10 debunked myths of World War I

[Semper Victor]

Not really. The Hodomor occurred due to collectivization and food requisitioning. While I think there were famines that occurred until the East India Company like that (wiki mentions that the 18th century one caused revenues to drop so they compensated by raising taxes), those features weren't really present during the Raj. Non-Hodomor famines also don't really work- the war years are only comparable to the 1943 famine and the Soviet 1947 famine isn't really comparable to any in India (as it was exacerbated by the agricultural labor force being squeezed by death and conscription).

They are comparable in the official indifference towards the victims' plight, but not much else. In the Ukrainian case, it was Stalin's ruthlessness in overcoming Ukrainian peasants' opposition to collectivization at whatever the cost what caused the famine, while in the Indian cause it was a sustained drought made worse by the colonial British policy. In neither case though the main goal was genocide in itself.

Stalin wanted to accomplish in 10 years what industrialized countries had done in decades, and for that goal he stopped at nothing. In Bulwer-Lytton's case, it was the pressing need for Disraeli's government to finance the Afghan campaign (in order to pressure the Russians, who were about to embark in their 1877-78 war against the Ottomans) at Indian expenses, with minimal or no cost for the British taxpayers.

Apart from that, there are indeed few similarities.

 

[Ming]

The last page has but one reference to WW1, and that not in the context of the OP.

Hats off!

/thread.

I do have one question about the popular image of WW1, that of the trenches being a blasted and miserable hell hole full of standing water and disease.

I believe this is based on British and American experiences.

I read a very long time ago, before the internet was much of anything, that British trench systems were spartan compared especially to the Germans, but were lacking even compared to the French. Is this in fact true?
I remember learning later that the British had much higher emphasis on raiding and harrassing the enemy in their trench so perhaps this is related.

 

[StephenT]

I read a very long time ago, before the internet was much of anything, that British trench systems were spartan compared especially to the Germans, but were lacking even compared to the French. Is this in fact true?
I remember learning later that the British had much higher emphasis on raiding and harrassing the enemy in their trench so perhaps this is related.

Half right. The German trenches were, on the whole, better than both the British and the French. That was because they were usually on the defensive on the Western Front, so they concentrated on building up their defences as strongly as possible. They would often have multiple lines of defence, concrete bunkers, purpose-made machine-gun posts, and so forth.

The Allies, on the other hand, were on the attack - and so there was something of an attitude that the troops shouldn't get too comfortable in their trenches, since they were only intended to be temporary. Also, of course, since they were only rarely attacked by the Germans they didn't need to be as strong. During the battle of Verdun where the Germans actually were on the attack for half the year, the French built much more elaborate trenches than they normally did.

I'm not, however, aware that there was a dramatic difference between the British and French trench systems. If anything, I've read that the British tended to be more systematic in laying out defence lines and so forth, while French trenches were often haphazard.

Another factor is that the British Army organised a system of rotating troops in and out of the trenches on a regular basis, so an individual soldier might only spend one week a month in the front line. That was much better for his morale and fitness than spending weeks on end in the trenches, but did perhaps mean that he had less incentive to personalise his trench and make it more comfortable. The French didn't organise anything so elaborate until after the mutinies in 1917, when it was one of the reforms Pétain introduced to restore morale.

It's true that the British placed a higher emphasis on trench raiding. The Army authorities saw this as a good way to maintain offensive spirit among the troops and harass the enemy, though some condemned it as wasting lives for no long-term gain.

 

[Easy-Kill]

Another factor is that the British Army organised a system of rotating troops in and out of the trenches on a regular basis, so an individual soldier might only spend one week a month in the front line. That was much better for his morale and fitness than spending weeks on end in the trenches, but did perhaps mean that he had less incentive to personalise his trench and make it more comfortable. The French didn't organise anything so elaborate until after the mutinies in 1917, when it was one of the reforms Pétain introduced to restore morale.

It's true that the British placed a higher emphasis on trench raiding. The Army authorities saw this as a good way to maintain offensive spirit among the troops and harass the enemy, though some condemned it as wasting lives for no long-term gain.

For some reason, I thought Petain was responsible for rotations at Verdun in 1916?

 

[StephenT]

For some reason, I thought Petain was responsible for rotations at Verdun in 1916?

The French did rotate troops at Verdun, but the impression I get is more that it was a question of "This division holds the line until it's worn out, then we pull it back and send a fresh one in". The idea of organising a regular rotation of troops within the individual units was a British one. It's possible, of course, that some French commanders organised something for their own men on a local basis, but it didn't become official national policy until 1917.

One of the types of grievance of the French mutineers in 1917 was often, "We've been stuck in this trench for two months, while that unit next to us got pulled back for leave after a week!" The problem was the lack of systematisation.

 

[Gil galad]

Half right. The German trenches were, on the whole, better than both the British and the French. That was because they were usually on the defensive on the Western Front, so they concentrated on building up their defences as strongly as possible. They would often have multiple lines of defence, concrete bunkers, purpose-made machine-gun posts, and so forth.

The Allies, on the other hand, were on the attack - and so there was something of an attitude that the troops shouldn't get too comfortable in their trenches, since they were only intended to be temporary. Also, of course, since they were only rarely attacked by the Germans they didn't need to be as strong. During the battle of Verdun where the Germans actually were on the attack for half the year, the French built much more elaborate trenches than they normally did.

I'm not, however, aware that there was a dramatic difference between the British and French trench systems. If anything, I've read that the British tended to be more systematic in laying out defence lines and so forth, while French trenches were often haphazard.

Another factor is that the British Army organised a system of rotating troops in and out of the trenches on a regular basis, so an individual soldier might only spend one week a month in the front line. That was much better for his morale and fitness than spending weeks on end in the trenches, but did perhaps mean that he had less incentive to personalise his trench and make it more comfortable. The French didn't organise anything so elaborate until after the mutinies in 1917, when it was one of the reforms Pétain introduced to restore morale.

It's true that the British placed a higher emphasis on trench raiding. The Army authorities saw this as a good way to maintain offensive spirit among the troops and harass the enemy, though some condemned it as wasting lives for no long-term gain.

When the Germans finally attacked again in 1918 there where a lot of factors behind their succes but tactical aptitude in the attack was not one of them. We hear a lot about stormtroops but I've read quotes from British machine-gunners about attacking Germans moving forward like cricket match crowds. Their casualties where quite high also.

 

[StephenT]

When the Germans finally attacked again in 1918 there where a lot of factors behind their succes but tactical aptitude in the attack was not one of them. We hear a lot about stormtroops but I've read quotes from British machine-gunners about attacking Germans moving forward like cricket match crowds. Their casualties where quite high also.

The best description I're heard of the 1918 attacks is that the Germans were roughly equal in attacking ability to the British and French - but the British and French were much worse at defending than the Germans, because they'd had so little practice over the last three years. The Germans also concentrated all their best troops into elite units (stormtroopers) to spearhead the attacks. And so the Germans won some dramatic-looking breakthroughs in their offensives.

Then the Allies got their act together and started defending better, just as the Germans were running out of trained manpower. In any offensive your casualties will come disproportionately from the units leading your offensive: and if you've deliberately gathered together all your youngest, fittest and best-trained men into those spearhead units, that means you just got all your best soldiers wiped out at once. Oops.

 

[Jazumir]

AFAIK (mostly from storkesbury), there had been quite significant differences in how the germans would conduct an offensive (in 1917/8) as opposed to say the britons. For example, the british used heavy indisciminatory (rolling barrage) preliminary bombardment which precluded any breakthrough right from the beginning, as their troops would never be able to pass the resulting quagmire faster than the attacked would bring in his reserves - well until tanks en-masse that is. They opted, in short, for mass. While, otoh, the germans were more about surprise in their offensives. They consciously tried to keep prelimary bombardment as short and targetted (spotting of enemy arti, first) as possible in order to not give the attack away weeks before it actually jumped off.

Another factor is that the german ´stormtroopers´ were not trained generally, but specifically according to their designated targets in an upcoming offensive. They formed what would today be callled ´task forces´, focusing entirely on busting that bunker or rolling up this trench from this specific suitable spot or such.

The first to use this tactic, btw, was brusillow (sp?), a russian general, who did it not so much because he understood the inherent advantages, but because he simply lacked the ammo for a long bombardment for his offensive, which turned out to be, despite mere numerical parity with the defending side, to be the most successfull one upto that point in the war by far.

 

[StephenT]

AFAIK (mostly from storkesbury), there had been quite significant differences in how the germans would conduct an offensive (in 1917/8) as opposed to say the britons. For example, the british used heavy indisciminatory (rolling barrage) preliminary bombardment which precluded any breakthrough right from the beginning, as their troops would never be able to pass the resulting quagmire faster than the attacked would bring in his reserves - well until tanks en-masse that is. They opted, in short, for mass. While, otoh, the germans were more about surprise in their offensives. They consciously tried to keep prelimary bombardment as short and targetted (spotting of enemy arti, first) as possible in order to not give the attack away weeks before it actually jumped off.

Sorry; but that's one of the 'debunked myths' the OP goes on about.

First, a rolling (or creeping) barrage is the exact opposite of a indiscriminatory bombardment. A rolling barrage means you aim the guns at the enemy front line trench, then as your own troops advance the guns gradually lift their aim and lay down a moving curtain of explosions just in front of your advancing troops, moving forward at walking pace. This provides a moving barrier to suppress the enemy and prevent reinforcements coming up to counter-attack your advancing troops.

A rolling barrage needs extremely accurate gunfire, and both artillerymen and infantry who are very experienced and well-trained. For one thing, it need a lot of trust by the infantry that the gunners are going to keep the barrage moving forward at the right speed, and not let any of their shells fall short and land among the infantry walking just behind the line of explosions.

The rolling barrage was invented by the French Army, as far as I know - the word 'barrage' is French. The British copied them, but in the first half of the war their artillery wasn't good enough to make it a regular feature of their attacks. By 1917-18, though, the much more experienced British Army was able to employ rolling barrages frequently.

Fireplans often involved elaborate combinations of barrages. There might be a creeping barrage ahead of the troops and a standing barrage on the rear-line trench to block reinforcements. There might be a box barrage, shelling the sides of the advance to prevent a flank counter-attack. There might be a back barrage, when the line of shells creeping forward would suddenly, at a pre-planned moment, change direction and return back towards the advancing troops - so any Germans who thought they could shelter in their dugouts while the barrage went past then rush out to the parapet to fight off the advancing British would instead be caught in the back barrage.

The idea of the hurricane barrage, a sudden surprise attack by massed artillery intended to stun and suppress the enemy, was also well-known to the British, and in 1917-18 they frequently employed it. The battles of Cambrai and Amiens are the most famous examples. In fact, the British proved to be even better at this strategy than the Germans, because their guns tended to be newer and more accurate. By 1918 the German heavy artillery was worn out, and attempts to launch a surprise attack with no initial ranging shots often missed their target. The British didn't have that problem - and indeed, by that time they were also using sound ranging, aerial reconnaissance and pre-registered guns to achieve even greater surprise and accuracy.

The idea of pre-planning an offensive in detail, with specific troops assigned to particular offensives and even practicing the attack in advance using a mock-up of the enemy trenches, is also something that every army did. They might not all have been conscientious about it - Brusilov is famous because he spent much more time and care than was usual planning his offensive in 1916 - but it wasn't some incredible innovation that nobody had thought of before then.

**********


The problem, it seems to me, is that there was one particular British offensive - the Somme in July 1916 - where the British did rely on a mass bombardment for a week before the attack, losing all element of surprise and failing to destroy the enemy front lines. The Somme was a famous disaster - but people like the author you quote apparently believe that the British went on repeating the exact same tactic in every battle they fought for the next two and a half years, without ever learning from their mistake or changing their doctrine.

That is, quite simply, nonsense, as a brief look at the evidence would show. Unfortunately, it feeds into the popular stereotype that the British army were bumbling, shortsighted 'lions led by donkeys' while the Germans were all elite Aryan stormtroopers inventing Blitzkrieg 20 years in advance. The Germans are given credit for introducing 'innovative new tactics' in 1918 which were actually things the British and French had been doing as routine for the last year or so.

There is one thing I will give the Germans credit for - they were much more systematic and efficient in implementing the new doctrines and tactics in the winter of 1917-18. The British and French had been muddling through improving their tactics through trial and error for a couple of years. That led to significant differences between units; one division might have an innovative commander who trained his men in the new infiltration and bombardment tactics, while another one stuck to the same old drills and a third experimented with different tactics entirely.

The Germans, by contrast, because they knew they were going to launch their first big offensive in the West for two years in the Spring, studied the enemy tactics, decided on best practice then carefully circulated the new doctrines and trained their troops to use them, making sure everybody was working from the same page. (Unfortunately, as I mentioned before, they gave the new training to elite stormtrooper battalions, which they then threw into the fiercest fighting and got them killed, so by summer 1918 the German Army had lost most of its best and most experienced men.)

 

[Jazumir]

Hmmm, i dunno, maybe my vocab lacks, but to me a rolling barrage is the arti-equivalent of carpet bombing, e.g. targeting an area or some other geometric entity (a line, f.e.), rather than spotted enemies. And in practice, i imagine it like this: Set up a line of tubes, set the range to x, fire, turn that screw by a given amount, reload and fire again... and i am no artillerist, or soldier for that matter, but i fail to see, how that takes a lot of training (except for the guys hurling the ammo).

Cambrai, btw, is also known as one of history´s first tank battles - hence i said ´until tanks en-masse´.

But i dont think we are that far off in our views after all. I would not claim the germans had their late successes with their offensives, because they were in any way inherently superior or something. They basically worked from the same premise as brusillow had: shortages. Surprise and specialized training were simply the last things they could bring to the field, in order to be able to hope for success. Had they had the industrial capacities of the western powers, they might as well have also opted for a more materialistic approach (like mass producing tanks).

 

[Gil galad]

Hmmm, i dunno, maybe my vocab lacks, but to me a rolling barrage is the arti-equivalent of carpet bombing, e.g. targeting an area or some other geometric entity (a line, f.e.), rather than spotted enemies. And in practice, i imagine it like this: Set up a line of tubes, set the range to x, fire, turn that screw by a given amount, reload and fire again... and i am no artillerist, or soldier for that matter, but i fail to see, how that takes a lot of training (except for the guys hurling the ammo).

Because there are a lot of factors to take into account when aiming and firing a gun, like weather, air humidity, the wind etc.

 

[StephenT]

Because there are a lot of factors to take into account when aiming and firing a gun, like weather, air humidity, the wind etc.

Quite true. Hitting a trench one metre wide at a distance of 10 kilometres, when you can't even see the target, and you don't have the benefit of radar or modern guided projectiles, is incredibly difficult.

The usual practice was directed fire. One gun would fire a single shell, then someone with binoculars and a telephone sitting in the front line trench - or later in the war, with a radio sitting in an aircraft or balloon - would watch for the explosion and - assuming he saw it - send back a message "Up a bit... right a bit". The gun would adjust its aim and fire a second time. This time they might be too far to the right, and would have to correct again. It would take multiple shots to be on target, giving the enemy plenty of time to realise what was happening and take cover.

Once the sighting rounds hit the target, the rest of the battery would 'fire for effect' - but the problem here was that not all guns matched. They were big hunks of pressed and cast iron, not precision-milled engineering, and over time they wore out in different ways. Two guns might be set up side by side, aimed in the same direction and set to the same elevation, and yet hit 250 metres apart. Of course, if you knew that a particular gun always fired high and to the right, you could make allowances for that - but that needed a lot of hands-on experience.


Couple of minor points:

The artillery equivalent of carpet bombing is, surprise, an 'area barrage'. Rolling/creeping/moving barrages moved their target location.

Before the invention of the portable radio, aiming artillery fire at a specific group of enemy soldiers was impossible - unless the enemy got close enough to the artillery that the gunners could actually see the advancing enemy! (In which case they had troubles of their own.) At best, you could send a runner back to the artillery to ask them to fire at a specific point on the map; but hours might go by between you sending this message and the heavy artillery behind the lines getting it. Or you might have a system of pre-arranged flares - fire a red flare to say "Please target the artillery in front of my position" - but that was unreliable and limited.

The battle of Cambrai is famous for the mass use of tanks, yes, but a lot of the initial British success was due to their surprise artillery bombardment. This was actually partly by luck - the generals didn't want to chew up the ground with lots of shell craters before the tanks got there, so they limited themselves to a short, sharp shelling to suppress the enemy instead - and it worked even better than the tanks.

 

[Jazumir]

...also, they didnt think it was really neccessary, cause they had the tanks to take out machine gun nests and flatten the wire. See, it all ties together, and we are actually saying the same things. Except you seem to underestimate a bit what i am aware of when it comes to fire control (which is not much, but about as much as you just wrote).

I´d still think, that it would take a more sophisiticated gunners (and aids) for hurricane bombardment, though. If i get it right, this kind of artillery fire tries to knock out pre-spotted targets (by whatever means: ground recon, accustics, muzzle-fire observation, air-recon...) on first try and then move on to the next, to do the same to it, before it starts moving (or force it to move, which is just about as good for the current battle). Wheras a rolling barrage is more like the ´brute force approach´ to password-hacking: Surely, if you hit everywhere, you must hit everything...

 

[JodelDiplom]

For a rolling barrage, your gunners and spotters still need to be good enough to make their shots fall precisely at the barrage line target, and keep it focused while the target shifts forward. I don't think it's that easy. If done wrong, it could be terrible for the morale of the front line troops, and completely botch the attack.

 

[Jazumir]

Well, i know - it did happen, after all, that the barrage went too slow or too fast. I am not saying that its as easy as scoring a penalty against an empty goal. Still: If you are told to hit a specific target, and got 1-3 tries to do so and then move on, it must be, at least in theory, be much harder than to just hit straight ahead of you at the distance of x+y meters, simply because you need to get two angles right (you are aiming at a point, not a line, after all).

The preperation is more with the individual gun (and the spotting crews of whatever kind), than with the whole battery, i´d imagine. For when the rolling barrage did move too fast or too slow, it was mostly due to mis-assessments in the preperation for the whole offensive, like how fast the infantry would be able to advance. Well, that´s staff work, and not so much due to what the gunners can or cant do (or failure of the infantrymen). If the aimed bombardment fails, then either was the enemy very good in decepting your recon somehow, moved the targets last minute, or your gunners suck. And the general would also be able to tell which guns did not hit their targets, at least in some cases (where targets can not be moved, for example). In the rolling barrage, an individual gun could treoretically fire miles off target, and nobody might even notice. And if it gets noticed, that someone is shooting, say way too far, it´s still a matter of finding the bad singer in the choir. Wheras in the targeted bombardment, if that gun of the enemy that has been spotted in this wood a week ago is still firing two hours into the offensive, then this one gun-crew of yours, that had been assigned to take it out, must have failed.

As someone else has already said: Those ´debunked myths´ are more like hyperbolical truths. It´s like saying the earth was perfectly round. It is not. But still more like a ball than a cube...

 

[Henry IX]

The primary objective of a hurricane bombardment in WW1 was to shock and stun the defenders and prevent them from being able to mount an effective defence. The aim was not target destruction but target supression. As such a rolling bombardment could also be short and sharp. The objective again being supression rather than distruction. The British learned after the Somme and 3rd Ypres that you could not destroy an entrenched enemy by simple bombardment.

The doctrine of the rolling barrage also changed throughout the conflict. The British used rolling barrages in 3rd Ypres that left the ground so chopped up that the following infantry could not keep up and got left behind, and hence slaughtered. By 1918 they were using very sophisticated artillery tactics that included both elements of hurricane bombardments and creeping barrages to effectively suppress the defenders to the point where commanders could rely on being able to break German defences with the first wave of the assault. In essence the British could suppress different sectors of the battlefield according to accurate timetables. The job of the infantry was to follow the timetable

 

[Easy-Kill]

The primary objective of a hurricane bombardment in WW1 was to shock and stun the defenders and prevent them from being able to mount an effective defence. The aim was not target destruction but target supression. As such a rolling bombardment could also be short and sharp. The objective again being supression rather than distruction. The British learned after the Somme and 3rd Ypres that you could not destroy an entrenched enemy by simple bombardment.

The doctrine of the rolling barrage also changed throughout the conflict. The British used rolling barrages in 3rd Ypres that left the ground so chopped up that the following infantry could not keep up and got left behind, and hence slaughtered. By 1918 they were using very sophisticated artillery tactics that included both elements of hurricane bombardments and creeping barrages to effectively suppress the defenders to the point where commanders could rely on being able to break German defences with the first wave of the assault. In essence the British could suppress different sectors of the battlefield according to accurate timetables. The job of the infantry was to follow the timetable

Indeed. British Operational Analysts put a lot of work into something called the true 'Probability of Injury' from indirect fire weapons (Artillery and Machine Guns) and the 'Perceived Probability of Injury'. The Hurricane barrage would weaken the enemy positions, while the creeping barrage was then powerful enough to give a high enough rate of 'perceived probability of injury' to limit the movement of enemy forces without completely ruining the ground (as happened at the Somme). Wireless (both training and equipment) also improved significantly throughout the war better enabling control of fire.

 

[Easy-Kill]

...also, they didnt think it was really neccessary, cause they had the tanks to take out machine gun nests and flatten the wire. See, it all ties together, and we are actually saying the same things. Except you seem to underestimate a bit what i am aware of when it comes to fire control (which is not much, but about as much as you just wrote).

I´d still think, that it would take a more sophisiticated gunners (and aids) for hurricane bombardment, though. If i get it right, this kind of artillery fire tries to knock out pre-spotted targets (by whatever means: ground recon, accustics, muzzle-fire observation, air-recon...) on first try and then move on to the next, to do the same to it, before it starts moving (or force it to move, which is just about as good for the current battle). Wheras a rolling barrage is more like the ´brute force approach´ to password-hacking: Surely, if you hit everywhere, you must hit everything...

There is a lot more to firing guns than you probably appreciate. For example, most indirect fire weapons have an elliptical 'beaten zone' (nominally known as the gunners ellipse). This is the expected zone where a round will drop. The ellipse is generally quite narrow (as azimuthal aiming is generally more accurate) and quite long (because accurate ranging is difficult to achieve). One of the key principals is to align the gunner's ellipse to ensure that it falls over an area of interest. I.e. if as opposed to trying to hit an trench line in an orthogonal direction, it is more effective to attempt to hit a trench with a radial direction to you (such as a support trench). The whole purpose of indirect fire is just that - it is indirect and has an area effect.

 

[Jazumir]

Now, that little detail is actually something i know from my own experience (from WoT - which i do not mistake for being realistic, mind you, but portraits this detail pretty well).

BTW, please people, stop telling me, that it is hard to hit a trench with arti. Duh - that´s why there are trenches.

Now, in the spirit of ´debunking myths´ one might say this were not true, because they also protected the troops against (machine) gun fire. So: #11: ´Trenches were made to dug arti-fire - Actually, the first trenches were dug to hide from small calibre fire, like rifles and machine guns. Many more small calibre bullets missed they intented targets, because of trenches, than arti-shells´

 

[PEP]

I'm not, however, aware that there was a dramatic difference between the British and French trench systems. If anything, I've read that the British tended to be more systematic in laying out defence lines and so forth, while French trenches were often haphazard.

That seems about right. The British usually built slightly more comfortable trenches than the French who had the nasty habit of overcrowding their first line at the expense of their secondary lines. Both were miles behind the Germans though. This can be easily explained by the relative passivity of the German army on the Western Front: they just planned to stick to their trenches and wait so they had all the time and willingness in the world to do some digging (and the Germans sure love their digging) and build pretty comfy and efficient fortifications.

The idea of organising a regular rotation of troops within the individual units was a British one. It's possible, of course, that some French commanders organised something for their own men on a local basis, but it didn't become official national policy until 1917.

For once I'll have to disagree with you. French units did rotate for the duration of the war. Battalions, regiments and brigades were constantly switching places within divisions and soldiers rarely spent more than a week per month on the front line (they usually enjoyed a week-long rest, then they had to train or work in the rear for another week and finally they spent a third week in reserve trenches before going to the front line). Divisions also got regularly pulled out to refit and train. Of course there were disruptions (especially during offensives) but French soldiers didn't spent the whole war on the front line.

One of the types of grievance of the French mutineers in 1917 was often, "We've been stuck in this trench for two months, while that unit next to us got pulled back for leave after a week!" The problem was the lack of systematisation.

Lack of systematisation yes but regarding permissions. Permissions were first granted to soldiers in 1915 but they were often cancelled or delayed because French leadership considered them a luxury. That changed once Pétain took command of the army.