Slitherine

quote:

ORIGINAL: Arinvald

I think many historians have misinterpreted Falkenhayn's strategy for the Battle of Verdun. He did not simply mean to trade lives in an effort to bleed France white first; his plan was to threaten an objective that France would be compelled to defend. After the initial German advance, the plan was to let France bleed herself white trying to take back the lost territory in order to diminish the threat to Verdun. As it turned out though, once the initial German advance got going, it continued through the momentum of the attack. It seems that it was very difficult to stop some German Generals making a successful advance. This just wasn't the mindset that had been established in the German military officer corps. Thus the battle degenerated into a bloody attrition. Through poor communication with his own forces, Falkenhayn failed to impose his will on his own forces an thus lost controll of the battle. Also, the Generals from all countries, didn't opperate in a political vacum. Their decisions were heavily influenced by the the political considerations of their own nations, which was as it should have been.

I certainly agree that many costly mistakes were made by all political and military leaders from all belligerents, but other than the scale of casualties, which the modern industrial economies made possible, WWI was not much different than most other wars.

Much like the American Civil War, technology had to catch up to make decisive offensive action a reasonable proposition. Given time, the tactical and operational problems were solved to a large degree, but as long as there was no way in which to exploit a breech in the line that was any faster than the speed of marching Infantry, the breech could always be sealed before any significant rupture of the front could take place.

Also, the density of forces on the Western Front compounded the already difficult problems for any offensive. On all other fronts, there was much operational maneuver with decisive results, even using the pre-war tactics.