Could the South have used trench warfare more effectively or

>>2160251
I mean, if you took the same geopolitical issues but placed the year at 1914 instead of 1861, Id imagine the same thing that happened in Europe would have happened along the Mason - Dixon line. The fucking south would have actually one, the shit eaters.

Attrition warfare doesn't work very well when you have less production and population than the enemy.

Trench warfare was used wherever possible. By the end of the war, the first thing soldiers did when they stopped was to dig a trench.

>>2160264
It should never have been thought of as attrition warfare. Besides the assaults by Rommel againt the honestly, and I'm saying this as an Italian, infamously shitty Italian army. But hey it was in the alps so. Fucking Rommel man...

Anyways as far as I'm aware, and I'm not an expert, I cant think of a single offensive on the western front (weren't trenches on the eastern front to any sort of comparable degree) that was anything other than a pure disaster. Any side could have won that war if they simply held back and waited. The Germans were MASSIVLEY outnumbered by the Entente colonial empires, but they were in a superior position because the didn't attack (in the west) as much.

>>2160251
>Could the South have used trench warfare more effectively or was the artillery technology and ROA of the Gatling guns just not enough to force a stalemate yet?


"Trench warfare", at least the WW1 style that is most commonly associated with the word, works because of an inability to maneuver much; army size exceeds the ability to project force along the front line, you can't effectively use more men than a quantity less than you have mobilized.

That would never happen in the ACW. The border is too long, the army size is too small.

>>2160289

>Anyways as far as I'm aware, and I'm not an expert, I cant think of a single offensive on the western front (weren't trenches on the eastern front to any sort of comparable degree) that was anything other than a pure disaster.

Most offensives did more damage to the enemy than the attacker sustained, and were successful by that metric. The popular image of people walking forward to be mown down by machineguns isn't the reality. Trench assautls were a complicated mass of attack and counterattack, and by 1918, tactical breakthroughs enabled real offensive momentum to develop again.

>The Germans were MASSIVLEY outnumbered by the Entente colonial empires,

Which were generally untapped as manpower pools, and Germany itself didn't quite match the populations of the UK and France, but wasnt' far behind them either. Army size on the Western front, for most of the war, tended towards pretty even at around 4.5 millionish overall.

>but they were in a superior position because the didn't attack (in the west) as much.

Except when they were, like in 1914, 1916, and the 1917 peace offensives.

>>2160422
Pretty good post anon. Although I think you should have been more denigrating towards the know-nothings to discourage them from making bad posts again.

>>2160422

I wish retards would just fuck off this board instead of shitting it up with crap posts.

>>2160251
>When I say "trench warfare", I mean as a general battle strategy, to dig in. Not just the tactical use of, obviously.

Stop using the terms strategy and tactic if you don't know what they mean.

>>2160251
Gee wilikers OP, I can't see an attrition based strategic doctrine backfiring on South! It's not like the Union had a larger industrial base and a bigger population or anything silly like that.