Quote Originally Posted by Fragony
... it's often said that the ww1 generals were poor commanders, but what started as a mobility-war ended in a stalemate and it ended up as a meat-machine, what exactly happened here.
The view of the WW1 generals as donkeys does not quite square with their overseeing the technological change that CBR mentioned. They were looking for solutions to the stalemate, but there were none available "off the peg".

I think the military at the start of the war could be faulted for not having learnt sufficiently from previous conflicts - such as the ACW (which ended in trenchwarfare) and the Russo-Japanese war (which showed the power of machine guns and heavy artillery). There was still a fair amount of pseudo-Napoleonic claptrap about bayonet charges and closed formations etc. It's not just a failure to understand the technology, but also to anticipate the scale. Reared on professional armies, it was probably hard to envisage that mass mobilisation would permit the entire length of Western Europe to be defended in depth. It's still rather a mind-boggling fact today. Even then, the venerable Schlieffen Plan can hardly be faulted for failing to seek a solution to gridlock. But once the stalemate and trench warfare started, my impression is that the factions were rather quick to seek ways to overcome it.

Quote Originally Posted by Louis
Perhaps not stubbornly attacking all of the time then?
Reading about even the most bloody encounters such as the Somme and the Verdun in the past, my recollection was that casualties were more evenly divided between attackers and defenders than one might expect. So it's not that obvious that greater passivity would have substantially reduced losses. Attacking gives you the advantage of initial concentration of force and suprise, I guess. Plus the defenders have to counter-attack to stabilise the front.

However, more generally, I think the logic of war demands generals who are fighters. The public, the politicians and perhaps even the soldiers require it. Like with the ACW, when Lincoln kept sacking generals until he could find a brawler like Grant who was prepared to accept terrible losses and keep attacking aggressively. There's a pressure for victory, particularly given that losses are already so horrific, so there were always schemes for a key breakthrough. I guess on the Western Front during the middle part of the war, the French and British were in the position similar to that of the Union in the ACW - they had to go on the offensive. After 1914, the Germans switched to fighting defensively in the West, looking to get a knockout blow in the East. Then the boot was on the other foot, with the Germans desperate for victory in the West before millions of Americans arrived to swing the balance. Given the Russian revolution and the logic of American entry, it is hard to fault either side for their alternating aggressive stances.

I suspect that a proper answer to the question would identify some WW1 generals who were plain bloody minded and lacking in imagination (I'd look at the Italians for some culprits here) while others who adapted rather successfully (Ludendorf comes to mind at a strategic level; Rommel at a tactical one).