Ok, here's the scenario... Poeple come up with ways in which they would break through the western front :bugeye: in the era of around 1916-1917 right in the middle of the eara where the bloodiest battles of recent history took place. So post your plans for desposing of either the german or english opposition here for us to have a look at and comment on flaws and or way to make the plan better, oh and if we think its perfect your greatness will be recognised. Please Register or Log in to view the hidden image!
My solution to reducing the needless carnage of a needless war would be implemented much earlier: The U.S. should have stayed the frell out of it. Woodrow Wilson, the lying, conniving bastard, manipulated American sentiment by secretly loading armaments onto the British passenger ship Lusitania, in violation of an agreement that had been painstakingly worked out by cooler heads in America and Germany. They agreed not to fire on any non-military ship carrying American civilians, if we agreed to make sure those ships did not carry military cargo. The S.O.B. didn't even tell the passengers. He just let them board the ship in order to sacrifice their lives so he could have the glory of leading the U.S. into one of Europe's endless series of incomprehensible wars. I believe that the war would have been much shorter, with many fewer casualties, without our participation. Sure Germany would have won, but a victorious Germany would never have brought Hitler to power. Without Hitler, Stalin would never have turned the USSR into a military machine at the sacrifice of the civilian economy. France, in defeat, would not have been able to hang onto its colonies in Indochina which would therefore not have turned to communism in desperation. Britain, in defeat, would not have had the power to redraw the maps of the Middle East and Africa, which resulted in the squalor and ethnic violence that we are now dealing with. WWII would never have happened so Japan would not have been driven out of China, and Mao would be a farmer. The entire course of the 20th century would be different. No Hiroshima, no Holocaust, no Cold War, no Little Red Book, no Perestroika, no 9/11. Yeah, a whole lot of lives would have been saved indeed.
well a novel solution, but still, doesn't sadly answer the question, the issue is about how you solve o the issue of the trenches using any ingenious plan you care to thing of. but still nice thaught... But how sure are you that the germans would have won? i beleive the armistice would have still happened but only as a response to huge casualties and massive destruction. i imagine a withdrawl to pree war positions would have occurred and an uneasy peace would have reigned for many years.
The answer would have been to solve the problems befor they escalated into a war in the first place. That could have been done if the right people were trying to resolve the impasse.
without seeming to be rude... this thread was designed to see how other poeple would have planned a military battle to get around the problem of the trenches. its wasn't intended to be a political solution.
I'm no ,ilitary historian, but 2 ways round the trenches occur to me: 1) Dont bother trying, sack the british generals in charge, ( who as far as I could see had ideas of mass warfare about 70 years out of date) and starve them out. 2) Use tanks properly, as people LIke General J F C Fuller were suggesting. In mass, with proper support, fuel, and tens of thousands of troops ready to rush through the gap created, and they did create some big gaps, you could have rolled the germans back over a few weeks or months.
But it's an extreme strectch to say that the sinking of the Lusitania was the excuse to get the US into the war, especially considering that the Lusitania was sunk in May 1915 and the US didn't declare war on Germany until April 1917, 2 years later! The Germans announced the Arabic Pledge in September 1915 after sinking the British liner Arabic, promising not to sink liners. Berlin extended that with the Sussex Pledge in 1916, but insisted that Britain obey international neutrality laws as well. It was following Jutland, when the High Seas Fleet never put to sea again that Germany growing desperate, believed her only chance was to starve Britain into submission, so she announced unrestriced u-boat warfare in January 1917. In February Britain intercepted the Zimmerman Message, which infuriated Wilson, and the American public when it was leaked to the press, and Wilson, who was growing weary of his efforts to negotiate a peace, asked Congress to declare war. While Wilson was a prick, it would be wrong to blame America's entry on any under-handed efforts by him. As a progressive, he genuinely, if not naively, believed for the first two years of the war that America should remain neutral and above the conflicts of Europe. He envisioned taking American progressivism to the world stage, as was later reflected in his 14 points. Problem was, the first few months the tanks had little success because they proved unreliable, breaking down, not clearing the trenches, or simply getting bogged down. And finally when they begin working the kinks out they found that too often there either weren't enough troops to exploit the break, or the troops had so much trouble moving up that it was easier for the Germans to move reserves up and create new lines. Had armor been introduced a year or so earlier they might have made a bigger difference than they actually did. The British and French broke the German lines a few times, but were simply never able to exploit their successes. I think the blitzkrieg of the 2nd ww showed that they learned from the mistakes of the first ww. Rather than have an inflexible chain of command, where operations are controlled from the rear, you have to have a more flexible command, allowing field commanders along the front, utilizing integrated, coordinated, rapidly moving forces, to exploit weak spots that have been probed. Read Heinz Guderian's Achtung! Panzer; you should be able to find an English print copy. Like everyone else, he recognized the problems with trench warfare and prepared tactics to prevent the next war becoming bogged down again. He broke German battlefield tactics down into 3 parts: break-in, breakthrough, and exploitation. The first was the intitial breach, the second was achieved when your force reached the point where it had advanced past the static defenses, and the 3rd was doing something positive from that point, which was to advance rapidly enough to disrupt the enemy command system so that resistance fell apart or could be flanked. Guderian had seen the British and French achieve break-in with their armor, but not be able to achieve the other two, mainly because armor couldn't do it alone. You needed to exploit with rapidly moving infantry as well, hence the need not just for infantry, but a mechanized infantry that could advance as rapidly as the armor.
but still nobody has come up with a campaign plan! thats the point of my thread, to see what pople come up with to get round the lines or through or under, it doesn't matter, just make a plan write it down here for us to discuss it.
Well, ok, I would have used Guderians tactics. Problem was, in 1918, armor wasn't that rapid, there was no mechanized infantry, and infantry was in short supply as nearly a generation of Brits, Frenchmen, and Germans had been wiped out already, so exploiting breaks in the lines wasn't possible. I suppose if I had a super-duper ultra secret mega-death laser death ray I could have simply burned gaping holes through the lines, but alas, I didn't.
Or in other words, there was no technological or industrial possibility for a great breakthrough. WW2 had the nuclear bomb, WW1 didnt have anything. Even stuff like gas, although hideously effective in small areas, had its own trouble. Hey Spyke, did Guderian study in the UK? I understand that Fuller and others in the UK put together the basics of Blitzkreig soon after WW1, and then during peacetime a lot of army exchanges and trips etc went on, so the germans came over and learnt what the British had put together, and improved upon it.
What about the massive gun the germans had built? http://www.spartacus.schoolnet.co.uk/FWWbertha.htm If they had built enough they could of knocked out the enemy's conventional artillary it would of given them a definite advantage, if they could build enough of the big guns quickly and concentrate their firing on targets. If nothing else the troop moral of the enemy would of fallen quickly when they realized they could be blasted and not blast back.
I don't think Guderian ever visited England, at least not that I'm aware of, but he definitely read both Fuller and Liddell-Hart. He was fluent in English, and French for that matter, and later translated those two British military theorists' works into German for other staff officers to read.
whoa ive just fallen in love with fraggle rocker, off to san fran! Please Register or Log in to view the hidden image! :m:
The problem with big guns is - aiming, keeping them supplied with ammo, and probably, though I dont know for certain, the difficulties of manufacture and their probably limited barrel life. It likely turned out much cheaper to throw cannon fodder with rifles into the mincing machine. Thanks Spike. Heres a little problem i heard a couple of friends talking over, was Rommel better than Guderian or not? Which was the better general?
If the USA hadn't joined ww1 Germany would still have LOST One way to of cut casulaties would have been to allowed british soldiers to run and take cover instead of "walking" into machine gun fire
Good points but it would of been money well spent if it achieved victory or saved a few lives. How about a tactical change? Train a regiment of sharpshooters and work artillary in shifts. Artillary was most likely inaccurate back then so walk the artillary on to targets during the day then fire for effect at night so the enemy can't sleep. Meanwhile march most of your artillary personnel away from the front during the day so they can sleep somewhere quiet. Sharpshooters could hot rack it with the artillary, Snipe during the day and retreat from the front and sleep somewhere quiet at night. The regular infantry guarding the front would also need to be replaced often because I doubt they could take the punishment for to long. Sleep depriving the enemy might give an advantage that sheer numbers can't supply. After the area has been succesfully "softened" regular troops should be given wooden targets shaped like soldiers in uniform to raise above the trenches before they attack. I think the French did something like this. The amount of fire the targets take would give the commander knowledge of the enemy's remaining capabilities so they can call off the attack if the area hasn't been softened enough. Attacks would be conducted during the day so the sharpshooters can throw precision rounds at the enemy while the regular infantry are charging.
Tough one. I think Rommel usually gets the nod in most debates mainly because we are more familiar with him because he fought in the Western theater and our history books give him more print, and while I do think he was brilliant, I'm kind of partial to Guderian, but both were brilliant. However, Erich von Manstein may very well have been the best of the Germans. He was outstanding on the Eastern Front against superior forces, and seems to have been Hitler's favorite. From what I've read, Allied generals picked his brain pretty thoroughly after the war.
HHmm, I can sort of see your suggestions working, ron Volk, as long as the enemy didnt launch their own assault into the trenches emptied of troops when the bombardment happens, or onto the sleep deprived allied troops. Plus I dont think it would necesarily lead to much greater battles. But worth trying. You know how no plan survives contant with the enemy. Or so Ive been told. Spyke- my friends I think plumped for Guderian, after a long and complex discussion, on the basis that he was better all round, rommel was fine on offense, but less so on defence. But this was last year, so dont take my word for it.
I personally don't believe there was really a way to avoid the stalemate that was the trench warfare in Europe. I think that the allied war effort would have been better if the Russians and the Western allies had really coordinated offensives against the Germans, seriously straining German resolve. The reason why it was not possible imo not to have a trench war is because the tech was not advanced enough, the machines were there, but they were not even up to par. Everything in that war was slow and a blitzkrieg was impossible to achieve. Politically the Germans should have just given up after the surrender of Russian forces, if they got that there would have been no Hitler at least, German "living space" would have been achieved: http://www.sciforums.com/showthread.php?t=32867
Guthrie, undoubtably the enemy would try to adapt but if the key to the plan would be not just the increase of numbers on the front but an increase in skills. Undecided, the way the British implemented their Tanks leads me to believe that the tactics in the command staff weren't up to par, at least not up to par enough to understand new weapons could give massive advantages.
