infantry fire. The book mentions a single instance of what appears to be use of chemical weapons. Following a Japanese artillery barrage, some shell fragments are said to give off fumes which cause nausea and illness in nearby soldiers. Communications Almost all communication is done through courier, whether on foot or horse. The Russians have a dedicated telegraph company, but it is capable of serving only a very small part of the army. They are criticised for their poor use of heliographs. Wireless radio isn’t even mentioned. Orders take time to arrive, if they arrive at all. Cossacks are singled out as being particularly apathetic and careless when it comes to delivering messages, sometimes not even bothering to get the job done. A single instance of Russian use of transporting troops by railroad is described, and it is pointed out how this allowed them to quickly reinforce their defences along the rail line. Recon Recon is mainly done by cavalry, or by infantry patrols. Artillery batteries make use of tall, self-supporting ladders to get a better view of the surroundings. Over the course of the war, the Russians set up the East Siberian Air Sailing Battalion, for recognisance from balloons. However, they are only used a handful of times throughout the war. Eventually, both sides start making use of what the Swedish authors refer to as “ambushes” – forwards observers hidden beyond their own front line. They operate in a pair of two, and are not supposed to open fire or light bonfires when the enemy is sighted – which normal observers would. Instead, one man returns to report, while the other stays hidden. This is considered very unorthodox, and the fact that, towards the end of the war, the majority of Japanese forward observers are made up of “ambushes” is seen as remarkable. Command The command situation, at least on the Russian side, seems to be a clusterfuck. Orders go missing, arrive too late, or are adjusted or countermanded ad infinitum. Cooperation between units suffer from petty rivalries between their officers, and examples are given of commanders who refuse to commit their units to battle because they feel they have been slighted by another officer. High-ranking officers set up their headquarters within areas allocated to other units, simply because there happens to be nicer houses there. Russian officers are often criticised for their rigidity and lack of initiative. However, at other times they are criticised for failing to maintain discipline and order among the soldiers. I was left with the impression that occasionally the authors were pointing out every perceived fault among the Russians without reflection. Conclusions Judging from this work, a book of observations collected by a neutral state, should the European powers have seen the shape World War One would take? Well, yes and no. The authors note the power of artillery and machineguns, and also how incredibly bloody it is to attack trenches and bunkers. However - though it is never said outright, it is implicitly understood that you should not attack a fortified enemy if at all possible. You pin him down and outflank him. The basis for strategic and tactical thinking is movement, often over rather large areas. What strikes me is that no conclusions are drawn from the poor state of what we today call infrastructure in Manchuria and the Russian far east. The speed with which you can reinforce your front when you have access to railroads and proper communication is observed in the book, yet nothing is made of it. It is also notable that the serious impact on morale of unnecessary or costly attacks is explicitly spelled out. These people knew that it sucked to attack trenches, and that it was something you shouldn’t do (though the authors don't use the Swedish word for trench – in Swedish a trench is called skyttegrav, which literally translates to “shooting grave”). The general view appears to be that a modern war becomes static only when the opposing sides lack either resources or the will to act rapidly. A properly equipped and motivated force would act with such speed and decisiveness that it could not be pinned down long enough for what we now call trench warfare to develop. The Russians are criticised for their passivity and lack of offensive spirit, the rigidity in their thinking and the lack of initiative at all levels of command. Almost all of the problems that the belligerents would face on the western front are observed and identified – the power of artillery and machineguns, the futility of attacking a fortified enemy, the grind of static warfare – but these problems are largely taken to be a peculiarity of the fighting in the Far East, and something that a more competent army can bypass.
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Jan 10, 2014 11:13
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Fascinating. Good luck with those 300 meter bayonete charges, guys.
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Jan 10, 2014 15:04
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I always thought that it was a case of arms briefly outstripping some quotient of armor and mobility, in the case of WWI. Why operate in the open field or in thinly-armored cars when the enemy has machine guns in a static, fortified position? gently caress it, just dig in and use your artillery to work them over before finishing off with an infantry charge.
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Jan 10, 2014 15:53
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quote:The general view appears to be that a modern war becomes static only when the opposing sides lack either resources or the will to act rapidly. A properly equipped and motivated force would act with such speed and decisiveness that it could not be pinned down long enough for what we now call trench warfare to develop. The Russians are criticised for their passivity and lack of offensive spirit, the rigidity in their thinking and the lack of initiative at all levels of command. Well, if the Schlieffen plan had worked (could it have worked?) we'd probably be looking at things differently. Trench warfare didn't happen on the Eastern front, for what it's worth.
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Jan 10, 2014 16:28
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Fangz posted:Well, if the Schlieffen plan had worked (could it have worked?) we'd probably be looking at things differently. Trench warfare didn't happen on the Eastern front, for what it's worth. Schlieffen couldn't work, even Schlieffen himself acknowledged that. The road network in Belgium simply wasn't dense enough to allow the troops needed for that giant flanking maneuver through. In fact, the early war as it happened went better than Schlieffen had expected.
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Jan 10, 2014 16:35
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The Entire Universe posted:I always thought that it was a case of arms briefly outstripping some quotient of armor and mobility, in the case of WWI. Why operate in the open field or in thinly-armored cars when the enemy has machine guns in a static, fortified position? gently caress it, just dig in and use your artillery to work them over before finishing off with an infantry charge. That's...exactly what they were trying. Turns out artillery usually wasn't as effective as expected, so the defenders were still there waiting for you. Except they probably know you're on your way because your artillery fire is diminishing.
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Jan 10, 2014 16:37
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The Entire Universe posted:I always thought that it was a case of arms briefly outstripping some quotient of armor and mobility, in the case of WWI. Why operate in the open field or in thinly-armored cars when the enemy has machine guns in a static, fortified position? gently caress it, just dig in and use your artillery to work them over before finishing off with an infantry charge. Yes, it was possible to smash the defenders in trenches by drowning them in artillery shells*. Most generals had (more-or-less) figured that out by 1916. The next problem was making hay out of the advance: Your men are running across muddy, cratered ground that hasn't had all of the barbed wire removed yet, and they're carrying full packs, which means they can only run so far. They can probably make it to the first line of trenches no problem, but at that point you've lost contact with them because telegraph wires don't carry across No Man's Land, radios aren't that portable yet and couriers are too slow even if they did survive going to HQ then back again to the line. If you planned the advance along a narrow front ("bite-and-hold") and maybe pre-synchronized the rate of advance with the artillery, you might even have mustered up enough force to make it to the second trench line, but now your men have created a salient and are open to attack from 3 sides. If this was a broad front offensive, you probably don't have enough concentration of force to make significant gains, or you only make significant gains in some sectors which creates salients anyway. In both cases, you're advancing through bad terrain and away from railheads, while the enemy is retreating into prepared positions and good infrastructure, which means you're never going to advance fast enough to prevent him from throwing up reserves in front of whatever half-breakthrough you might have created. The whole machine-gun/artillery/dug-in-defenders dynamic was a tactical evolution. On the operational side, the Western Front devolved into trench warfare due to logistics. The defender could move with trains while the attacker could only march. Even though generals had figured out how to initiate an attack and make good the first phase, there just wasn't any good answers for the exploitation phase. * As Godholio said, there's technically more to it than just firing off a ton of shells into trenches - long bombardments that announce what you're doing long before you begin the attack are less effective than things like creeping barrages, short-sharp bombardments just enough to make everyone duck for cover while the infantry advances (and then you bombard them again once people stick out their heads), or mixed-shell and mixed-intensity barrages along a wide front that don't tell the enemy when and where you're going to attack.
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Jan 10, 2014 16:51
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gradenko_2000 posted:In both cases, you're advancing through bad terrain and away from railheads, while the enemy is retreating into prepared positions and good infrastructure, which means you're never going to advance fast enough to prevent him from throwing up reserves in front of whatever half-breakthrough you might have created. This is a great explanation of the heart of the issue of WWI's static lines. There was just no good way to sustain troops that were even a few miles away from supply trains, and those troops were nearly always facing fresh reserves who were counterattacking from a well supported position. There just wasn't a good answer to that problem until better mechanization came along.
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Jan 10, 2014 17:01
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I thought the German introduction of infiltration tactics was regularly able to break trench lines, but they were simply to exhausted to keep the attacks going. (And there was still a tendency to attack strong points instead of exploiting past them. Old habits die hard)
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Jan 10, 2014 18:13
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Exactly. You can break the line but then you have a small contingent of guys in enemy territory, with no man's land between them and reinforcements. Meanwhile the other side is rushing reinforcements in via rail, truck, cart, communications trench, etc. The defender has all the advantages and can counterattack at a time of their choosing.
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Jan 10, 2014 19:34
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ArchangeI posted:Schlieffen couldn't work, even Schlieffen himself acknowledged that. The road network in Belgium simply wasn't dense enough to allow the troops needed for that giant flanking maneuver through. In fact, the early war as it happened went better than Schlieffen had expected. It didn't improve in the inter-war years as the B.E.F. and French learned.
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Jan 10, 2014 21:05
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BurningStone posted:I thought the German introduction of infiltration tactics was regularly able to break trench lines, but they were simply to exhausted to keep the attacks going. (And there was still a tendency to attack strong points instead of exploiting past them. Old habits die hard) The problem is that the infiltrating units had poor cohesion once they got past their objectives and they were still slower than the reserves they were up against. The Michael attacks petered out after a while, and there's some thought that their success had as much to do with poor British defensive philosophy than anything else.
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Jan 10, 2014 21:05
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So if attack was basically futile and defence was far more efficient in a men and materiel, and everyone in command pretty much knew this already, what was the point of making any kind of attack at all? Why not just constantly defend and let the other side wear themselves out? Was it really just because they thought Germany was right on the edge of collapsing and throwing more men at them would hasten that?
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Jan 11, 2014 00:17
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Well keep in mind that Germany occupied almost all of Belgium, and a decently sized chunk of France. That's not really something you can just let go.
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Jan 11, 2014 00:24
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Slavvy posted:So if attack was basically futile and defence was far more efficient in a men and materiel, and everyone in command pretty much knew this already, what was the point of making any kind of attack at all? Why not just constantly defend and let the other side wear themselves out? Was it really just because they thought Germany was right on the edge of collapsing and throwing more men at them would hasten that? Several reasons, most of which go back to the attitude that inaction is defeatism. And yes, the fact that Germany was sitting on a bunch of French and Belgian real estate.
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Jan 11, 2014 00:30
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Slavvy posted:So if attack was basically futile and defence was far more efficient in a men and materiel, and everyone in command pretty much knew this already, what was the point of making any kind of attack at all? Why not just constantly defend and let the other side wear themselves out? Was it really just because they thought Germany was right on the edge of collapsing and throwing more men at them would hasten that? On the German side, the Imperial leadership knew that because of the blockade and the size of the Russian army they were at a disadvantage when it came to a battle of attrition, so they were of the mind to look for a way to break through and force a settlement.
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Jan 11, 2014 00:33
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Slavvy posted:So if attack was basically futile and defence was far more efficient in a men and materiel, and everyone in command pretty much knew this already, what was the point of making any kind of attack at all? Why not just constantly defend and let the other side wear themselves out? Was it really just because they thought Germany was right on the edge of collapsing and throwing more men at them would hasten that? Well, they didn't have some sort of intuitive knowledge that there was almost no way a strategic-level offensive could have succeeded during that era. They did try ton of different things, some very creative, to try and restore some strategic mobility. I think you can say it was Falkenhayn who, at least at the national level, understood the true nature of the war (attrition) and what was needed to win it (casualties). That was the design behind Verdun, and it nearly worked despite being horribly run at the operational level. In any case, it was a very difficult position for everybody. The "spirit of the attack" kind of thinking refused to die (it still isn't dead), plus you had a TON of public pressure (especially on the Allies) to do..."something"....to get the dirty Germans out of Belgium and France. A negotiated peace was the only real sane way out but that wasn't going to happen with Germany in a position of strength on the Western Front, so over the top we went. I suppose if some particularly transcendent military mind (Longstreet comes to mind) had been present on either side that the meat-grinder nature of things might have been turned up a bit and the conflict hastened, but from a strategic perspective at least I don't really find a whole lot of fault with how either side conducted the war, humanitarian concerns aside of course. This puts me at serious odds with a lot of people, needless to say.
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Jan 11, 2014 01:05
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I thought the whole Verdun "bleed the French white" thing was just the general trying to save face after it failed.
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Jan 11, 2014 02:56
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Shimrra Jamaane posted:I thought the whole Verdun "bleed the French white" thing was just the general trying to save face after it failed. The "bleed the French white" thing game from Falkenhayn's memoirs after the war, and I don't believe he ever mentioned the phrase to anyone during Verdun. No one is really sure what his intentions were at the time.
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Jan 11, 2014 03:03
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No, it was a deliberate policy, though, as mention, it wasn't executed very well, with the Germans ending up bleeding almost as much as the French. Arguably, it worked: the French army was greatly weakened. The price was too high, however.
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Jan 11, 2014 03:03
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Shimrra Jamaane posted:I thought the whole Verdun "bleed the French white" thing was just the general trying to save face after it failed. I don't know about the origin or date of that specific phrase, but the general strategy of the offensive was exactly that. In short, to draw as many French troops into an area that was covered with as much artillery as possible, and blow them up, with the goal of destroying /attriting the French strategic reserve and a maybe even the British if you got really lucky. After the reserves were sufficiently reduced, a major offensive would be launched in the north roughly following the 1914 egress. Basically, Falkenhayn and crew had figured out that no major offensive could be effective while major reserves were still available, so their plan was to destroy the reserves and then just grind it out to Paris.
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Jan 11, 2014 04:06
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bewbies posted:I don't know about the origin or date of that specific phrase, but the general strategy of the offensive was exactly that. In short, to draw as many French troops into an area that was covered with as much artillery as possible, and blow them up, with the goal of destroying /attriting the French strategic reserve and a maybe even the British if you got really lucky. After the reserves were sufficiently reduced, a major offensive would be launched in the north roughly following the 1914 egress. Basically, Falkenhayn and crew had figured out that no major offensive could be effective while major reserves were still available, so their plan was to destroy the reserves and then just grind it out to Paris. But then they lost nearly as many troops as the French. So what happened?
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Jan 11, 2014 04:11
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Slavvy posted:So if attack was basically futile and defence was far more efficient in a men and materiel, and everyone in command pretty much knew this already, what was the point of making any kind of attack at all? Why not just constantly defend and let the other side wear themselves out? Was it really just because they thought Germany was right on the edge of collapsing and throwing more men at them would hasten that? Your last question did play a part - Allied intelligence services kept saying that the Germans lost way more men than the Allies did whenever the Allies attacked (partly out of national pride, partly because the intel was plain bad) and the generals bought into it enough to think that Germany was always just on the other side of running out of manpower after this next offensive. Keep in mind though that we're talking about the Western Front. The Eastern Front remained relatively fluid and mobile and it's a what-if of the war for the Central Powers to have remained on the defensive in the West, throw most of their weight into going after Russia and hoping to trigger a national collapse earlier. The unfeasible part of this what-if is with regards to political considerations on going purely defensive in the West. Shimrra Jamaane posted:But then they lost nearly as many troops as the French. So what happened? AFAIK, the Germans lost sight of what they wanted to do. They pissed away so many men trying to take Verdun as a symbolic/political gesture that they were no longer following the original objective of luring the French into killing zones and destroying them afterwards. The French also managed to adapt better to the demands of the battle, particularly in the way Petain rotated pretty much the entire French Army through Verdun as a means of letting everyone gain experience while preventing front-line divisions from getting ground down to nubs.
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Jan 11, 2014 05:25
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Shimrra Jamaane posted:But then they lost nearly as many troops as the French. So what happened? Mud and the Somme. So the German plan for Verdun was to take the heights above the town on the German side of Meuse and bombard the crap out of town/salient. However, they decided to attack in February. First the attack was delayed by about a week, due to fog IIRC, then after a few days of attacking a storm comes in and turns the area to mud, slowing the German advance and allowing the French to reinforce the area. So now the Germans have to grind through the strengthened French lines to take the heights which they eventually nearly succeed at by June 1916. Then on July 1st the British open the Battle of the Somme which forces the Germans to redeploy artillery and troops from Verdun north. This, in addition to a poorly planned attack that still nearly took the last fort they needed to hold the heights, caused Falkenhayn to order a switch to defense, ending the German offensive at Verdun. The opening of the Somme also allowed some French units to be moved to Verdun where they were then used in the French counter-offensive that pushed the Germans back off the heights. e: also does anyone know if like a topographic version of google earth exists? It'd make looking up military movement so much easier. e2: Apparently the French have a pretty awesome at http://www.geoportail.gouv.fr/ but its for France only and of course is in French. Raskolnikov38 fucked around with this message at 06:09 on Jan 11, 2014 |
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Jan 11, 2014 05:54
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bewbies posted:In any case, it was a very difficult position for everybody. The "spirit of the attack" kind of thinking refused to die (it still isn't dead), plus you had a TON of public pressure (especially on the Allies) to do..."something"....to get the dirty Germans out of Belgium and France.
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Jan 11, 2014 06:16
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