Everyone and their mother loves to shit on the Generals of the

>>33805953
who else would you blame for the huge butchers bill, OP?
the view is justified in this case.

>>33805953
Smaller scale, limited objective offensives. You're not gonna break through and force a 20 mile retreat.

>>33806980

If a gigantic operation across a miles long front can only get a couple yards advance, can you really expect smaller scale attacks to do anything?

>>33805953
more mustard gas

>>33805953
Dig large tunnels like it's the DMZ. Lel as whole divisions appear behind enemy lines.

Fight more defensively, only do small skirmishes to keep them on their toes. Shell them 24/7, low intensity, prohibit them any kind of sleep whatsoever. Invest more in naval ressources. put pressure in the south (bypass switzerland of course). Absolutely do not attack en masse like verdun, or the somme. Push for peace ASAP.
Thoughts?

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>>33806980
>Smaller scale
This. Germany initiated a two front war against France and Russia. They got bogged down against France and overextended in Russia. At least they weren't as big fuckups as the Turks or Italians.

>>33807259

There was no way to go to war with just France or Russia.

They had a specific treaty calling each other to war in the case they were attacked.

>>33805953
Learn the proper combined arms lessons learned by the end of the war. If you had those, the relatively inadvanced defensive measures would get soundly trounced.

>>33805953
Bongs: Amphibious assalt?
Huns: Airship paradroping?

>>33807532
>Amphibious assalt?

Yeah, because that worked in the Dardanelles, right?

>Airship paradroping?

Yeah, cause blimps can hold more than 30 guys, right?

>>33807161
They did that though.

Except, they packed the tunnels full of explosives and lel'd as whole enemy divisions appeared six feet below enemy lines.

>>33807196
>Shell them 24/7
There was plenty of that.

>>33807259
>Germany initiated
Germany just supported Austria, and they did so expecting common sense to prevail after some chest beating.

>>33807532
>Huns: Airship paradroping?
You mean, giving the enemy a fuckhuge target to shoot at?

>>33807099
>more mustard gas
Only good for cases like the Kurds, where you're not interested in having your own guys there or holding that area.

Half the time, you end up gassing your own guys otherwise.

>>33805953
go turtle defense mode

send the other resources to knock out russia faster and defeat the retarded italians

hopefully if you can knock out Russia and Italy in 1917, it would be such a political crisis that France or Britain would capitulate.

Also more U-boats.

A WW1 version of the Afrika Korps, german forces attacking into Egypt from Ottoman-held Palestine, might have worked. If Egypt fell, you might have caused a political crisis in Britain, that could have led to a peace deal.

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>>33807196
Also pic related, that was a single day's worth of spent shells.

>>33807819
Size didn't stop then from droping bombs, so why not troops behind enemy lines?

Invent ICBMs early.

>>33807835
I know they shot a crazy amount of artillery in ww1, nearly all casualty were from big guns, but im saying, keep them firing every day, all year long. Not massive barrages before an assault, although you can do that too, just harrasing fire, perhaps one round per gun every 20, 30 minutes? Something like that.

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>>33807991
>nearly all casualty were from big guns

Really? Shit, this whole time i'd assumed that it was machine guns + disease and the elements.

>>33807928
If you drop a bomb, you want it to die, you don't care about what happens to it after. Troops though...

>>33807991
>just harrasing fire, perhaps one round per gun every 20, 30 minutes? Something like that.
They often shelled trenches at rates of several rounds a minute for hours on end. I'm sure plenty of the soldiers would've wished for only a few rounds an hour.

>>33808004
IIRC like 60-75% of the casualties where by artillery

create the modern unit group sizes much earlier,using squads as the smallest battlegroup rather than a company
use infiltration technique based on Brusilov and sturmtruppen,but not just relying on them
better artillery and infantry coordination with the air arms supporting them
using artillery as a suppressing weapon rather than a destructive one
improve supply and logistics so that an attack and breakthrough could be exploited and gains to be held rather than given up
better coordination between generals,battles like somme or ypres would've gone much better if there was more higher level communication between the leaders,an assault up in the flanders and another consecutive one near the swiss border would've made a major crisis
using the strategy of trying to roll up or penetrate another sector after a breakthrough rather than trying to penetrate the line any further

>>33808042
>often
thats the thing, the war lasted around 1500 days, make it 1500 days of shelling.

>>33808125
>>33807991
>>33807196
they did constant low intensity shelling you retard

>>33807259
>over extended
Maybe you didn't get the memo but we actually best Russia in WWI and signed a peace treaty with them.

>>33805953
In 1914 after the first battle of ypres and hopefully at that point realizing that mass assaults versus direct fire artillery and machine guns would not be effective, I would use a defensive retaliation tactic like General Lee in the first 1/2 of the civil war where you plan attacks using the reserve troops in a sector after an enemy attack. Basically you let the enemy attack, wear themselves out and break against your lines, and then immediately attack them after they fall back

>>33808072
expanding upon my points
the reasoning for smaller unit sizes is so that a group would have a clearer scope in their mission and objective,more often that not controlling a 100 men group would mean limiting their role,spreading out the men to smaller section means that they would have clearing understanding in their mission

the problem with infiltration technique by Brusilov is that the superbly incompetent Russian high command were unconvinced by his ideas,even though his offensive was the most single decisive battle of the war,the decision to siphon his forces to the summer offensives stagnated any advances and made gain relatively useless,storm troopers are made to copy Brusilov's successes,but the German failed to realize the same short coming as the Russian had which is to ensure proper supply and maintenance to these units,since most of the storm troopers are the cream of the crop and such units have a terrific attrition rate they weren't able to replace these men effectively,rendering most of their achievement moot

Artillery and infantry coordination is a no brainer,there is no question that any infantry attack unsupported by artillery is a futile effort
any effective use of creeping barrage would give ample amount of offensive power for the aggressor,air arms is crucial to give the artillery proper marks and scout up the build up of enemy troops

Also using artillery for an all out massive barrage is ineffective,troops would simply move out of the front line trenches and go to secondary trenches to wait it out, a short sustained barrage to start off followed by constant suppressive would suprise and keep defenders on edge of any intention

The major problem with sustaining an offensive in the great war was that any gains taken were pretty much unsustainable,assaulting troops making up the trenches were pretty much alone to hold up any counter offensives

>>33808278
the problem is that since the scale is so much larger compared to previous war
the german sixth army didn't know they were being outflanked by two entente armies until they saw french troops right behind their lines

>>33808319

I think if implimented as a policy and delegated rather than planned by the higher generals each time it would still be effective. The 6th Marines in 1918 at Belleau Wood found success in non-traditional combat style literially know as "Indian style" as in Native Americans, becasue they would not advance in a line but would spread out when attacking and use any means they could to outflank, and outthink each individual obstacle.The german tactic was still mass assaults even in 1918. The only reason they had success was because the majority of their opponents didnt have enough weapons training to hit anything past 300 yards

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>>33808004
>disease and the elements.

>what is non-combat casualty category

americans cant be this dumb

Anything anyone says will be completely with the benefit of hindsight anyway, so the exercise is pointless.

>>33808462
yeah it's nice to think we would do differentely but, we are speculating what they could have done differently so we can still use hindsight to do that

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>>33808477

we could speculate on what if OP wasn't a faggot, but that won't him any good in hindsight.

>>33808416
>[...] but would spread out when attacking and use any means they could to outflank, and outthink each individual obstacle.
>The german tactic was still mass assaults even in 1918.
Devil's advocate here, but that late in the war, the German tactics might've been more appropriate depending on who they were.

If the average German soldier was a half-starved teenager with five minutes of weapons training, they might not have fared well one-on-one against a mid-20s, healthy, well-trained and fresh faced American.

Although I'm not entirely sure if the memes live up to historical facts, which is why I choose to hide behind my declaration of devil's advocacy.

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>>33808447
>Casualties of WWI
>casualty
>To include non-combat related
>being so dumb you think they exclude disease and elements from the casualty counts

>>33808731

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/World_War_I_casualties#Classification_of_casualty_statistics

when someone's talking about casualties from artillery, can you at least pretend to have been born with a brain and assume he's talking about combat casualties.

i wonder if you're the steven hawking of retarded people, needing a special pc to type because you don't have the brain cells to move your hands, much think critically.

>>33808447
>Soldiers who died during active WW1 operations arent casualties

wew tell that to historians and governments everywhere then

>>33806980
This, along with aggressively rotating fresh units though the front. A hell of a lot of infantry divisions were reduced to ineffective mush by just leaving them out too long like fucking potato salad in the sun.

>>33808780
You have somali tier English skills if you think that the phrase "all casualty" >>33807991 magically excludes non combat casualties because of some superbly brain-damaged context bending skills of yours.

>>33808780
>nearly all Casualties were from big guns

That's what was stated.


Which is false.


But I know logic is no longer common with eurotards.

>>33808845
>>33808835
I'm
>>33807991
and I wrote it wrong but yes, I was talking about combat casualties.

>>33808835
>>33808845

> About two-thirds of military deaths in World War I were in battle
>66% of casualties

>nearly all Casualties were from big guns
>nearly all 80% and over

it's true artillery accounted for a high percentage of combat casualties, which is what he should be referring.

why the fuck would he be talking about non-combat casualties.

>>33808789
This. What exactly does the determiner 'all' mean in whatever shitpit he comes from?

>>33808906
see
>>33808913

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>>33808879

welp, maybe can stop autisically spasming out to the point it's affecting they're reading comprehension.

oh wait, i almost forgot where i am.

>>33805953
The reason why people are fixated on "why the fuck did they keep sending cavalry with swords against consertina wire and Maxim guns" is because for DECADES prior to WWI the British empire and anyone else with a colony had been using machineguns, artillery, quick loading highly accurate bolt action rifles to wholesale slaughter natives by the thousand.

Arguably even as far back as the US civil war the writing should have been on the wall regarding the efficacy of rifle fire.

>>33808913

jesusssssssssssssssssssss christ you are some tier 1 special ops autsits.

the guy admitted he phrased it wrong.
>>33808879

>>33808945
>the guy admitted he phrased it wrong.
and yet you're still desperately and embarrassingly trying to save face even after he admitted what he wrote was unclear.

>>33807819
During WWI specifically airships we're still effective militarily due to having a much higher operating ceiling than planes and most anti aircraft guns (which really didn't exist yet)

>>33808293
>>33808072
>Any of this shit before the Advent and proliferation of radios
The effectiveness of 10 ten man units vs the effectiveness of one 100 man unit when the 10 units can't communicate with each other or higher command is severely lacking. No plan survives battle. Communication is one of the biggest problems armies have faced for all of history.

>>33808004
the old WW1 war movies depict constant carnage via artillery and machine guns as conscripts are forced to run toward an enemy trench

probably not too far off, at least at first?

>>33808959
>and yet you're still desperately and embarrassingly trying to save face even after he admitted what he wrote was unclear.

i understood he was talking about combat casualties and you didnt, but i'm the one trying to save face?

in this universe where everything is ass-backwards, does it also make faggots that take it up the ass like yourself straight because you see the guy's balls slap against you?

>>33808943
and yet it was the brtiish who performed retarded light cavalry charges upon MG08 dugouts
the central powers only fought dismounted it was the brits who had poor leadership and le daring do to actually attempt such a retarded manuever for all of their great imperial majesty and pomp

>>33807082
Yes, because that's exactly what happened. Small parts of the big offensives made good gains but were negated by the failures of the offensives as a whole.

>>33809067
Yikes. You embarrassed yourself. Admit it and let it go instead of derailing the thread with all that impotent sperg rage. Also instead of describing in detail the kind of porn you watch regularly, how about investing in English lessons...

>>33809104
>Admit it and let it go instead of derailing the thread with all that impotent sperg rage.

lol you think i'm mad? i'm just bantering on another all-nighter with sleep deprivation.

if your asshole is this sensitive to being offended by a few choice words, i hate to think how anally wrecked you get when someone is genuinely angry.

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>>33808004
Example A

>>33807723
>Yeah, because that worked in the Dardanelles, right?
Except without a lucky as fuck naval mine the Dardanelles was full victory mode.

>>33809157

Yeah, not like the British weren't literally being JUST'd on the beaches

The British had a better showing in fucking Passchendaele than they did in Turkey

>>33809129
>LOL U MAD I TROL U I WAS ONLY PRETENDING TO BE RETARDED
Another one bites the dust

Pressure the Admiralty to tell Churchill to fuck off, so that Fisher's plans to move into the Baltic and cut Germany's supply lines can but put in motion.

>>33809325
kek, germany just invaded copenhagen and your grand fleet is now stuck in the baltic. what the cuck now fugboi?

>>33809028
they literally implemented all of that at the near end of the war

having smaller units size is more to having lower level leaders making their decision on the ground,rather than relying on the higher ups who cannot accurately assess the performance

>>33805953
Nobody shit on them for losing men.
It's, as you wrote, really for wasting lifes for little to no gain in ground.

In 1914, they did fine on the Western Front :
The war was mobile for two full months before Germany dug in to prepare the next move.

Even the First Ypres wasn't that bloody for such a large-scale battle lasting a full month.
And since it was the first true trench battle, one could forgive both sides for not realizing how lethal it would be.

In 1915, however, they had that knowledge and just went full retards anyway, sending tens of thousands of men in concentrated attacks to take little to no ground.

The idea wasn't bad in itself : local numerical superiority, combined with large firepower from artillery, could have been the key to make a break in enemy lines.
And several times, it was... but then the gap was too narrow to be held and there wasn't enough troops to push further anyway, since so many would have died locally and most of the rest was needed to hold the whole front so the enemy couldn't just do the same kind of operational move everywhere.

By 1916, they had no excuses, knowing that those attacks were for naughts.
Verdun and la Somme were the eight of stupidity, trying to attack a well-entrenched enemy on a large front with barely a 2:1 advantage in numbers when this had already fails earlier in the war.

The smart thing for the Germans ?
Dig in, stay digged, fortify, fortify further.
Abandon the positions that are too costly to hold, retreat to the heights and let the allies suicide themselves if they so want.
Germany had already won Belgium, Luxembourg and the most industrialized parts of France.
The Western Front was only a problem because it kept troops away from the Eastern Front, preventing a quick victory there... but such quick victory wasn't needed, as russians were bleeding men and territory anyway.

>>33809089
In 1914 and 1915, they tried the "small scale, local offensives" approach.
It was bad exactly because those small pushes, while taking ground, still costed too many men.

With the knowledge the generals had by the end of 1915, offensive wasn't an option.
You could just keep shelling enemy position and hope to inflict casualties over time.
Even by mid-1915, it wasn't.

>>33809733
it's mind boggling on how many number of factors could have shift the war
what if Austria would concede parts of Dalmatia to the Italian
what if the Von Moltke stick more to the Schlieffen,would it be Franco Prussian war 2.0
what if Zimmerman telegram was never exposed
what if the Russian weren't stuck using 18th century tactics

>>33807991
There's a point where industry can't supply enough shells if you spend them too fast.

What you describe here :
>>33807991
>>33807196
>>33808125
could work... but the "low intensity" would be very low.

>>33809776
Yeah, there's the political factor too, I agree.
But from a purely military strategy, I think this >>33809733 was the right approach for Germany.

The allies, while not doing excellent, still won so really, less blame to give.

>>33809789
and also shipment of shells would come in large batches,it's hard to constant supply shell in a daily ration

Roll back. Frontal assaults favor the defenders.

Besides, they were fighting on Belgium? Would have been better off retreating to a river and defending from there.

>>33809880
Actually, holding as far into France as they did was extremely important. The majority of France's industry lay behind German lines.

>>33809880
>Would have been better off retreating to a river and defending from there.
...You mean like the Somme?

That river that the largest battle of the war was named after? A million soldiers dead?

...Ring any bells?

>>33809880
it was a matter of pride and civilian morale
any mile closer to Paris is verboten since the memories of 1871 still lingers on the populace
the germans fighting on their soil makes a lot of sense since they have a large terrain advantage there,but as said above it was a matter of national pride rather than strategic sensibility

i can think of one thing the germans didn't do correctly in hindsight. after the general breakthrough towards the seine river the allowed first and second armies to be seperated at the marne during a counter offensive.

if the germans could have held their line than reinforcements could have been deployed to the northwest up to dunkirk maybe and that last river and the french capital would have been a stones through away.

>>33809070

If the cavalry have artillery cover, they're able to get the objective done, such as in the Battle of Beersheba. The problem was that due to the nature of the war, cavalry outran its support units and found itself either facing machine guns that should have been disabled or surrounded after breaking a hole through the line. Tanks would suffer from much the same issues, finding the holes they punched into the line filled and themselves flanked because infantry can't move fast enough to exploit the gap.

>>33805953

My man, they knew perfectly what they were doing. It's called a war of attrition.

While many generals dreamed of the "victory" or the "breakthrough", the basic strategy of the war evolved into a struggle to break the only worthwile enemy: the German Empire. In other words, the objectives were to 1) kill Germans and disable their manpower 2) free French lands and Belgium 3) Break Germany once and for all.

In 1914 and 1915 there were desperate attempts to gain the "victory" that was needed, but the means were lacking: all the attempts to open new fronts and to gain "spectacular" victories went to hell (Gallipoli, Italy, Balkan, hell, even the Eastern Front). Failures on the battlefield in 1916 were almost necessary to develop the means and the tactics to break on the battlefield Germany and kill their men (k\d rations between Entente infantry and German infantry went from a rough 2 Allies par German to 1:1 in 1917).

Sure, in retrospective many tactical ideas could have been tried and developed, but we must consider that the generals themselves were learning as they went a war far different than the one they dreamed of. The Germans did their best, but they were fated to lose in any case a war of sheer annihilation.

So, I guess strategically, to win a early 20th century industrial war, the Entente generals did a adequate job. Sure, we can consider bleak the perspective to sending thousands to their death, but it was indeed a war of mere calculations and exhaustion.

>>33810176
Cavalry can't go through a combination of barbed wires, trenches, minefields and direct machinegun fire.
Even more so if the whole thing is supported by its own indirect artillery.

Damn, even infantry weapons were by then accurate and fast enough to deliver a volume of fire through which the cavalry couldn't hope to just push forward.
There's a reason why, even in the colonies, the "cavalry" operated more and more akin to mounted infantry.

>>33810495
>k\d rations between Entente infantry and German infantry went from a rough 2 Allies par German to 1:1 in 1917

Maybe because, by 1917, Russia wasn't even pretending to fight ?
In some large scale battles, they had up to 10:1 losses against Germany.

Also, by then, Germany was indeed exhausted demographically.

>>33810109
that's Von Moltke fault
he fucked up a perfect battle plan due to his timidness

>>33810176
i think having 2 corps against 4 regiments had more to do with the success of beersheba than some faggy englishman prancing around on his pony

>>33808273
Actually no, if the revolution wouldn't have started you would have been utterly crushed one year earlier - Brusilov already knew how to break up your lines and flood your rear echelons.

>>33810595
This, a thousand time

>>33805953
Apply series of carefully prepared small scale offensives which goal is to capture strategic ports like railroads or hills until you introduce the following:

Improve coordination between artillery and infantry, with artillery changing it tactics from "shelling until you destroy the enemy" to "shelling for 40 minutes to pin the enemy infantry, machineguns and artillery down, covering infantry in the meantime. The 1915-1917 style artillery doctrine led to decent successes at capturing first line of defences but stopped further advances because the destruction was too big to allow for redeployment of artillery.

Delegate more power to NCO's and lower rank CO's along with developing communication protocols with the rear, allowing them to for instance to call artillery strike on given positions, on demand.

Introduce lighter artillery models allowing you to reach 1st/2nd enemy line quickly and provide at least defensive fire support for the infantrymen who took them over, allowing you to buy the time to get heavier artillery for shelling stronger rear lines.

>>33810620
Brusilov was pushed aside by the stupid Russian high command
his offensive would've knocked the Austrian empire if he had like 200000 more men given to him

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>>33809129
>saving face this hard

>>33810542

You are correct, but I was considering just Western Front (thus, "competent") armies. French losses in 1915 went for something like 1.5 par German and British 2.0 par German. Should check the tables again, though.

Italian losses are something like 3.5 par Austrian and I have no idea for Russians.

>>33810620
>Brusilov
You know the offensive was one of the very reasons the revolution could happen, right ?

Sure, operationnaly, it was a masterstroke... but strategically, it was a disaster because Russia, at this stade of the war, couldn't afford to go on the offensive.

It costed 1 million men to take a territory about the size of Belgium.
Most of these soldiers were veterans and officers loyal to the Tsar.
They were replaced by grumbling new recruits conscripted from a population that was already screaming for peace.

>>33805953
The Triple Entente should fight defensively, blockade Germany, and release biological and chemical weapons over their agricultural areas.

>>33811239
>this whole post

Jesus /k/ should never be allowed anywhere near a history teacher job