Its not as simple as that, there's a strong argument that general Haig had a plan and it was working. The major criticism is the human cost not the strategy.

If you wouldn't mind, I'd like to read that argument. Or, perhaps you can provide some links, or something.

Wish I could provide more but cant recall where I read a fairly detailed account some years ago.

The basic argument is that the stategy was a war of attrition and that Germany was losing that war (albeit slowly), and would have lost despite the unforseen collapse of the Eastern front even if the USA hadn't joined in.

I'm not claiming to be convinced this is the case but even less convinced by the claim that somehow if the USA hadn't joined in WW1 would still be going on. There is room for an analysis on who was winning the war of attrition and whether that was the general strategy or itself a post hoc justification.

Also Haig was correctly an easy target because of the saverge butchery under his command but so much of the (at the time) revisionism against him was led by politicians like Lloyd-george and Churchill. Not something we should just believe too easily.

[OT but probably my favorite comic moment of all time is the scene of Haig in Blackadder goes forth playing with his toy soldiers while on the phone]

I have the impression from someplace that a major failure in tactics was the use on both sides of artillery. They would precede any offensive with days of massive artillery fire which was suppose to soften up the enemy as well as flatten or destroy the barb wire. Trouble was it did neither. It barely touched the soldiers in trenches and had little impact on the barb wire. If anything it made no-man's land more treacherous to cross. And it tipped off the enemy that a major offensive was on the way.

What made the machine gun especially deadly was the barb wire. They should have recognized the ineffectivenss of their artillery barrages early on and concentrated on developing something to get them past the barb wire. I believe that turned out to be the highest use of tanks in the theatre when they finally got some. Tanks could roll over the barb wire and allow advancing soldiers to walk through the breach. Had they not so stubbornly stuck with their artillery tactics and instead concentrated on finding a way to solve the barb wire problem the war might have gone a lot differently.


PairTheBoard

This is not clear at all. The Americans barely even had a tank core in WW1, let alone any of their own tanks, and on French and British tanks they only appeared on the battlefield in mid to late 1918, and when they did it hardly created a 'breakthrough'. See here for more details.

No one knew how effective tanks were/could be for basically the whole of WW1. Many of the tank battles ended in total failure and no one could work out how to sustain attacks with them - thus still not allowing them the break in the lines that everyone dreamed possible.

Even in the period where we did make sharp progress right at the end of 1918, it has much more to do with logistic and moral problems with Germany, than it did with any kind of other troop/technology factor as far as nearly all respected historians are concerned.

Should read 'morale' above in last paragraph.

Just to expand on troop mobility etc - the Allies made many daring and 'mobile' infantry attacks during WW1. Gallipoli, The Somme - even Paschendale could be considered a daring and highly mobile plot.

It's highly unlikely the Americans would have faired little better than any other nationality in any of these, and it seems a quite simple point to show that they had little more success on the Western Front late on than the rest of the Allies - and using near identical tactics - something that would suggest it had much more to do with a German internal collapse (which was pronounced and huge) than any single sudden military breakthrough in tactics or technology.

So was the German army "stabbed in the back"? Could Germany have fought on to a cease fire and more equitable peace agreement? Did Germany quit because German bankers were refusing to extend more credit to the government? And/or because of social unrest on the home front stirred up by communists? Why did Germany decide to surrender subject to such onerous terms for peace? Could they have practically done otherwise?


PairTheBoard

Sorry to come to this thread so late and be a nit, but this painting is by John Singer Sargent, not Constance Oliver.

From the article you cite:

Which comports with this:


I've already stated the Armerican troops were inferior to their Allied counterparts, so its not about that. Americans did bring a new way at looking at things which came to bear in reducing the St. Mihiel salient. I did not state or imply that the U.S. used its own tanks or operated on their own. For the most part, they did not.

As for providing a difference, it certainly mattered that the U.S. was brought into the fold. The eastern troops of the Germans were available to fight on the western front after the armistice with Russia. If the U.S. was not there (and you are free to insert troops from "x" country here) the Germans may have had an advantage or at least could have held out much longer.

Both of these were coincidental. The fact remains that the Allieds employed new tactics and were working them to an advantage. Germany's internal problems certain brought a quicker end to the war, but prior to that, the outcome was in little doubt as the Allied were holding a knife at their throat. This explains why Germany accepted such one-sided terms.

Also, I appreciate why you may be interpreting my statements as "rah rah Americans," but I'm not. In any event, I think it odd that the Allied generals insisted on fighting the war a certain way for 3 1/2 years then changed up once a new element was introduced (the U.S.), and then one does not want to acknowledge this profound change. Also, the French and the English played the U.S. troops as a political football hoping to be the ones to use them to help them achieve the breakthrough and grab the glory.

The fact is that the French and English generals were not very good and were mostly political puppets or sought to use the War to their own political ends. They are quite responsible for millions of uneccesary casulaties that served no tactical advantage.

I think some of these respected historians need to correct these introductory paragraphs to the wikipedia article on the Western Front:

Yes they probably do. And this is true for most historical wikipedia articles - most of them are written to be as approachable as possible and miss huge amounts of data and tell a hyper-simplified version of everything.

Even in the part you quoted it says nothing of the huge German home famine, mass desertions etc, and I don't think I have ever read or studied any graduate or above level text on WW1 that does not have these up there with the very largest factors involved in the armistice.

After all, the Germans made the deepest advances of any army since 1914 in WW1 in the Spring offensive of 1918, and they used very little apart from troops and artillery (albeit lots of them). It seems an odd argument to make that the 'crucial' breakthrough came through changes in tactics when the Germans nearly won using the 'regular' tactics very late on in the war (when by your argument we should have been really getting these technologies/tactics working well).

A much more plausible argument is that the Germans had very little to give after their final massive (and near successful) roll of the dice, and amid mass desertion and starvation and the graudal erosion of the Western front that followed (again - even with out new machines, tactics and the huge problems the Germans had in supply/morale, we advanced slower and less distance than the Germans did in the Spring fighting 'regular' trench warfare), realised all was lost from both a morale and logistical point of view, and then sued for peace - hence it's general acceptance as the reason the war ended amongst nearly all primary source historians.

Once Bismarck lost control of the Navy there was very little he could do imo. Once you lose a section of the war machine that big all is lost.

That's the point - there was tons of change and innovation in those 3 1/2 years, just none of it worked very well. Gallipolli, digging under trenches, new forms of air tactic, the first use of tanks, and posion gas. You seem to be taking credit for a final part of it and dismissing all of this as stupidity, when there is a very solid argument that the 'stupidity' had not changed much at all, just the condition of the soldiers/society it was directed at.

This is incredibly bold statement and I can think of no solid examples of this at any point during WW1. Would be happy to look at any examples of this you have.

http://www.historylearningsite.co.uk...ve_of_1918.htm

One thing is new about this picture.

The German's most significant problem is that military defeat was inevitable. Indeed, after the Spring offensive, they were rapidly moving backwards. If the state of the military did not have as much of a factor as you claim, why didn't the Armistice include more equitable terms? Why did Germany have to concede territories that they were still holding at the time of the cease-fire and which they had been holding since the start of the war?

The fact is the German forces were losing rapidly and they couldn't hang on much longer. The collapse of Germany was important to ending the war because it made the Germans realize that their country would probably be wiped out if the war continued and if it was to be fought in Germany (as it was about to be). The fact that the Army couldn't hold much longer made it necessary to expidite the negotiations while the Germans could still get something (even a little as we know) out of it.

How about I start with this, and you can argue it the other way:

http://www.historylearningsite.co.uk...ld_war_one.htm

the bolded portion is your opening. However, you must be careful not to run afoul of my further argument that part of being a competent commander is to take into account new weapons and battle conditions rather than doing the same thing over and over.

And yet, given the "tons of change and innovation in those 3 1/2 years" The armies still charged fixed positions en masse leading to wholesale slaughter. At this point, I am not really sure what you are trying to argue.

It seems that your argument is something along the lines that the Generals made the correct use of tactics because their chosen strategy was to conduct a war of attrition. The strategy played out as planned because they knew that after both sides lost millions of men that Germany would collapse economically, thus the military strategy was a success. Of course, things were going so well, that the Allies had to look to the U.S. and other countries to supply them with troops to make sure the stalemate would last long enough to allow for the planned economic collapse of Germany.

Of course, even though the U.S. troops after seeing things firsthand and developing a "different" approach to fighting, and such tactics were used, there is no correlation between the Allieds turning the tide of the war and putting the Germans in wholesale retreat to the point where weapons, materiel, vehicles and animals were abandoned in the field all across the Western Front.

And fear not, the French and English generals were not incompetent as they ran millions into meat grinder because they found innovative ways to allow these mass slaughters, while incorporating the most modern tactics known to man.

As I stated in my post, these are introductory paragraphs. The support for these conclusions is set forth in the main article (with citations).

I appreciate the pratfalls of relying on Wikipedia. It so happens this article comports with what I have read about the War, so I don't have reason to question it.

However, in this thread alone, you have not really provided any citations to back up your arguments and normally, that is not a problem for me, but you have also 1) presented a doctored photo as genuine; 2) incorrectly cited a painting. Once these errors are coupled with the fact you have continued your arguments without citing sources makes me concerned.

http://www.historylearningsite.co.uk...ld_war_one.htm

Looks like something new.

the timeline tells the story:

500,000 troops freed up for use on the Western Front

German offensive

Allied military success

Losing ground on all fronts; Luderndorff requests armistice.

And once again

Allied keep pushing Germans back

Here come your mutinies:

More Allied success:

The point where you state "all is now lost" once the Navy withdraws its support

So, it is your position that the precipitating military event leading to surrender happened only one day prior to the signing of the armistice (and six weeks after Luderndorf initially requested an armistice)?

We already know your primary position is the internal collapse of Germany ended the war. The "spark" of the Revolution, of course is traced to November 3 - 8 days prior to the end of the war and 5 weeks after Luderndorf initially requested an armistice.

Maybe we'll start with Haig, instead:

http://www.historylearningsite.co.uk...uglas_haig.htm

certainly not Bismarck. He was dead for 20 years by that point and gone from power even longer.

You seem to have been responding to
"The fact is that the French and English generals were not very good ..."
as being the 'bold' statement.

But I think it's the rest of what you said, "... and were mostly political puppets or sought to use the War to their own political ends. They are quite responsible for millions of uneccesary casulaties that served no tactical advantage." which is the issue.

Even the last clause of your statement is a little bit ott, even if the generals were mediocre (at best) or incompetent (at worst) it's a little excessive to lay personal individual blame on people because they were only 'ordinary' rather than 'great'.

This seems a little like taking credit when a bet wins but not when it does not. The reasons the Germans broke through had a lot to do with men and the fatigued and demoralised state of the Allied troops at this point. In terms of tactics there is very little quanitifiably different than say if they had broke through with gas, yet this is ranked as stupidity, where as this one new tactic is suddenly genius.

This has very little to do with the point I was making. I agree the Germans were in total dissary and had to sue as quickly as possible. We just disagree why.

My line on this is very simple. Generals/scientists on both sides were highly innovative throughout the war - just none of their innovations worked. Towards the end of the war certain innovations helped make slight progress, but that over all the apex of the collapse of Germany and the near collapse of the Allied was based in societal/moral/supply factors much more so than battlefield tactical ones.

Your get out clause of 'being competant means you should know what weapons/tactics will work' is also nonsense - no person can look at rapidly moving technology and understand exactly how it will work. It's a grim process of trial and error and of doing whatever you can to keep the lines intact.

My argument is that in many situations they had little choice. What would your response as a general at the time have been to Verdun for example? Retreat? Attack? How and with what methods?