[mr.WHO]

With upcoming Battlefield 1 (aka WW I Call of Duty) people start to get interested in World War I.


What always bothered me about World War I is how incredibly stupid approach both sides took with "trench warfare".
Why for five long years both side repetetly sacrificed thousands and sometimes tens of thousands of lives to just take one trench line 100 meters ahead...when whole damn trench system was multi layer?


I mean you can say they didn't knew how crazy good is combination of trench + bunker + MG stocked with thousands of rounds AT THE BEGINING OF WAR, but how is that they didn't learned anything in whole 5 god damn years (the solution to the problem in form of Tanks was deployed in the very end of the war).

They could also assume that massive artillery barrage / gas strike would be enough to make a dend in trench line...for the first several failed attempts, not for whole god damned war!


How is it possible that both side allowed such incompetence on command level to allow multiple, hundreds if not thousands of such failures one after another.
I wouldn't expect something like that from Axis monarchies, but at least France and Britain goverments should put their entire high command to first trench line and send them to meet their well deserved doom.
Wasn't there a single high officer who openly admit the futility of such tactic to the govement? Wasn't French and British goverment interested at all to preserve the life of their soldiers?

Why World War I didn't actually ended with both side going full turtle?
I mean strategically speaking trench warfare is a war of attriction and clearly attacker was ALWAYS loosing more soldiers than defender.
Therefore such war would end when one side exhaust all it's manpower and can no longer attack or hold it's own trench line (and this was the case in reality...but ****ing 4 years late).

Why nobody on Allies side came up with an idea to build thick, multi layer trench line, where each line would be weak enought for enemy to break it, but strong enough to inflict casualties and smart enough to allow quick retreat to secondary line.

Such system would lure Axis to actually perform strikes (they would see them as victory, taking land, closing to Paris with each strike) but would ultimately exhaust their manpower with each and every line they take. In the same time Allies would conserve their power (less causalty, less shell shocked soldiers, maybe even frequent rotation for R&R).
That way when the Tanks arrive at the scene Allies would easilly roll over exhausted Axis. Maybe the tanks wouldn't even be needed as the land that Axis took could be retake at negotiation table (obviously Allies with fresh and preserved army would have upper hand over the Axis full of dead, crippled and war orphants).

Granted that making multi-layer treches for hudreds of miles could be huge logistical efford, but they already had them created. Instead of sending tens of thousands of men to their death if they would be put to building trench after trench it could be easily done that two trench lines are build in the place of one lost to Axis. The diffrence is that Allies would pay the price in sweat while Axis would pay the price in blood.

I also exclude some important places that would need to be defended at all cost - like Paris that at some point was very close to the frontline.


Or maybe the whole WWI was actually double full turtle where both sides bleed out during attack, but not actually enough to come to their sense and went in to perpetual "just one more trench" and we finally break trrough their lines? But this just turn back to my original question why wouldn't they realize how stupid and costly it is after several frst pushes and just let the other side bleed out on their attack.

[Bobboau]

"this doesn't work very well", does not always translate quickly into "this works better" no one had ever built a tank before and no one could think of better tactics faster than they did so they kept doing the only thing they could to maybe win, even if there were not very good odds.

[Luis Dias]

Hindsight is 20/20, and I further recommend the brilliant Dan Carlin podcast series "Blueprint for Armaggedon" which deal with WW1 exclusively. It's a brilliant listen for dozens of hours. Might sound daunting, but it's definitely not. It's a great listen, probably the best podcast I've ever encountered.

[Phantom Hoover]

It's amazing, mr. WHO, that you are able to predict the outcomes of your tactics so accurately despite never having been anywhere near a trench or a war.

[The E]

Yeah, mr WHO, there's a lot of argumentation from hindsight in your post. WW1 was a really good example of militaries having to figure out modern tactics on the fly, while no side had a decisive technological or tactical advantage over the other. If you look at every single decision taken that lead to the war's outcome, you will see that most of them will be perfectly justifiable based on what the people making those decisions knew at the time; it's only when we take all these decisions together and look at them with the benefit of hindsight that we see an enormous omnishambles.

[Phantom Hoover]

It's not even arguing from hindsight, he's frankly just fantasised about some alternate history WWI fanfic and asserted that it would work in real life.

[mr.WHO]

Guys don't complain about the hindsight, that wasn't my point.

Of course it's not that smart to come with better solution decades after actual event.

My main question was not why they didn't followed "My tactic" month after the war started, but why they continued "their tactic" for nearly 5 years of the war?
Yes the tank development took almost entire war to adress the issue that was brought by that war, so there might be 0% chance to speed this up.
I don't ask for miracle weapon nor miracle strategy.

I ask why nobody in Axis or Allied command notice simple fact:
- today we attack, we fail, 10k troops dead
- tomorrow they attack, they fail, 10k troops dead
- today we attack, we suceed, 10k troops dead, 5 trench lines to go for us
- today they attack, they suceed, 10k troops dead, 5 trench lines to go for them

Why we (Allies) would need to bother with attacking and loosing 20k men, if they could just move the resources to add another trench line and the effect would be:
- 20k dead for attacker
- still 6 trench lines to go

Even 100 years ago politicts/military wasn't braindead and should  be aware that manpower is not unlimited resource. Not to mention it's key on both military and economic level.
The WW I end up as a war of attrition anyway, so why Allies (as defender) didn't tried to abuse bleed out tactic? I can reason why Axis (as attacker) could not turtle too long (which at the end they in fact turtle, to their own doom).



The only resonable idea that come to my mind is that the Allied command was delusional:
- lets make a push today, 10k dead
- lets make a push today with more soldiers, 20k dead
- lets make a push today with more soldiers and artillery, 20k dead
- lets make a push today with more soldiers and more artillery, 20k dead
- lets make a push today with more soldiers and more artillery and gas attack, 20k dead
- lets do the same as previous, but add even more soldiers/artillery/gas and whatsoever you have now at disposal, 30k dead
.....5 years later
- lets do this with this new metal buckets called Tanks


This still brings me to my main question:
- how the **** French and British goverments allowed such trail & error tactic for 5 long years?!

[NGTM-1R]

On the other hand, there had been some reasonable previews of what World War One would look like. The opening phase of the Boer War, particularly the Siege of Mafeking and a forced river crossing, provided good clues to the British Army. Similarly, the land fighting of the Russo-Japanese War contained all the major features of World War One.

In truth if we were to be reach back even further, trench warfare in the World War One mode was born at Petersburg during the American Civil War.

With this understanding, why did everyone not expect the trenches?

They were unduly optimistic, mostly because they discounted each other's strengths. The British sat secure in their superb training and superior logistics, confident that their troops were better by any measurable metric, failing to realize the grave failures of their staffwork. The Germans were hypnotized by their superior staffwork and their intelligence coups against France, failing to realize their defects in actual execution and logistics. The French built a cult of elan, stressing the ability to move forward under fire while heedless of the casualties it would cause, and had fine technical arms like artillery and intelligence but did not properly coordinate them. All of them were used to colonial wars where it was enough to show up with sufficient bullets and they would win. They failed to understand the raw strength of another European nation-state, and put surprisingly little effort into figuring out just how deep the manpower reserves and production capacity of the others went, which might have warned them.

To this must be added a political and military moral cowardice. The generals were unwilling to admit that the military art had been defeated and they could offer no solutions, lying to the politicians that they could win the war with just a few more men and a few more guns. The politicians in turn lacked the courage to challenge this assertion after it had been proved false multiple times and seek a compromise peace, rather than allow the war to continue on and on in a demented race to whose national collapse came first.

[mr.WHO]

To this must be added a political and military moral cowardice. The generals were unwilling to admit that the military art had been defeated and they could offer no solutions, lying to the politicians that they could win the war with just a few more men and a few more guns. The politicians in turn lacked the courage to challenge this assertion after it had been proved false multiple times and seek a compromise peace, rather than allow the war to continue on and on in a demented race to whose national collapse came first.

This might been good explanation for political failure at first year or two (as all the nations in general were pro-war, something that you don't see anymore post WW I).
Still it is amazing that none of politicans had any balls to challenge the military tactic when the pile of corpses was rising higher and higher.

With this understanding, why did everyone not expect the trenches?

Funny, but everyone expected infantry blitz and short a few months war. Still as you mentioned when first trench line occured, or rather first multi-layer trench they should adapt their tactic (at least Allies, Axis were much more limited in options as attacker).

I don't know when recon planes / observation baloons were actually introduced, but maybe they were actually thinking that the trench ahead is the only one ( so once you break it you're open for you blitz again)? Again this would explain only initial year or two (I'm quite sure that at least observation baloons were avaliable pre-war).

[niffiwan]

I feel you really haven't studied WW1 very much, to address just a few examples:

The British & French had a political imperative to drive the Germans off French & Belgium soil, creating a "turtle" defense was not politically feasible. And in any event, the Germans would not have futilely attacked the defences, after the failure of the Moltke/Schlieffen Plan in 1914, they were generally on the defensive in the West until 1918 (if you ignore Verdun) while they defeated the Russians in the East. 

Tanks had not been built at the start of the war, they had to be designed from scratch and then tactics had to be devised for them with no prior experience to draw on.  It should be noted that the contemporary British Officer Corp could be said to be anti-intellectual, completely the opposite of what tanks stood for, a technological solution to a warfare problem. It would be essentially the Germans in WW2 that would finally find the appropriate tactics for tanks... 25+ years of various developments & refinements.

Tanks were 1st deployed in 1916, not almost at the end of the war.

Given that the entire war lasted 4 years, 3 months and 2 weeks, you can't say "this" continued for almost 5 years. At best almost 3 considering battles in 1918 such as Operation Michael, The Battle of Hamel & The Battle of Amiens.

In addition to the other suggestions, just have a read of Wikipedia, there's plenty of good material there to give you a better framework to understand some of the  factors contributing to the insanity of the 15/16 trench warfare.

[Scourge of Ages]

NGTM-1R seems to have summarized it pretty well, so I won't quote his whole post. But, if I could summarize his summary, I'd say it came down to pride, stupidity, and refusal to adapt to a new type of war simply because they didn't want to.

In the minds of the generals, you couldn't just turtle forever. If you didn't attack, you couldn't win! Well, the Russians actually did use the strategic retreat strategy quite a bit, and it worked at first.

Anyway, watch this youtube channel, they follow the course of the war, week by week. It's awesome: https://www.youtube.com/user/TheGreatWar

Here, a primer:

"What are machine guns? pfffft, who cares? Bright blue uniforms for all! Now march!"

[qwadtep]

Also note that real life is not a RTS game where an invisible hand guides forces with perfect efficiency. There's a lot of politicking and concerns regarding logistics and morale.

[LaineyBugsDaddy]

In regard to Russia and strategic retreats, Russia has a LONG history of retreating, burning the crops and other supplies as they go, and letting "General Winter" take care of the enemy (Stalin's order to contest every inch of ground against the Nazis not withstanding). Mind you, the crop burning bit was more back when armies "foraged" for their food. These days, if they were to do this, they'd fall back, then come around and cut the supply line of the invader, then let old General Winter have his way with them

[Grizzly]

Also note that real life is not a RTS game where an invisible hand guides forces with perfect efficiency. There's a lot of politicking and concerns regarding logistics and morale.

The simple task of relaying orders proved very difficult.

The battle of Gallipoli was one such case were soldiers trained for trench warfare advanced half a mile and then just stopped because their training did not account for taking large swathes of territory. On the trench front, british and french attacks could be succesfull but issues with communication ensured that they could not capitalize on their successes.

[mr.WHO]

Hey niffiwan, thanks for you input, it really provide me some fresh view on the matter, especially this part:

The British & French had a political imperative to drive the Germans off French & Belgium soil, creating a "turtle" defense was not politically feasible. And in any event, the Germans would not have futilely attacked the defences, after the failure of the Moltke/Schlieffen Plan in 1914, they were generally on the defensive in the West until 1918 (if you ignore Verdun) while they defeated the Russians in the East. 

I must say that I wrongly assumed that WWI Allies would be more like WWII Allies, which didn't had any problem giving up their allies territory, one after another to Axis advance.

[Mika]

WWI is not the only time something like this happened. What was new was the trench warfare and the scale.

Japan had a period of warring states (1461-1603) for 150 years. In short, this warring period took a massive toll on the recruited soldiers, while the nobles commanded the armies. The nobles themselves had a sort of strategy where they asked ransoms for every captured noble and when getting the ransom, released them. When each of the states has the same strategy, the result is predictably a bloody gridlock, mainly grinding down those nasty peasants. This lasted until one person broke this gridlock and started to execute the captured nobles. He eventually won over the island and the warring states period ended. The same question could be asked there, why nobody else figured this out during the time of 150 years? If I'm not badly mistaken, Europe went through something like that too, but I can't be bothered to start checking the European history to find the time.

Military history is just full of stories like that. Any moment the upper command echelon gets too separated from the field something like that is bound to happen. USA's Vietnam is a similar kind of thing, military allowing too much control for the politicians over the actual operations, while politicians were utterly unaware of the actual situation on the ground. Curiously, the last air strikes of that war demonstrated what military could have achieved if politics hadn't came into play. Similar thing with Iraq occupation, this effort was also drastically underestimated (political reasons once again). Soviet Union screwed up royally in Afghanistan and in Finland, and so on...

My company commander shortened this to "Those who won the war f*cked up less"

[Polpolion]

I must say that I wrongly assumed that WWI Allies would be more like WWII Allies, which didn't had any problem giving up their allies territory, one after another to Axis advance.

It's interesting that you make that comparison. In fact, by September 1939 France had learned the lessons you outlined in your posts. Instead of wasting manpower by invading the German heartland, the two allies waited for the inevitable German assault at the Maginot Line, hoping to stop the war at the border with minimal casualties. Instead, the German army bypassed the most heavily fortified portion of the line by invading through Belgium (again). Then in June 1940 French Premier Philippe Pétain, the hero of Verdun, surrendered France to the Germans.

[NGTM-1R]

And the idea of the French counterblow while the Wehrmacht was busy with Poland became one of the great historical what-ifs of the war. (Much like if Czechslovakia had fought.)

[mr.WHO]

I must say that I wrongly assumed that WWI Allies would be more like WWII Allies, which didn't had any problem giving up their allies territory, one after another to Axis advance.

It's interesting that you make that comparison. In fact, by September 1939 France had learned the lessons you outlined in your posts. Instead of wasting manpower by invading the German heartland, the two allies waited for the inevitable German assault at the Maginot Line, hoping to stop the war at the border with minimal casualties. Instead, the German army bypassed the most heavily fortified portion of the line by invading through Belgium (again). Then in June 1940 French Premier Philippe Pétain, the hero of Verdun, surrendered France to the Germans.

Ha! That's a nice one! Here in Poland we really hold a huge grudge that France and Britain didn't launched a second front on September 1939 when Germans were busy Blitzkreig'ing us to death.
Yeah I know they weren't prepared at that time for offensive actions and didn't knew that German border was defenceless from the West.
Now it seems French and British actions seem much more logical rather than cowardly.

This conclusion reminds me the opinion, that from historical point of view it's more clear to analyze WWI and WWII as a single greate war with long period of temporary truce, rather than two wars one after another.

[Grizzly]

I must say that I wrongly assumed that WWI Allies would be more like WWII Allies, which didn't had any problem giving up their allies territory, one after another to Axis advance.

It's interesting that you make that comparison. In fact, by September 1939 France had learned the lessons you outlined in your posts. Instead of wasting manpower by invading the German heartland, the two allies waited for the inevitable German assault at the Maginot Line, hoping to stop the war at the border with minimal casualties. Instead, the German army bypassed the most heavily fortified portion of the line by invading through Belgium (again). Then in June 1940 French Premier Philippe Pétain, the hero of Verdun, surrendered France to the Germans.

Ha! That's a nice one! Here in Poland we really hold a huge grudge that France and Britain didn't launched a second front on September 1939 when Germans were busy Blitzkreig'ing us to death.
Yeah I know they weren't prepared at that time for offensive actions and didn't knew that German border was defenceless from the West.

Actually, there was an offensive. It just didn't end well.