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>Do you really think anyone on the street really had anything to gain or lose from World War I, a war that cost between 8 and 21 million lives, all because of s

by lsc 8y ago

>Do you really think anyone on the street really had anything to gain or lose from World War I, a war that cost between 8 and 21 million lives, all because of some piece of paper after some idiot born into a “special” family took a wrong turn and couldn’t escape perhaps the most incompetent assination squad in history[0]? There are a lot of ways of looking at world war 1. There are those that view it as largely a war of German aggression; that Franz Ferdinand was merely a convenient excuse.[1] - I dunno, if I was a French person and the Germans were marching on my home in Paris, I might think I had something to gain or lose. At any rate, I think that the schlieffen plan (i.e. We're going to war with Russia, so let us roll over France preemptively) evinces a kind of extreme arrogance that is... well, it certainly says something that isn't good. As an aside, I find it super interesting how the Germans took a very similar tack in world war two, with an army that was by all accounts, vastly inferior as far as training and equipment went, (I mean, adjusted to their enemies/the technology of the day) but with superior tactics. And while the attack was... similar, in the first war, the attack succeeded against Russia[2] and bogged down in France - and in the second the war, they succeeded against France,[3] and bogged down in Russia. - there is an argument to be made there that the victories were as much about politics and organization and motivation as anything else. Of course, there's also a strong argument that it's just technology. Taking ground with world war one era technology was really hard, as the attack moved forward at the speed of a walking man, while the defender moved men around at the speed of train. armored and motorized units in world war 2 allowed attackers to exploit breakthroughs again, breaking that huge advantage that the defense had. I mean, in favor of your point, it might not have been completely clear that had Germany won, that the citizens of the conquered nations would be treated so roughly as it was in the second round of that conflict. But still, I think that the civil war was very different, because the union war aims were pretty clear, and those aims would not have been served by treating the southerners as a conquered people. (One can make the argument, in fact, that we'd all be better off, especially the southerners, if we had treated the south as conquered land, and if reconstruction continued; if the north put together a marshal-plan style rebuilding effort that reconstructed the south as a functional society. But it didn't continue, in part because treating the southerners as a conquered people went against both the war aims and the ongoing goals of the north.) [1] Certainly July 5 showed that Germany was not willing to put any effort at all into preventing the war from escalating; At a pen stroke, Wilhelm 2 could have had a pretty good chance of making world war one a localized conflict, preventing world war two and the cold war in one stroke. Instead, he said "we'll back you up no matter how far you take it" I personally think history treats the man much more lightly than he deserves. [2](in part due to their support of Lenin... you could argue it wasn't really a military victory, that Germany succeeded against Russia in the first world war by funding Lenin until he took down the Russian government and sapped their will to fight. I mean, there were a lot of factors here; even in the second world war, Germany seemed to do really well against Russia... until they hit lenningrad and stalingrad, and things bogged down. - It's possible that a Kerensky or even Kornilov lead Russia[2a] would have pulled off something similar and fought the Germans to a standstill. The technology of the day favored the defense, after all. of course, you could also put this in part on Wilson for not propping up kerensky the same way the other allies were propped up with food and ammo. A well-timed and full throated "we will not let you starve" from America and some machine guns from the UK would probably have saved Russia from the Bolsheviks. I mean, some of it is on Kerensky; he wasn't aggressive enough against Lenin when he had the chance, and he had given up control of most of the armed forces (and unwisely armed some of the wrong people) by the time it was really clear that Lenin was a German-supported traitor.) but... Germany certainly wasn't doing badly militarily, you could argue that they would have won against a Kerensky government that didn't have a whole lot of allied support.) [2a](as an aside, I see the conflict between Kerensky and Kornilov as one of the great tragedies of history. If the two would have worked together, we would probably have had a mostly-democratic Russia... in 1917. Kerensky was understandably super suspicious of Kornilov, but all evidence later was that the man would have been a soldier loyal to the Russian government, even one lead by Kerensky.) [3]and why? France had more and superior tanks and a much larger army. It was in part tactics, certainly. Ohler argues that it was methanphetamene; He thinks the drug allowed the germans to plow through the ardennes and roll over France while sleeping something like 1/3rd as much as people without the drugs, thus ending the battle before the French had time to formulate a response. Of course, one could also attribute it to an airpower advantage on the German side; while the French had a larger army, more and better tanks, the Germans had an airpower advantage that may have been decisive. There's also the theory that war weariness from the first war just had a hugely different effect in Germany and France, and that was the root of the French defeat the second time around. My favorite book on the subject is, of course, Bloch - but while it is an incredible book, it doesn't really come to a real conclusion as to why France lost against an enemy that was by all accounts inferior.

Latteland 8y ago
You have a lot of claims, but I want to say the germans did not have vastly inferior equipment but better tactics. they had pretty excellent equipment but no ability to mass produce it like others (us mostly). You seem to have a lot of indepth knowledge but that claim is so counter to my own knowledge of history.
- lsc 8y ago
  To be clear, I am claiming that germans in world war one had better equipment (relative to the time) and training than Germans in World War Two. I'm not saying that the allied equipment was in general superior to the German equipment in the second world war. My understanding is that the German army of 1914 is generally considered one of the best fighting organizations ever fielded; they lost due to the dual problems of taking on the UK while depending on food imports via sea and that they were the aggressor in a war where the tech vastly favored the defender, a problem they didn't have in the second war. (as I was saying, an attacker's breakthroughs moved at foot-speed; the defender moved reinforcements at rail speed. Tanks restored the balance between the movement of the attack and the movement of reinforcements.) - that, and taking on the whole rest of the industrialized world in a war of production, especially without a credible navy is usually going to end badly. The only specific claim I'll stand behind about german vs. allied equipment in ww2 is that at the outset of the battle of France, the Germans had worse tanks than the French, and that the French had a larger army. the Char, for example, was more than a match for anything the Germans had. (In skilled hands, a fair number of anything the Germans had.) It was way more expensive, (as one would expect for a heavier, better-protected tank with a bigger gun) and harder to support and keep in the field (sort of the opposite of the later situation with the Panzer4 and the Sherman, much later in the same war, where you needed several Shermans to take on one Panzer.) but it was very well protected, and had a very large gun for it's day. It was cast, rather than made from wielded plates, further increasing it's cost and it's protection (and further complicating repair) I mean, "Better tank" is a funny thing to say; the allies later won the war with tanks that were inferior even to the panzer of the time, if we are using that standard. It was totally fine you needed several Shermans to reliably take out one panther, because the allies had such an advantage in material and logistics that they could reliably get numerical advantage after D-day. But one on one, the Char, as I understand it, could be expected to beat the Panzer of it's day with ease. It was built for those one on one fights, and excelled at them... when it had the chance. My understanding is that the Char was an 'infantry tank' - it was built to sit and slug it out, essentially. It seemed that the idea of a heavy 'infantry tank' went out of style pretty fast after world war two started up; it looked like lighter tanks for exploiting breakthroughs (and simply being on the battlefield in quantity) which were called 'calvary tanks' at the beginning of the war seemed to be the tank design that proved most useful. I mean, turns out, these "medium tanks" were simply more useful than either giant or tiny tanks, and this wasn't known at the outset of world war two, as there weren't a lot of large scale tank battles in the Polish campaign or in the spanish civil war to learn from. Look up Pierre Billotte in the Battle of Stonne for one particularly dramatic example of the Char in skilled hands in action against Panzers. (and if you find a good book about him in English, report back) But, my point here is that France did not lose through inferiority of numbers nor through inferiority of equipment.[4] It was something else. Perhaps they just weren't prepared for the German army sending their tanks out faster than their supply lines in ways that the French were utterly unprepared for? But really, I think it might just be Tactics. The French were fighting world war one, perhaps fighting it acceptably well. Germany had been through a number of smaller wars meanwhile, and could see how the new technologies upended the old rules of war, and those technologies made decisive the time it took France to figure out that the rules had changed. (There's a view, in fact, that the same thing happened in the first world war; The French started out in bright red trousers and white gloves, that they were dramatically less prepared for the sort of war that the new technology created than the German aggressors were. But the technology of the first world war meant that they were not overrun before they figured out the new rules, and in the end, a willingness to fight, short supply lines, and a large population carried the day.) (as another aside, I consider the idea that the French are somehow less willing to fight under unpleasant conditions or more likely to surrender than other countries, that "the last brave frenchman died during Napoleon's retreat from Russia" to be... ahistoric. ) May's "Strange Victory" isn't as good as Bloch's "Strange Defeat" - but as I recall (it has been some time) May seemed to suggest that much of this seemed like chance on the German side, too. That you had ridiculously overconfident people in charge, that a lot of the Germans who should have been listened to thought the plan to invade France was way too risky, way too likely to fail. but that somehow, perhaps because the technology of the day allowed for fast and deep breakthroughs and the French leaders were still thinking in world war one terms, that confidence worked out better than could have been reasonably expected. Or maybe it was a low probability event; a fluke. Low-probablility events do occasionally happen. [4] Unless that inferiority was in airpower; The Germans had decisive air superiority on the continent at that time. And it could have been what made the difference; You could easily argue that air superiority made the decisive difference. - I mean, having arial surveillance could have gone a long way towards mitigating the French confusion at the command level, if nothing else. But air superiority alone doesn't seem like it was decisive in other theatres, so you have to come up with some reason why it made the difference here and not, say, against Russia. (also I want to point out that while I am of the opinion that the Germans can be considered the aggressors in world war one, and you can reasonably make that case, it's not a universally accepted opinion as their culpability for world war two is.)

by lsc 8y ago

Latteland 8y ago

You have a lot of claims, but I want to say the germans did not have vastly inferior equipment but better tactics. they had pretty excellent equipment but no ability to mass produce it like others (us mostly). You seem to have a lot of indepth knowledge but that claim is so counter to my own knowledge of history.

lsc 8y ago
To be clear, I am claiming that germans in world war one had better equipment (relative to the time) and training than Germans in World War Two. I'm not saying that the allied equipment was in general superior to the German equipment in the second world war. My understanding is that the German army of 1914 is generally considered one of the best fighting organizations ever fielded; they lost due to the dual problems of taking on the UK while depending on food imports via sea and that they were the aggressor in a war where the tech vastly favored the defender, a problem they didn't have in the second war. (as I was saying, an attacker's breakthroughs moved at foot-speed; the defender moved reinforcements at rail speed. Tanks restored the balance between the movement of the attack and the movement of reinforcements.) - that, and taking on the whole rest of the industrialized world in a war of production, especially without a credible navy is usually going to end badly. The only specific claim I'll stand behind about german vs. allied equipment in ww2 is that at the outset of the battle of France, the Germans had worse tanks than the French, and that the French had a larger army. the Char, for example, was more than a match for anything the Germans had. (In skilled hands, a fair number of anything the Germans had.) It was way more expensive, (as one would expect for a heavier, better-protected tank with a bigger gun) and harder to support and keep in the field (sort of the opposite of the later situation with the Panzer4 and the Sherman, much later in the same war, where you needed several Shermans to take on one Panzer.) but it was very well protected, and had a very large gun for it's day. It was cast, rather than made from wielded plates, further increasing it's cost and it's protection (and further complicating repair) I mean, "Better tank" is a funny thing to say; the allies later won the war with tanks that were inferior even to the panzer of the time, if we are using that standard. It was totally fine you needed several Shermans to reliably take out one panther, because the allies had such an advantage in material and logistics that they could reliably get numerical advantage after D-day. But one on one, the Char, as I understand it, could be expected to beat the Panzer of it's day with ease. It was built for those one on one fights, and excelled at them... when it had the chance. My understanding is that the Char was an 'infantry tank' - it was built to sit and slug it out, essentially. It seemed that the idea of a heavy 'infantry tank' went out of style pretty fast after world war two started up; it looked like lighter tanks for exploiting breakthroughs (and simply being on the battlefield in quantity) which were called 'calvary tanks' at the beginning of the war seemed to be the tank design that proved most useful. I mean, turns out, these "medium tanks" were simply more useful than either giant or tiny tanks, and this wasn't known at the outset of world war two, as there weren't a lot of large scale tank battles in the Polish campaign or in the spanish civil war to learn from. Look up Pierre Billotte in the Battle of Stonne for one particularly dramatic example of the Char in skilled hands in action against Panzers. (and if you find a good book about him in English, report back) But, my point here is that France did not lose through inferiority of numbers nor through inferiority of equipment.[4] It was something else. Perhaps they just weren't prepared for the German army sending their tanks out faster than their supply lines in ways that the French were utterly unprepared for? But really, I think it might just be Tactics. The French were fighting world war one, perhaps fighting it acceptably well. Germany had been through a number of smaller wars meanwhile, and could see how the new technologies upended the old rules of war, and those technologies made decisive the time it took France to figure out that the rules had changed. (There's a view, in fact, that the same thing happened in the first world war; The French started out in bright red trousers and white gloves, that they were dramatically less prepared for the sort of war that the new technology created than the German aggressors were. But the technology of the first world war meant that they were not overrun before they figured out the new rules, and in the end, a willingness to fight, short supply lines, and a large population carried the day.) (as another aside, I consider the idea that the French are somehow less willing to fight under unpleasant conditions or more likely to surrender than other countries, that "the last brave frenchman died during Napoleon's retreat from Russia" to be... ahistoric. ) May's "Strange Victory" isn't as good as Bloch's "Strange Defeat" - but as I recall (it has been some time) May seemed to suggest that much of this seemed like chance on the German side, too. That you had ridiculously overconfident people in charge, that a lot of the Germans who should have been listened to thought the plan to invade France was way too risky, way too likely to fail. but that somehow, perhaps because the technology of the day allowed for fast and deep breakthroughs and the French leaders were still thinking in world war one terms, that confidence worked out better than could have been reasonably expected. Or maybe it was a low probability event; a fluke. Low-probablility events do occasionally happen. [4] Unless that inferiority was in airpower; The Germans had decisive air superiority on the continent at that time. And it could have been what made the difference; You could easily argue that air superiority made the decisive difference. - I mean, having arial surveillance could have gone a long way towards mitigating the French confusion at the command level, if nothing else. But air superiority alone doesn't seem like it was decisive in other theatres, so you have to come up with some reason why it made the difference here and not, say, against Russia. (also I want to point out that while I am of the opinion that the Germans can be considered the aggressors in world war one, and you can reasonably make that case, it's not a universally accepted opinion as their culpability for world war two is.)