The Great War

[The Brain]

We all know that the Great War wasn't all that great. It's in many ways the war of blunders. I'm interested in what people think were some of the more important/interesting/amusing. Many are well-known: Russian lack of functioning high command. Germany's fleet thing. General failure until 1914 to grasp the effects of modern firepower. Churchill's turkey. Austria-Hungary's... well, Austria-Hungary.

One that I don't think get enough attention is the complete failure of the UK (and US) to prepare for war. The UK amazingly went to war in 1914 without an army. It took years before they started to pull their weight. Even Sweden had realized in the decades before that mass armies were necessary FFS. If the UK had put 2 million trained and equipped men on the continent in 1914 they may not exactly have been able to suck sausages in Berlin but the war in the west would certainly have been very different.

IMHO France did some important shit right, in some ways better than anyone else. They realized that they needed every man in uniform and acted on that info.

And imagine that I said something about how awesome dreadnoughts were.

[Josephus]

I don't think the word "Great" was used to imply grandeur or wonderful, but more as a quantitative measure as in Large, Big.

[The Brain]

I don't think the word "Great" was used to imply grandeur or wonderful, but more as a quantitative measure as in Large, Big.

Really? Are you sure?

[KRonn]

How did the UK not have a sizable army? They had a worldwide empire to garrison, and had many units from nations within that empire serving. I find it surprising that their army was so lacking, if that is the case.

[Richard Hakluyt]

You need a fleet to protect an Empire like that, the army was not so important, a small professional force of about 250,000 men.

[KRonn]

You need a fleet to protect an Empire like that, the army was not so important, a small professional force of about 250,000 men.

Heh, no wonder you guys lost the Colonies.   

[The Brain]

Yes the British army was completely adequate until a pesky war broke out. Who could have known?

[Admiral Yi]

Gallipoli turned out shit but it wasn't doomed from the start.

[Tamas]

Yeah, the execution was fucked up but the idea was sound: the Ottomans were the weakest link, could had been easily knocked out by taking Istanbul, then marching up AH's weak underbelly 3 years before it actually happened.

But of course that is in hindsight: Nobody knew how the western front would look like. Every great offensive there was The Real Deal which would end the war swiftly. It is perhaps understandable that they tried to seek decision there.

[dps]

The British didn't have a large army essentially because they didn't envision fighting a large-scale war in Europe.  Keep in mind that they hadn't had to do so since Napoleon.  The British were prepared for war, except that the wars they were prepared for were colonial wars and a naval war to keep hostile forces off the British Isles (note that AFAIK, there were never any real Central Powers plans to actually invade Britian).  To their credit, as soon as the war broke out and they decided to send an expeditionary force to the continent, they realized that they would need a much larger army.  It just took time to build it up--it wasn't simply a matter of getting more men into the service, they had to be equipped and supplied, too.

Keep in mind, too, that the British did have a huge army--the Indian Army.  It was just that they felt that they had to keep the vast majority of it in India as a garrison there.

As for the US, we weren't prepared for war because we had long followed an isolationist foreign policy, and had never had any intention of fighting in Europe.

[The Brain]

The British didn't have a large army essentially because they didn't envision fighting a large-scale war in Europe.  Keep in mind that they hadn't had to do so since Napoleon.  The British were prepared for war, except that the wars they were prepared for were colonial wars and a naval war to keep hostile forces off the British Isles (note that AFAIK, there were never any real Central Powers plans to actually invade Britian).  To their credit, as soon as the war broke out and they decided to send an expeditionary force to the continent, they realized that they would need a much larger army.  It just took time to build it up--it wasn't simply a matter of getting more men into the service, they had to be equipped and supplied, too.

Keep in mind, too, that the British did have a huge army--the Indian Army.  It was just that they felt that they had to keep the vast majority of it in India as a garrison there.

As for the US, we weren't prepared for war because we had long followed an isolationist foreign policy, and had never had any intention of fighting in Europe.

Yes, every country had reasons for their blunders.

[dps]

The British didn't have a large army essentially because they didn't envision fighting a large-scale war in Europe.  Keep in mind that they hadn't had to do so since Napoleon.  The British were prepared for war, except that the wars they were prepared for were colonial wars and a naval war to keep hostile forces off the British Isles (note that AFAIK, there were never any real Central Powers plans to actually invade Britian).  To their credit, as soon as the war broke out and they decided to send an expeditionary force to the continent, they realized that they would need a much larger army.  It just took time to build it up--it wasn't simply a matter of getting more men into the service, they had to be equipped and supplied, too.

Keep in mind, too, that the British did have a huge army--the Indian Army.  It was just that they felt that they had to keep the vast majority of it in India as a garrison there.

As for the US, we weren't prepared for war because we had long followed an isolationist foreign policy, and had never had any intention of fighting in Europe.

Yes, every country had reasons for their blunders.

Sure but there seem to me to be different categories we could put countries in:

1)  Countries like France or Germany which had plans for a major ground war, but
  a)  had bad/poorly conceived plans, or
  b)  had arguably good plans, but botched the execution,

2)  Countries like Belgium whose plans mostly came down to saying, "Gee, I hope we don't get invaded" but who had no real choice in the matter,  and

3)  Countries like the US and the UK who had no plans for a major ground war and which could have avoided going to war if they really had wanted to.

[The Brain]

The British didn't have a large army essentially because they didn't envision fighting a large-scale war in Europe.  Keep in mind that they hadn't had to do so since Napoleon.  The British were prepared for war, except that the wars they were prepared for were colonial wars and a naval war to keep hostile forces off the British Isles (note that AFAIK, there were never any real Central Powers plans to actually invade Britian).  To their credit, as soon as the war broke out and they decided to send an expeditionary force to the continent, they realized that they would need a much larger army.  It just took time to build it up--it wasn't simply a matter of getting more men into the service, they had to be equipped and supplied, too.

Keep in mind, too, that the British did have a huge army--the Indian Army.  It was just that they felt that they had to keep the vast majority of it in India as a garrison there.

As for the US, we weren't prepared for war because we had long followed an isolationist foreign policy, and had never had any intention of fighting in Europe.

Yes, every country had reasons for their blunders.

Sure but there seem to me to be different categories we could put countries in:

1)  Countries like France or Germany which had plans for a major ground war, but
  a)  had bad/poorly conceived plans, or
  b)  had arguably good plans, but botched the execution,

2)  Countries like Belgium whose plans mostly came down to saying, "Gee, I hope we don't get invaded" but who had no real choice in the matter,  and

3)  Countries like the US and the UK who had no plans for a major ground war and which could have avoided going to war if they really had wanted to.

Sure, categorize away.

Fact: it was known to almost all countries (even several of the retarded ones) that the next major war in Europe would be a war of mass armies.
Fact: the Brits did nothing to prepare for this even though they were playing the alliance/guarantor game on the continent.
Fact: this left their ally France to fight for her life while the Brits were building the mass army they obviously needed.
Fact: France managed to weather the storm until the Brits got going but this was NOT a sure thing and if she hadn't it would have been pretty much game over.

The Brits tend to get away with this in the history books while less serious errors like alleged Haigian incompetence or Gallipoli get attention. Seems to me that the decision to not bring an army to an army fight was a much bigger blunder and had much bigger consequences.

[Admiral Yi]

Could Britain have afforded a large conscript army *and* a large standing fleet?

[Richard Hakluyt]

From 1815-1914 Britain had a tiny army costing virtually nothing whilst running a huge empire, the fleet was not that expensive either, for most of the period other countries did not even compete. The chickens may have come home to roost in 1914, though arguably the French and Russians should have had more then enough troops to deal with Germany, but the benefits of low taxation for an entire century should not be underestimated.