Slitherine

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ORIGINAL: kylenapoleon
Sadly, the Canadian contribution to the Great War has gone unappreciated for far too long.

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I have such a hard time coming up with any generals who are worry of note from WWI. Most of them had no idea how to conduct a battle. Just send 4 waves of soldiers against a defensive position hoping there would be enough left in the 4th line to take the position. Hardly a plan of an accomplished general.

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ORIGINAL: Bossy573

I'm hard pressed to think of 5 commanders (or politicians) in this war who shouldn't have been shot out of hand for gross incompetence and murder.

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ORIGINAL: 7th Somersets

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I have such a hard time coming up with any generals who are worry of note from WWI. Most of them had no idea how to conduct a battle. Just send 4 waves of soldiers against a defensive position hoping there would be enough left in the 4th line to take the position. Hardly a plan of an accomplished general.

That is true at the start of the war - but tactics on all sides evolved considerably - by August 1917 the British, for example, were using the platoon as the basic combat unit and integrating trench mortars with the platoon's inherent firepower of Lewis light-machineguns, rifle grenades and rifle sections. The tactics (see for example the 38th Division Orders for Attack in August 1917 - G484) included bypassing enemy strongpoints and attacking them from the rear.

Another example of British/Commonwealth tactical evolution is the tank attack at Cambrai where, for example, the 7th Somersets - supporting tanks - managed to capture a strong point (the village of La Vacquerie) that was the front line of the Hindenburg line by frontal assault - losing 6 dead and 34 wounded out of a battalion of about 800.

There were significant tactical advances (both offensive and defensive) by all sides of the war. These were brought about by intelligent officers both learning from mistakes and by training others. These officers were at all levels of the forces involved.

What must be remembered though is how much technology advanced in the war - changes in artillery techniques on all sides were immense, aircraft were used for the first time in large numbers for combat, tanks were invented, light machineguns were deployed for the first time, flame throwers and gas were developed into usable combat tools. All of these changes were implemented by the military on all sides of the conflict by men who had the vision to see their capabilities. They then had to be tried out, refined and retried until tactics were evolved to use them properly.

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ORIGINAL: Bossy573
It is difficult to remove the combatants from their times but the blatant disregard for the value of human life in the face of the predominance of rapidly industrialized warfare is almost unimaginable. Morons like Haig, Falkenhayn, Joffre, etc., cannot, IMHO, be sheilded.

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ORIGINAL: CSL
Haig, Joffre, etc. needed to conduct offensives throughout the war that were sure to cause thousands of casualites, first in order to eat up the enemies reserves and then launch what would hopefully be a decisive strike elsewhere in the line.

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ORIGINAL: Bossy573

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ORIGINAL: CSL
Haig, Joffre, etc. needed to conduct offensives throughout the war that were sure to cause thousands of casualites, first in order to eat up the enemies reserves and then launch what would hopefully be a decisive strike elsewhere in the line.

This is the line which fed to the public after the catastrophies that were the Somme, Paschendale, Loos, etc., etc. These were designed to be war winning offensives, not a giant Verdun on Germany. Haig continued his offensives long after they had been stopped cold and essentially sent his men to die with no hope whatsoever of acheiving his initial planned breakthrough. He did this, IMHO, out of a simple refusal to admit failure, not through any long range plan to bleed Germany white. And the numbers are clear: the human toll simply did not figure into his thinking.
On the other hand, and this is, IMHO, even more despicable, this is exactly what Falkenhayn attempted to do at Verdun. His logic, taken to its conclusion, would have been "we have 1 soldier left, you have none. We win." How is this at all defendable, even in the context of his times?

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ORIGINAL: CSL
And you are a fool if you believe the Somme was ever meant to truely be an offensive designed to breakthrough to the German rear.

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ORIGINAL: Bossy573

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ORIGINAL: CSL
And you are a fool if you believe the Somme was ever meant to truely be an offensive designed to breakthrough to the German rear.

Easy on the personal jibes there friend.

There is no question that the British battle-plan at the Somme was, in part, designed to relieve some of the pressure on the French at Verdun. However, the original idea was a joint British-French attack to tear open the German lines, roll it up and set cavalry free into the German rear. Haig did plan on a war winning offensive. It is only after the plan had clearly failed in its objective that an attrirional spin was put on it.
Defending battle tactics in the face of 60,000 casualties in one day doesn't seem viable IMHO.

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nfantry tactics

Prior to the battle Rawlinson's staff published the Fourth Army Tactical Notes, an instruction pamphlet setting out the recommended assault tactics to be used by the infantry. The notes specified that battalions should advance in waves with two platoons per wave on a 400 yard front which left about 5 yards between each soldier. A battalion would therefore advance in eight waves (two per company) plus additional waves for the battalion HQ and stretcher bearers. The advance would be carried out at a steady walking pace of 50 yards per minute.

Soldiers in the leading waves were required to carry about 70 lb (32 kg) of equipment; rifle, bayonet, ammunition, two grenades, entrenching tool, empty sandbags, wire cutters, flares, etc. The later waves would also be burdened with the necessary paraphernalia for consolidating the captured trenches such as barbed wire & stakes.

Viewed with the benefit of hindsight, these tactics were clearly misjudged. The reasoning behind them was that the intense artillery bombardment was expected to destroy the German garrison so that all that was required of the infantry was to walk over and take possession of the objectives.

Many commanders approached the battle with great optimism. The pre-battle speech delivered to the 8th Battalion, King's Own Yorkshire Light Infantry — which would suffer 539 casualties on the first day — included:

"When you go over the top, you can slope arms, light up your pipes and cigarettes, and march all the way to Pozières before meeting any live Germans."

Though these flawed tactics have been blamed for the failures of the first day, they were not universally adhered to by the attacking divisions. It was left to the individual commanders to decide on the method to be used. Many units moved out into no man's land before zero hour so that they could rush the German trenches as soon as the barrage lifted. Whether a particular unit's attack succeeded or failed depended not so much on the infantry tactics but on how well the wire had been cut, the intensity of the German defensive barrage in no man's land and whether or not the defenders could swiftly bring their machine guns into action.

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ORIGINAL: Bossy573
There is no question that the British battle-plan at the Somme was, in part, designed to relieve some of the pressure on the French at Verdun. However, the original idea was a joint British-French attack to tear open the German lines, roll it up and set cavalry free into the German rear. Haig did plan on a war winning offensive. It is only after the plan had clearly failed in its objective that an attrirional spin was put on it.
Defending battle tactics in the face of 60,000 casualties in one day doesn't seem viable IMHO.

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ORIGINAL: Bossy573
When this bad boy hits the shelves, CSL, I hope you will engage in a PBEM game.