Were the WW1 generals idiots?

[CBR]

Since WW1 did not allow for "battles of annihilation" there was really only attrition warfare left. Part of the package meant large battles that, even though they involves heavy losses, were merely small steps towards exhausting the enemy and forcing him to the negotiating table. There is no immorality in that.


CBR

[al Roumi]

How does that coexist with your theory of bleeding the french dry? I didn't say kill everyone, I mean kill everyone until you won, hence a transaction of casualties. That isn't something I just decided it to be, you even kinda touched it however briefly as it may have been.

My question, and the debate i was hoping to see was related to the morality of the kind of warfare where you are simply trying to bleed a nation dry through attritive warfare. Yes the technology of WW1 didn't really allow for much of a different strategy, but it evidently became "normal" or acceptable for the "transaction of casualties" to be the de-facto method of war.

I'd like to think I'm not being strategically naive but what I do find so appaling about WW1 is that life became so horrendously cheap to the strategists of both sides. They basically drew a blank when looking for an answer to their contemporary tactical equations but decided to carry on with the "meat-grinder" regardless.

I recognise that there weren't any readily available solutions on the western front (exploitation of this fact is what drove the German plans for the Verdun offensive -backing France against an effective wall), so I won't call the generalls and startegists "stupid", but I cannot think of them without shuddering at the lives they ultimately had responsability for condemning.

The German strategy for Verdun fully embraced the attritive nature of the war and sought to exploit it. Basically by laying the French nation over an anvil (Verdun) and breaking it remorselessly.

bah, you can tell me the generals were just following political orders but IMO that doesn't wash the blood off their hands.

Whether those in charge of the Somme offensive were any different I don't really know, but afaik the plan there was more traditional -to overwhelm and capture ground rather than to specifically create the battlefield equivalent of a mass slaughterhouse (as at Verdun).

[al Roumi]

Since WW1 did not allow for "battles of annihilation" there was really only attrition warfare left. Part of the package meant large battles that, even though they involves heavy losses, were merely small steps towards exhausting the enemy and forcing him to the negotiating table. There is no immorality in that.


CBR

I understand that, but purposefully setting up the equivalent of an abatoir is not moral.

All is not fair in war IMO.

I will now go and pick some flowers, or something, man.

[A Very Super Market]

How can one form of generalship be more immoral than another? You are still leading men to their deaths. A battlefield is a mass slaughterhouse. Does it really matter if the objective is expressively to kill them, or to kill them in order to achieve something? Death is death, and the only thing that distinguishes it is a death at peace or a death in fight.

[al Roumi]

How can one form of generalship be more immoral than another? You are still leading men to their deaths. A battlefield is a mass slaughterhouse. Does it really matter if the objective is expressively to kill them, or to kill them in order to achieve something? Death is death, and the only thing that distinguishes it is a death at peace or a death in fight.

When death and destruction itself is the sole aim, I do find that immoral. In that light I see the Verdun "mill" strategy as immoral, even though it was ultimately intended to achieve an eventual strategic "manpower" victory and peace.

In a purely hypothetical case, I could not plan and see through a strategy which was solely based on exterminating enough people that there would not be enough left to oppose me.

Hindsight is a luxury, but I would hope to be less cynical and more merciful than those who planned Verdun.

Sorry for derailing the post!

[Alexander the Pretty Good]

At least before 1918, the Allies on the Western Front were focusing on trying to create a breakthrough as a means of driving the Germans out of France. Most of their commanders didn't realize just how big of a breakthrough needed to be made for anything to be accomplished. To compound that mistake, they failed to grasp the new weapons, logistics, and tactics the Germans had developed, their choices for locations of potential breakthroughs were worthless unless a breakthrough developed (and one never did), and in lying to themselves about how poorly the war was going for themselves they were continually overoptimistic about the likelihood of a breakthrough happening. So you had your Vauquois and Somme and Passchendaele.

The idea of bleeding out the Central Powers was based on the idea that Germany was running out of men (they weren't) and as spin for the horrific casualties the Allies suffered in pointless assaults. If you could pretend that the Germans lost double the men you lost on the Somme then it made sense to continue fighting there no matter the cost. But it was largely fiction.

[Oleander Ardens]

The idea of bleeding out the Central Powers was based on the idea that Germany was running out of men (they weren't) and as spin for the horrific casualties the Allies suffered in pointless assaults. If you could pretend that the Germans lost double the men you lost on the Somme then it made sense to continue fighting there no matter the cost. But it was largely fiction.

The myth of a the favorable "exchange" in casualities at the Somme was created to justify the unjustifiable. To quote Wikipedia:

The original Allied estimate of casualties on the Somme, made at the Chantilly conference on 15 November, was 485,000 British and French casualties versus 630,000 German.[61] These figures were used to support the argument that the Somme was a successful battle of attrition for the Allies. However, there was considerable scepticism at the time of the accuracy of the counts. After the war a final tally showed that 419,654 British and 204,253 French were killed, wounded, or taken prisoner; of the 623,907 total casualties, 146,431 were either killed or missing.[61]

The British official historian Sir James Edmonds maintained that German losses were 680,000, but this figure has been discredited.[61] A separate statistical report by the British War Office concluded that German casualties on the British sector could be as low as 180,000 during the battle. In compiling his biography of General Rawlinson, Major-General Sir Frederick Maurice was supplied by the Reichsarchiv with a figure of 164,055 for the German killed or missing.[62]

It is quite striking that most English literature still gives more credit to estimates founded on the necessary myth than on hard facts.

But I would not rate the efforts of Allies in the realm of tactics as low as you did. Their integration of recon and surveillance with the combined arms were indeed sophisticated.

OA

[KrooK]

How can one form of generalship be more immoral than another? You are still leading men to their deaths. A battlefield is a mass slaughterhouse. Does it really matter if the objective is expressively to kill them, or to kill them in order to achieve something? Death is death, and the only thing that distinguishes it is a death at peace or a death in fight.

Death for country, life sacrificed for country is biggest gift that could be given.

[A Very Super Market]

Depends on what you believe in. KrooK, your reputation as a Polish nationalist preceeds you, so it is no doubt that you believe so. But my post is in reference tp alh_p's, who argues that attritional warfare is more immoral than manuevre warfare. Not, a one-off on the pointlessness of death and war, that would be profoundly off-topic.

[G. Septimus]

The myth of a the favorable "exchange" in casualities at the Somme was created to justify the unjustifiable. To quote Wikipedia:



It is quite striking that most English literature still gives more credit to estimates founded on the necessary myth than on hard facts.

But I would not rate the efforts of Allies in the realm of tactics as low as you did. Their integration of recon and surveillance with the combined arms were indeed sophisticated.

OA

485.000 is not a small number!!!!!!!!
that's a bunch of guys there.
War is sweet to those who never tasted it, and those guys tasted it.
they really got they're asses kicked.

Spoiler Alert, click show to read: 

this is a small part in the Somme,

[KukriKhan]

Um, not exactly. Traditionaly battles are for fought for control of an area, an asset or something. Not with the express desire of killing everyone who might be able to oppose you.

The above is an important shift in thinking that I believe gets overlooked too easily.

1972. The first "sit down in a chair"-type indoctrination class I attended in the US Army. A Major took the stage, and asked us (a platoon-sized audience) "What is the mission of the army?" Answers from the floor included "seize and hold land", "defend the country", "achieve political objectives", etc.

The Major shrieked: "KILLLLLL THE ENEMY!!!", that's what we do. That other stuff: 'hold land' and so on, is just a means to the end of KILLLLL THE ENEMY!!!".

It took a little while for the simplicity of that idea to sink in, and replace any old ideas I had about battlefield honour or chivalry, and removed any doubts I had about the brutality of this outfit I'd been forced into.

[CBR]

If one looks at classic Napoleonic campaigns, or even Moltke's campaigns in Austria or France, then the asset was the enemy army. Taking certain objectives might be equal to victory, a capitol maybe, but the threat of taking objectives were sometimes merely to force the enemy to accept battle.

Killing, wounding, capturing or routing was all fine but when it is no longer possible to take out a majority of the enemy army, nor make a great breakthrough to exploit, then one is left with the killing and wounding part.

WW2 had the Atlantic or the bombing raids as examples of attrition. That was more of a focus on materiel losses than killing people but not because of higher morals but because commanders has better/different cards to play. Both were indeed used in WW1 too but never had the same impact as in WW2.


CBR

[Ramses II CP]

Spoiler Alert, click show to read: 

My question, and the debate i was hoping to see was related to the morality of the kind of warfare where you are simply trying to bleed a nation dry through attritive warfare. Yes the technology of WW1 didn't really allow for much of a different strategy, but it evidently became "normal" or acceptable for the "transaction of casualties" to be the de-facto method of war.

I'd like to think I'm not being strategically naive but what I do find so appaling about WW1 is that life became so horrendously cheap to the strategists of both sides. They basically drew a blank when looking for an answer to their contemporary tactical equations but decided to carry on with the "meat-grinder" regardless.

I recognise that there weren't any readily available solutions on the western front (exploitation of this fact is what drove the German plans for the Verdun offensive -backing France against an effective wall), so I won't call the generalls and startegists "stupid", but I cannot think of them without shuddering at the lives they ultimately had responsability for condemning.

The German strategy for Verdun fully embraced the attritive nature of the war and sought to exploit it. Basically by laying the French nation over an anvil (Verdun) and breaking it remorselessly.

bah, you can tell me the generals were just following political orders but IMO that doesn't wash the blood off their hands.

Whether those in charge of the Somme offensive were any different I don't really know, but afaik the plan there was more traditional -to overwhelm and capture ground rather than to specifically create the battlefield equivalent of a mass slaughterhouse (as at Verdun).

I find this kind of retrospective moral judgement substantially more distasteful than a similarly framed strategic judgement. The fact is that the value of life is different for societies as they develop. Recreating the circumstances of WWI in the modern world would cause us to fight it differently, but that has more to do with sociological changes than with some imaginary objective moral superiority. It is, in my opinion, equally unseemly to judge on purely moral grounds Europe's expenditure of soldiers in WWI as for us to judge Fredrick the Great's treatment of his soldiery, or Alexander's use of native levies. In no case was consideration of right the primary driving force, it was what they believed was necessary that drove them to these acts.

And in judgement of necessity hindsight has an inherent superiority which destroys all proper perspective. It's the same situation as questioning the necessity of the use of nuclear weapons against Japan; our knowledge of the postwar era and the true situation in Japan distorts our ability to properly parse the situation as the commanders at the time saw it. Personally I find questions of right and wrong are nearly irrelevant when it comes to war; it is never going to be right in any logically consistent system to perpetrate mass slaughter, but it may at times be necessary all the same.

I am considerably more comfortable giving my opinion on the quality of the strategic decisions made at the time because, absent all those moral values that cannot be eliminated from a discussion of right and wrong, it is possible to assess what choices could have been made to improve results at the front. On that topic I think the average WWI commander was operating as intelligently as could be expected under the circumstances, though there was a failure of innovation at the higher levels of command. There simply were very few good choices that could be made at the tactical level aside from the politically and economically unacceptable decision to halt all offensives, and the fact that commanders of sufficient strategic influence failed to invent new methods at that level is mostly an indication that they were of merely normal intelligence and operating under constrictive and authoritarian systems of command.

Let us not forget that WWI was won, after all, and if it was done so in a particularly uninspired and staid manner it is no less a victory for that. We can speculate that it could've been won more cheaply, more completely, more quickly, or more brilliantly, but I can certainly imagine it being conducted more foolishly, destructively, and wastefully as well. Anyone else read L. Ron Hubbard's Final Blackout? Purely speculative, but entertaining and closer to the source (In time and perspective) on strategic grounds than any of us as well.

[Subotan]

Anyone else read L. Ron Hubbard's Final Blackout?

*Overwhelmed by sheer terror, Subotan recoiled in the face of such monstrous horror, his face contorted into an expression of pure pain and disgust*

[Ramses II CP]

*Overwhelmed by sheer terror, Subotan recoiled in the face of such monstrous horror, his face contorted into an expression of pure pain and disgust*

While your post is amusing I'm sure you're aware it is also entirely content free. Hubbard's more well known nonsense was still well in his future when he wrote this book, and delusions of grandeur are at least as often an aid to writing as an impediment.

[Snite]

Everytime I shoot an insurgent my only intent is to kill the mother. Is that immoral? Some would say so, but it's war and in war you kill people to further the aims of your own nation. So is war immoral? Yes and no. I, like many others, believe in context. The war the insurgents wage against American soldiers and even their own people is immoral. Since it is stated explicitly in our Rules of Engagement that we are to protect Iraqi/Afghani citizens from these insurgents, I would say that our war is not.

Oh and the official purpose of the Army: "To deter war. Should deterrence fail, to achieve peace through victory in combat."

The Mahdi Militia in Baghdad is a lame duck these days. When I was there 8 months ago they had been attritted to 1/3 of their former strength and were no longer capable of posing a real threat. Bleeding the enemy dry is a legitimate strategy. Kill them. Just kill them.

[Beirut]

Bleeding the enemy dry is a legitimate strategy. Kill them. Just kill them.

A very Sherman-esque viewpoint.

[al Roumi]

Spoiler Alert, click show to read: 

I find this kind of retrospective moral judgement substantially more distasteful than a similarly framed strategic judgement. The fact is that the value of life is different for societies as they develop. Recreating the circumstances of WWI in the modern world would cause us to fight it differently, but that has more to do with sociological changes than with some imaginary objective moral superiority. It is, in my opinion, equally unseemly to judge on purely moral grounds Europe's expenditure of soldiers in WWI as for us to judge Fredrick the Great's treatment of his soldiery, or Alexander's use of native levies. In no case was consideration of right the primary driving force, it was what they believed was necessary that drove them to these acts.

And in judgement of necessity hindsight has an inherent superiority which destroys all proper perspective. It's the same situation as questioning the necessity of the use of nuclear weapons against Japan; our knowledge of the postwar era and the true situation in Japan distorts our ability to properly parse the situation as the commanders at the time saw it. Personally I find questions of right and wrong are nearly irrelevant when it comes to war; it is never going to be right in any logically consistent system to perpetrate mass slaughter, but it may at times be necessary all the same.

I am considerably more comfortable giving my opinion on the quality of the strategic decisions made at the time because, absent all those moral values that cannot be eliminated from a discussion of right and wrong, it is possible to assess what choices could have been made to improve results at the front. On that topic I think the average WWI commander was operating as intelligently as could be expected under the circumstances, though there was a failure of innovation at the higher levels of command. There simply were very few good choices that could be made at the tactical level aside from the politically and economically unacceptable decision to halt all offensives, and the fact that commanders of sufficient strategic influence failed to invent new methods at that level is mostly an indication that they were of merely normal intelligence and operating under constrictive and authoritarian systems of command.

Let us not forget that WWI was won, after all, and if it was done so in a particularly uninspired and staid manner it is no less a victory for that. We can speculate that it could've been won more cheaply, more completely, more quickly, or more brilliantly, but I can certainly imagine it being conducted more foolishly, destructively, and wastefully as well. Anyone else read L. Ron Hubbard's Final Blackout? Purely speculative, but entertaining and closer to the source (In time and perspective) on strategic grounds than any of us as well.

You make a good point, as does Snite, on what hindsight does to a perspective even slightly removed from the time when the decision was taken. I'd like to think I was kind of aware of this whilst writing what I did, I concede it is all a bit moralistic though.

And i'm afraid i share Subotan's horror at the mention of Mr Hubbard -I trust you are not the type of person to be trying to type using the power of thought alone?

As to CBR's, Snite's and Kukri's more strategic point on "killing is [the way to] the objective", I guess that is true in the mechanistic sense of an army -it literaly is what it does. And there really was a paucity of strategic options in WW1.

[Snite]

A very Sherman-esque viewpoint.

I think you mean Grant, cuz Sherman waged a war agains the people by destroying farms and infastructure. Or Forrest. Forrest actually since he refused to take prisoners in every battle he fought in, though I should state I'm all for taking prisoners; they give good intel.

[Meneldil]

I, like many others, believe in context. The war the insurgents wage against American soldiers and even their own people is immoral. Since it is stated explicitly in our Rules of Engagement that we are to protect Iraqi/Afghani citizens from these insurgents, I would say that our war is not.

In memory of Tribesman:
:laugh 4:

[Alexander the Pretty Good]

tribesy bought a ban?

[Snite]

In memory of Tribesman:
:laugh 4:

I don't know Tribesman so I don't understand your post.

[Beirut]

I think you mean Grant, cuz Sherman waged a war agains the people by destroying farms and infastructure. Or Forrest. Forrest actually since he refused to take prisoners in every battle he fought in.

Perhaps. But Sherman was definitely of the same mindset.

[cegorach]

I WW is hardly my thing, but I'd like to add one thing.

I am just after reading the Galizian War about Austro-Hungarian battles with the Russians (Germant activities were less important than usually believed).

My opinion is that in the east initially neither side could commit forces able to cover the entire frontline and later the size of the front was still an extremely important factor.
The facts meant the first years of conflict were full of higly mobile offensives and counter-offensives - if there were enough troops to create a stable position in the center, there were always the Carpatian Mountains to outflank them, if the mountains were blocked there was central Poland where only the Russians could commit massive forces attempting to steamroll the Central States'' armies.

However there were still moments where both sides were stuck in combat unable to outfalnk the enemy or simply fighting for some important transport route e.g. just like during the battle at Kraków. In those cases the clashes quickly became rather similar to great attrition battles of the west.

Because the Russians were usually the side which was unable to provide enough firepower they were suffering more which stopped more than one of their offensive actions, but the same could apply to the Austrians for example during later attempts to de-block Przemyśl.

Quite often generals who seemed rather capable and competent were simply helpless facing entrentched enemies and superior artillery sometimes in difficult terrain.

Russian armies suffered horrendous losses at Kraków or when storming Przemyśl, not to mention the Austrian-German breakthrough at Gorlice, but the Austo-Hungarian army paid their price during the winter offensives in the mountains.



Compared to these battles such as the one at Kraśnik

Spoiler Alert, click show to read: 

a nice looking map - http://www.taktykaistrategia.pl/?top...nt=krasnik1914

allowed more even if circumstances could be less forgiving than during the attrition battles.

But of course I no expert when it comes to the subject.

[Megas Methuselah]

I don't know Tribesman so I don't understand your post.

He's laughing at what he sees as being ridiculous in your post.

[Snite]

I got that he thinks it's funny that I don't view killing Mahdi Militia as immoral, but I don't want to respond to him until I know who Tribesman is and fully understand his post.

[Fragony]

I got that he thinks it's funny that I don't view killing Mahdi Militia as immoral, but I don't want to respond to him until I know who Tribesman is and fully understand his post.

Tribesman is a backroom member, hasn't been here for a while sadly even if we don't exactly get along, he has his own way when it comes to communicating his views, usually looks like this;

[Husar]

And it's a big loss not to know him, have you never wondered where that black hole in your soul comes from?

[Snite]

It's not from never meeting Tribesman.

[Subotan]

It's not from never meeting Tribesman.

Oh God it is, it really is. You just don't know it yet.