![douglas-haig[1].jpg](https://i.imgur.com/nWy5Zd3.jpg "douglas-haig[1].jpg")
Do the generals of WW1 get undeserved hate? Are the blood of unnecessary deaths on their hands, or is that just hindsight and underestimation of how hard it was for militaries to adjust to the new realities of 20th century industrial warfare?
Which generals do you think adapted well, quickly, and minimised losses? Which generals do you think were incompetent and deserve the moniker of "donkeys leading lions"?
>>891063
Petain was a traitor shit
>>891063
>most tech was extremely new and tactics hadn't quite adapted to them yet
>trench warfare resulted while tacticians struggled with what to do against the new defense heavy tech
>Offensive Tech to counter trench warfare was near non-existent and wouldn't exist until the war was practically over and even then in it's most primordial forms
>Communication tech combined with top down tactical management meant adaptation went as fast as it possibly could but was far too slow
>Incompetency actually did very little thanks to these previous factors
It really wasn't the generals fault, they did what they could with what they had.
>>891068
Petain was a hero, the last knight of France
>>891063
A crucial part of the problem is that military theorists dismissed the Boer War and Russo-Japanese War as poor evidence of what a European conflict would look like. They thought that with the larger formations that would be fighting on the continent, they would still have the manpower to outflank enemy positions, even with their increased defensive capabilities. They underestimated the effective combat frontage though, and ended up racing to the North Sea coastline in increasing attempts to outflank each other at the operational and strategic levels.
By the time they had dug in in places like Picardie, the Germans had already gone into turtle mode as a response to their failure to manage a decisive victory in the West and Russian mobilization in the East.
I don't agree with >>891112 about the lack of offensive capability. Aggression at the tactical level began in earnest at the start of 1916 and escalated to larger and larger scales as the war went on. WWI's static nature is over-exaggerated to the point of hampering general understanding of the conflict and overshadowing what was a critical period in technological and theoretical development.
That being said, the generals of the later years seem to be more competent. I'd take Haig over French, Ludendorff over Bulow, etc.
>>891160
When you consider the lack of flanking capability or mobility for infantry, the real workhorse of the battlefield, offensive capability was extremely limited, outside of "throw bodies at the wall and see what doesn't get mowed down," until late artillery tactics and the minor addition of landship tanks.
from Sir Douglas Haig's Final Despatch, 21 March 1919 - "In every stage of the wearing-out struggle losses will necessarily be heavy on both sides, for in it the price of victory is paid. If the opposing forces are approximately equal in numbers, in courage, in moral and in equipment, there is no way of avoiding payment of the price or of eliminating this phase of the struggle."
>>892090
>>891063
I think part of the reason Haig is disliked is because the diary entries that have come to light since WWI portray him as cold and uncaring for the troops he commanded. WWI marked a shift between noble officers slaughtering their men for victory, and uncaring of their plight since they're just "peasants" to a civilian government that cared very much about the survival and safety of their troops.
Haig's outlook just seems too much like the old European one.
>>891112
>defensive "tech" and offensive "tech" hurr durr
go jump off a bridge
>>891063
>Do the generals of WW1 get undeserved hate?
yes
>Are the blood of unnecessary deaths on their hands, or is that just hindsight and underestimation of how hard it was for militaries to adjust to the new realities of 20th century industrial warfare?
the latter
in a war of materiel, a war of attrition, it all comes down to the numbers
sadly for us, those numbers are also usually people
>>891068
Pétain developed the strategic troop rotation system which kept the French lines from collapsing during the Battle of Verdun. Without Pétain, WW1 would have gone a lot worse for France.
Is this guy due any credit for the Entente victory? I mean, he was the supreme commander of all allied forces by the end of the war, yet he was never covered in courses on WWI.
>>891063
It always the same bullshit, when they act profesional they get criticize, they interviene politically and they get criticize, they just get in the middle of politics, which sucks
>cntrl+f
>no paul lettow-vorbeck
shiggy diggy /his
>>891063
>Do the generals of WW1 get undeserved hate?
No. Absolutely not.
>Are the blood of unnecessary deaths on their hands
Absolutely. If the fucking "leaders" were required to actually lead their troops during the conduct of the shitty plans they came up with, they would have realized that massed attacks crossing open terrain, filled with obstacles, covered by sustained machine gun fire and artillery, was pants on head retarded, and they would have tried a different approach.
>>892531
>strategic troop rotation system
When you think of it as the "multiple-wave retreat system," the events of WWII start to make sense.
A lot of the generals basically had no idea what the fuck they were doing and still thought it was Napoleonic warfare. Up until this point civilian politicians basically would not interfere with matters of war, but as WW1 went on they increasingly became disillusioned with the military and started interfering.
In Britain it was the civilian sector that came up with the idea of convoys and had it tested out, saving Britain from the german u-boats and starvation
>>892753
Take your Nazis back to /pol/.
>>893376
>paul von lettow-vorbeck
>nazi
pick 1. get educated friendo
>>892991
>A lot of the generals basically had no idea what the fuck they were doing and still thought it was Napoleonic warfare.
literally no one thought it was Napoleonic warfare
Napoleonic warfare was dead in Europe for about fifty years prior to WW1
>>892962
what other, different, better approach than the one they had historically used - which is not the one you have "described", mind you - in a war of attrition and materiel?
I dunno. I've heard nothing but good about Arthur Currie.
>>894023
Not trying any offensives before you had a way to deal with barbed wire and machine guns desu
>>891063
>Around 200 Generals from all combatant powers died like crazy since they had to be around the combat zone getting shelled at along with their men.
"it takes 15.000 casualities to train a major general"
they where dicks
>>891063
They did adapt quickly, however the rapid arms race also resulted in many blunders. For example shrapnel shells successfully tore apart barbed wire early in the war so the Germans switched to thicker wires, iron pegs and more lines of barbed wire, come the battle of the Somme the British high command was apparently unaware of the changes and believed their colossal bombardment would clear the way as before.
A general would have to be an exceptional person to never fail to overlook seemingly minor issues like this while simultaneously attending to a multitude of other tasks. A general should be an exceptional person, however it takes years and years to train someone to have the level of expertise needed to even grasp the basics of a problem like this, let alone adapt quickly to new technology and apply/counter it effectively, and you only discover how exceptional they are after they have been tested by real life circumstances.
Most likely you will end up with someone intelligent enough to study for years and conduct themselves competently in previous minor wars, but not a Reinhard von Lohengramm who can prevent errors like this from ever happening.
