The Great War

[Razgovory]

But what about the ACW?

That is what it would have looked like if everybody tried to fight the Great War with no standing army.

Germany would have won that war then I think given their immense industrial capacity and innate organization.

And their Aryan superiority.

[jimmy olsen]

Why did the Russians want to attack Sweden?

Here's a thread I made about it a while back.
http://languish.org/forums/index.php?topic=4251.0

[The Brain]

If Germany quickly defeats France (and Russia) then a big British 1914 army would have been sorely needed

No it wouldn't have.  If France and Russia are defeated, then the British army is a waste of resources, because only the RN matters at that point.

Deliberately obtuse much? It would have been needed to prevent the quick German defeat of France and Russia.

Which is exactly what they did.

British strategy:  1
The Brain:  0

Hindsight is great. At least enjoyable, apparently.

[The Brain]

Britain's policy of keeping a small standing army - and relying on continental allies to do a lot of the heavy lifting when war broke out - had been successful for centuries.  I'm not sure how much blame Britain deserves for not keeping a larger army by 1914 considering:

(A)  They already had what appeared to be formidable continental allies encircling Germany
(B)  The policy of a small standing army (partly fueled by a geographical isolation that was still equally true in 1914) had been successful for centuries
(C)  As far as I'm aware, the naval race with Germany was already putting a strain on the British military budget
(D)  Compared to other nations' pre-war plans, e.g.  Plan XVII, the Schlieffen Plan, and Russian lack of effective planning, the British mistake of not keeping a larger army was less spectacularly costly

That being said, in hindsight it would have made sense for Britain to have had a larger army when the war broke out.  But was it a particularly egregious error?  I say no.

Less spectacularly costly 1) to Britain 2) with hindsight, sure. Before the war the Brits couldn't know that their huge gamble would only cost them France being almost defeated and Russia ultimately being knocked out of the war, and not the whole war. It was also an error that had a completely obvious solution: mass army. Unlike some other countries at the time Britain was also a rich, modern and centralized state that could easily have implemented it, had they wanted to.

The  problem is, it wasn't a huge gamble--it was the expected course of events, and if the Russians had been even marginally competant or the French hadn't been so committed to an immediate attack throught the heavy German fortifications in Alsace-Lorraine, it would have worked.

Britain based its plans on Russian competence? Blunder.

[Neil]

If Germany quickly defeats France (and Russia) then a big British 1914 army would have been sorely needed

No it wouldn't have.  If France and Russia are defeated, then the British army is a waste of resources, because only the RN matters at that point.

Deliberately obtuse much? It would have been needed to prevent the quick German defeat of France and Russia.

Which is exactly what they did.

British strategy:  1
The Brain:  0

Hindsight is great. At least enjoyable, apparently.

You certainly seem to be enjoying it.

[The Brain]

If Germany quickly defeats France (and Russia) then a big British 1914 army would have been sorely needed

No it wouldn't have.  If France and Russia are defeated, then the British army is a waste of resources, because only the RN matters at that point.

Deliberately obtuse much? It would have been needed to prevent the quick German defeat of France and Russia.

Which is exactly what they did.

British strategy:  1
The Brain:  0

Hindsight is great. At least enjoyable, apparently.

You certainly seem to be enjoying it.

Am not.

[The Brain]

OK new question. What do people think of the commanders of WW1? Who was great and who was not?

Joffre? Haig? Falkenhayn? Ludendorff? French? Conrad?

I've always had a soft spot for Falkenhayn ( ), but not based on any rational stuff.

[Sheilbh]

I'm a Haig revisionist

[grumbler]

Monty was the best WW1 general.  He just happened to be fighting in the wrong war.

[The Brain]

What about Brusilov? Was he as good as he's sometimes made out to be?

[Valmy]

Joffre? Haig? Falkenhayn? Ludendorff? French? Conrad?

I've always had a soft spot for Falkenhayn ( ), but not based on any rational stuff.

Joffre is a hard one to rate.  His leadership in 1914 was part brilliant and part remarkably incompetent.  I do admire the extent the French Army reformed, experimented, and thought outside the box in 1915 but results were abyssmal and the extent he had a hand in either the innovation or the failures is not clear to me.  But, you know, there was a reason he was fired in 1916.

French is also a hard one.  He was the victim of the fact his country was not prepared to fight a land war of that scale so he had to launch attacks where his guns were starved for ammo in an artillery centric war.  And Haig managed to get him booted.  It was Loos that got him fired was it?  I do not recall.

Haig was a very good general IMO.  I think alot of people really underestimate the difficulty in having to invent entirely new tactics and implement new weapon systems all the time like the generals in WWI did and now that concept is generally accepted (that warfare and weapons are constantly evolving) it was really alien at the time.  Every offensive Haig launched I thought he worked very hard to implement all the new weapons and tactics and try to give his men the optimal chance to succeed and sometimes it worked really well...at least at the beginning.  World War I battles tended to take on a life of their own and just suck men and material in and Haig really seemed to lose control as the vortex would start sucking in British reserves but is that his fault or just the nature of the beast?  But at the very least the Germans suffered just as much if not more from his offensives which is not something you can say to the same extent about Allied efforts in 1915.

I hate Conrad with a pathological loathing so it is hard to be objective.  He was one of the big drivers in getting A-H into the war in the first place (and thus starting it) because of his pathological hatred of Serbia.  He then incompetently mismanaged the Second Army and managed to make sure Austria-Hungary would lose on both fronts by suicidally attacking both Serbia and Russia at the same time.  He then seemed to work as hard as he could to undermine his German allies whenever he could, seemingly out of jealousy because of how badly his army had performed in comparison to the Germans.  Just a loathsome man, general,  and politician IMO.  But I really dislike him so take that with a grain of salt.

Falkenhayn was simply incorrect in his strategic thinking.  The Germans needed to expend as few troops as possible on the Western Front while Russia was still fighting.  They had to keep Austria-Hungary and their other allies in the war and I think Falkenhayn blundered by turning to attack in the West in 1916.  Especially after he had so much success in 1915 by going East.  I think his hatred of the British and fury about their blockade of Germany played a big part in the decision.  And then his efforts were largely undermined by Conrad's absurd attack on Italy right when he needed them to hold the Russians in the East.  Was that his fault or Conrad's?  Naturally I blame Conrad but Falkenhayn needed to at least make sure he was informed about what the Austro-Hungarians were doing.  Surely it wasn't that well kept a secret that they were preparing an attack at Trentino.

[Valmy]

What about Brusilov? Was he as good as he's sometimes made out to be?

Well there is no doubt Brusilov was a competent, innovative, and consummate professional which is not something you saw in the Imperial Russian Army very often.  I mean he did nothing but crush the enemy he was attacking constantly and only Russian failures elsewhere tended to slow him down.  On the other hand, it is pretty easy to look like a genius when most of your battles are against Austria-Hungary.  I say the best compliment for Brusilov was that the German Army copied his tactics (especially with regard to artillery) and strategic thinking he used during the Brusilov Offensive for their own attack on the Western Front in 1918 to a large extent.

Pity he became a Commie.

[Ideologue]

OK new question. What do people think of the commanders of WW1? Who was great and who was not?

Joffre? Haig? Falkenhayn? Ludendorff? French? Conrad?

I've always had a soft spot for Falkenhayn ( ), but not based on any rational stuff.

My favorite: Giulio Douhet.

[Tamas]

I think Falkenhayn deserves some points for realizing the true nature of the war. ie. his Verdun offensive was for attrition not the elusive breakthrough. It's a sad ironic thing that if he wasn't so convinced that a true breakthrough was impossible, it might, it might just had happened at the opening phase of that offensive. But as I said, IIRC he was the first high level decision maker to not only realize how that war could be won, but also acted on it.


And sure, now we say all those troops and materials should had been spent at the East. Probably. But I think there are too many what-ifs going full scale homeland invasion of 1916's Russia to be certain of it.

But I would vote for Brusilov. Sure, he faced the Austro-Hungarians, but so did most of the other Russian generals, all the Italians, and some French dudes in the Balkans later, and he was the only one who repeatedly defeated them in pure military terms. What I mean, is that he faced them with an army clearly not superior to A-H's, and not only played a good part in breaking the A-H army's back for good in 1914 (I read from a Hungarian historian once that the army basically bled dry in that year when it comes to core troops and real offensive capabilities, and I tend to agree), but also managed to almost break them again at the height of trench warfare, before the severe economic problems would start to tear the A-H army apart from the inside.
All other A-H enemies were kept at bay until the army collapsed.

[dps]

But what about the ACW?

That is what it would have looked like if everybody tried to fight the Great War with no standing army.

Germany would have won that war then I think given their immense industrial capacity and innate organization.

Germany industrial capacity wasn't that great.  In fact, the bottom line in both World Wars was that the root of Germany's defeat was that they couldn't match the industrial output of their enemies.