Re: Lest we forget.....
Posted: Wed May 07, 2008 11:31 am
"It was pointless slaughter and a crude campaign of relentless attrition, which reeked of incompetence and arrogance on the part of those in charge."
I'm afraid that's the sort of thinking which shows like "Oh What a Lovely War" have cemented in the public mind. It was not a policy of relentless attrition which led Britain to develop the tank, creeping barrages, lightning barrages, and something pretty close to blitzkrieg involving infantry, artillery, tanks and aircraft.
Briatin got gradually better at coping with the war as it progressed, the sort of tactics used at Loos in 1915 would have been thought of as laughable by 1918. The bottom line is the British Army took on the Germans in 1918 and beat them. It annoys me that the achievements of our soldiers seem now to have been forgotten, instead we dwell endlessly on the first day of the Somme, and seem to forget that we won, and that was not an accident. Of course the casualty figures are unthinkable by modern standards, but that does not mean the men who fought and the men in charge could have done any better with the technology they had.
I doubt we could do better today. Think about it, they had to develop the tank from scratch, today we are still losing men in Iraq and Afghanistan because we do not use mine protected vehicles. These already exist, it's just that the MoD have only just thought of buying some. Maybe the generals in the First World War weren't so stupid?
"We had to 'do to it all over again in 1939-1945' because having lost the Great War the Germans had to accept peace terms which generated so much resentment that the Nazis were able to exploit the nationalist feeling generated and were in business as early as 1918."
Not really, the peace terms at Versailles were not so harsh in reality. The Nazis gained power because of the economic meltdown in the great depression, which led to six million unemployed. I don't think you can blame that on the Treaty of Versailles.
I'm afraid that's the sort of thinking which shows like "Oh What a Lovely War" have cemented in the public mind. It was not a policy of relentless attrition which led Britain to develop the tank, creeping barrages, lightning barrages, and something pretty close to blitzkrieg involving infantry, artillery, tanks and aircraft.
Briatin got gradually better at coping with the war as it progressed, the sort of tactics used at Loos in 1915 would have been thought of as laughable by 1918. The bottom line is the British Army took on the Germans in 1918 and beat them. It annoys me that the achievements of our soldiers seem now to have been forgotten, instead we dwell endlessly on the first day of the Somme, and seem to forget that we won, and that was not an accident. Of course the casualty figures are unthinkable by modern standards, but that does not mean the men who fought and the men in charge could have done any better with the technology they had.
I doubt we could do better today. Think about it, they had to develop the tank from scratch, today we are still losing men in Iraq and Afghanistan because we do not use mine protected vehicles. These already exist, it's just that the MoD have only just thought of buying some. Maybe the generals in the First World War weren't so stupid?
"We had to 'do to it all over again in 1939-1945' because having lost the Great War the Germans had to accept peace terms which generated so much resentment that the Nazis were able to exploit the nationalist feeling generated and were in business as early as 1918."
Not really, the peace terms at Versailles were not so harsh in reality. The Nazis gained power because of the economic meltdown in the great depression, which led to six million unemployed. I don't think you can blame that on the Treaty of Versailles.