Quote Originally Posted by TinCow View Post
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WWI general were no more idiots than US Civil War generals. Both wars were fought at a period of time when technology resulted in a vast increase in firepower, but before there was a corresponding increase in defense technology. The result was that soldiers were faced with overcoming massed machinegun and artillery fire with nothing but their uniforms to protect them. A lot of blame is placed on nations for not realizing the potential of armored vehicles to overcome the technology advances, but I think that is distorted by hindsight. The first tanks did not reach the battlefield until the end of 1916, by which time the war had already stagnated. Even then, the first tanks were extremelly unreliable and the designs were relatively poor. Tanks did not really even become successful until the end of 1917, only a year before the war was over.

In addition, the idea that WWI was somehow more of a bloodbath than WWII is itself ridiculous. According to Wikipedia, in WWI, Germany lost 2,050,897 men in battle. In WWII they lost 5,533,000. Russia lost 1,811,000 in WWI and 8,800,000 to 10,700,000 in WWII. The UK and US cannot properly be compared, as the UK did far less ground warfare in WWII than in WWI, and the US was the opposite. When you compare deaths (both military and civilian) as a percentage of the population of the combatants, WWI resulted in the deaths of 1.75% of the population, while WWI resulted in the deaths of 3.17% to 4.00% of the population.

Essentially, WWII was far, far more of a meat grinder than WWI ever was. The only difference was that in WWI there were a larger number of casualties in a smaller area. That results in a distortion effect on the perceived bloodiness of the events. By contrast, the Battle of Towton in 1461 resulted in the death of approximately 1% of the entire population of England, and that was in a single day. Yet when we think of the bloodiness of wars, no one ever ranks the Wars of the Roses up there with WWI, despite similar impacts on the population.
The commanders of WW1 looked stupid because they used inappropriate tactics -based on old situations: the old adage that military planners are always preparing for the last war they fought.

This raises an interesting point, as relevant today as ever before, the commanders at the end of a conflict in which a major new technological/strategic challenge was faced always have a better reputation than those who were in command at the start of it: eg Gen. Petreus enjoys a much better reputation than Tommy Franks... ok, not sure how far i can push that but...