Slaughter of WW I

[sigma]

Was anybody bought to account over the losses of WW I due to bad leadership and poor tactics.

[Graham-W]

Don't know but a whole series of streets were named after some of the poorest generals of WW1 in a town near me.
Haig Street, White Street, Powell Street ,Johnson Street etc.

[Mosaic]

It seems that the leadership of Britain and France focused attention on making Germany pay for the war rather than entertaining any self-doubts.

[mushroom25]

//....some of the poorest generals of WW1....//

and yet, it was these "poor" generals who prevailed and were on the winning side by November 1918. how did that happen?

[woofgang]

its also very easy to look back and see what went wrong when you can see the whole picture and have not been brought up in that certain era with its expectations and beliefs.

[bert_h]

Of course not. Such modern issues as human rights just weren't in the picture. You signed up or were conscripted, and you took whatever happened to you. The generals were not answerable to the law or to anybody else; they were put there to do a job as well as they knew how.

Hindsight's useless in this situation. What we can see of the situation that the leaders were then facing is now stripped of its urgency, and of many little details which could have influenced decisions then. There's no way anybody can categorically say even today that any of the leadership decisions were culpable, and far less could anybody have said at the time.

[jno]

an admiral was executed in 1757 for losing a battle

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/John_Byng

This practice appears to have gone out of fashion, however.

[rojash]

"and yet, it was these "poor" generals who prevailed and were on the winning side by November 1918. how did that happen?"

Well someone has to win. In this case, at the cost of over 1 million British and Empire soldiers.

[heathfield]

Despite 'bad leadership' and 'poor tactics', could it be that the extra manpower and industrial might provided by the USA had some effect on the outcome?

[bert_h]

Yes, Heathfield, I think that every realistic assessment of WW1 concludes that it would have been an indeterminate stalemate for years and years had the USA not come into it.

However, it was the UK's first hostile act of the war that eventually brought the Americans in. We cut the German submarine telegraph cables in August 1914, as a result of which we could intercept and decode the infamous Zimmerman telegram. Everyone now seems to agree that it was that telegram that brought the USA into the war, not the sinking of the Lusitania, or anything else.

[HowardKennitby]

As Napoleon said

'The greatest general is he who makes the fewest mistakes.'

[nungate]

Personally, I think it was a learning process for the generals. They weren't prepared for an industrialised war. Think how much technology advanced as the war progressed. Tanks, aeroplanes, machine guns, I know they were in use prior to 1914, but I reckon it was then that they became widely used. The British commander Haig was in essence a cavalry man and was keen to find ways to use cavalry, such was the mindset, they were still fighting a 19th century war in the 20th. It wasn't really until after the introduction of the creeping barrage, and the bite and hold tactic that things began to change. Some of the generals got the tactics right. On the first day of the Somme, the troops from Ulster Regiments achieved their objectives, this was due to their commander (I think it was Rawlinson) who ordered his men not to go over the top carrying all their equipment etc and not to walk but to run at their objective, whereas at other points on the front the men were fully laden and told to walk towards their objectives. It's all very well for us to sit and judge those in charge in 1914-18 by the way things are done today, I used to be of the opinion that it was the case of lions led by donkeys but, miltarily things had changed so much in the years between say the end of the American Civil war and the outbreak of war in Europe in 1914. The warning of an industrialised war was there during the civil war, sadly no one seemed to heed that warning, resulting in the wholesale slaughter of the early years of the war. You know I could make my point so much better in person than I can in writing, it would probably take me a couple of days to get this right I just hope you understand where I'm coming from. To answer your question though, nobody was brought to account over the tactics and so on, after the war was over they just wanted to put it all behind them and get on with life, and of course make Germany pay. You could make the argument that Germany didn't start it all off, it was an assassination in Sarajevo, coupled with treaties that a would support c if b attacked and so on. What do you think?

[heathfield]

Far from being held to account, Haig was hailed as a hero - not least because of his charitable post-war work which continued until his death in 1928. More people turned out on the day of Haig's funeral than did for Princess Di's!!

[Haggisdj]

I'm not sure how accurate this is but Ie read that the first trench war was The American Civil War. The Americans documented how to fight and win a trench war and the Europeans refused to read the documents because they cam from our cousins across the water who knew nothing...

[Haggisdj]

..and to add to nungate's post, I have also read that trains played a massive part in WW1.

[Parsfan]

Minor quibble with Nungate's post. Rawlinson was in overall charge of the Somme offensive and had decreed that the infantry go over no-man's land in full equipment and at walking pace. He had assumed that the artillery barrage would have destroyed the German trenches and the barbed wire in front of them, but in fact both remained largely intact due to the robust nature of the trenches and the inadequacy of the shells. Haig had expressed misgivings about the plan but had declined to overrule Rawlinson. On that basis, Haig needs to shoulder some of the blame for the failure of the first day. As overall commander, if he didn't agree with a subordinate's battle plan he should have changed it.
As for the point about the generals having eventually won the war, inevitably in a conflict of this magnitude the reasons for it having gone one way or another are not simple. As has been suggested, after the fiasco of the first day on the Somme, the army commanders learnt to use more flexible tactics, such as the creeping barrage, and this helped reduce casualties. No doubt the Americans played a part, but Germany collapsed before they were able to play a decisive role. The main reason for the collapse was logistical. The blockade starved them of the raw materials needed to wage a war on this scale.

[heathfield]

Today, not many people realise that in 1914 the British public were actually firmly against a war with Germany, and considered that what was going on in Europe was none of our business. But the government thought differently. The Prime Minister of the day called in the owners of the leading British broadsheet newspapers and told them they had to change the public's mind over this. And it worked. It took only a fortnight before the British couldn't wait to challenge the Germans, and men rushed to sign up. This aspect of the mood of the public towards WW1 remains largely hidden even today, buried under heaps of references emphasising their patriotic fervour.