How Europe Went to War in 1914

[GrauGeist]

Turkey (Ottoman Empire) wanted to preserve thier Empire and looked to recover lost territory if the war went well for Germany and Austria.

Based on early Central power victories, this convinced the Turks that an alliance with Germany would be beneficial to the Ottoman Empire. Add to that, the suspicion that the Allied powers (Triple Entente) wanted to carve up the Ottoman Empire, gave the Turkish Minister of War (Enver Pasha) all the evindence he needed to press his case for the alliance and war.

 

[Marcel]

General Erich Ludendorff praised the British for their bravery and remembered hearing first hand the following statement from the German General Headquarters. "The English Generals are wanting in strategy. We should have no chance if they possessed as much science as their officers and men had of courage and bravery. They are lions led by donkeys."

The phrase Lions Led by Donkeys was used as a title for a book published in 1927 by Captain P.A. Thompson. The subtitle of this book was "Showing how victory in the Great War was achieved by those who made the fewest mistakes."

I'm not saying that this book is a historical reference piece, but as a book about WW1 it warrants the time to read it.

I never understood why they retained General Haig. I personally think they should replaced him for incompetence. His terrible performance at the Somme was beyond believe. He refused to even look at the way the battle at Verdun was going. Had he even taken one eye from his teapot and learned anything from that Battle and what artillery did to defenses, many young man would have still been alive at the end of that day.

 

[redcoat]

General Erich Ludendorff praised the British for their bravery and remembered hearing first hand the following statement from the German General Headquarters. "The English Generals are wanting in strategy. We should have no chance if they possessed as much science as their officers and men had of courage and bravery. They are lions led by donkeys."

The phase has a long history, it was first used in reference to European troops during the Crimean war, then the Franco-Prussian war, the Boxer Revolution, and for the British French and German forces in WW1


Lions led by donkeys - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

 

[parsifal]

I never understood why they retained General Haig. I personally think they should replaced him for incompetence. His terrible performance at the Somme was beyond believe. He refused to even look at the way the battle at Verdun was going. Had he even taken one eye from his teapot and learned anything from that Battle and what artillery did to defenses, many young man would have still been alive at the end of that day.

Haig was a "good officer" in the sense that his staff was competent. But he had a callous disregard for the survival of his men and continued with offensives long after it was obvious they were going nowhere fast. The Somee offensives are witness to that. He also was sceptical of the value of tanks and resisted any new theories on warfare. he saw infantry as the battering rams to open gaps through which the cavalry were to pour. That such breakthroughs never happened was a lesson he should have learned, but took a long time to do so.

Eventually Haig began to realize that things needed to change, and his benevolent neglect allowed his Corps and Army commanders to oush to the forefront in 1918.

 

[redcoat]

He also was sceptical of the value of tanks and resisted any new theories on warfare.

That is simply not true. Haig was impressed with the idea of tanks and rushed them into service as quickly as he could, in fact he often gets criticized for rushing them into service before they were ready for operations.

Tanks in the Somme | Days Gone By

 

[parsifal]

I think your right. My mistake. Still, he did not do well with tanks. monash observed their failure and determined the repair teams needed to be as close to the front a possible. The tank formation attached to I Aus had a better serviceability rate as a result

 

[parsifal]

The Somme. The magnitude of the battle still stuns the imagination. The Somme was an epic of both slaughter and futility; a profligate waste of men and materiel such as the world had never seen. On the morning of July 1, 1916, 110,000 British infantrymen went "over the top." In a few hours, 60,000 of them were casualties. Nearly 20,000 of these were either dead already or would die of their wounds, many of them lingering for days between the trenches, in no man's land. The attacking forces did not gain a single one of their objectives. i believe it remains the single most costly day in terms of casualties in the entire history of the British Army.


Unbelievably, despite the obvious carnage Field Marshal Sir Douglas Haig, chief of staff of the British Expeditionary Force (BEF) and architect of the battle, thought the battle had made a deep effect. . On the day after the debacle, stating that the enemy "has undoubtedly been shaken and has few reserves in hand," he discussed with subordinates methods for continuing the offensive.

Which he did, with a kind of transcendent stubbornness, for another four months, until winter weather forced an end to the campaign, if not the fighting. By then, Haig's army had suffered more than 400,000 casualties. For the British, in the grave judgment of noted military historian John Keegan, "the battle was the greatest tragedy…of their national military history" and "marked the end of an age of vital optimism in British life that has never been recovered."

But Douglas Haig still has any defenders, which i find most incredible. . First, because he still has defenders who—in spite of those inconclusive, costly battles—would claim he was not in fact an unsuccessful commander. At the end of the war, after all, the army he commanded—and had almost ruined—was, if not victorious, then plainly on the winning side. Still, at the other extreme, one can argue persuasively that Haig did not merely fail to achieve his stated objectives in the great battles of the Somme and Ypres. He failed in a much grander sense; failed classically in the fashion of Pyrrhus, who lamented after the battle at Asculum, "Another such victory over the Romans and we are undone."

While the controversy over Haig has never been settled, there was no question about his fitness for command when he took over the British forces on the Western Front after the failures of 1915. The battles at Arras (first battle) and Loos had been badly planned and managed, captured little ground and resulted in what seemed at the time heavy casualties. Then–BEF commander Sir John French was exhausted, demoralized and lacked confidence in himself and that of his immediate subordinates. He was replaced by Haig, who was, in the words of Winston Churchill, "first officer of the British Army. He had obtained every qualification, gained every experience and served in every appointment requisite for the General Command." And Haig was as confident as he was qualified. Churchill, again: "The esteem of his military colleagues found a healthy counterpart in his own self-confidence….He was as sure of himself at the head of the British army as a country gentleman on the soil which his ancestors had trod for generations and to whose cultivation he had devoted his life."

 

[fastmongrel]

Haig was a "good officer" in the sense that his staff was competent. But he had a callous disregard for the survival of his men and continued with offensives long after it was obvious they were going nowhere fast.

Incorrect British casualtie figures as a proportion of serving men were better than German and French casualty rates. British soldiers were generally better fed and equipped than German and French soldiers and a wounded British soldier was more likely to survive thanks to a better medical system, the British Army had a dentists corp with nearly a thousand fully trained dentists. If your going to base your attacks on books by Alan Clark and Lloyd George two men who if they had written that the Sun rose in the East I would need to check first then you need to do more reading. Try reading John Terraine, Les Carlyon and Tim Travers they dont pull punches and are highly critical of some of Haigs record but they dont try to carry out politically motivated hatchet jobs on Haig. Some efforts by Marxist historians in the 60s to rewrite the history of WWI dont even merit the description of history but should be put into the fantasy section of the library.

Haig is most often critisised for carrying the Somme offensive past its natural time. Conveniently forgetting that the French High Command put massive pressure on Britain to start early before reserves had fully built up and put continued pressure to maintain the offensive to relieve pressure on Verdun. If you read about how the tactics changed over the whole Somme campaign you can see how British tactics changed radically over the period. British Army casualty records are reasonably accurate and include all casualties from a man knocked down by a truck 50 miles from the front to the number of men taken prisoner. German and French records are not as detailed and for obvious reasons German records have many holes in them. The casualties for the whole Somme area from July to December 1916 is British and Empire forces suffered 530,289 casualties French approx 426,00, German between 600 and 700,000. A massive butchers bill but not the mythical numbers some so called historians like to use to beat the generals about the head with. It was total war for the first time and total attrition.

 

[fastmongrel]

For the British, in the grave judgment of noted military historian John Keegan, "the battle was the greatest tragedy…of their national military history" and "marked the end of an age of vital optimism in British life that has never been recovered."

Keegan is a readable historian very good on the minutiae of history but you have to remember he was a High Tory grandee who brought a certain political view to things. He has been desribed as politically naive by some other historians, I would describe his political views as very uncomfortable.

 

[meatloaf109]

Incorrect British casualtie figures as a proportion of serving men were better than German and French casualty rates. British soldiers were generally better fed and equipped than German and French soldiers and a wounded British soldier was more likely to survive thanks to a better medical system, the British Army had a dentists corp with nearly a thousand fully trained dentists. If your going to base your attacks on books by Alan Clark and Lloyd George two men who if they had written that the Sun rose in the East I would need to check first then you need to do more reading. Try reading John Terraine, Les Carlyon and Tim Travers they dont pull punches and are highly critical of some of Haigs record but they dont try to carry out politically motivated hatchet jobs on Haig. Some efforts by Marxist historians in the 60s to rewrite the history of WWI dont even merit the description of history but should be put into the fantasy section of the library.

Haig is most often critisised for carrying the Somme offensive past its natural time. Conveniently forgetting that the French High Command put massive pressure on Britain to start early before reserves had fully built up and put continued pressure to maintain the offensive to relieve pressure on Verdun. If you read about how the tactics changed over the whole Somme campaign you can see how British tactics changed radically over the period. British Army casualty records are reasonably accurate and include all casualties from a man knocked down by a truck 50 miles from the front to the number of men taken prisoner. German and French records are not as detailed and for obvious reasons German records have many holes in them. The casualties for the whole Somme area from July to December 1916 is British and Empire forces suffered 530,289 casualties French approx 426,00, German between 600 and 700,000. A massive butchers bill but not the mythical numbers some so called historians like to use to beat the generals about the head with. It was total war for the first time and total attrition.

So, somewhere around a million and a half men, give or take, on both sides.


Let that sink in.

 

[parsifal]

There were heavy caualties throughout the war, on all sides. Even during the so-called success period of 1918, casualties were etremely heavy. Its a question of what objectives were achieved as a result of those butchers bills. in the case of the Somme, none of the objectives (principally the destruction of the German defence lines) were achieved. that did not stop Haig from pouring more and more men into the grinder.

This is what the AWM has to say on the Somme

"The assault was originally planned as a joint French–British offensive which was part of a wider strategy of attacking Germany simultaneously on the Western and Eastern Fronts, with the aim of destroying Germany's reserves of manpower. The massive German attack launched on the French fortress of Verdun on 21 February 1916 significantly reduced the French contribution to the Somme campaign, which was also being launched, in part, to divert the Germans' attention from Verdun. Britain's "new army'' – a volunteer force similar to the AIF – was required to step up.

At the start of 1916, the French called on the Brits to play a bigger role on the ground, which they agree to do at the Somme," explains Peter Burness, a senior historian at the Memorial. "But these were not professional forces, or large conscript ones such as the German and French armies were – these were men from all walks of life who joined up in their communities." Hundreds of men from communities large and small would join up together, give their units nicknames such as "Pals", and die together, leaving their towns and villages devastated.

Britain's generals lacked confidence in the abilities of their men, which meant there was a distinct lack of imagination or innovation in the tactics employed.

"The application of artillery was still rather simple in 1916: to bombard the enemy's position, then send in the infantry and charge through after with the cavalry," Burness says. "The British and French were always looking for the breakthrough, to fracture the enemy and drive them out. They wanted to see the Germans in disarray, to make a wild retreat."

The Germans, however, were deeply entrenched on the Somme. They had been honing their defences and their war weapons since the trench line zig-zagged its way across France and Belgium in the autumn of 1914. The Germans had built an impregnable and sophisticated wall of barbed wire, deep dugouts and machine-gun posts on favourable locations in difficult country. They had a formidable position on the Somme, and the British underestimated their preparedness.

Despite days of shelling immediately before the assault on 1 July, the British were unable to smash the German dugouts, and belts of wire remained uncut. The Germans also had many guns that outranged those of the British, or were kept silent and well hidden until the offensive began.

In his memoir The old front line, British poet laureate John Masefield, who spent months at the front, includes a German's account of the start of the assault, at 7.30 am on July 1:


They came on at a steady easy pace as if expecting to find nothing alive in our front trenches ... a few minutes later, when the leading British line was within 100 yards, the rattle of machine-guns and rifle fire broke out from along the whole line of craters.

The advance rapidly crumpled under this hail of shells and bullets. All along the line men could be seen throwing their arms into the air and collapsing never to move again. Badly wounded rolled about in their agony, and others less severely injured crawled to the nearest shell-hole. The noise of battle became indescribable ... Again and again the extended lines of British infantry broke against the German defence like waves against a cliff, only to be beaten back. It was an amazing spectacle of un-exampled gallantry, courage and bull-dog determination on both sides.

All along the 30-kilometre front, the same annihilation was taking place. In his book, The first day on the Somme, Martin Middlebrook records the experience of Private W. Slater, 18th Battalion, West Yorkshire Regiment (known as the 2nd Bradford Pals):


For some reason nothing seemed to happen to us at first; we strolled along as though walking in a park. Then, suddenly, we were in the midst of a storm of machine-gun bullets and I saw men beginning to twirl round and fall in all kinds of curious ways as they were hit – quite unlike the way actors do it in films.

The first day of the Somme offensive has a relevance to the British today that is akin to the landing at Gallipoli for Australians.

"It was a day of high hope and expectation, and it ended in disaster," Burness says. "To a new generation, that realisation had a real impact. There was so much expectation that was destroyed on the battlefield."

Despite the enormous losses of that first battle at the Somme, the offensive continued through summer and a particularly wet autumn until the first snow fell on 18 November 1916. The Australian Imperial Force, consisting of men who had fought at Gallipoli and fresh volunteers from home, arrived at the Somme in late July.

The major contribution of Australian troops to the Somme offensive was in the fighting around Pozières between 23 July and 3 September. The 1st, 2nd and 4th Australian Divisions suffered more than 24,000 casualties at Pozières, including 6,741 dead. Official war correspondent C.E.W. Bean described the small village as "more densely sown with Australian sacrifice than any other place on earth".

When the Somme offensive ended, the allied forces had managed to advance only 12 kilometres. It had come at a cost of 430,000 British and Dominion troops and 200,000 French casualties. The offensive destroyed Britain's mass volunteer army, and for the rest of the war it would be reliant upon conscription for reinforcements. It had also resulted in heavy German casualties, about 230,000 according to current scholarship. The German army never recovered from its loss of experienced junior officers and non-commisisoned officers on the Somme. To those who fought there, and for the present generation, the Somme was synonymous with slaughter".

Castigationg haig for his lack of imagination in these offensives is more than justified.

 

[Marcel]

Good post Parsifal. The battle at Verdun also showed the artillery was not very effective against entrenched troops and barbwire. The barbwire usually ended up in a big mess, making it even more impenetrable then when it was still intact. The troops usually could shelter and be on their post again when the soldiers arrived (attacks were always necessarily be preceded by a pause in the shelling). But Haig had clearly not studied that battle and was confident that the shelling had successfully broken the German spirit. This mindset resulted in the "steady easy pace" of the soldiers and the great massacre of that first day. After that day Haig just pressed on in the same stupid manner, disregarding all losses. I doubt if he even knew what was going on.

I don't know why fastmongrel says 500,000 British is not a mythical number. I wrote in an earlier post that the Somme claimed 1,2 million casualties on all sides. I think it's massive and unbelievable.

 

[fastmongrel]

What I am trying to say about the casualty figures for the Somme is that though the butchers bill was high it was not neccesarily high when compared to other battles. The British Army suffered much higher casualty figures during 1918, the Normandy campaign and the Battle of the Imjin River in Korea. German and French forces suffered higher casualty rates pretty much straight through the First world war, why does no one attack German or French Generals for there lack of consideration for the troops.

Look at the death rates as a % of population France 4.3%, Germany 3.8%, Austria/Hungary 3.9%, Ottoman Empire 5%, British Isles 2.2%, Australia 1.45%, Canada 1%, New Zealand 1.7%, Italy 3.5%, Russia No one is sure but estimates of military deaths vary between 3 and 6 million.

British Armies have generally avoided massive casualty rates often because the Army has for most of its 1,200 year history been small and often proffesional. WWI was different and holds a big place in the British phsyche because for the first time and hopefully last time a civillian army fought a bloody and long war where big casualties where an unavoidable thing. The USA was understandably reluctant to become involved because of the racial memory of the US Civil War where casualty rates sometimes made WWI battles look small in comparison. There were still elderly people alive who had Seen The Elephant and didnt want to see boys march to the band again.

Criticise British Generals and Haig in particular all you like they made mistakes that make me shake my head and mutter "What were they trying to do, thats insane" but dont try to make out that they were particulary bloodthirsty without comparing them to other generals.

Dont perpetuate the myths promulgated by historians with a political axe to grind.

Apologies the figures above are death rates not casualty rates I misread my source.

 

[fastmongrel]

After that day Haig just pressed on in the same stupid manner, disregarding all losses. I doubt if he even knew what was going on.

.

British Army tactics changed considerably even on the first day, Pinch and Hold tactics became the favoured tactic massively different to the initial waves on Day 1. All Arms tactics using forward observers, short sharp bombardments, Engineers to prepare the way, specialist shock troops and Cavalry who by this time were mounted light Infantry were all used. So different to the initial tactics its not even close. Day 1 was Napoleonic war tactics at the end of the battle it was 20th Century tactics.

The 1916 British Army was an amateur civillian army overwhelmingly made up of people who hadnt seen a rifle 6 months previously, the fact that by the end of the battle in November the amateur British Army was for the first time able to stand up to the Germans on a 1 to 1 basis is a testament to NCOs and Officers who learnt the new war the hard way.

 

[michaelmaltby]

".... Don't perpetuate the myths promulgated by historians with a political axe to grind...."

Very good point. It was a transformative war ... because of its timing in the continuum of European (and human) development. It was NOT transformative simply because of high casualty rates ... although those had an impact, certainly ... and in Russia's case were a huge contributor to the cause of the revolution .... but let us not forget that the same revolution almost happened in 1905 .... once again tripped by war in a climate of corruption and backwardness that was Czarist Russia.

We all know how RAF Bomber Command has had its reputation smeared not just by politicians but by those "with a political axe to grind".

Flavor-of-the-month political correctness is an abomination ....

 

[parsifal]

I dont know where you got 1.45% for the Australians. Try 5.95% and you might be getting closer. There were 4.5 million Australians during the war. 267000 of them were casualties. 67000 were deaths. Just over 450000 enlisted. The immediate casualties were by far the heaviest casualty rates of any army at that time.

Frankly, by that standard, the Australians were the worst army put into the field. but its a cockeyed standard to apply. The Australian Army is considered by most to be one of the pivotal armies put into the field. The difference is that in exchange for those 200000 + casualties, they are seen as achieving many things. the failure of the Somme was that it was an unimaginative, profligate, largely pointless and certainly callous loss of life. French or German commanders are not castigated for that sort of wastage, because it is in their military natures to not care about casualties. in the british armies, losses matter. And therein lies the difference.

As a percentage of the overall forces, other campaigns can be broken down and paraded as being more expensive or costly, but you cannot do that because the frames of reference are just not comparable. Lets put that into perspective....in the whole of WWII, casualties in the Australian armed forces amounted to just over 30000, with 10000 of those dying in Japanese POW camps. We lost almost that many in a few days of fighting on the Somme, and in 1916, the Australian army's experience was pretty typical of the wider British experiences. It is the sheer number and the short space of time, and the utter non-achievement that makes the Somme so terrible and such an anathema to british military traditions. Haig and his supporters paraded that as some sort of grotesque badge of achievement. it was nothing of the sort.

 

[michaelmaltby]

Canada: 1914 population 7,879,000

WWI: 67,000 dead. 173,000 wounded. WWII: 45,000 Dead. 54,000 wounded.

US Civil War:

"The traditional estimate has become iconic," historian J. David Hacker said. "It's been quoted for the last hundred years or more. If you go with that total for a minute—620,000—the number of men dying in the Civil War is more than in all other American wars from the American Revolution through the Korean War combined. And consider that the American population in 1860 was about 31 million people"

 

[fastmongrel]

I got my figures wrong in post #193 I typed casualty rates but meant to type death rates. I have checked and edited the post and and cross checked the figures with wiki and they agree with small differences. A brief check and total casualty figures seem to be roughly 3.5 to 4.5 times greater than total deaths. Casualty figures combining death rates and injury rates cannot be compared with total accuracy as different armies calculated things differently, British figures include all injuries in theatre. I believe French figures only included combat injuries but cant find a definite answer.

 

[fastmongrel]

I cannot understand why the British Army is held to a different standard. Is a German or French life not considered as valuable as British or Australian life. All life is precious to someone and grief is just as hard whatever it says on your passport.

 

[yulzari]

Whatever may have been Haig's ability to command Commonwealth forces in France; when the British Legion was formed in 1921 by, and for, soldiers of WW1, they turned to Haig to represent them. This was a choice of his own men.

He may not have been the darling of later left wing academics and political writers but those who served under him clearly did respect him.