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Perhaps the idea was to bleed them white, but then like many things the "moment" got to them and they tried to force too much in an attempt to "break" the French by actually taking Verdun?

I honestly have not read too much on that battle beyond the high-level though, so my opinions are ill-founded and just a gut instinct at this point.

squidhills wrote:

 Ketara wrote:

I believe horses carried out most of the logistical backbone in the subsequent world war; so he wasn't actually incorrect.

Yes, but Haig wasn't talking about horses as beasts of burden. His vision of war was centered on cavalry assaults as a direct factor in battle, .

I'm not sure about that. You have to accept that the 'soldier and his horse' occupied far more in the way of military utility than 'Charge at the Enemy' (this isn't Waterloo, after all), and that's the full context which Haig was talking about. We're also talking about encirclement, reconnaisance on the ground level, hitting supply lines, and strategically moving bodies of troops from point A to B. Whilst tanks had more or less stolen the thunder of the Cavalry breaking an enemy defensive line through sheer momentum and gusto by the end of the First World War; the utility of cavalry in those other roles (which tanks were ill equipped to replace them in) remained present to an unknown degree. It took the continued development of the motor vehicle and the internal combustion engine before that occurred. By the time you reach the stage of the Aufklärungsabteilung in WW2; what you have in effect is the scouting/transport functions having been entirely mechanised in a way that replaced those cavalry functions.

But that's not to say that those future developments would have been immediately apparent to a decrepit retired old man in the mid 1920's. When WW1 ended, large scale mechanised infantry was still a thing of the future, with existing vehicles mechanically unsuited to the rough terrain and lack of regular servicing points. It wasn't until the Experimental Mechanised Force of 1927 was initiated that such things became more than vague futuristic theory.

The American Civil War showed the limitations of cavalry in modern warfare fifty years earlier. The only effective uses that didn't result in lots of dead horses were reconnaissance and harassment. The largest cavalry engagement of the war was at Gettysburg. It was Union cav vs Confederate cav, and it was pretty much a draw. Cavalry was too specialized to be used to ferry large bodies of troops around; we used mules for that, and largely only against the Indians after the war.

Now, the roles that cavalry traditionally performed on the battlefield were still important, but we hadn't figured out quite how to replace them. It is why horses stuck around for so long even after they had shown their severe limitations. They were obsolete due to the types of weapons being used, even though we didn't have a replacement for the horses that could do the job better than them.

Then the tank was invented and we had our replacement.

It didn't happen right away, of course. It took a while for tanks to become reliable enough, mobile enough,and fast enough, but tanks largely took over the battlefield role of the horse in modern armies by WWII.

Haig's assertion wasn't that "cavalry" would be valuable in future wars. If it was, he would be right. The "Air" cavalry of the Vietnam War, the "Armored" cavalry of the modern tank division, mechanized transport of infantry; all are important extensions of "cavalry" in modern warfare.

Haig was banging on about horses. And he wasn't using cavalry to provide reconnaissance, because trench warfare. And he wasn't having them harass supply lines, because trench warfare. And he wasn't having them encircle anything, because trench warfare. And he wasn't using them to move his troops around, because trains and trench warfare. He was using his infantry to try to punch a hole in the German lines so his cavalry could charge straight through to Berlin. And we all know how that turned out.

I believe the statement from Haig on the last page was post-war, and in that context, it does make sense. Again, post-war, the British concerned themselves with the Empire, ignoring Europe for the most part. Thus, their thinking revolved around colonial policing, combating insurgency and maintaining a presence abroad at the minimal cost. At no point did Haig (or any British commander) act as if a cavalry charge could simply break the German lines in WW1, so to say they did is just disingenuous.

In the kind of war post-1918 Britain was planning for, cavalry in the traditional sense was still of great use; mounted men could easily break a riot, could traverse rough ground/poor roads far more efficiently than a tank, cost far less to employ and didn't require anywhere near as much logistical support. When you're dealing with rebels, riots and guerrilla forces, a tank (especially one of that era) offers very little that cavalry (and later the armoured car) didn't.

Up until the mid 30s (by which point Haig was dead), very few people in Britain expected another mass, industrialised, European war. Now that, one might argue, represents a lack of foresight, but it's clear the 'next war' Haig refers to is one expected to be a much more traditional, colonial affair as that was where Britain's strategic concerns lay in the immediate post-war period.

It is also true that cavalry (although really mounted infantry to be honest) played a much larger role in the more open Eastern and Mesopotamian fronts.

Mounted infantry is not a new concept, and it was definitely still relevant during and after WWI, until replaced by mechanised transports as mentioned. Haig may have personally served at the Western front, but the British army also fought in theatres in WWI where cavalry still played an important part. His comments post-war do not only reflect a Western front perspective, but warfare in general, and in the colonial context as Paradigm points out.

squidhills wrote:
The American Civil War showed the limitations of cavalry in modern warfare fifty years earlier. The only effective uses that didn't result in lots of dead horses were reconnaissance and harassment. The largest cavalry engagement of the war was at Gettysburg. It was Union cav vs Confederate cav, and it was pretty much a draw. Cavalry was too specialized to be used to ferry large bodies of troops around; we used mules for that, and largely only against the Indians after the war.

As noted above; this is a remarkably North American-centric perspective. Cavalry played a large role in the Boer War for example; which was much closer to the First World War in terms of armament, time period, and the actors involved. And even there, British cavalry doctrine was constantly learning and mutating into one synchronised with modern technology. To quote from Stephen Badsey:

In a wider military history con-text, the main impact of the Boer War was that it fostered a number of British military reforms made before the First World War of 1914–18. Of these, one was that by 1908, alone among the major powers of Europe,
the British Empire had the only cavalry entirely armed with an infantry rifle rather than a shorter carbine, together with a tactical doctrine based on dismounted firepower and on synchronising a mounted charge with flanking or supporting fire, giving the British a marked advantage over their enemies....Douglas Haig, who would serve as chief staff officer to the Cavalry Division in South Africa, wrote in 1890 that “unless a cavalry force is by instruction and practice ready to fight on foot its usefulness will be curtailed and it cannot be considered efficient.”

See 'The Boer War (1899–1902) and British Cavalry Doctrine: A Re-Evaluation' in the Journal of Military History, 2007 for more detail on that. Immediately pre-war, British cavalry had already evolved more into a 'dragoon' format; functioning as infantrymen as much as cavalrymen. And that role was one which even by the end of the First World War had yet to be replaced by mechanisation; especially in the far flung reaches of the Empire (where innumerable small conflicts far from complex logistical chains and supply depots existed).

It didn't happen right away, of course. It took a while for tanks to become reliable enough, mobile enough,and fast enough, but tanks largely took over the battlefield role of the horse in modern armies by WWII.

Not just the tank. The aircraft, the motorcycle, and the APC combined with it to create the mechanised forces which replaced the horse on the battlefield.

Haig was banging on about horses. And he wasn't using cavalry to provide reconnaissance, because trench warfare. And he wasn't having them harass supply lines, because trench warfare. And he wasn't having them encircle anything, because trench warfare. And he wasn't using them to move his troops around, because trains and trench warfare.

The quote above was taken from Haig in the interwar period. Not much trench warfare around then, and not a huge amount of it around beforehand. WW1 was a relatively unique occurrence, and a conflict twenty years earlier or later had considerable differences. Every conflict usually has its own peculiarities which emphasise the character of the warfare; and whilst cavalry might not have been much use in trench warfare, it is a far cry to say that it could never have possibly had a use again after that. Immediately dubbing something as obsolete and discounting it is just as strategically/tactically closeminded as slavishly adhering to it beyond all reason.

He was using his infantry to try to punch a hole in the German lines so his cavalry could charge straight through to Berlin. And we all know how that turned out.

The quote originally cited was taken from Haig in the interwar period. Haig wasn't obssessed with having his cavalary 'charge straight through to Berlin' in WW1, he was interested in what could dubbed as 'Breakthrough'. He wanted to push through the enemy defensive line beyond the point whereby reinforcements/artillery could be brought up to plug the gap, and get far enough that:

a) new defensive lines of the same depth could not be thrown up to impede a more general advance,
b) German supply and other trench lines would be severely vulnerable to being flanked and encircled, and
c) The war could resume a more mobile state which would reduce the numbers of casualties being suffered through attritional trench warfare.

Had tanks been first introduced in large enough waves as a separate force rather than doled out piecemeal as infantry support; he might even have succeeded. In which case the cavalry would have been the only arm mobile enough (cavalry can live off the land, move quickly, and don't require vast amounts of logistical support like WW1 tanks did) to seriously push into German lines before new defensive networks could be re-established. Hating on Haig for being an out of touch commander obssessed with re-enacting Waterloo cavalry charges hasn't been fashionable (or considered entirely accurate) for quite some time now. It was promulgated by the likes of Churchill and Liddell Hart as a way of getting at Haig and has been substantially revised in recent years.

 Ketara wrote:

"I believe that the value of the horse and the opportunity for the horse in the future are likely to be as great as ever. Aeroplanes and tanks are only accessories to the men and the horse, and I feel sure that as time goes on you will find just as much use for the horse—the well-bred horse—as you have ever done in the past."

I believe horses carried out most of the logistical backbone in the subsequent world war; so he wasn't actually incorrect.

My understanding was it was mostly the Germans who used horses as the logistic backbone of their army because they didn't have the resources to build and fuel heaps of support vehicles that could have replaced horses. The Soviets also used a lot of horses when considered as a total number, but weren't as reliant on them when considered as a % of their force because they had the resources (and some supplied by other allies) to allow greater mechanisation.

AllSeeingSkink wrote:

 Ketara wrote:

"I believe that the value of the horse and the opportunity for the horse in the future are likely to be as great as ever. Aeroplanes and tanks are only accessories to the men and the horse, and I feel sure that as time goes on you will find just as much use for the horse—the well-bred horse—as you have ever done in the past."

I believe horses carried out most of the logistical backbone in the subsequent world war; so he wasn't actually incorrect.

My understanding was it was mostly the Germans who used horses as the logistic backbone of their army because they didn't have the resources to build and fuel heaps of support vehicles that could have replaced horses. The Soviets also used a lot of horses when considered as a total number, but weren't as reliant on them when considered as a % of their force because they had the resources (and some supplied by other allies) to allow greater mechanisation.

I'll take your word for it; WW2 sadly falls a good twenty years beyond my purview for the most part. I daresay there's plenty of people on here who know more than me about that one.

I'll grant that my point of view is North American-centric, and that my knowledge of the Boer War isn't up to par. Victim of the American public school system, here.

But many of the things the British were learning about cavalry in the Boer War, the US had already figured out during the Civil War. Yes, the technology of the Civil War wasn't the same as in WWI, but it was close enough to show the shortcomings. Haig was learning to have his cavalry fight as dismounted infantry in 1900? Good for him. The most important cavalry action at Gettysburg wasn't the battle on the third day; it was General Buford's holding action where his cavalry force fought as infantry against the advancing Confederate army on the first day. We had cavalry commanders who knew that traditional cavalry was on the way out by mid-war (1863).

I think one of the reasons that Americans seem to agree with the "WWI generals are all idiots" stereotype is that Europe learned the lessons of modern warfare in WWI, whereas we learned it during the Civil War. Our generals made many of the same mistakes that yours would make eventually. So a lot of Americans approach WWI tactics with the benefit of fifty years of foreknowledge from the Civil War. We have a broad "our generals would never have done anything as dumb as yours did" attitude that isn't really borne out by the facts. After all, we showed up three years late and Pershing did everything he could to keep us away from actual battle until 1918. We didn't have many opportunities to show that we would've done things differently. I half think Pershing was trying to wait it out to see if offensive tactics improved to the point where he could commit his forces without suffering the kinds of losses the British and the French had. Maybe if we'd been there on day one, our generals would look as bad as everyone else's, but we got the benefit of not getting involved until the tacticians had started to sort out what not to do in trench warfare.

squidhills wrote:

I think one of the reasons that Americans seem to agree with the "WWI generals are all idiots" stereotype is that Europe learned the lessons of modern warfare in WWI, whereas we learned it during the Civil War.

I'm not sure I'd agree with that. The American Civil War had a plethora of observers from all European nations, and many lessons were taken away from it. Furthermore; it is difficult to seriously contend that the American Civil War in any way demonstrated the advent of a form of modern warfare predominantly revolving around poison gas, machine guns, heavy rifled quick firing breech loading ordnance, submarines, battleships, tanks, trenches, or frankly, any of the major aspects of the First World War. Not only had Britain/France/Russia conducted the Crimean war within historical spitting distance of the Civil War, the French and Germans had actually fought the reasonably large scale Franco-Prussian war a short time afterwards. Don't get me wrong, the Civil War showcased all kinds of interesting things; but the only military developments of mild interest that I can think of to emerge from America in the subsequent fifty years were Harveyed armour and the Zalinski dynamite gun.

Well, those and Ericcson's submarine gun, but that one never even got off the ground.

None of the Civil War Generals or high rankers of note were alive by the time the First World War rolled around, and frankly, America spent the 1880's onwards looking to Europe for military equipment and lessons. They had no arsenals of note at that time; the military was a chronically underfunded bureaucratic nightmare with an isolationist streak a mile wide. When America fought Spain in 1898, no strategic genius or knowledge not equally apparent in practically every other large scale European engagement was in effect. At the Battle of San Juan hill, the Americans dealt with modern firepower by effectively mass swarming the defenders with bodies; no different to any early WW1 engagement (they suffered five times the losses despite outnumbering the Spanish many times over). Doctrine for items such as artillery changed so much in the intervening period that I'm really not convinced it's transferable knowledge at all. When you see all the iterations that the British Army Handbooks went through over the Civil War to WW1 period; you realise that they were constantly changing and learning from various conflicts. I don't know what lessons the American army pulled out of the Civil War; but I'd really be extremely surprised to learn that it was the same sorts of tactics/strategies which they would then go on to apply fifty years later.

I'll be plain, my knowledge of American history is not great, so I'm willing to be corrected on this. But from where I'm sitting, I regularly read dispatches from American naval and army commanders surveying/poaching off foreign military expertise and developments in the pre-war period. Not leading the charge, as it were.

Have no fear Ketara, DINLT is here.

I'm no expert on American history, but American history is a hobby of mine, so I have some info on the US military between the Civil War and WW1.

For obvious reasons, once the Civil War was over, the vast majority of troops faced one of 3 scenarios:

1. Sent home and disarmed becuase you were on the losing side.

3. Garrison duty in the defeated South.

3. Mass demobilization, because the Federal government no longer needed an army of that size.

The US military then switched its attention back West, because the frontier was still expanding, and Crazy Horse and Sitting Bull were making a mockery of the US cavalry.

Custer, a general in the civil war, stayed in the army, because his pre-war West Point commision was worth something, unlike the civil war volunteers, who got told to hit the road. Custer had a choice to stay or go.

Anyway, more plains wars occured, the US military went back to chasing Native Americans, US Marines would pop up in China for the Boxer rebellion, you've already mentioned the Spanish-American war, and some American general with funny eyebrows would try and kill off the development of the Lewis Gun, and later tell Congress that the Army's machine guns were fine, even though they were hard to use at night.

C&Rsenal, a youtube channel, does a great documentary on the Lewis Guns and other world war 1 weapons.

And pre-WW1, Congress would laugh at the US Army for wanting to increase troop numbers to 25,000.

Long story short, yeah, you're right - the US didn't have a lot to offer Europe's militaries, and that would be the case in early WW2 as well.

Hope that makes sense.

squidhills wrote:
I'll grant that my point of view is North American-centric, and that my knowledge of the Boer War isn't up to par. Victim of the American public school system, here.

But many of the things the British were learning about cavalry in the Boer War, the US had already figured out during the Civil War. Yes, the technology of the Civil War wasn't the same as in WWI, but it was close enough to show the shortcomings. Haig was learning to have his cavalry fight as dismounted infantry in 1900? Good for him. The most important cavalry action at Gettysburg wasn't the battle on the third day; it was General Buford's holding action where his cavalry force fought as infantry against the advancing Confederate army on the first day. We had cavalry commanders who knew that traditional cavalry was on the way out by mid-war (1863).

Well, then it is good that those commanders never had to fight on the Eastern front of WW1, or the Russian Civil War and the wars that originated from that. For something on the way out, traditional cavalry played a pretty damn important role in those conflicts.
The nature of warfare on the Western front meant that cavalry could not play a decisive role, but cavalry armed with lances, pistols and sabres did not become obsolete in any way until motor vehicles (and good roads and railroads) became widespread enough to replace them in the 1930's and 40's.

You're right that Europe had lots of observers over here during the Civil War. You may not be right about the lessons they learned from it. I'd heard of assessments by European observers who claimed that the Americans were not using cavalry "correctly" because we'd been using it for recon, supply raids, and as dismounted infantry, instead of the way it had traditionally been used in European warfare.

Yes, Crimea was fought very closely to the time of the Civil War. And there is a school of thought which puts forward the idea that Crimea, not the Civil War is the first true Modern War. I'm no expert on Crimea, so I can't say if they are right or wrong to do so, but I will say the argument I've seen makes sense.

But just because the Civil War did not have *exactly* the same weapons as WWI had, you cannot make the claim that it didn't serve as a preview of WWI. There weren't Maxim guns during the Civil War, but we did have Gatling guns, which filled the same role: crew-served, rapid-fire, anti-infantry guns that made massed assaults on defensive positions costly in the extreme. We didn't have battleships with 12" guns, but we had ironclads, which fought an indecisive naval engagement and spent the rest of the war as shore bombardment platforms. Bit like how WWI played out for the surface fleets, huh? We had extensive trench works during sieges, and General Longstreet even encouraged Lee to fight a purely defensive war, because he saw defensive tactics were going to rapidly outpace offensive tactics in effectiveness. Lee's ego didn't permit him to listen, otherwise we would've seen a lot more trench lines popping up in the countryside. We had our own miniature Battle of Messines Ridge with the Battle of the Crater (Union forces undermined a Confederate trench and set enough dynamite under it to put it on the moon). We had the first submarine to sink an enemy ship. True, it wasn't a major factor on the battlefield, but it did show what could be done and that the technology was there to be developed. We had a massive naval blockade of the entire Southern coastline, for the purpose of starving the Confederacy of war materiel, not entirely unlike the British blockade of much of the European coast to starve Germany. Observation balloons for spotting enemy movements, telegraphs for communications (WWI had telephones, but the principle is close enough) our artillery was longer-ranged and more accurate than in decades prior, heck even infantry firepower increased massively by war's end. We didn't have Enfields or Kar 98s, but the Winchester and Henry repeating rifles allowed an infantryman to fire multiple rounds before reloading.

And my point was never that the US led the way in military development, training, and weaponry in the prewar period. Nowhere did I say that. I just said they got a preview (albeit a slightly incomplete one) of WWI in 1861, and figured out that modern war was going to suck. You are correct that the US Army was a joke between the 1880s (after the Indian Wars) and 1917. That has nothing to do with the Civil War being a preview of WWI; that has its roots in the US being both isolationist and lacking an empire to safeguard, and on a general distrust of standing armies inherited from the Revolutionary period. Americans historically let their army languish in mediocrity and failure between wars because having an army meant they were like those guys over in Europe who liked to use their armies to force other countries to do what they wanted (at least to an American of the era...) Of course after fighting Spain they wound up with an empire, just like those guys in Europe, but ours wasn't an empire no sir, it was completely different, because we're the good guys just ask us... Heck, our army was still a joke between WWI and WWII. The US only started having a decent standing army after 1945.

As for casualties at San Juan Hill; those weren't professional soldiers. Those men, even the officers, were volunteers. They were not the relative handful of guys in the US Army who had actual military experience and training. They were bored guys who volunteered to go kick Spain in the taint because they thought it would be a fun thing to do on an afternoon. It was kind of like if an anime forum on the internet fielded a regiment of volunteer soldiers in Iraq or Syria. There is a reason we don't do armies that way anymore.

squidhills wrote:
You're right that Europe had lots of observers over here during the Civil War. You may not be right about the lessons they learned from it. I'd heard of assessments by European observers who claimed that the Americans were not using cavalry "correctly" because we'd been using it for recon, supply raids, and as dismounted infantry, instead of the way it had traditionally been used in European warfare.

Couldn't say. My specialty is from about 1880 onwards. I know the bare bones of various related subjects and can track military developments in Europe back to 1860 with reasonable depth; but given that every war is different, I'd be inclined to say that any lesson learned in any war is really only as useful insofar as you run into similar conflicts. WW2 panzer on panzer experience isn't of much use in suppressing insurgents in Iraq, you know? Tactics that served well against Boer fighters weren't so hot against Germans in trenches. There's a good saying about how every military prepares for the last war.

Yes, Crimea was fought very closely to the time of the Civil War. And there is a school of thought which puts forward the idea that Crimea, not the Civil War is the first true Modern War. I'm no expert on Crimea, so I can't say if they are right or wrong to do so, but I will say the argument I've seen makes sense.

But just because the Civil War did not have *exactly* the same weapons as WWI had, you cannot make the claim that it didn't serve as a preview of WWI. There weren't Maxim guns during the Civil War, but we did have Gatling guns, which filled the same role: crew-served, rapid-fire, anti-infantry guns that made massed assaults on defensive positions costly in the extreme. We didn't have battleships with 12" guns, but we had ironclads, which fought an indecisive naval engagement and spent the rest of the war as shore bombardment platforms. Bit like how WWI played out for the surface fleets, huh? We had extensive trench works during sieges, and General Longstreet even encouraged Lee to fight a purely defensive war, because he saw defensive tactics were going to rapidly outpace offensive tactics in effectiveness. Lee's ego didn't permit him to listen, otherwise we would've seen a lot more trench lines popping up in the countryside. We had our own miniature Battle of Messines Ridge with the Battle of the Crater (Union forces undermined a Confederate trench and set enough dynamite under it to put it on the moon). We had the first submarine to sink an enemy ship. True, it wasn't a major factor on the battlefield, but it did show what could be done and that the technology was there to be developed. We had a massive naval blockade of the entire Southern coastline, for the purpose of starving the Confederacy of war materiel, not entirely unlike the British blockade of much of the European coast to starve Germany. Observation balloons for spotting enemy movements, telegraphs for communications (WWI had telephones, but the principle is close enough) our artillery was longer-ranged and more accurate than in decades prior, heck even infantry firepower increased massively by war's end. We didn't have Enfields or Kar 98s, but the Winchester and Henry repeating rifles allowed an infantryman to fire multiple rounds before reloading.

But the thing is, you can make claims like the above about practically any conflict by identifying common features between them. For example, Napoleon had observation balloons, sponsored submarine research, had the battle of Trafalgar deploying warships with cannons to break the British blockade, faced light infantry with rifles on the field of battle as well as twentieth century style mounted dragoons, etcetc. I suppose you could say that the American Civil War had more common features; but then again, so did the Boer War, the Opium War, the Franco-Prussian conflict, and dozens of others. I'd say I could identify just as many (frankly, more I should think) such features in those wars. I really don't think the American Civil War deserves any particular primacy for common identifying attributes over much closer conflicts like as the Russo-Japanese war. Sure there was a submarine in the American Civil War, but then again, there were swords in WW1 too and I wouldn't claim Roman battles were a precursor to WW1.

As a point of general historical accuracy for those who might be interested; some of the above points aren't quite as common to the First World war as you might think. For example, the 'ironclad' actions of the American Civil War weren't true ironclads; they were just standard wooden ones with plates bolted on as opposed to actually being ships made from steel. Neither fish nor fowl nor good red herring as the saying goes. The ships of WW1 were as different to them as modern warships now are to those of WW1 vintage.

And my point was never that the US led the way in military development, training, and weaponry in the prewar period. Nowhere did I say that. I just said they got a preview (albeit a slightly incomplete one) of WWI in 1861, and figured out that modern war was going to suck.

Couldn't agree more!

 Ketara wrote:
For example, the 'ironclad' actions of the American Civil War weren't true ironclads; they were just standard wooden ones with plates bolted on as opposed to actually being ships made from steel. Neither fish nor fowl nor good red herring as the saying goes. The ships of WW1 were as different to them as modern warships now are to those of WW1 vintage.

Actually, you'll find that the ironclads of the Civil War were true ironclads, because that's where the term originated. Ironclads were wooden ships "clad in iron" as opposed to made of the stuff from the ground up. Although, in the case of the USS Monitor, every bit that stuck up above the water line was made of metal (and it had a rotating turret!) as opposed to just metal slapped on a wooden frame (as the CSS Virginia/Merrimac was).

As for all wars having loose parallels to WWI if you tilt your head and squint your eyes enough, I have to call shenannigans on that. The Civil War had distinct and proximate parallels to WWI that you don't have to twist yourself into a pretzel to see. Napoleon may have funded submarine research, but he never got a working example that sank an enemy ship during hostile action. President Jeff Davis did. Yes, Napoleon's infantry had rifles, but not ones that held seven to nine rounds of ammo (more than the French or Germans had in WWI!), allowing their operators to "Load on a Sunday and shoot all week". And yes, the Boer War had more advanced weapons and was temporally closer to WWI, as was the Russo-Japanese War, but the American Civil War was the earliest large-scale conflict that hit all of the same notes as WWI, apart from airplanes and poison gas. We averaged almost as many casualties in a single battle than the UK suffered in the entire Second Boer War. 22,000 dead in a three year period is not a preview of WWI. 800,000 dead in a five year period is (and those are just Union losses). I don't know about British historians, but on this side of the Atlantic, the Civil War is considered the first Modern War due to all of the similarities (though as I said earlier, the guys claiming we should give that honor to the Crimean War make a compelling argument). My history teachers all said it: "First Modern War". My history professors said it: "First Modern War". Heck, those two guys I know who do re-enactments say it: "First Modern War". Europeans may feel differently, but I think that may come from Europe largely discounting the US during that period of history. We didn't have an empire, we were isolated by distance and oceans, and we spoke English the wrong way and spelled half of the words wrong. Europe kind of looked at the US as a curiosity, rather than a rival for power on the world stage. I think that may explain why European historians want to point to the Russo-Japanese War as their "preview" of WWI; it was a European War therefore it holds historical merit, while the Civil War was an American war, therefore it was a curiosity with no bearing on how a European war would develop.

I'm not saying you're wrong to discount the Boer War or the Russo-Japanese War as previews of WWI. I'm not saying you're wrong to consider them better previews, even. I'm just disagreeing with your willingness to dismiss the Civil War as an equally valid preview of WWI, or to dismiss the very real similarities between the two wars.

At any rate, this conversation has gotten me thinking about something, and I'd like to ask a question and get your opinion...

So, over here, we are taught that the Civil War was our preview of WWI and that our generals learned that charging a defended trench work manned by guys armed with modern weapons would result in staggering losses, and they would never do that again, because it was stupid. The thing is, the next war we fought was against Spain. And Spain barely bothered to show up for that war. The volunteer army performed astonishingly poorly (you mentioned San Juan Hill and that was just one example) and the US only won that war because Spain somehow managed to perform even worse than we did. Our army was so chock full of untrained volunteers at every level that we can't say if any lessons actually were learned from the Civil War, because nobody who would have learned those lessons was in any kind of command. So we move on to WWI. We only suffered 50,000 or so killed in that war. But we only showed up in very late 1917 and we didn't see combat until 1918. Are our comparatively light losses a result of better tactics on our part? Or is it because by the time we showed up the Brits and the French had finally developed combined arms offensives that resulted in more gains than corpses allowing us to benefit from their hard-earned knowledge? Or was it because by the time we showed up Germany was so on the ropes that simply by putting boots on the ground we secured victory for the Entente?

TL;DR We say we learned the lessons of modern war from the Civil War, but did we? When did we prove that? Between 1880 and 1917 we fought one war against a modern-ish military, and the war was the real-life version of a shoot out between an Imperial Stormtrooper and a Star Trek Redshirt (ie: the Stormtrooper fires and misses. The Redshirt dies anyway). Did we prove we learned the lessons in WWI or did we just benefit from our allies' prior experience?

squidhills wrote:

Actually, you'll find that the ironclads of the Civil War were true ironclads, because that's where the term originated. Ironclads were wooden ships "clad in iron" as opposed to made of the stuff from the ground up. Although, in the case of the USS Monitor, every bit that stuck up above the water line was made of metal (and it had a rotating turret!) as opposed to just metal slapped on a wooden frame (as the CSS Virginia/Merrimac was).

I'm not referring so much to the etymological roots of the word as to what was considered to be an 'ironclad' in the 'ironclad' era itself. The French threw together the first one in the shape of the Gloire initially which was, like the American Civil War versions, a wooden ship with iron armour plating bolted on. The British then decided to go one better for their first 'ironclad' HMS Warrior (viewable today if you care to visit England) which was made entirely out of iron. Warrior was considered so superior to the Gloire version of battleship that the decision was quite rapidly made that future ironclad designs absolutely had to be made fully out of iron. So what you find is that whilst a number of these 'semi-ironclads' were made in all countries; they were usually wooden battleships which had already been laid down being converted due to being judged pointless in the face of the all metal ironclad. That or because the country in question lacked the technical capability to build all metal ironclads.

Consequently once you move into the 1870's, you'll find that most naval commanders automatically exclude such ships as being utterly useless for calculation of ironclad strength and don't actually consider them to be ironclads. They consider the first Warrior style ironclads as useless and barely counting (much like pre-dreadnoughts post 1906), but 'semi-ironclads' literally don't even figure into the calculations. They're just considered to be mongrel 'half-clads' (as one commander put it). It's only in the eyes of their contemporaries when they were first built, and those of historians trying to determine 'the Age of the Ironclad' that they're considered as such.

As for all wars having loose parallels to WWI if you tilt your head and squint your eyes enough, I have to call shenannigans on that. The Civil War had distinct and proximate parallels to WWI that you don't have to twist yourself into a pretzel to see. Napoleon may have funded submarine research, but he never got a working example that sank an enemy ship during hostile action. President Jeff Davis did. Yes, Napoleon's infantry had rifles, but not ones that held seven to nine rounds of ammo (more than the French or Germans had in WWI!), allowing their operators to "Load on a Sunday and shoot all week".

I'll be honest, I don't entirely disagree. It did have parallels moreso than all those pre-1850 conflicts, I'm quite happy to concede that. It's more the basis of the specific examples you're using to try and justify the statement that I find problematic. Trying to say that both had submarines and therefore were similar is logically like me saying that the Battle of Agincourt also had swords and is therefore similar. It's the same again with the Gatling (a gun that wasn't automatic, powered by a crank, treated as artillery, and had a direct contemporary in the Agar gun). It's not the sort of rule I'd try and define similarity between conflicts on.

Essentially, I would assert that any number of legitimate parallels (scale, technical changes, adaptation to more modern systems, etc) you could draw between the Civil War and WW1; you could also draw with the earlier Crimean Conflict. I also think that the most immediate pre-war example of the WW1 'style' of warfare would actually probably be the Russo-Japanese war in terms of equipment, strategy, & tactics. The American Civil War just slots in with the Third War of Italian Independence, Boer war, Franco-Prussian conflict, and several other such wars in the category of 'Pre-WW1 wars that featured some similarities to it'. Depending on which aspect you're looking at, you could find more or less parallels to WW1 in any individual one.

I think I'm probably splitting hairs to be honest though, so I'll shut up one that one now.

So we move on to WWI. We only suffered 50,000 or so killed in that war. But we only showed up in very late 1917 and we didn't see combat until 1918. Are our comparatively light losses a result of better tactics on our part? Or is it because by the time we showed up the Brits and the French had finally developed combined arms offensives that resulted in more gains than corpses allowing us to benefit from their hard-earned knowledge? Or was it because by the time we showed up Germany was so on the ropes that simply by putting boots on the ground we secured victory for the Entente?

TL;DR We say we learned the lessons of modern war from the Civil War, but did we? When did we prove that? Between 1880 and 1917 we fought one war against a modern-ish military, and the war was the real-life version of a shoot out between an Imperial Stormtrooper and a Star Trek Redshirt (ie: the Stormtrooper fires and misses. The Redshirt dies anyway). Did we prove we learned the lessons in WWI or did we just benefit from our allies' prior experience?

I'll be honest, the Americans showed up militarily in WW1 just in time for the victory parade more or less. What was more important in their involvement in that conflict was their economic muscle. By the time the Americans started heading into battle, the Ludendorff offensive (Germany's final military throw of the dice) had been exhausted. They were out of reserves, out of resources, technically outmatched, outnumbered, and out of steam. Out of everything, in effect. Their final offensive had captured a huge amount of new territory; but they could never have held it; it had cost them a fifth of their remaining men to do it. They were effectively reduced to a shrinking defensive only force at that point in time. Even had the American troops not arrived; the still increasing British war machine (production of munitions and men to use them kept going up) would likely have ground them under over the next year or two (the French were doing less well).

Into this environment dropped the American army; with the benefit of every piece of received tactical/strategical wisdom and technical advance that the British and French could give them. What the American troops gave the Allies was the ability to rotate exhausted units off the front line, man a more in depth defence more generally, launch multiple attacks up and down the line, and build up their offensive potential more quickly. In short, they gave what was left of the Entente the ability to finish the war a year or two earlier by giving Allied attacks that little more oomph.

So in answer to your question, I think the Civil War had nothing to do with American performance in WW1. How could it? American tank design and tactics were learnt from the Allies. The hard-won methods of planning/launching large scale offensive movements was drawn from British/French commanders (you don't get the experience for that sort of thing from a history textbook). The superficial similarities with WW1 and the Civil War in no way gave American Commanders any kind of special or unique experience in launching successful assaults. Nobody survived from one to the other, and everything from small unit tactics to large scale planning, to the weapons involved was significantly different.

I find it very interesting that that is how it's taught in American schools though.

Thanks for the response. I must admit, I've been moving towards that viewpoint over the last few years, as I learn more about WWI. I just wanted to see if someone with more knowledge thought the same way. I guess it is just showing another weak spot in how Americans are taught history.

Up next: how the US single-handedly won WWII!

The Americans were the real winners of WW1. Not because they did the most or showed those silly Europeans how it was done, but by the merit of showing up fashionably late to the party. The Russians went down in revolution, Austria-Hungary was broken up, France ravaged, Germany Versaille'd, and Britain bankrupted. The Americans effectively strolled in, and for the price of 100,000 casualties, made innumerable fortunes, sat high at the peace table, gained every European technical advance free of charge, and got to wean their new army to combat.

Had they stayed uninvolved, I suspect the war would have dragged for another year and a half beyond; but then Germany would have been broken up at the end of it back into the Germanic states (preventing WW2) and America would have been left miles behind in terms of combat experience and military technology. They really did join at just the right moment (for them). Hat off to the President of the time for playing his realpolitik cards right.

 Ketara wrote:
The Americans were the real winners of WW1. Not because they did the most or showed those silly Europeans how it was done, but by the merit of showing up fashionably late to the party. The Russians went down in revolution, Austria-Hungary was broken up, France ravaged, Germany Versaille'd, and Britain bankrupted. The Americans effectively strolled in, and for the price of 100,000 casualties, made innumerable fortunes, sat high at the peace table, gained every European technical advance free of charge, and got to wean their new army to combat.

Had they stayed uninvolved, I suspect the war would have dragged for another year and a half beyond; but then Germany would have been broken up at the end of it back into the Germanic states (preventing WW2) and America would have been left miles behind in terms of combat experience and military technology. They really did join at just the right moment (for them). Hat off to the President of the time for playing his realpolitik cards right.

Wait... So if the US had not got involved into WW1 then WW2 would never have happened? I knew it! WW2 is all the fault of the Americans! My friends in the Kremlin are going to love this

In all seriousness, had the war dragged on for another year and a half, cost that many more lives, and seen all that ground taken in the Ludendorrf offensive ravaged, I can't see the French having been willing to let Germany survive as a political entity. With America restraining them and it having ended when it did it was hard enough. We'd probably have gone back to Prussia, Bavaria, etc with a semi-permanent occupation that made the Ruhr look low-key.

 TheMeanDM wrote:
You keep saying that the tactics changed.

I don't 100% disagree with you there.

I keep saying that the "throw more men at the enemy, and keep throwing" tactic essentially didn't change quickly enough...and was repeated.

The casualty numbers speak for themselves in just 2 campaigns.

Somme (400k+ Brit casualties) was the first major Brit offensive.

Third Ypres (250k min Brit casualties) was Haig's second major offensive. The numbers are fuzzy, as some estimates of Brit casualties go upward of nearly 500k.

Regardless...it was the *same* attrition strategy. With the same bloody results.

But finally toward the end (the 100 Days Campaign) new tactics were adopted and they finally proved effective (as evidenced by the end of the war).

Again...all I have been saying is that the tactics didn't evolve fast enough due to the stubborn mentality of the overall commamder of British forces.

Show me what he did differently in Somme and TY. I woukd like to know....because I am really only seeing a difference later.


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Edit: looks like you did go into an explanation.

Also forgetting the French and Germans who suffered demonstrably greater casualties time and again, doing the same damn thing.

Why not defeat the German navy and land in the Netherlands?

 Frazzled wrote:
Why not defeat the German navy and land in the Netherlands?

Probably because that would have been an even worse place to fight than the trenches if the Dutch didn't agree to let forces pass. Blow up bridges, flood areas, mine the canals... It would have been a nightmare. And probably even worse for international standings than invading the suspiciously neutral Swiss.

Spetulhu wrote:

 Frazzled wrote:
Why not defeat the German navy and land in the Netherlands?

Probably because that would have been an even worse place to fight than the trenches if the Dutch didn't agree to let forces pass. Blow up bridges, flood areas, mine the canals... It would have been a nightmare. And probably even worse for international standings than invading the suspiciously neutral Swiss.

Fair enough (I am confusing WWI and WWII occupation), then northern Belgium.

 Ketara wrote:
The Americans were the real winners of WW1. Not because they did the most or showed those silly Europeans how it was done, but by the merit of showing up fashionably late to the party. The Russians went down in revolution, Austria-Hungary was broken up, France ravaged, Germany Versaille'd, and Britain bankrupted. The Americans effectively strolled in, and for the price of 100,000 casualties, made innumerable fortunes, sat high at the peace table, gained every European technical advance free of charge, and got to wean their new army to combat.

And the USA didn't have to drop the gold standard following WW1 like other nations involved. It got even better for the US at the end of WW2, where they had basically all the gold, and other countries used USD in place of gold. That's why countries use USD as reserve currency to this very day, even though the US abandoned the gold standard in the 70's. Good old economic inertia.

 Do_I_Not_Like_That wrote:

Long story short, yeah, you're right - the US didn't have a lot to offer Europe's militaries, and that would be the case in early WW2 as well.

I agree with you in the sense that we didn't have a lot to offer in terms of fresh, new military thought/theory.

What we did have to offer, particularly when the US arrived in Europe in 1917, was fresh bodies. It wasn't until Fismes/Fismette that Pershing got what he wanted: American troops fighting under command of American generals. I actually wrote a paper on Fismes and Fismette, focusing on some of the troops from the 112th Infantry regiment (part of the 28th division), and I honestly think that it was a battle which would have far reaching consequences in terms of doctrine and training.

 TheMeanDM wrote:
I get that the powers involved didn't start off with the intention of fighting a trench war.

I think my thought/opinion is bes described in the encyclopedia entry: "At the start of the war, most of the world's armies had tactical doctrines based on combat operations consisting of vast sweeping maneuvers and meeting engagements."

There's two parts to this, and one part you're partially right. Tactical doctrines were out of date. As an example, just last night I was reading about a prototype French semi-auto rifle developed in 1907 (it was an interesting design ultimately rejected for cost and reliability). It was noted the rifle was incredibly long - not for accuracy or range, but just because French tactical doctrine wanted a rifle that could be fired two ranks deep, and the longer barrel meant troops at the back would have the rifle's barrels forward of the front rank. Yeah. It was the 20th century and a great power had a doctrine calling for firing two ranks deep. So there's some case that doctrine was way out of step with the reality of modern war.

However, you're still working with the false assumption that trench warfare was inevitable and that meant the static, attritional nature of war on the Western front was inevitable. It wasn't. It was only in Western Europe where the front became static. In the East, in the ME, and everywhere else there was fighting the lines changed frequently. In Russia for instance, trench lines were dug, but due to the much greater space for fighting it was possible to outflank, and if the defender drew his lines wide enough to prevent that, then it became thin enough to exploit somewhere.

That is what I have been trying to show, and how the generals were slow to adapt to the vastly different battlefield and the technology that changed the lethality of war.

And what people have been explaining, very patiently I think, is that there was a great deal of adaption. The early period of mass infantry movements gave way to trench warfare, and soon as you see that then you see rapid developments in offensive and defensive tactics. For instance, Germany quickly moved from attempts to out maneuver the Western allies, and instead focused on picking battles that could force far more French casualties than they suffered themselves - Verdun. Germany achieved a positive kill-loss ratio in the conflict, but nothing like what was needed. But the war in the East was going far better than expected, so the Germans adapted, developing the Hindenburg Line. This line gave up ground to narrow the front, but more importantly it redesigned how an area was defended - instead of a trench line defended by a mass of infantry instead you saw hardpoints and fortifications deployed in depth, designed to slowly yield ground while inflicting heavy casualties, until elite troops would be released in counter-offensives to retake the lost ground.

In contrast, the early actions at the Somme were disastrous for the English. But contrary to myth this wasn't because the English had learned nothing from the first two years of the war. They actually had developed effective squad based tactics, but did not think those complex operations could be undertaken by the troops at the Somme, as they were freshly raised troops with little training and no experience in war. Instead the English thought immense artillery would suffice, this was mistaken but hardly a foolish notion. But the English rapidly adapted, and after the first week they actually killed as many as they lost. They moved towards combined arms and closer co-ordination between air, artillery and infantry in each offensive.

In fact, it was British advances in doctrine over the Somme, along with the declining German strategic position, that caused Germany to move to the Hindenburg Line. And the British then adapted to the Hindenburg Line, changing to tactics of bite and hold, isolating and taking each hardpoint in isolation, and not advancing until each position was secure.

I mean, tanks weren't developed by idiots stuck in old forms of battle. Hell, tank doctrine changed massively from the Somme to Cambrai, and massively again by Amiens. (edit - whoops, Paradigm made this exact point )

I'm not saying there wasn't plenty of inexplicably awful doctrine, but there was also a lot of very intelligent and rapid adaptation. Same as any war, really.


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 TheMeanDM wrote:
But what I have been trying to simply state, that Haig carried out antiquated tactics and really didn't adopt new strategies that may have saved lives, is confirmed by the man himself even years after the war had ended:

"I believe that the value of the horse and the opportunity for the horse in the future are likely to be as great as ever. Aeroplanes and tanks are only accessories to the men and the horse, and I feel sure that as time goes on you will find just as much use for the horse—the well-bred horse—as you have ever done in the past."

The statement wasn't wrong, given the tanks and aircraft at that time. The thing you have to realise is that you win battles in two ways - either by breakthrough and exploitation collapsing the enemy army, or by attrition. Attrition was a war of infantry and artillery, supplemented by the rest. Breakthrough was combined arms, where exploitation would be achieved by cavalry.

In WW2 exploitation could be carried out by tanks and mechanised infantry, but in WW1 tanks were not mechanically reliable enough, and their supporting infantry was still on foot. As such tanks were a breakthrough weapon, exploitation would still be left to cavalry.


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 TheMeanDM wrote:
The casualty numbers speak for themselves in just 2 campaigns.

Somme (400k+ Brit casualties) was the first major Brit offensive.

The Germans lost more than 400,000 men as well.

Third Ypres (250k min Brit casualties) was Haig's second major offensive. The numbers are fuzzy, as some estimates of Brit casualties go upward of nearly 500k.

German casualties are also fuzzy, but on par with allied casualties.

Regardless...it was the *same* attrition strategy. With the same bloody results.

But finally toward the end (the 100 Days Campaign) new tactics were adopted and they finally proved effective (as evidenced by the end of the war).

Both sides in the 100 days offensive lost about a million men each. So your metric of 'attrition is bad' makes zero sense if you think the 100 Days Campaign was somehow better.

And what you're missing is that tactics used in the 100 Days weren't just suddenly tried out of the blue. They were the result of years of small and large innovations, and the deployment of new weapons. And beyond that, they were made possible because the environment had changed considerably. The hard, continuous trench line was gone, the Spring offensive combined with declining German manpower and moral made a lot of new tactics wildly more effective. For instance, infiltration tactics suddenly began paying huge results, flanked and surprised German positions of hundreds of men would surrender to a handful of infiltrators. It wasn't that sneaking up on the enemy at night was a new idea - its that it would have been suicide against the defences and committed German troops of 1914-17.


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 Easy E wrote:
Perhaps the idea was to bleed them white, but then like many things the "moment" got to them and they tried to force too much in an attempt to "break" the French by actually taking Verdun?

I honestly have not read too much on that battle beyond the high-level though, so my opinions are ill-founded and just a gut instinct at this point.

Attrition is a complicated strategy to execute. The German high command couldn't tell operational commanders, let alone rank and file, that the plan was to feed them in to a meatgrinder so that the French would put more of their own in to a meatgrinder. You got to give them objectives, ground to capture. So in execution attrition can end up a huge mess. That's on top of the usual mess of command and control that you normally get in WW1.

As to whether it was the 'real' German plan... there's hardly any direct evidence either way. I also don't really get the debate, even if the intent was different at the outset it became a war of attrition very quickly. And in terms of assessing Falkenhayn - if it was an operation to capture Verdun... it failed. If it was an attritional war to bleed France white... it failed.


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squidhills wrote:
The American Civil War showed the limitations of cavalry in modern warfare fifty years earlier. The only effective uses that didn't result in lots of dead horses were reconnaissance and harassment.

You need to add in exploitation, and then you have a list of three of the most important things in war, besides firepower.

I get what you're saying that cavalry were still in the role just because nothing had come along to do it better... but I think you're missing that the Western front 1915-1918 was a really unusual environment. It wasn't replicated elsewhere in the world, and in those places horses were still an essential element of fighting.


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squidhills wrote:
But many of the things the British were learning about cavalry in the Boer War, the US had already figured out during the Civil War. Yes, the technology of the Civil War wasn't the same as in WWI, but it was close enough to show the shortcomings. Haig was learning to have his cavalry fight as dismounted infantry in 1900? Good for him. The most important cavalry action at Gettysburg wasn't the battle on the third day; it was General Buford's holding action where his cavalry force fought as infantry against the advancing Confederate army on the first day. We had cavalry commanders who knew that traditional cavalry was on the way out by mid-war (1863).

I think one of the reasons that Americans seem to agree with the "WWI generals are all idiots" stereotype is that Europe learned the lessons of modern warfare in WWI, whereas we learned it during the Civil War. Our generals made many of the same mistakes that yours would make eventually.

This is getting very strange. The complaint was the British were idiots for believing in cavalry through WWI and afterwards. While the Americans had learned the limitations of cavalry in the ACW.

But the US raised a cavalry division specifically for WW1, and after the war the US raised three more cavalry divisions.


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squidhills wrote:
As for all wars having loose parallels to WWI if you tilt your head and squint your eyes enough, I have to call shenannigans on that. The Civil War had distinct and proximate parallels to WWI that you don't have to twist yourself into a pretzel to see.

Yes, but it also had such massive differences that claiming Europe should have known what was coming becomes utterly false. We can look now and see the very limited value of cavalry on the Western Front, but it's pure nonsense to claim that's a lesson to be learnt from the ACW. Any army trying to fight in ACW without cavalry would have found itself failing to locate the enemy, stumbling in to ambush, and seeing its lines of supply and communication constantly broken. Cavalry played that role in every campaign in WW1 other than the Western Front, because it was only there that the lines ran from coast to coast.

My history professors said it: "First Modern War". Heck, those two guys I know who do re-enactments say it: "First Modern War". Europeans may feel differently, but I think that may come from Europe largely discounting the US during that period of history. We didn't have an empire, we were isolated by distance and oceans, and we spoke English the wrong way and spelled half of the words wrong. Europe kind of looked at the US as a curiosity, rather than a rival for power on the world stage. I think that may explain why European historians want to point to the Russo-Japanese War as their "preview" of WWI; it was a European War therefore it holds historical merit, while the Civil War was an American war, therefore it was a curiosity with no bearing on how a European war would develop.

I'm not saying you're wrong to discount the Boer War or the Russo-Japanese War as previews of WWI. I'm not saying you're wrong to consider them better previews, even. I'm just disagreeing with your willingness to dismiss the Civil War as an equally valid preview of WWI, or to dismiss the very real similarities between the two wars.

Ultimately I think this is a bad question. War doesn't have some sudden paradigm shift. The minie ball and other developments changes the ACW and that level of firepower probably felt very modern at that time, but the massed musketry of the Napoleonic Age would have felt very modern as well.

Hell, even WW1 you still had armies moving at the speed of foot, with offensive operations being comunicated back with signal flags. Even WW2, once you look past the pointy end of the spear and in to the logistics you see horse and cart, and very limited communications. If anything anywhere was going to be considered a truly modern army, I think that distinction goes to the US in WW2, because it had all the weapons, logistics and communications of a modern army.

So we move on to WWI. We only suffered 50,000 or so killed in that war. But we only showed up in very late 1917 and we didn't see combat until 1918. Are our comparatively light losses a result of better tactics on our part? Or is it because by the time we showed up the Brits and the French had finally developed combined arms offensives that resulted in more gains than corpses allowing us to benefit from their hard-earned knowledge? Or was it because by the time we showed up Germany was so on the ropes that simply by putting boots on the ground we secured victory for the Entente?

There was still heavy fighting but Germany really was falling apart by that stage. I've never been able to find it since, but I once saw a chart of German desertion, month by month through WW1. You see almost nothing until after the Spring Offensive, then you see enormous rates of surrender and desertion. That was seen by Germany as the last, final, all or nothing push. That it succeeded at first only to finally peter out in to nothing probably made the moral hit all the worse.

Seb, you're late. Ketara already kicked my butt on this.

 Iron_Captain wrote:

 Ketara wrote:
The Americans were the real winners of WW1. Not because they did the most or showed those silly Europeans how it was done, but by the merit of showing up fashionably late to the party. The Russians went down in revolution, Austria-Hungary was broken up, France ravaged, Germany Versaille'd, and Britain bankrupted. The Americans effectively strolled in, and for the price of 100,000 casualties, made innumerable fortunes, sat high at the peace table, gained every European technical advance free of charge, and got to wean their new army to combat.

Had they stayed uninvolved, I suspect the war would have dragged for another year and a half beyond; but then Germany would have been broken up at the end of it back into the Germanic states (preventing WW2) and America would have been left miles behind in terms of combat experience and military technology. They really did join at just the right moment (for them). Hat off to the President of the time for playing his realpolitik cards right.

Wait... So if the US had not got involved into WW1 then WW2 would never have happened? I knew it! WW2 is all the fault of the Americans! My friends in the Kremlin are going to love this

The question is what Stalin would've done if Germany didn't exist.

squidhills wrote:
Seb, you're late. Ketara already kicked my butt on this.

Christ, that's not the impression I give off is it? I really need to work on my metaphorical bedside manner if so.

squidhills wrote:
Seb, you're late. Ketara already kicked my butt on this.

And mine too!

I have definitely learned a grrat deal more from everybody in this thread and through researching for responses than I originally knew of WWI.

So thank you all for that!

I am sure your posts were well intented to be informative, and for my part, sometimes after 12 to 13 hrs of being brain drained by patients, my matience and resiliency is a bit low...so I hope that I didnt't come across as an ass myself.