I'm a former British soldier. I learned once that the armies of 1914 fought in a way that Wellington would have recognised, while the armies of 1918 fought in a way that I would have recognised.
Correct, in a sense. AIUI and from memory, British light artillery began the war by using grape shot to great effect. Fairly soon after the enemy began using heavy artillery to wipe out light batteries. In Wellington's time they would have immobilised what we would call light guns by removing the wheels, and bowling them into the infantry square, firing until the last sensible moment, using grapeshot.
One of my favorite modern historians, Major General Sir Julian Thompson, who commanded the British 3rd Commando Brigade in the Falklands, and whose father fought at the Somme, said it best, "No army trains for the next war. We all train for the last war." In the First World War, the technology advanced faster than the lessons learned for the first 3 years.
@@markrounding2731 The Germans, in fact, have not, in their entire military history, used “blitzkrieg”. The German military doctrine used during WW2 was bewegungskrieg.
@@markrounding2731 Technically, that’s actually an evolution of the combined arms operations developed by Generals Byng, Currie, and Monash towards the end of the First World War. So you could also say that the Germans fought the Second World War using the lessons they had learnt from the First - in which case, the principle is sound.
My grandfather was in WW1, at the Somme, at Paschendaele and at Ypres. He went out in 1916 with a service battalion, the 21 West Yorks ( Textile) Regiment. He had a lot to say about their general, Rawlinson, and none of it was good. He bitterly remembered them involved in a hard fight at the front, struggling back to base after a tough time, and being lined up for General Rawlinson to address them : ‘ I know you are just back from having a tough time at the front, but you’ll be pleased to hear that we are going to send you straight back so you can get your own back’. Apparently there was nearly a riot. He wasn’t impressed by Sir Aylmer Hunter-Weston either, who had the greatest number of casualties at the Somme, Grandfather was also very upset about two of their number who were shot at dawn. The two, Herbert Crimmins and Arthur Wild, both from the Bradford Pals, had slipped out to meet some local lasses at a local bar, and when they got back it was to find their comrades had gone up to the front. They tried to find them but couldn’t before the fight started, so fought with some other British troops during the battle. However they were found guilty of cowardice and desertion, - despite pleas from their officers because they had fought - and both were shot at dawn on September 5 1916Grandfather must have known them as he knew all about them. Ref www.thetelegraphandargus.co.uk/tahistory/14615343.the-bradford-men-killed-by-their-own-side-during-the-great-war/ Finally they did a lot of marching. I believe they marched for an hour and then had a 10 minute rest. At one point they had to line up to get water, grandfather at the end of the line. He had just got his water when the order came to move out. He drank up and put his cup back in his tunic, but not quickly enough as a senior officer saw him with his top tunic button still undone, as he was doing it up, and put him on a charge. He had to spend 24 hours doing observation from a shell hole in No Mans land. The young soldier with him during that night became hysterical with fear, and began to scream out in the dark so grandfather knocked him out. He was very pleased to see their relief a day later. However the couple who relieved them were never seen again - the hole took a direct hit from a shell. My grandfather, like so many others, had nightmares for the rest of his life, and the shrapnel they were unable to remove from his wounded body went with him to his grave. He was a clever man - a manager later in Civvy street - but always felt they were not well led.
This story typifies why the term " lions led by donkeys" ( wether made up or not ? ) Is fundamentally correct . Most of the officers had paid commission s ( rich mater's & paters ) no empathy or social mind set nor any compation for their charges ( connon fodder ) . YOU sir should be very very proud of your grandfather
Your reply also reflects my grandfather's experience in WWI, he highlighted the lack of planning, poor logistics, over the top discipline measures and a system based on class and not on merit or ability.
My grandfather fought in Flanders from 1916 and later spent time in the occupation of Germany, mainly Cologne. He related many stories, made surprisingly lucid due to the onset of dementia. One thing that did come through, was his first hand stories of the appalling treatment metered out to those that were probably suffering shell-shock and similar psychological conditions. Disgraceful treatment, even for those times.
Did they also torture them with electric shocks? That's what the Germans did (at least during the first years of the war), believing they were just cowards pretending to be ill.
@@ScepticGinger89 Look up 'field punishment', there is a Wiki page too. Tied to a gun carriage wheel in the open overnight might not be as bad as electric shocks; I'll let you make up your own mind.
@@DidMyGrandfatherMakeThis wasn't Foch the one who wanted to end WW1 at 11:11 on November 11? I can't imagine being a soldier and dying on the last day of the war because the field marshal wanted a funny date 🤣
You should give credit to Australian General Monash, who was Haig's subordinate and later became his friend. General Monash an engineer and lawyer and who kept up to date with emerging technologies, created and tested combined operations at the battle of Hamel. Haig encouraged him to promote this operation as a template for British and French forces in future combat operations on a larger scale.
Yes, he should get due credit, but it should also be remembered that while Monash was responsible for developing some aspects of that template he did not develop all of it. He did however have it available, was given the resources to pull it off, and fought Hamel, which is probably his outstanding Battle of the war.
Monash definitely deserves credit but so do Byng (British) and Currie (Canadian). Combined arms was first used properly at Cambrai - well before Hamel. Monash built on what had been learned during the battle , and critically, so did the British Tank Corps.
@@tooyoungtobeold8756 It was absolutely needless. Caught in the maelstorm of paranoid seats of powers the world devolved into a state war for no other purpose than for the old order to keep their power. There were no gains and ww1 didn't even end in a victory but in a devolved state of order that would lead to an even greater conflict. More open and less power-hungry elites could have avoided it. A less paranoid Tsar could have avoided it. A less senile emperor could have avoided it, a less childish kaiser could have avoided it, a government that could see clearly that Britain would one day have to open the seas to free commerce could have avoided it. In the end it was all avoidable, the steel-coal union after ww2 would serve as the precursor to todays European Union. Never again would Germany and France have to go to war over coal or steel as they could simply trade it between them at fair prices. Far before the ideas of this existed. It took two lunatic world wars that served nothing but to spawn an equal cold one. It was only due to the diligence of organized non-military-loving groups to tear down the walls of paranoia and usher in an actual international order that could cooperate. World war 1 was never something that needed to happen. It took the combined lunacy of several 'great' nations and the utter greed of an elite that had nothing but contempt for the ordinary citizenry that they sent into battle to provoke it.
My paternal great grandfather served on the western front. One family story is that he was carrying an artillery shell and had had enough, and so threw himself to the floor in the hope that it would go off and end it all. After a few minutes of just lying there he just got up and went back to his job. Don't know how true it is but there does seem to be a believably bleak pragmatism to his, "Well, might as well carry on" conclusion.
My grandfather joined up in 1915 aged 16 - Royal Engineers. Got "his buttocks shot away" (Oh What a Lovely War) by a German sniper, running away from a burning fuse under a bridge over a Belgian dyke. Family jewels undamaged, he finished off with Passchendaele in 1918 and here I am 👍👍.
“WW1 generals only used Napoleonic tactics” I don’t remember the Grand Armeé using fire and manoeuvre tactics, creeping barrages, tank assaults, and combined arms warfare at Austerlitz
But if you read about Napoleonic battles the good Generals and good armies did use combined arms tactics. Cavalry would hover near infantry forcing them into square. Horse artillery would then pummel the squares until they were weakened. Then infantry would advance leaving the defending commander few good options. It might not have been "Blitzkrieg" as we understand the term, but within the limitations of technology of the day, it came close. Add to that the relearning of light infantry tactics* (fire and movement, use of ground etc) and you can see the germ of modern tactics beginning to sprout. *Bothe the Brits and the French had been pretty good at them in 1757 during the French and Indian War (Seven years War) in North America.
Creeping barrages were after 1915, tank assaults/combined arms post-1917. So to be fair, for most of the war neither did the British army. In fact considering the training needed to fight in squares, it could be argued the British Army was better trained in Wellington's time.
@@timfirth977 That's a good point. But the army in Wellington's time was smaller proportionally (?) and not a lot of, basically, raw recruits. Was it lions led by donkeys? Dunno. Some good docos on it.
Silly thing to say. Franco Prussian war was the recent example but provided wrong answer. In that war the modern weapons killed thousands but the mass of men still won. A few decades later the balance had shifted. Mass of men defeated by modern weapons. Logical for generals to expect a bloody and short war. Nobody could imagine a huge war lasting years
Haig didn’t have much experience of commanding men in battle before his elevation to field marshal. His rise through the ranks was helped by the loan of £50000 to a senior officer and his wife was a lady in waiting to the queen. British officers took a very long time to learn from the mistakes of their tactics that cost thousands of ordinary soldiers their lives and kept on repeating the same tactical mistakes time after time. There seems to be a concerted effort to downplay the inadequacy of the British officer class where promotion was more reliant on class and social relationships than ability.
But British high command was no different to that in France or Germany. Haig was by no means a tactical genius and I'm certainly not a fan but the narrative that has been created following the war is unfair. The Somme is a good example of this. Haig's hand was forced by French pleading during Verdun. Despite his failings, he stated that the British Army wasn't ready and had concerns about what was being asked. There was also autonomy at division level - compare the approaches taken by e.g. the 18th and 48th divisions on the first day. Haig and Rawlinson weren't responsible at ground level so to speak. What can be said is that it was harder for British NCOs to advance through the ranks compared with say the ANZACS or Canadian Corps. This barrier was class based and it did impact the fighting quality of the British Army later in the war (as it became harder to recruit the "right" officers). No doubt the Canadian Corps benefitted from having a large number of former British soldiers as NCOs.
@@willmunny9279 Haig wanted to attack. He just wanted to save up more artillery and resources. Its disingenous to say he was pressured into attacking. He was pressured to change his time table. Waiting would not have improved the Somme.
@@deweywhitley4127 He was pressured to attack before he felt the BEF was ready. Waiting would've allowed for better preparations and the eager but very inexperienced New Army troops to gain more experience. No doubt there would have still have been bloody lessons but these were the same lessons being learned by the French and Germans at Verdun.
@@tamlandipper29why dont you stop and consider what is being said here. We stand on the edge of what could soon be another major war in Europe, one likely to be another trench war. Here we have the media and inteligencia, the educated people who would be made officers to lead us, saying that the waste of life in the western front was fine, and that it's useless, stubborn generals who failed to adapt their tactics soon enough, were A-OK.
I had two Canadian grandfather's, who served in WWI. One was at Passchendaele and Walter held quite bitter feelings toward Douglas Haig. In fact, according to my parents, both of my grandfathers considered Haig's decisions to fight a battle over a non-strategic target, as nothing short of bloody incompetent. The Canadians went into that battle over the strenuous objections of General Arthur Currie, who only acquiesced under threat of a insubordination charge and the switch from reporting to General Gough to reporting to General Plumer. After taking Passchendaele, with 16,000 casualties, the Canadians were dismayed that Passchendaele was given up without a fight five months later. I think your viewpoint, of how British leadership was viewed by Commonwealth armies, is not entirely supported by Canadian and Australian sources. In particular, my reading of Tim Cook's books "At the Sharp End" and "Shock Troops" paints a different picture of Haig and some other British Generals. That there were Generals, such as Byng and Plumer, who were well respected by the Canadians, does not obviate a harsher opinion of Haig's leadership and, in particular his choices in subordinates. I also somewhat suspect that Canadian and Australian historians have access to records that paint a different story. As to why that may be, I don't know. However, your assertion that Commonwealth nations had a high opinion of Haig and company, is something I do not buy. My grandfathers certainly had strongly negative opinions of them and I think they were far from alone in that.
The experience of ANZAC troops in the Boer War with British command left a bitter taste and resulted in Anzacs insisting thereafter on their own command and operating as forces independent of the Brits. Canada came to the same conclusion during WW1. Currie was very strategic and avoided any unnecessary casualties. Haig was driven partially by politics and acted on how things appeared as much as how necessary they were.
@@francoistombe The Dominions did not "operate independently of the Brits" during the First World War. They had Corps formations that were a component of the BEF, which spent most of the war commanded by British GOCS, and were under 1. A British Field Army Commander and 2. Under the C in C, Haig. The Dominions were not independent during the war
What sources would Australian & Canadian historians have access to that UK ones don't have? The Dominion Corps spent most of the war commanded by British Divisional & Corps-level commanders; Byng (Canadian Corps), Birdwood (ANZAC Corps, AIF), Alexander-Godley (ANZAC Corps, New Zealand Division)- all were Officers from Britain and the Raj that led Empire troops and enjoyed their men's esteem. The aggressively mythologised Monash not only liked Haig, but (rightly) saw himself as totally under & at one with Haig's G.H.Q. What did Currie think about Haig? There are people from Britain who will trot out the anecdotal "my grandfather didn't like Haig", as if this is indicative of the BEF's overall attitude towards the man. The cumulative evidence about Haig's army- including its generally high levels of morale- suggest otherwise.
@@skibbideeskitch9894 The intended function of ANZAC troops from the Brit point of view was that they would be individually integrated into existing British units. As was the case with the navy.. There was by then a well identified cultural incompatibility which resulted in dominion soldiers being in their own units with their own NCOs and officers. These units operated under overall allied commands of course.
According to the book "Mud, Blood and Poppycock" an order was given prohibiting officers of General rank to visit the trenches as too many were killed doing so.
Possibly true, but also think of this. Haig had 58 infantry divisions in the BEF. That means 754 infantry battalions (12 plus a pioneer battalion per division). If he visited one battalion every day, which isn't an unreasonable time to see a unit, he'd take more than two years just to see all his infantry. Then there were all his other units. Meanwhile he actually had to run an army of two and a half million men engaged in a war.
@@remittanceman4685 That's why in the German army communication via telephone was standard. A commander of half a million men or more could no longer afford to visit front-line troops without his vital communication centers. He'd be out of the loop completely.
@@TomFynn It's not just communication. Any leader needs to be "at the office" for a lot of the time. That's where people come to find him. That's where all his experts are. During lockdown a lot of people thought this would finally prove we could work from home. Except in a lot of cases it didn't. Most of my colleagues (including myself) found we couldn't function half as well in isolation. I'm pretty sure running an army is the same.
@@remittanceman4685 Also, to clarify, the book - which I can only recommend - states that with every dead General decades of experience and skill were lost, so one dead General, in the grand scheme of things did count for much more than the life of one squaddie. It also recounts an incident in which British officers were gathered in a chateau, planning stuff. As you do, since large maps and dozens of telephones ill-fit in a dugout. The chateau stood out like a sore thumb, as did the rows of vehicles indicating the presence of officers. So German artillery observers quickly twigged on. The officers in the chateau lost a few of their number, when they had to vacate premises somewhat sharpish.
@@TomFynn I've also read Corrigan's book and agree with you. But the loss of experience was only one aspect. Generals also have a war to fight and win. This expectation they must be constantly visiting their units is one based on a total misunderstanding of the military.
It's worth remembering that when we went into Afghanistan 20 years ago the troops were going around in the "snatch" landrovers. They had limited armor against small arms and not a hope at surviving the threat of IEDs. The Americans were in a similar position with their Humvees. Now we have the foxhound, husky and mastiff vehicles and the Americans have the MRAP etc. We didn't have any more foolish leaders at the start of the Afghan invasion than the end... Some lessons just get learned in a brutal way.
@@tommcguire6472 Which is provably false, and shows your utter lack of actual *knowledge* of the changes that occurred in the British Army from 1914 - 1918. Lets take the British Infantry Platoon to illustrate a point shall we? In 1914 it was around 50 men in all, every single one of them other than the Officer was a rifleman. This was standard for infantry platoons in every army in 1914, so was not unique to the British. By September of 1916 the Platoon had utterly changed. It was small, around 38 men, but its four Sections looked VERY different. The first was a rifle Section, which made up one of the two manoeuvre elements. It had 6 riflemen and two grenadiers. The second manoeuvre element was the Grenadier section, consisting of six grenadiers and two riflemen who acted as flankers to cover the grenadiers flanks. This was also the primary Assault Element. You then had a Gun element, consisting of two two man Lewis gun teams, and four ammunition carriers who also acted as flank guard and security for the guns, as well as spare crew. Finally you had either a Mortar Section armed with two 3 inch stokes mortars, or, more usually a Rifle Grenadier Section consisting of four rifle grenadiers and four riflemen. The Gun Section was your suppression element, while the Mortar/rifle grenadiers were indirect light fire support. That was in place by 1916. That ALONE demonstrates why your words are so much horse crap. You do not fundamentally change the basic small Unit of an army to that extent by 'not learning'.
1. They didn’t walk, that’s a myth. Nobody walks when bulllets are whizzing by you. 2. Fast moving armoured personnel carriers weren’t invented so the only way to move men into action was to cross open ground, your going to take casualties.
Well, yes, but this was in the belief that six days of HE and shrapnel bombardment would have destroyed the enemy wire and killed all the front line troops.
@@richardsinger01 The bombardment didnt work because 1/3 of shells didnt detonate and because they mostly used air burst shrapnel shells for the opening bombardment, which were useless at cutting barbed wire
At the end of the day the Generals planned some of the largest & most complex artillery barrages in history which, most of the time, succeeded in destroying enemy defences and machine gun nests so that their infantry could get into German positions. Your comment is a misrepresentation of 1 July 1916. Funnily enough, the companies that "walked" across No Man's Land in rigid formations enjoyed the most success that day 🙂
My grandfather joined 2 weeks after the start of the war in August 1914, over the top at the Somme (one of 73 left the next day), fought at Cambrai, was invalided out gassed in 1918, MM + bar, Croix de Guerre, mentioned in despatches. He stated to me, unequivocally, that they were lions lead by donkeys.
^^ my grandfather, wounded above 3000 m in the Alps (1915) while he was an artillery observer with Alpine troops, the Alpini, every time he heard the name Cadorna, he cursed
@@simmo.261 so true , even if perhaps the artillery of the royal army was the most "modern" specialty of the Italian army; * much cared for by the state even before the unification of Italy (Regno Sabaudo ) * it must be said that in WW I the heavy pieces were above all 149A, ballistically good but with a rigid carriage and a useful range of less than 18,000 m, therefore a little obsolete, the project dated back to 1890
Haig, in 1917, was keen on an attack plan to load tanks onto landing craft and have them come ashore at Zeebrugge behind German lines in Belgium. The plan was never followed through, but it shows he was not unimaginative when it came to tactics
Contested amphibious assaults are one of the hardest logistical exercises to coordinate. Thinking it and doing it are two different things. Consider the Dieppe raid in WW2, there were still many lessons to learn so the likelihood of doing it successfully in WW1 seems low.
The attack was cancelled for all the reasons commenters have given. But the point is, Haig more than the mindless butcher of Blackadder and the like. However, in that war, there weren't many realistic options. "Remember Umboto Gorge?"
The fact remains old men send young men to war ,there wasn’t much regard for the lives of young men officers or other ranks in what was basically a family fallout that after hostilities had ceased the seeds were sown for the second .
Well, here's the thing. Monty is not wrong, but his wisdom has been in large part formed by hindsight. In a cruel twist of fate, if these generals had not learned about modern warfare the hard way, Monty wouldn't have been able to be as careful with his manpower as he wished. There is also the factor that this was the first time such casualty numbers were a thing. At some point Stalin's quote that 1 million casualties is (just) a statistic does come into play. The human mind can barely comprehend that 100.000 is a bigger number than 10.000, let alone that that number is 10x bigger, because our brains can't really comprehend numbers of that size as anything other than 'big'. And so many more men were shipped off to the frontlines that losses barely even mattered, until Germany realized it had run out of manpower for the frontlines. Again, Monty is right that this is callous, but he had the luxury of hindsight.
I would partially agree in the case of the Reserve Army (Commander Hubert de la Poer Gough) where the staff work was insufficient. However the Chief of Staff, Harington (?) of 2nd Army under Plumer, was a superb staff officer.
The Australian General Monash developed the combined attacking forces, making sure the reserves were not miles behind the attacking forces and even had aircraft dropping ammo to the front line troops as they advanced, thus no shortage as happened on many previoous attacks
There was no evidence really that the British generals were successfully learning on the job until Sir John Monash's battle plan for the Battle of Le Hamel. This successful battle plan became the template for the larger Battle of Amiens, which broke the German lines. And he didn't even get a mention in this RUclips video.
@@peterslocomb152 Except there is evidence for exactly that. Nothing Monash used was unique, it had *all* been used before. Hamel was the first time that and Empire officer had the resources assigned to be able to put all those things together, because it was the first time they were all available in the numbers the British Combined Arms Doctrine of 1917 - 1918 required. And sorry, but no, Hamel was not the Template. The planning and preparation for Amiens started before the Battle of Hamel was fought. The template already existed, Monash was simply the first to put it into action. To claim he *invented* it is ignorant at best and outright disingenuous at worst. Those tactics were a culmination of tactics that had been tried and adjusted over the entire war. The Combined Arms Platoon for example was instituted in 1916, when Monash had absolutely zero ability to affect the British Army as a whole given that he was a Divisional Commander at the time. Yet it was in 1916 when the four Section Combined Arms platoon was instituted. Neither Monash nor Currie had *any* say in that. The use of aircraft to cover tanks engine noises was first used in the Battle of Cambrai in 1917. Aircraft were used in the Ground Attack role on the Somme in 1916. Hurricane bombardments were first used in 1917, In fact the way artillery was used developed at a staggering pace through the war and the innovations came almost entirely from the British, as the vast majority of the Artillery crews, even in the Australian and Canadian Corps, were British. The list goes on. Monash is rightly regarded as one of the best Empire General Officers of WWI, but he was NOT the only one of such high calibre, and not all of the really good Empire Generals were Australian or Canadian. Contrary to your denigration of those British General officers the British actually had some very good ones of their own who ALL contributed to the Combined Arms Warfare the Empire Army used in the summer of 1918.
Again Monash does not get a mention. Nor do the Canadians. No mention of Empire forces at all. The Australians, Canadians and New Zealanders served as spearheads in the 1918 offensive. Unfortunately, a typically blinkered presentation.
There's also the small fact that the "Lions led by Donkeys" quote was made up. The historian and disgraced MP, Alan Clarke, claimed it was spoken by a German officer of the British Army. But, when pressed for sources or evidence he admitted he'd simply made it up because "it sounded good." The closest it ever came to being true was 45 years earlier uttered by a Prussian officer about Napoleon III's French army at Sedan. Wrong Army, wrong war, but at least it was spoken in German.
As a British soldier and historian, I have learned that cockups however small do happen, either by accident or poor planning. What this video over looks, is the attitudes of upper-class officers towards their men and the small and large mistakes that killed thousands. The Somme for instance, an attack that was to bolster the French. The bombardment on the German trenches used the wrong ammunition. Instead of high explosive, most of the ammunition fired were shrapnel canisters. Not enough maps for officers in the field, the rations offered to the men were often inedible and caused diarrhea. And orders that did not allow officers in the field to deviate from orders to take advantage of the situation. In fact, the only ground gained, was only gained, due to an officer deviating from orders.. Regarding Haig, David Lloyd George tried to sack Haig a number of times for his incompetence, but due to Haig's connections with the aristocracy, the butchery continued.. The term Lions led by donkeys from Captain P. A. Thompson, a subtitle of this book was "Showing how victory in the Great War was achieved by those who made the fewest mistakes". There are those who for dubious reasons (a patron demanding something perhaps) would like to whitewash history and maintain god like reputations for fallible people. Mistakes were made, from the top to the bottom. The disregard for those thought to be born bellow them by the top brass cost thousands of lives. Orders and attitudes like, "don't build permanent trenches, for the men won't fight", or "don't give pilots parachutes, for the cowards may jump instead of fight", were numerous among officers. In the end, my problem is, that there is no middle ground being shown between those who hate Haig and those who love Haig. People with common sense, will look at both parts to this human, the good and the bad..
What this video overlooks is how we AMERICANS arrived and turned the tide of the war on the Western Front with our huge numbers, our superior logistics and the ferocious fighting of our U.S. Marines.
@@tedmccarron No, you were late both times and were dragged into WW1 due to the Germans making deals with the Mexicans to invade you and WW2 by a Japanese surprise attack at Pearl Harbour 3 years into a world war. Your nation has always been slow in learning it lessons and continues to stay out of big fights for profit. This time round, if your nation votes back in that Nazi Trump, you will be late for the next one, as the fat bloated fool and most of your arrogant nation takes an EMP attack up their arse..
There were in my opinion two factors that contributed to Haighs problems during the war, one that is alluded to in the commentary, that is the lack of communications. Previously a Commander could sit on his horse and direct the battle, and by the time of WWII, radio and wireless enabled a Command to pass his instructions down to at least company level and receive information back. Front line troops could also communicate with the artillery, armoured and aviation support directly. The other factor that is never mentioned is education, the average British soldier in WWI, had left formal education at the age of twelve, with only very basic reading writing and mathematical skills, and thus had had to be taught everything he needed to know by drills and rote. By WWII, the equivalent soldier would have had three more years of formal education, as the school leaving age was now fifteen. And thanks to his exposure to the cinema, a much better understanding of technology, some of which he will have seen on the big screen.
Maybe they could have retreated from the fixed trench line and fought the Germans in open country, but that would have meant retreating in the face of the enemy in the donkeys minds, and they didn't like to retreat an inch even though it would have improved their position. Hitler did exactly the same thing in WWII. Neither WWI generals or Hitler could conceive the idea of a tactical retreat.
Also for comparison, the average size of a WW1 soldier was the same as a 12 y.o., today. There are piles of abandoned boots, left on the Somme - they are tiny.
@@Poliss95 retreating from the fixed trench line to get a better position to defeat the advancing enemy was exactly what the Germans did in 1917. And what did they do? They built more and better trenches, because trenches work. There is no 'open country' to fight in when artillery was as powerful as it was and trenches were as effective at keeping people alive as they were
You also have to remember, as was mentioned in the video, Britain was subordinate to the French military command and they would never willing give up ground on their own territory which exactly why the Germans choose Verdun the French in a battle of annihilation (in their planning it was only meant to happen to the French)
I think the biggest problem was that communications did not keep up with weapon technology. Field telephones and flags were no match for artillery and machine guns. There were lessons that could have been learnt from previous campaigns, such as the US Civil War and the Boer War, but many campaigns were still fluid at that stage. WW1 was a "learning" War - where mistakes were always going to happen. Fire and movement tactics were only perfected in the last years of that war. I doubt many modern commanders would have performed any better than their WW1 counterparts throughout 1915 to 1917
WW1 generals were obsessed with the idea of a esprit de corps that could overcome any obstacle. I think the modern general has a much more nuanced idea about psychology and the ability of the fighting man to endure
@@Brockza So how do you explain the endurance of British units throughout the war if they had a poor idea?? I doubt the modern soldier from the west could face what they faced, nuanced or not.
@@dulls8475 some decided to endure because if they didn't they would have been shot. The generals believed that a well motivated soldier could overcome any obstacle. Which is a fine idea when the only people the British army fought until the Boer war were people whose only weapons were arrows and shield. A machine gun seems to care very little about your spirit. The SAS, despite having the best esprit d core in the British army, doesn't send their soldiers to fight with weapons that don't work and tactics that can't achieve victory.
@@desperateneedofscotch the Zulus, the Mahdists in Sudan, the Boxer Rebellion in China. All examples of poorly-armed foes going up against machine guns, artillery and fast-firing rifles.
It boils down to: 1. They're not supposed to be at the front too much. They're supposed to be at HQ connected to telephone and telegraph wires, doing their proper work, not swanning around looking like heroes in the trenches. They should be at the front just enough to get refreshed on conditions. British generals did that, resulting in respectable combat fatalities for the class. 2. Junior and field grade officers are supposed to be leading at or near the front. British officers consistently and bravely did all that. 3. A lot of the accusation was that they weren't trying new things. Oh yes they were. Every year. That was part of the cause of casualties. But one has to try something. IIRC Haig would seriously have considered not doing an offensive in 1916 but after all, Lloyd George was insisting on seeing some action taken, and he was the civilian leader ultimately responsible for policy, plus something had to be done to take the pressure off the French. Inaction by Britain in 1916 would likely have meant defeat.
The Somme disaster gave rise to a change in tactics and in particular the development of the rolling barrage. The attacking troops attacked behind a rolling barrage of artillery fire aimed just in front of them. WW1 generals did learn and change tactics as the war progressed
I'm sure 68 men of Royal Newfoundland Regiment who attended roll call on July 2nd 1916 would be appreciative of your nuanced view of the Somme offensive, but I suspect the other 732 who participated in the attack the day before might have felt less charitable.
But the British Army never again suffered casualties anywhere close to July 1st 1916 for the rest of the war so that tells me that they adapted and lessons were learned
A significant number of those were officers, funnily enough. There's a difference between not adapting tactics, because of unknowingness, and wilful murder.
Good to see the Bristol fighter. My maternal grandfather was a mechanic on them at Boscombe Down. He was fortunate having been gassed at Ypres during 1916 & left totally blind for over 6 weeks & invalided back to Blighty. The army wanted to send him back to the front but with a bit of help from his brother he managed to get a transfer to the RFC
I heard nothing that would shatter the "lions led by donkeys" analysis. The video only demonstrates that the same was true for the German side and that the British leadership was not "that bad" by comparison. But that is something we knew before.
What you probably missed was that despite you not hearing something, the British Imperial forces were good enough to win the War during the 100 days in 1918 with some help from the French and minimal assistance from the Americans.
@@petergaskin1811 Wow. The Brits won the war all by themselves with a tiny bit of help from their allies. You must be stuck in the propaganda dreamland of 1920 Britain.
@@jodij2366don’t tell me you believe that Hollywood bs about “charging through the no man’s land”. You try running through massive artillery craters filled with water and mud, destroyed trees and alike and just normal mud plus dead bodies from previous assaults while getting shot by machine guns. Units had to stay in close contact in order to not get lost because of the smoke and debris and they would crawl to the other trench, yes crawl, as soon as enemy fire started (forgot to mention the artillery shooting you) soldiers would drop prone and start crawling. How do you even run while prone ?!
A junior officers life span on the Western Front was 3 WEEKS, while the enlisted men could expect to live for 8 WEEKS. The junior officers (subalterns) trained their troops PERSONALLY and lead them 'over the top'. Those are NOT 'donkies. Read CONEMPORARY ACCOUNTS of soldiers there in the line - dont bother with the ridiculous rubbish written by later 'authors' who would not know one end of a shell from the other!
@@wuffothewonderdog donald duck seems to be, maybe, an American. Americans don't care about the truth, they take any facts, forget where the info came from, and triple the figures. Americans do that a lot.
I think you've missed the whole point of the saying. It means brave men led by incompetent officers, not brave men led by cowards. The saying wasn't that they were lions led by mice or rabbits. Have you been watching Shrek maybe?
"There is, however, one small problim....." "Everyone always gets slaughtered in the first ten seconds" "Exactly! And we're worried this might be bringing the men down a tad"
Never true words ever spoken.wars are caused by little men behind desks.while the real men and women fight and die for weaklings sitting at their desks with brandy and cigars.
@@michaelrankine1825 A myth if there ever was one. Wars are started for all kinds of reasons. Most of the people responsible for starting WW2 were themselves front line combat veterans. It's easy to sit in judgment over those in leadership when you have no responsibilities of your own.
The lion of lion’s was General John Monash…. Why didn’t you give him credit of formulating the strategy that broke the Western Front…. He cared about the men under his command. Not only his Australian forces but the Americans and British as well. He was Knighted in the field for his service, the King came to him to Knight him.
What nonsense the Germans had to surrender as they had given all. The Allied blockade was forcing many into starvation but still the modern day General Blimps have it that it was purely force of arms that defeated the Germans
Because he was not the only one who formulated the strategy, and he did not formulate all of it. Just as Sir Arthur Currie did not. While both outstanding officers neither can claim all the credit. The reality is the strategy and tactics used by the British, ANZAC's and Canadians in the last 100 days of the war were learned and developed over the course of the war by multiple people. Monash's tactics at Hamel for example were not unique to him, what *was* different is that it was the first time ALL of those lessons were gathered and applied in the same battle. Trying to claim everything was either Monash or Curries brain child is belittling the very real efforts of British officers who also developed many of those same tactics.
HEAR HEAR- I couldn't remember his name, even though I have a Australian Postage Stamp with him on it. After his marvelous plan worked, Haigh ( having previously rejected it) copied the plans and took the credit.
The late Richard Holmes wrote with great clarity and insight on the misconceptions surrounding British commanders of the First World War in his excellent book “Tommy”. I highly recommend it to anyone with an interest in the British Army during that period.
The U.S. army had to undergo a similar rapid expansion from a tiny pre-war force (just 127,500 officers and soldiers) to an army of over 4 million. As with the British army, there was a core of well-trained officers, but not _nearly_ enough, and therefore a lot of what would, in later wars, be called "shake and bake" officers and NCOs as men were rather hastily trained to fill those roles. But it's hard to think there wasn't some pure dunderheadedness, or bloody-mindedness at play when, at the end of the war, when the armistice had been agreed upon, but had not yet taken gone into effect, men's lives were being expended in totally pointless attacks against objectives that they would be able simply to walk into in a few hours or days. American Expeditionary Forces in France suffered more than thirty-five hundred casualties on November 11, 1918, Armistice Day, even though it had been known unofficially for two days that the fighting would end that day and known with absolute certainty as of 5 o’clock that morning that the war would end at 11 a.m. These casualties were, I think, down to the ambitions of careerist officers, who saw a fast-fading opportunity for glory, victories, and especially promotions in the postwar army that they expected to shrink back to its small, prewar size (which it did). The excuse invariably given was that, with rumors of enemy capitulation in the air, this was no time to relax but rather to tighten the screws. Maybe that was understandable _weeks_ prior to the armistice, when they were just rumors, or even once the rumors started to become reliable intelligence, but not in the last days and hours, when it became incontestably clear the armistice was going to happen. After that, it was just throwing lives away. In questioning Brigadier General Fox Conner, in postwar congressional hearings, Rep. Oscar Bland (R) of Indiana, pulled no punches. Bland: “How many generals did you lose on that day?“ Conner: "None.“ Bland: “How many colonels did you lose on that day?“ Conner: “I do not know how many were lost.“ Bland: “How many lieutenant colonels did you lose on that day?“ Conner: “I do not know the details of any of that.“ Bland: “I am convinced, that on November 11 there was not any officer of very high rank taking any chance of losing his own life." That statement infuriated Gen. Conner, but as far as I'm concerned, it was a _completely_ accurate statement of things. Alas, the U.S. army was not alone in such behavior. The British army felt some inexplicable need to retake the city of Mons on the war’s final day, and suffered 2,400 casualties. The French also conducted attacks that day, and took an estimated 1,170. The Germans suffered some 4,120 casualties. Indeed, losses on Armistice Day, 1918 exceeded the total number of casualties sustained by all the combatants on D-Day, June 6, 1944. But the men who fell in Normandy on D-Day were giving their lives to win a war. The ones who fell on November 11, 1918, lost theirs in actions that changed _nothing_ in a war the Allies had already won.
An incident late in the Somme which in previous comments the actual time and occasion of the event was told, but anyway British soldiers were ordered to attack these German lines, the British officer in charge refused due to enfilading machine guns, he was then re-ordered to attack to which he responded no, it’s pointless come down yourselves and see, so senior officers did come down and agreed it was pointless to attack. News got back to Haig and he insisted in an attack anyway and many soldiers died without reaching enemy lines.
Three of my great uncles, all from one family were killed in WW1. 2 were MPs and the third a professional army officer who, incidentally, was one of three who refused to join the Curragh mutiny shortly before. They were from an immensely wealthy family. You can go around Berrington Hall to see where the family lived. One, Harold Cawley is commemorated by the name of a crater in Gallopoli. Cawley's Crater. He died because he wrote to his father, also an MP, telling it as it was. Asquith was then informed and this suicidal act sent him to the front where, in an act of lunatic bravery, he died. Put Cawleys Crater into google. A disproportionate number of officers were killed in WW1 compared to the general futile and appalling slaughter.
Important to remember that Asquith lost his son Raymond, on the Somme I think it was. So he was probably well informed of much of what was going on. We know Lloyd George was an absolute scoundrel writing to his wife, his real one, to do her utmost to keep his sons out of uniform whilst urging the sons of other mothers to join up.
@@spacemanclips Had Germany not invaded Belgium, Britain would not have entered the war at all. So it is ironic that the Germans showed the seeds of their own destruction not just once, but twice. Mind you, one cannot say the Germans have learned since then, can one given their antics of today.,
@@spacemanclips No one really wins a war, only some lose less than others. Because some are thought more culpable and dangerous than others does not change this fact. I am of course glad Germany was defeated in WW1 but everyone lost in the process. There is no such thing as a good war despite the fact there is something as a necessary war.
The book "Mud, Blood and Poppycock" by Gordon Corrigan (Cassel, 2003) dispels a lot of the myths regarding the British army on the Western Front in WW1.
So does the excellent 'The War the Infantry Knew' by Capt J C Dunn. Captain Dunn was a long serving colonial medical officer who served as MO for the Royal Welch Fusiliers between 1914 and 1917 on the Western Front. His book collects his own memories and those the (mostly) officers he served with and was first published in 1938. There are aspects in Dunn's book that Corrigan fails to mention or even denies - I was genuinely surprised to see it was not in his bibliography as it is a non-critical first hand account of the First World War. I recommend it .
Before the start of the 100 Days Campaign the Royal Artillery had used sound location devices to find the positions of the German artillery. So when the artillery opened up on the first day only a few positions of the German artillery were not hit. My paternal grandfather served with the Royal Garrison Artillery 60 pounder guns in WW1. So when I see the film footage of the 60 pounders I often wonder if he is amongst those in the film.
The sound ranging was perfected and first used at the battle of Vimy Ridge. Col. Andy McNaughton engaged the scientific people to use the technique to locate German guns. That and flash spotting were used to great effect. By the time the Canadian Corps rose out of their trenches to assault the ridge, 80% of the German guns had been silenced.
Yes Big Blue! The habit of new German artillery units moving to a sector and firing a few rounds to "range" the guns was used to "spot" their positions, and mathematics used to "reverse engineer" the fall of shot to enable British fire control to pinpoint German artillery positions without needing air recon. However, air recon was still used to confirm what the fire support maths was telling us. British artillery became adept, best in the world in fact, at counter battery fire in the initial bombardment. This silenced the majority of German artillery support and paved the way for British guns to be able to deliver all sorts of fire support "plans" that just would not have been possible without first obtaining a superiority in artillery support
Haig survived in command throught the course of the war. He was incharge when this new mechanised warfare took off and adapted to suit. Introducing aircraft, tanks and new techniques.
The idea that, quote, "Magazine-fed rifles and machine guns were brand-new" is blame washing at its worst. Both weapon systems had been extant since at least 1870, if not before (think the American Civil War). The British and French had at least forty years prior to the opening of the Great War to examine the effects, and wasted that time creating new tactics.
@@eviloverlordsean there are always a lot of different new technologies. Realizing which ones play out is hard. Especially as first prototypes are unreliable and expensive. A lot of stuff shows it will not get reliable and useful, even if looked different first. Understanding which differences in tactics and operations had to been done is a hard task to accomplish. As you not just have to get the understanding, but structure it and teach it to the troops. You can see this problems with drones as "new" weapons in the war in ukrain. Drones are not new, but how they play out in this masses in a war army against army, is new and evolving.
While that may be true, Britain hadn't really seen an extended great power war since Crimea in the 1850s and France since their war with the Prussians in the 1870s, well before those technologies became prevalent. Much of the institutional memory at the outbreak of WWI consisted of experience fighting colonial wars against technologically inferior and/or irregular opponents (Zulus, Zanzibar, Dahomey, Boers, etc), which didn't lend itself well to the task of fighting an industrialized war against near peers. If the tensions during the Scramble for Africa had escalated into a proper interstate war, then maybe the general staffs of each country might have learned valuable lessons. But then again, WWI partly began because the European powers hadn't let off steam in a while and were itching to try out their new toys without fully understanding their implications.
@@maltekoch1632The difference here is that it was British officers who had already developed an understanding of the use of machineguns and an understanding of the futility of massed infantry against them. Machine guns had been wining battles for them in the colonies for decades. The proper army of course ignored the warnings of officers from the colonial forces
WW1 was a transitional war, and without making excuses for the massive loss of life it resulted in, the reality was that no one was prepared for what the war would become, and very few were capable of transitioning to a modernised way of thinking. My family lost three sons, Gallipoli, Paschendale, Somme.
Certainly during the war's early years there was the deadly combination of the facts that military technology of the day heavily favoured the defender and that as Germany had invaded and occupied lands in France & Belgium, allied war aims were to expel the invader from theses territories. Therefore, the Western Allies were compelled to attack despite tragically predictable losses.
Or they could have waited and developed the weapons they needed to go on the attack. Recognising the advantage of defense is what put Ludendorf so far ahead of Haig as a modern general.
@@tellthemborissentyou The French lands that were lost to the Germans were where some of the best industrial assets of France were located, getting them back was a priority. There was also no way of knowing if weapon technology would develop to the point that an easy victory could be achieved. The Germans could equally have developed that technology. Also, Ludendorf was on the losing side. Von Hindenburg and him were ultimately unsuccessful in the one big offensive that they attempted in 1918. He also never accepted that the Entente won and he helped create the stab in the back myth, which the Nazis exploited to start WWII.
Most generals in ww1 were not "lions led by donkeys", however the most influential generals were. Examples are Robert Nivelle, Erich Von Falkenhayn, Luigi Cardona and Conrad Von Hotzendorf.
I think many and probably Haigh knew that the almost one attack method of going over the top would result in huge casualties. But in 191 what other options did they have
That's the generals' job, though the vast majority try to limit their own casualties. You're also wilfully ignoring the fact that all the generals would have been sent to their deaths at some point by someone else, but managed to get away with it.
WW1 is far more interesting than the popular myths, the British army had to order generals at the Somme not to be at the front as they were losing a shockingly huge number to snipers and artillery. For me the real amazing story is how the army developed from a small colonial empire force to the coordinated modern force of 1918. That was done, while the RN maintained a strategic blockade which slowly strangled the central powers economies. As for the mysterious war causes, it came down to the pretexts and opportunism of powers seeking advantage through violent force. Not so different from the reasons for fighting WW2 or supporting Ukraine's struggle for freedom. Yes, deterrents failed and mistakes were made. Those seeking power through division and nationalistic mind sets should take heed of the historical consequences of such rhetoric.
Division and a nationalist mind set are precisely what have led the Ukrainians into their current disaster. Their struggle is for ethnic cleansing, not freedom, and they are losing.
Predictably, this vid shows the IWM as apologist for the British upper class. There are more Red Herring non-issues cited than sardines in a sardine factory. Haigh's only redeeming feature was he was no worse than so many other donkeys in the British, French, German, Russian, Italian, American, Austrian, etc etc armies, government and diplomatic corps of the time.
dont let facts or common sense get in the way of a dearly-held opinion.....Generals and staff officers of the 1914 period had no idea how to fight a modern war simply because no one had ever had to do so up to then........weapons, tactics and circumstances were all so very different from anything that had gone before, no one knew what heavy artillery, tanks, flamethrowers, heavy machine guns, barbed wire, poison gas and planes could do, no one knew how to use them properly or how to combat them, so it's so easy for armchair generals a century later, with all their accumulated combat experience from playing "Call of Duty" on their computers safe and warm at home, to be so critical and scathing about generals and armies a hundred years earlier who had REAL deaths and REAL carnage, REAL bullets and REAL bombs to face.....the Military High Commands did the best they could under appalling circumstances, the senior officers were there at the front and they learned the harsh lessons well........the 100 days offensive in 1918 proves THAT point quite conclusively. As for the myth of "chateau generals" which seems prevalent these days, I draw your attention to these figures, all fully authenticated and genuine, and not the works of "apologists for the British Upper class" .....during the Great War, 4 British Lt-Generals, 12 Major-Generals, and 81 Brigadier-Generals lost their lives, and another146 officers of General rank were wounded or taken prisoner........whatever else they were doing, British General Officers were at the sharp end, at the front, and NOT sitting safely in Chateaus and warm Barracks like so many people want to believe......as a footnote, if Haig were so incompetent, uncaring and callous as modern writers paint him, why, when he passed away, would over a third of a million people visit his body as it lay in state and pay their respects at his passing?... I suggest you stick to facts, not fiction.....
@@MichaelHill-we7vt Your first statement is not correct. European countries including UK had sent observers to the US civil war and saw siege works, trenches, barb wire & use of artillery. Sadly the British and other concluded that it was not applicable to Europe. There is also the decision to limit the number of machine guns provided compare to say the Germans who had about 6 times as many. The idee fix of the British commanders was war of movement and the importance of cavalry. It wasn't until late 1916 that tactics started to change. You also overlook the fact that the British army nearly mutinied in 1917 like the French Army did due to the slaughter. One last point, there was a great deal of resistence to the ideas of how best to use tanks developed by Major-General JFC Fuller (and that carried on into the start of WW2)
Haig a Corp commander under Sir John French was involved in the reorganization of the British Army from 1909, taking on the lessons of the Boer wars. While the Germans took on the lessons of the Franco-German war. So after a long retreat from Mons , to seeing the BEF decimated at the Marne , Haig who was in overall command of British Empire forces on the western front, had many errors as to. what was needed. The Kitchener's pals battalions paid the price for it in 1916. Failures to Cut the wire by artillery bombardment and mines, nor destroy sufficient deep bunkers , with experienced Spandau crews , must go to a clockwork devised plan of his and the General staff's making. The creeping barrage took 3 year for British artillery to get right , with doctrine from the Napoleonic wars of direct fire being hastily altered. Many British positions at the Somme were overlooked from higher ground , allowing German artillery spotters to more accurately direct fire , well beyond the front lines. Neither was the idea of landships to break the deadlock forwarded by Haig nor the British Army, but a naval proposal. Taking experienced staff from the munitions factories and replacing with untrained female staff to make up for manpower shortages and leading to many dud rounds fired, also a Donkey move. That has to lie on the heads of the Armies General staff. Foch the overall Commander's refusal to rotate his infantry until it sustained heavy losses , was not addressed until Verdun So plenty of Asses heads to go round.
It's easy for future generations to criticise the past - after all, they've never had to live it, so could never understand the ins and outs of the numerous unique situations at the time.
All wars are started by the most selfish beings alive whom would never risk themselves or those closest to them in any way shape or form. And those that benefit the most risk the least.
Credit where credit is due you say - but you haven't given any credit. Maybe generals like Plumer who really was able to get the whole combined arms thing going and Monash who methods during the 100 days you described in your video could get some credit. Goughs was more of the donkey type general. It would be useful to note that the significant problem in 1915 was the shortage of ammunition as far more was expended than expected in pre war planning and that the artillery lacked high explosive rounds relying on shrapnel which was not very effective in trench warfare.
The main difference between the end of the War and its beginning was the thorough integration of Artillery into the all arms approach to tactics. Key to this was the development of RFA "flash spotting" and "sound ranging" observers and the scientific "shooting in" of the British Artillery [edit: without revealing what they were doing to the Germans] which led to the ability of the RFA at Amiens to obliterate the German artillery batteries in virtually the first salvo and not have to spend hours of counter-battery firing.
I read 101AB Don Burgett's memoirs, and I think it was in the one taking place in Holland where he observed a British major march his battalion into German MGs, complete with bagpipes and fifes. The troops were cut to pieces and their commander said something like "It was a bloody good show while it lasted". A book on Monte Casino quotes that the British troops didn't have much trust in their officers who kept ordering frontal assaults up the mountain and sent tanks into the clogged rubble strewn streets of Casino town itself. There definitely seemed to be a big learning curve in understanding modern warfare.
Foch remarked that has a training instructor in 1914, all the lessons he taught were wrong and needed to be relearned. However he stayed in command throughout the war, and delivered the crushing blow, along with brilliant successes from other French generals. I think it's fair to say they learned
No the French army was in fact in a worse situation. The Verdun meat grinder had cost them far too many good troops and junior officers, such that the French officer corps was reliant on junior officers with little experience, and the army from 1916 was so poorly led by Foch and Petain it was subject to an almost general mutiny by it's troops and had the Germans been aware of this they could have been in Paris in 1917! At least Haig was capable of maintaining some disipline and had officers who could get supplies to the front for the men- it's one of his few successes of the entire war where the British and commonwealth forces achieved in-spite of it's senior commander, not because of him.
The definition of insanity is doing the same thing over and over expecting different results. Now saying this if you say you dont know what was happening on the ground ,you were either a lunatic or a moron, ask the multidues now dead who where asked to repeat the mistakes of haig and his cronies. sadly weve just kept on making the same mistakes nothing has changed
@@oceanroad1584 it was just the nature of the war even if they try to change up tactics they didn't have tanks until way later so no heavy cavalry to break through the lines
While many veterans were still alive the notion of lions led by donkeys was commonly accepted, yet once those men had mostly passed the revisionist history became more widely accepted. We’re the actual veterans wholly wrong? I doubt it.
Even if WW1 had the greatest generals on earth millions still would have died and half of Europe would be in ruins. The generals did as best as they knew how. Its silly to assume they didn't care about losses. Even a complete psychopath would want to minimize losses for his own benefit. I mean thats what it comes down to, no one would have died if the war never happened in the first place. At least the generals did the best they could.
That there were massive losses due to pointless charges from the trenches led by an officer class who were often appointed just due to their social standing, ie a lord, viscount, etc...
@@SJ-np4cz Oh yeah? And yet what I state is well known... But hey, you carry on tugging that forelock and being a happy pleb if you wish, others know better.
Excellent, I visited the Somme twice in the sixties with my parents to find the grave of my father's brother, I too saw the massive cemeteries of not just English troops but Commonwealth as well and came away thinking what a colossal waste of life and that High Command had a lot to answer for, Black Adder would later reinforce that belief
@@dulls8475I , Blackadder 'Is your secret plan to march the men slowly towards the German machine guns in line abreast?' General Melchett "My God man! How did you know?' Much truth in jest, Dulls, howabout you read a couple of books.
@@timfirth977 Go and join the Western Front Association. They do an episode on Blackadder for people like you.... You still told me nothing and quoted some fiction.
@@dulls8475 Oh go bite your bum! It wasn't Father Christmas that came up with the British Army's method of assault on enemy trenches. It was made worse by the British Army's attempts to avoid any consequences of their own poor decision making. If you want to look up that aspect of it, I recommend Lloyd George's memoir. He may have had an axe to grind, but his description of having to work with General Haig is eye-opening. One thing I loath is trenchant history revisionists. The what if's, but howevers and on the other hands, this maybe from watching my Grandfather weeping as he described his father's death from wounds a few years after the Somme while he was a small boy.
8:12 Hmm Silver sandwich box and drinks flask. Really roughing it with the troops on the front line. Contrast that to Churchill and De Gaulle in WW2 who had to be kept away from the battle.
Add Smith-Dorrien to that list. Probably the best commander on the Allied side at the outbreak. Flexible and not tied to 19th century doctrine. He was interested in what acheived goals and was willing to defy French when he knew that French's orders, if carried out, would lose the war.
@@johnreed8336 Haig built up the British army from practically nothing, trained it, deployed it, and led Britain to victory with it. He deserves more credit.
Yeah, Rawlinson was in command for the Battle of Amiens and spearheaded the 100 days offensive in 1918, which crushed the German Army. He definitely learned lessons from the Somme
I watched your video with interest 🙂 I ask , as you sound like a well learned man - please explain this term in light of Gallipoli Churchill went on to become a "great man " in the UK after the Gallipoli tragic massacre lions led by idiots (Donkey is no stupid animal )
I would agree that Haig was unfairly vilified after his death. He did his best in the worst circumstances, and I note that he later mentions his torment(I can’t remember exactly how he phrased it) at the loss of life under his command. War is hell! I’ve known this as long as I can remember from my grandfather(we were extremely close) who served in the 2nd AIF during WWII. I joined up in the 80s anyway… One name which should be mentioned in this video in regard to combined arms tactics is General Sir John Monash! He was the true architect of that first breakthrough, and he used brand new tactics, such as concealing the sound of the advancing tanks by having the noisiest aircraft he could find to fly overhead to conceal the noise of the approaching tanks, a week of gas artillery attacks at the same time every day in the lead up, of course the creeping barrage mentioned in this video, and the first ever airdropping ammunition to advancing troops. The week of gas attacks made the German troops don gas masks automatically on the day which inhibited their ability to fight, but there was no gas used during this offensive. The entire operation was planned to take 90 minutes. It took 93.
Wait.. the historians of today, many related to the generals and leaders of this time, are questioning if they should get the blame.. I wonder why.. ?!
The generals had gone to war college in eighteen eighty. And now they were fighting the war with automatic weapons and modern artillery Is plus barbed wire. Expect disaster.
Not a fair comment. Many of them had experience in the Boer War (for the British) or similar, and most militaries paid a lot of attention to any current wars to see what was developing and how tactics and technology were being developed. The unfortunate thing is that your enemy has also been learning. Don’t forget how much industrial production and logistics influenced the war. The tactics used to win in 1918 could not have been used in 1915 because many of the elements simply did not exist early in the war.
@peterwebb8732 Agreed to a point. The generals had been trained in classical tactics, like cavalry for mobility and communication. No one was ready for modern industrial war, where 1million artillery shells were fired as a preliminary bombardment. It is not a knock on their ability. But millions of men were killed, maimed, and burned with mustard gas to learn those lessons.
@@brianschmidt704 Yes. It was and will always be a tragedy. To what degree it was a tragedy that could have been avoided by British Commanders is another question.
The "Lions led by donkeys " myth was written in a book of the same name by a Tory by the name of Alan Clarke. He claimed a German officer had described the British soldier thus. Many years later when asked where he got this information he admitted he had made it up.
The German officer who said it was none other than general Erich Ludendorff according to Evelyn, Princess Blucher. The phrase was also the title of a 1927 book by Captain P.A. Thompson. Maybe you need to do more research?
I started reading "The New Zealand Division, 1916-1919: A Popular History Based on Official Records" in about 2015.... I still have not finished it. It does show the development and change in the tactics of the New Zealand Division, even in the Battle of the Somme (they joined that later in the battle) It is an 'official' history so is factual rather than literary, but does cycle through events at different levels, down to individual actions and people. It is a slog.... like the war I supose. Even now as I read, they are in the 'last 100 days', it is no picnic. In that sense it is profoundly depressing ... with the end only now coming into sight... (That is why I keep stopping - then picking up again) I have been profoundly blessed as the 1st generation not required to go to war nor experience family going to war (both my grandfathers served - 1st and 2nd world war, but I never knew them). It terrifies me that my grandchildren might have to step up one day.....
I've been trying to get through that as we speak, mainly to piece together what happened to my grandfather's brother who died on the Somme and is buried at Flatiron Copse in Mametz, I have also been resourcing the battle diary of the No. 2 NZ Field Ambulance. It is interesting reading and gives a better understanding of what these soldiers went through.
It took the British commanders a long time and huge human casualties to consider altering their tactics, these people were the decision makers baked up by firing squads and imprisonment and front line duties, for me Lions led by Donkeys is an accurate portrayal of the British military 1914 onwards
@@johnnewington6635 The difference is that I have actually thought about it. Your reference to firing squads is telling. Only around 300 were shot in the whole of the Great War, and that's out of around 3000 who were so sentenced. The numbers were negligible in an army of millions. But, yeah, whatever...
Yes, the armies of 1914 were trained to fight a 19th century war - but generals of any intelligence would have known that every army (including the relatively small British Army) would be much, much larger than those armies had ever been before. As societies industrialised, fewer and fewer human labourers were required to keep agriculture and manufacturing going. Mass armies could be formed - and the generals wanted them. Yet, as you point out, there are consequences for command and control of dramatically increasing the size of an army. Unlike Wellington, Haig (or any other general) could not see the entire battlefield. One valid criticism of most WW1 generals is they failed to think through the complications of controlling the huge armies they'd wanted. They also failed to think through the impact of modern artillery (much different to Wellington's short-ranged muzzle loaders) and machine guns. There were times in the 1904/05 Russo-Japanese war when units took enormous casualties because of artillery and machine guns. The observing generals who thought infantry with good morale could overcome modern (for 1914) weapons were just plain wrong. Many WW1 generals were 'donkeys' because they failed to prepare for industrial war - a type of war they wanted. They thought bigger armies and modern weapons would give them a key advantage, without asking 'what if everyone's army is bigger?' You critique Haig for being 'over optimistic' and continuing offensives beyond the point of 'diminishing returns'. As you would be aware, those 'returns' were soldiers' lives. Haig does not seem to have reconciled himself to conducting limited offensives - within the capacity of foot-soldiers to march and fight, and within the scope of WW1 communications technology to control. Is there any evidence Haig did some deep thinking about these things?
Interesting…..but why am thinking Whiter than the Whitewash on the wall ? Regarding Chateau Generals , this was certainly the view formed by Montgomery.
I will never stop believing it, I remember my great uncles saying it, they fought in that war, ten of them in my extended family paid the ultimate price and lay buried in Belgium/France. I'm a veteran myself from the 70s and 80s and believe me I met some real donkeys in my time, full of arrogance and aloof and to this day in civvy street I still run into it. Most of the people who are fighting against the saying are probable from the elite officer classes . One lad was shot at dawn because he was so sick and ill he fell asleep at his post, if that aint arrogance and aloofness I don't what is .
IWM I love your videos and keep it up! I use your videos and online articles as a talking point for my high school history courses. One of my students was struggling and he found himself enthralled with WWI and I believe it's in no small part to these videos.
I'm afraid I don't think this video is particularly useful as an educational or informative tool and this is why - to argue the case for Haig may be one thing but to use that ONE story to say that there were no donkeys or donkey-like decisions is astonishing - a) because they are separate issues and b) because there were MANY incidents of pointless attacks etc etc. And it wasn't only the French who overruled Haig about his ideas re the Somme - it was the British High Command too! So I'm afraid I think this is actually a very poor and misleading video - fine if IWM etc want to make a video about rescuing Haig from the ranks of donkeys but not to make that an argument against the fact that there were not plenty of donkey-like decisions made in local incidents or those on a wider field. Those are two separate matters. Sorry if I sound negative but I am concerned about perceptions as my grandfather fought on the Somme but would never talk about it - which made me want to find out what it was like - firstly as a teenager and now , in later years too 🙂 I've just finished reading Armageddon Road, the diary of Maj Billy Congreve VC who was killed in 1916. In it he describes MANY incidents of pointless attacks or attacks doomed to failure because there was no back up or not enough ammunition or of incidents where those higher up refused to listen to those nearer the front. One ordered attack he simply calls 'murder'. And no, Armageddon Rd is not a one-sided rant against the injustices of so-called 'donkeys' - Congreve was definitely 'officer class' and was latterly Brigade Major - but it is one of the more truthful books about WW1 that I have read. Incidentally, and relevant to the context of this video, is a rather telling event when Congreve's father General Sir Walter Congreve was relieved of some of his command in 1916 because he was thought to be 'not dashing enough' - but by all accounts he was loved by the men he cared about. I hope this is of interest or helpful.
A thought provoking assualt on a standard view of events in WW1, but I think that this assault, helpful as it is in understanding some key elements of events accross the war, will fail. It's still just too hard to imagine the thinking behind ordering those first attacks when everyone knew that machine guns were in the theatre, and that they would be used, and they must have known how these weapons performed and what they were capable of. And even if we overlook the ordering of the first attacks, what about the susequent ones? Sure, it's an example of how the army learned and developed, but they learned slowly, and at such catastrphic cost. Sorry, I remain unconvinced.
I am very glad this is being looked at again. So many of the records we have are from the young men who were there; and naturally they had a dim view of their experiences. But in truth you need to zoom out and see the bigger picture about how things are working. The Brits had a lot of good leaders...they just aren't as famous as the bad ones like John French.
@@AthelstanKing I knew someone would wilfully misunderstand what I said. Those records are important. My great grandfathers diaries of his time are very precious to me. But frontline soldiers and officers have a lower grasp of the bigger picture. Nowhere did I say those records were not valuable. But they DO skew thinking when used alone; which is how we end up with this myth of Donkeys leading in the first place.
@@AthelstanKing exactly we need modern 'historians" to rewrite what the people said and retcon history to fit their narrative rather than what actually happened. No one wants to read about the boring old facts, they want something that goes against them because that gets clicks.
I'm confused by Wakefield's statement that "the advantage was very much with the defender." Wasn't the source of the trench deadlock that the *attacker* had a big short-term tactical advantage, but that it was impossible to turn short-term tactical victories into long-term operational gains, largely because the side that lost ground could só easily counter-attack?
No, it was because of the defensive advantage, especially the massed use of machine guns that brought about the trench systems. You start seeing the digging in in the aftermath of the Battle of the Marne when the Germans fell back, and then the failure of the Entente to dislodge the Germans caused them to dig in as well.
Modern warfare looks for the attackers to have a 3 to 1 numerical superiority at a minimum, and that’s with All Arms tactics. At the start of 1918 the Germans we’re pretty confident of victory after the collapse of Imperial Russia and the capitulation of the Soviets to secure peace ASAP so they could focus on the White Russians. The release of the troops from the Eastern front would allow them to go on the offensive along with “new” specialised assault Storm Troopers that’s why they succeed before their they ran out of steam
@@ImperialGuard322nd no, the trenches were primarily to avoid artillery. Machine guns were important as a method to defend trenches against attack; but quite often, those attacks succeeded despite the machine guns, & the attackers would successfully take their enemies’ forward trenches. But the enemies would then successfully counter-attack, benefiting from access to their artillery in their back trenches
Well that will include the British then,Thanks. By the way it was the brilliant British army and the British Army Service Corps that facilitated that quick short battle. It was all down rifles and bayonets.
Oh dear, nothing in this piece suggested to me we were not led by donkeys. And, even worse still, the Versailles Treaty ensured it was all continued in 1939.
The highest proportion of casualties was among junior officers, who would have belonged to exactly the the same public-school-educated class as the "donkeys". Might even have been related to them in some cases.
I think this video is attempting to resurrect General Hague's reputation. My Grandad fought from 1914 to 1917 ( when he was captured) He despised Hague, thought he was an uncaring unthinking unempathetic fool who just kept doing the same thing, with predictable carnage ridden results. He would be appalled by this video.
I'm a former British soldier. I learned once that the armies of 1914 fought in a way that Wellington would have recognised, while the armies of 1918 fought in a way that I would have recognised.
Correct, in a sense. AIUI and from memory, British light artillery began the war by using grape shot to great effect. Fairly soon after the enemy began using heavy artillery to wipe out light batteries. In Wellington's time they would have immobilised what we would call light guns by removing the wheels, and bowling them into the infantry square, firing until the last sensible moment, using grapeshot.
Are you one of the ones who contributed to the war crimes in Iraq or Afghanistan?
@@jamesrowlands8971 They’re not very bright, look at Prince Harry, they’re just cannon fodder.
In war, we fight the previous war.
@@jamesrowlands8971 irrelevant. As a citizen you bear collective responsibility.
One of my favorite modern historians, Major General Sir Julian Thompson, who commanded the British 3rd Commando Brigade in the Falklands, and whose father fought at the Somme, said it best, "No army trains for the next war. We all train for the last war."
In the First World War, the technology advanced faster than the lessons learned for the first 3 years.
It is a pity that the German army of 1939 did not read that, then we would not have had the blitzkrieg tactics, and no prolonged WW2.
@@markrounding2731 The Germans, in fact, have not, in their entire military history, used “blitzkrieg”. The German military doctrine used during WW2 was bewegungskrieg.
@@caelestigladii You forgot to say "well, actually .."
@@markrounding2731 Technically, that’s actually an evolution of the combined arms operations developed by Generals Byng, Currie, and Monash towards the end of the First World War. So you could also say that the Germans fought the Second World War using the lessons they had learnt from the First - in which case, the principle is sound.
I read Thompson’s book, too: excellent insights.
My grandfather was in WW1, at the Somme, at Paschendaele and at Ypres. He went out in 1916 with a service battalion, the 21 West Yorks ( Textile) Regiment. He had a lot to say about their general, Rawlinson, and none of it was good. He bitterly remembered them involved in a hard fight at the front, struggling back to base after a tough time, and being lined up for General Rawlinson to address them : ‘ I know you are just back from having a tough time at the front, but you’ll be pleased to hear that we are going to send you straight back so you can get your own back’. Apparently there was nearly a riot. He wasn’t impressed by Sir Aylmer Hunter-Weston either, who had the greatest number of casualties at the Somme,
Grandfather was also very upset about two of their number who were shot at dawn. The two, Herbert Crimmins and Arthur Wild, both from the Bradford Pals, had slipped out to meet some local lasses at a local bar, and when they got back it was to find their comrades had gone up to the front. They tried to find them but couldn’t before the fight started, so fought with some other British troops during the battle. However they were found guilty of cowardice and desertion, - despite pleas from their officers because they had fought - and both were shot at dawn on September 5 1916Grandfather must have known them as he knew all about them. Ref www.thetelegraphandargus.co.uk/tahistory/14615343.the-bradford-men-killed-by-their-own-side-during-the-great-war/
Finally they did a lot of marching. I believe they marched for an hour and then had a 10 minute rest. At one point they had to line up to get water, grandfather at the end of the line. He had just got his water when the order came to move out. He drank up and put his cup back in his tunic, but not quickly enough as a senior officer saw him with his top tunic button still undone, as he was doing it up, and put him on a charge. He had to spend 24 hours doing observation from a shell hole in No Mans land. The young soldier with him during that night became hysterical with fear, and began to scream out in the dark so grandfather knocked him out. He was very pleased to see their relief a day later. However the couple who relieved them were never seen again - the hole took a direct hit from a shell.
My grandfather, like so many others, had nightmares for the rest of his life, and the shrapnel they were unable to remove from his wounded body went with him to his grave. He was a clever man - a manager later in Civvy street - but always felt they were not well led.
This story typifies why the term " lions led by donkeys" ( wether made up or not ? ) Is fundamentally correct . Most of the officers had paid commission s ( rich mater's & paters ) no empathy or social mind set nor any compation for their charges ( connon fodder ) . YOU sir should be very very proud of your grandfather
Your reply also reflects my grandfather's experience in WWI, he highlighted the lack of planning, poor logistics, over the top discipline measures and a system based on class and not on merit or ability.
@@stuartguyan106 paid for commissions was phased out before Haig joined the army.
If that story is true? Then they would not have been charged with cowardice but for AWOL or desertion.
Ypres and Passchendale were virtually one and the same.
Almost eighty British Generals were KIA on the Western Front. By 1916 the army had to commission hundreds of SNCOs to replace officers KIA.
Combined, the British army lost more than 1000 years' worth of military experience.
My grandfather fought in Flanders from 1916 and later spent time in the occupation of Germany, mainly Cologne. He related many stories, made surprisingly lucid due to the onset of dementia. One thing that did come through, was his first hand stories of the appalling treatment metered out to those that were probably suffering shell-shock and similar psychological conditions. Disgraceful treatment, even for those times.
Did they also torture them with electric shocks? That's what the Germans did (at least during the first years of the war), believing they were just cowards pretending to be ill.
@@ScepticGinger89 Look up 'field punishment', there is a Wiki page too. Tied to a gun carriage wheel in the open overnight might not be as bad as electric shocks; I'll let you make up your own mind.
True, that.
"It takes 15,000 casualties to train a major General"
- Marshal Ferdinand Foch
Ah yes, that wonderful french Marshal who loved nothing better at the start of the war than to send men to their deaths.
He certainly lived up to that
@@DidMyGrandfatherMakeThis wasn't Foch the one who wanted to end WW1 at 11:11 on November 11? I can't imagine being a soldier and dying on the last day of the war because the field marshal wanted a funny date 🤣
That’s not too bad.
Britain should have sided with the Germans
You should give credit to Australian General Monash, who was Haig's subordinate and later became his friend. General Monash an engineer and lawyer and who kept up to date with emerging technologies, created and tested combined operations at the battle of Hamel. Haig encouraged him to promote this operation as a template for British and French forces in future combat operations on a larger scale.
Yes, he should get due credit, but it should also be remembered that while Monash was responsible for developing some aspects of that template he did not develop all of it. He did however have it available, was given the resources to pull it off, and fought Hamel, which is probably his outstanding Battle of the war.
Monash would have been the Commander in Chief but for the war ending.
He is Australia's greatest national hero.
Monash definitely deserves credit but so do Byng (British) and Currie (Canadian). Combined arms was first used properly at Cambrai - well before Hamel. Monash built on what had been learned during the battle , and critically, so did the British Tank Corps.
@@terrymcmaster2787 please tell us why re why Monash would have been CinC
RIP to all the boys that were slaughtered needlessly on all sides 🙏🏻
No. RIP to OUR war dead.
@ All seeing Otto
You clown. War is not needless.
It wasn't needless at the time. The way things have gone since, yes.
@@tooyoungtobeold8756 It was absolutely needless. Caught in the maelstorm of paranoid seats of powers the world devolved into a state war for no other purpose than for the old order to keep their power. There were no gains and ww1 didn't even end in a victory but in a devolved state of order that would lead to an even greater conflict. More open and less power-hungry elites could have avoided it. A less paranoid Tsar could have avoided it. A less senile emperor could have avoided it, a less childish kaiser could have avoided it, a government that could see clearly that Britain would one day have to open the seas to free commerce could have avoided it.
In the end it was all avoidable, the steel-coal union after ww2 would serve as the precursor to todays European Union. Never again would Germany and France have to go to war over coal or steel as they could simply trade it between them at fair prices. Far before the ideas of this existed. It took two lunatic world wars that served nothing but to spawn an equal cold one. It was only due to the diligence of organized non-military-loving groups to tear down the walls of paranoia and usher in an actual international order that could cooperate. World war 1 was never something that needed to happen. It took the combined lunacy of several 'great' nations and the utter greed of an elite that had nothing but contempt for the ordinary citizenry that they sent into battle to provoke it.
@@gkewley42
The ordinary soldiers on both sides were pushed into the trenches by aristocrats and politicians....I say RIP to all of them.
"That old man got my Division killed"
- Georges Picket, after Gettysburg
My paternal great grandfather served on the western front. One family story is that he was carrying an artillery shell and had had enough, and so threw himself to the floor in the hope that it would go off and end it all. After a few minutes of just lying there he just got up and went back to his job. Don't know how true it is but there does seem to be a believably bleak pragmatism to his, "Well, might as well carry on" conclusion.
many of them were very fatalistic and knew they would get knocked after what they endured
My grandfather joined up in 1915 aged 16 - Royal Engineers. Got "his buttocks shot away" (Oh What a Lovely War) by a German sniper, running away from a burning fuse under a bridge over a Belgian dyke. Family jewels undamaged, he finished off with Passchendaele in 1918 and here I am 👍👍.
His sandwich box provides outstanding evidence he was a good man right in the thick of it
Very droll!
“WW1 generals only used Napoleonic tactics”
I don’t remember the Grand Armeé using fire and manoeuvre tactics, creeping barrages, tank assaults, and combined arms warfare at Austerlitz
True. And the change between 1914 and 1918 tactics is very marked.
But if you read about Napoleonic battles the good Generals and good armies did use combined arms tactics. Cavalry would hover near infantry forcing them into square. Horse artillery would then pummel the squares until they were weakened. Then infantry would advance leaving the defending commander few good options. It might not have been "Blitzkrieg" as we understand the term, but within the limitations of technology of the day, it came close.
Add to that the relearning of light infantry tactics* (fire and movement, use of ground etc) and you can see the germ of modern tactics beginning to sprout.
*Bothe the Brits and the French had been pretty good at them in 1757 during the French and Indian War (Seven years War) in North America.
Creeping barrages were after 1915, tank assaults/combined arms post-1917. So to be fair, for most of the war neither did the British army. In fact considering the training needed to fight in squares, it could be argued the British Army was better trained in Wellington's time.
@@timfirth977 That's a good point. But the army in Wellington's time was smaller proportionally (?) and not a lot of, basically, raw recruits. Was it lions led by donkeys? Dunno. Some good docos on it.
Silly thing to say.
Franco Prussian war was the recent example but provided wrong answer.
In that war the modern weapons killed thousands but the mass of men still won.
A few decades later the balance had shifted. Mass of men defeated by modern weapons.
Logical for generals to expect a bloody and short war.
Nobody could imagine a huge war lasting years
Haig didn’t have much experience of commanding men in battle before his elevation to field marshal. His rise through the ranks was helped by the loan of £50000 to a senior officer and his wife was a lady in waiting to the queen. British officers took a very long time to learn from the mistakes of their tactics that cost thousands of ordinary soldiers their lives and kept on repeating the same tactical mistakes time after time. There seems to be a concerted effort to downplay the inadequacy of the British officer class where promotion was more reliant on class and social relationships than ability.
Spot on!
But British high command was no different to that in France or Germany. Haig was by no means a tactical genius and I'm certainly not a fan but the narrative that has been created following the war is unfair. The Somme is a good example of this. Haig's hand was forced by French pleading during Verdun. Despite his failings, he stated that the British Army wasn't ready and had concerns about what was being asked. There was also autonomy at division level - compare the approaches taken by e.g. the 18th and 48th divisions on the first day. Haig and Rawlinson weren't responsible at ground level so to speak.
What can be said is that it was harder for British NCOs to advance through the ranks compared with say the ANZACS or Canadian Corps. This barrier was class based and it did impact the fighting quality of the British Army later in the war (as it became harder to recruit the "right" officers). No doubt the Canadian Corps benefitted from having a large number of former British soldiers as NCOs.
@@willmunny9279 Haig wanted to attack. He just wanted to save up more artillery and resources. Its disingenous to say he was pressured into attacking. He was pressured to change his time table. Waiting would not have improved the Somme.
@@deweywhitley4127 He was pressured to attack before he felt the BEF was ready. Waiting would've allowed for better preparations and the eager but very inexperienced New Army troops to gain more experience. No doubt there would have still have been bloody lessons but these were the same lessons being learned by the French and Germans at Verdun.
He was active as a Corps Commander in 1914 and was successful.
"Despite the losses", delivered in a chillingly trivialising way.
I can't even start to imagine what it must be like for a frontline soldier in a war, any war.
One thing I know though: I'm glad I'm not in one.
Casualties are a given once war starts. If taking casualties of any kinds makes you a donkey then we're all donkeys.
It's like you just heard about war for the first time
@@tamlandipper29why dont you stop and consider what is being said here.
We stand on the edge of what could soon be another major war in Europe, one likely to be another trench war.
Here we have the media and inteligencia, the educated people who would be made officers to lead us, saying that the waste of life in the western front was fine, and that it's useless, stubborn generals who failed to adapt their tactics soon enough, were A-OK.
I had two Canadian grandfather's, who served in WWI. One was at Passchendaele and Walter held quite bitter feelings toward Douglas Haig. In fact, according to my parents, both of my grandfathers considered Haig's decisions to fight a battle over a non-strategic target, as nothing short of bloody incompetent. The Canadians went into that battle over the strenuous objections of General Arthur Currie, who only acquiesced under threat of a insubordination charge and the switch from reporting to General Gough to reporting to General Plumer. After taking Passchendaele, with 16,000 casualties, the Canadians were dismayed that Passchendaele was given up without a fight five months later. I think your viewpoint, of how British leadership was viewed by Commonwealth armies, is not entirely supported by Canadian and Australian sources. In particular, my reading of Tim Cook's books "At the Sharp End" and "Shock Troops" paints a different picture of Haig and some other British Generals. That there were Generals, such as Byng and Plumer, who were well respected by the Canadians, does not obviate a harsher opinion of Haig's leadership and, in particular his choices in subordinates. I also somewhat suspect that Canadian and Australian historians have access to records that paint a different story. As to why that may be, I don't know. However, your assertion that Commonwealth nations had a high opinion of Haig and company, is something I do not buy. My grandfathers certainly had strongly negative opinions of them and I think they were far from alone in that.
The experience of ANZAC troops in the Boer War with British command left a bitter taste and resulted in Anzacs insisting thereafter on their own command and operating as forces independent of the Brits. Canada came to the same conclusion during WW1. Currie was very strategic and avoided any unnecessary casualties. Haig was driven partially by politics and acted on how things appeared as much as how necessary they were.
@@francoistombe The Dominions did not "operate independently of the Brits" during the First World War. They had Corps formations that were a component of the BEF, which spent most of the war commanded by British GOCS, and were under 1. A British Field Army Commander and 2. Under the C in C, Haig. The Dominions were not independent during the war
What sources would Australian & Canadian historians have access to that UK ones don't have? The Dominion Corps spent most of the war commanded by British Divisional & Corps-level commanders; Byng (Canadian Corps), Birdwood (ANZAC Corps, AIF), Alexander-Godley (ANZAC Corps, New Zealand Division)- all were Officers from Britain and the Raj that led Empire troops and enjoyed their men's esteem. The aggressively mythologised Monash not only liked Haig, but (rightly) saw himself as totally under & at one with Haig's G.H.Q. What did Currie think about Haig? There are people from Britain who will trot out the anecdotal "my grandfather didn't like Haig", as if this is indicative of the BEF's overall attitude towards the man. The cumulative evidence about Haig's army- including its generally high levels of morale- suggest otherwise.
@@skibbideeskitch9894 The intended function of ANZAC troops from the Brit point of view was that they would be individually integrated into existing British units. As was the case with the navy.. There was by then a well identified cultural incompatibility which resulted in dominion soldiers being in their own units with their own NCOs and officers. These units operated under overall allied commands of course.
All these commanders were warned about to potential of the machine gun and how it would change warfare , before the war broke out.
According to the book "Mud, Blood and Poppycock" an order was given prohibiting officers of General rank to visit the trenches as too many were killed doing so.
Possibly true, but also think of this. Haig had 58 infantry divisions in the BEF. That means 754 infantry battalions (12 plus a pioneer battalion per division). If he visited one battalion every day, which isn't an unreasonable time to see a unit, he'd take more than two years just to see all his infantry. Then there were all his other units. Meanwhile he actually had to run an army of two and a half million men engaged in a war.
@@remittanceman4685 That's why in the German army communication via telephone was standard. A commander of half a million men or more could no longer afford to visit front-line troops without his vital communication centers. He'd be out of the loop completely.
@@TomFynn It's not just communication. Any leader needs to be "at the office" for a lot of the time. That's where people come to find him. That's where all his experts are.
During lockdown a lot of people thought this would finally prove we could work from home. Except in a lot of cases it didn't. Most of my colleagues (including myself) found we couldn't function half as well in isolation.
I'm pretty sure running an army is the same.
@@remittanceman4685 Also, to clarify, the book - which I can only recommend - states that with every dead General decades of experience and skill were lost, so one dead General, in the grand scheme of things did count for much more than the life of one squaddie. It also recounts an incident in which British officers were gathered in a chateau, planning stuff. As you do, since large maps and dozens of telephones ill-fit in a dugout. The chateau stood out like a sore thumb, as did the rows of vehicles indicating the presence of officers. So German artillery observers quickly twigged on. The officers in the chateau lost a few of their number, when they had to vacate premises somewhat sharpish.
@@TomFynn I've also read Corrigan's book and agree with you. But the loss of experience was only one aspect. Generals also have a war to fight and win. This expectation they must be constantly visiting their units is one based on a total misunderstanding of the military.
It's worth remembering that when we went into Afghanistan 20 years ago the troops were going around in the "snatch" landrovers. They had limited armor against small arms and not a hope at surviving the threat of IEDs. The Americans were in a similar position with their Humvees.
Now we have the foxhound, husky and mastiff vehicles and the Americans have the MRAP etc. We didn't have any more foolish leaders at the start of the Afghan invasion than the end... Some lessons just get learned in a brutal way.
The difference is the bef NEVER learned
I am surprised at the Land Rover issues then given the strength of RUC vehicles perfected in the preceding 30 years
I deployed to Iraq in 2003 my LR's were 20 years old then.
@@kestrel5065 I played chicken with the RUC variety once in Derry back in 93. Fearsome beast to have bearing down on a trusty Ford Fiesta!
@@tommcguire6472 Which is provably false, and shows your utter lack of actual *knowledge* of the changes that occurred in the British Army from 1914 - 1918.
Lets take the British Infantry Platoon to illustrate a point shall we? In 1914 it was around 50 men in all, every single one of them other than the Officer was a rifleman. This was standard for infantry platoons in every army in 1914, so was not unique to the British.
By September of 1916 the Platoon had utterly changed. It was small, around 38 men, but its four Sections looked VERY different. The first was a rifle Section, which made up one of the two manoeuvre elements. It had 6 riflemen and two grenadiers. The second manoeuvre element was the Grenadier section, consisting of six grenadiers and two riflemen who acted as flankers to cover the grenadiers flanks. This was also the primary Assault Element.
You then had a Gun element, consisting of two two man Lewis gun teams, and four ammunition carriers who also acted as flank guard and security for the guns, as well as spare crew. Finally you had either a Mortar Section armed with two 3 inch stokes mortars, or, more usually a Rifle Grenadier Section consisting of four rifle grenadiers and four riflemen. The Gun Section was your suppression element, while the Mortar/rifle grenadiers were indirect light fire support.
That was in place by 1916. That ALONE demonstrates why your words are so much horse crap. You do not fundamentally change the basic small Unit of an army to that extent by 'not learning'.
At the end of the day the Generals knew exactly what machine guns were capable of and still sent thousands walking towards Enemy lines...
1. They didn’t walk, that’s a myth. Nobody walks when bulllets are whizzing by you.
2. Fast moving armoured personnel carriers weren’t invented so the only way to move men into action was to cross open ground, your going to take casualties.
Well, yes, but this was in the belief that six days of HE and shrapnel bombardment would have destroyed the enemy wire and killed all the front line troops.
@@richardsinger01 The bombardment didnt work because 1/3 of shells didnt detonate and because they mostly used air burst shrapnel shells for the opening bombardment, which were useless at cutting barbed wire
This is a myth that has been consistently debunked
At the end of the day the Generals planned some of the largest & most complex artillery barrages in history which, most of the time, succeeded in destroying enemy defences and machine gun nests so that their infantry could get into German positions. Your comment is a misrepresentation of 1 July 1916. Funnily enough, the companies that "walked" across No Man's Land in rigid formations enjoyed the most success that day 🙂
My grandfather joined 2 weeks after the start of the war in August 1914, over the top at the Somme (one of 73 left the next day), fought at Cambrai, was invalided out gassed in 1918, MM + bar, Croix de Guerre, mentioned in despatches. He stated to me, unequivocally, that they were lions lead by donkeys.
^^ my grandfather, wounded above 3000 m in the Alps (1915) while he was an artillery observer with Alpine troops, the Alpini, every time he heard the name Cadorna, he cursed
Your Grandfather was not a Lion, he was a trained soldier. The issue at hand was he was trained for a 19th century war.
Your grandfather was right! The British were excellent soldiers that did not deserve the mediocre numskulls who lead them. Greetings from Italy!
Using a phrase which he had learned in the 1930s and not during the War.
@@simmo.261 so true , even if perhaps the artillery of the royal army was the most "modern" specialty of the Italian army; * much cared for by the state even before the unification of Italy (Regno Sabaudo )
* it must be said that in WW I the heavy pieces were above all 149A, ballistically good but with a rigid carriage and a useful range of less than 18,000 m, therefore a little obsolete, the project dated back to 1890
Haig, in 1917, was keen on an attack plan to load tanks onto landing craft and have them come ashore at Zeebrugge behind German lines in Belgium. The plan was never followed through, but it shows he was not unimaginative when it came to tactics
Remember Gallipoli.
Contested amphibious assaults are one of the hardest logistical exercises to coordinate. Thinking it and doing it are two different things. Consider the Dieppe raid in WW2, there were still many lessons to learn so the likelihood of doing it successfully in WW1 seems low.
The attack was cancelled for all the reasons commenters have given. But the point is, Haig more than the mindless butcher of Blackadder and the like. However, in that war, there weren't many realistic options. "Remember Umboto Gorge?"
@@Poliss95 Gallipoli was 1915
@@rednaughtstudios but it shows they had other ideas
The fact remains old men send young men to war ,there wasn’t much regard for the lives of young men officers or other ranks in what was basically a family fallout that after hostilities had ceased the seeds were sown for the second .
Field Marshall Lord Bernard Montgomery of Alamein was decidedly of the opinion that the General Staff had been unprofessional and callous of losses.
Well, here's the thing. Monty is not wrong, but his wisdom has been in large part formed by hindsight. In a cruel twist of fate, if these generals had not learned about modern warfare the hard way, Monty wouldn't have been able to be as careful with his manpower as he wished.
There is also the factor that this was the first time such casualty numbers were a thing. At some point Stalin's quote that 1 million casualties is (just) a statistic does come into play. The human mind can barely comprehend that 100.000 is a bigger number than 10.000, let alone that that number is 10x bigger, because our brains can't really comprehend numbers of that size as anything other than 'big'. And so many more men were shipped off to the frontlines that losses barely even mattered, until Germany realized it had run out of manpower for the frontlines. Again, Monty is right that this is callous, but he had the luxury of hindsight.
I would partially agree in the case of the Reserve Army (Commander Hubert de la Poer Gough) where the staff work was insufficient. However the Chief of Staff, Harington (?) of 2nd Army under Plumer, was a superb staff officer.
The Australian General Monash developed the combined attacking forces, making sure the reserves were not miles behind the attacking forces and even had aircraft dropping ammo to the front line troops as they advanced, thus no shortage as happened on many previoous attacks
There was no evidence really that the British generals were successfully learning on the job until Sir John Monash's battle plan for the Battle of Le Hamel. This successful battle plan became the template for the larger Battle of Amiens, which broke the German lines. And he didn't even get a mention in this RUclips video.
@@peterslocomb152 Except there is evidence for exactly that. Nothing Monash used was unique, it had *all* been used before. Hamel was the first time that and Empire officer had the resources assigned to be able to put all those things together, because it was the first time they were all available in the numbers the British Combined Arms Doctrine of 1917 - 1918 required.
And sorry, but no, Hamel was not the Template. The planning and preparation for Amiens started before the Battle of Hamel was fought. The template already existed, Monash was simply the first to put it into action.
To claim he *invented* it is ignorant at best and outright disingenuous at worst. Those tactics were a culmination of tactics that had been tried and adjusted over the entire war. The Combined Arms Platoon for example was instituted in 1916, when Monash had absolutely zero ability to affect the British Army as a whole given that he was a Divisional Commander at the time. Yet it was in 1916 when the four Section Combined Arms platoon was instituted. Neither Monash nor Currie had *any* say in that.
The use of aircraft to cover tanks engine noises was first used in the Battle of Cambrai in 1917. Aircraft were used in the Ground Attack role on the Somme in 1916. Hurricane bombardments were first used in 1917, In fact the way artillery was used developed at a staggering pace through the war and the innovations came almost entirely from the British, as the vast majority of the Artillery crews, even in the Australian and Canadian Corps, were British. The list goes on.
Monash is rightly regarded as one of the best Empire General Officers of WWI, but he was NOT the only one of such high calibre, and not all of the really good Empire Generals were Australian or Canadian. Contrary to your denigration of those British General officers the British actually had some very good ones of their own who ALL contributed to the Combined Arms Warfare the Empire Army used in the summer of 1918.
@@peterslocomb152 Mostly rubbish.
Again Monash does not get a mention. Nor do the Canadians. No mention of Empire forces at all. The Australians, Canadians and New Zealanders served as spearheads in the 1918 offensive. Unfortunately, a typically blinkered presentation.
@@markjennings1036 You can't expect a 10 minute video to go into much detail. This video was purely rebutting the cliche of Lions led by Donkeys.
There's also the small fact that the "Lions led by Donkeys" quote was made up. The historian and disgraced MP, Alan Clarke, claimed it was spoken by a German officer of the British Army. But, when pressed for sources or evidence he admitted he'd simply made it up because "it sounded good."
The closest it ever came to being true was 45 years earlier uttered by a Prussian officer about Napoleon III's French army at Sedan.
Wrong Army, wrong war, but at least it was spoken in German.
Max Hoffmann first said it. Head of German Army Intel
@@perimetrfilms Proof? References? Link to a reputable source?
As a British soldier and historian, I have learned that cockups however small do happen, either by accident or poor planning. What this video over looks, is the attitudes of upper-class officers towards their men and the small and large mistakes that killed thousands. The Somme for instance, an attack that was to bolster the French. The bombardment on the German trenches used the wrong ammunition. Instead of high explosive, most of the ammunition fired were shrapnel canisters. Not enough maps for officers in the field, the rations offered to the men were often inedible and caused diarrhea. And orders that did not allow officers in the field to deviate from orders to take advantage of the situation. In fact, the only ground gained, was only gained, due to an officer deviating from orders.. Regarding Haig, David Lloyd George tried to sack Haig a number of times for his incompetence, but due to Haig's connections with the aristocracy, the butchery continued.. The term Lions led by donkeys from Captain P. A. Thompson, a subtitle of this book was "Showing how victory in the Great War was achieved by those who made the fewest mistakes". There are those who for dubious reasons (a patron demanding something perhaps) would like to whitewash history and maintain god like reputations for fallible people. Mistakes were made, from the top to the bottom. The disregard for those thought to be born bellow them by the top brass cost thousands of lives. Orders and attitudes like, "don't build permanent trenches, for the men won't fight", or "don't give pilots parachutes, for the cowards may jump instead of fight", were numerous among officers. In the end, my problem is, that there is no middle ground being shown between those who hate Haig and those who love Haig. People with common sense, will look at both parts to this human, the good and the bad..
What this video overlooks is how we AMERICANS arrived and turned the tide of the war on the Western Front with our huge numbers, our superior logistics and the ferocious fighting of our U.S. Marines.
@@tedmccarron that has to be the most American sentence ever written.
@christianraith4276 American and TRUE! We saved you guys in both world wars. 🇺🇸🇺🇸🇺🇸
@@tedmccarron No, you were late both times and were dragged into WW1 due to the Germans making deals with the Mexicans to invade you and WW2 by a Japanese surprise attack at Pearl Harbour 3 years into a world war. Your nation has always been slow in learning it lessons and continues to stay out of big fights for profit. This time round, if your nation votes back in that Nazi Trump, you will be late for the next one, as the fat bloated fool and most of your arrogant nation takes an EMP attack up their arse..
@@tedmccarron 'WE saved . . .,'? As third-generation flatulence, YOU weren't even there! : )
There were in my opinion two factors that contributed to Haighs problems during the war, one that is alluded to in the commentary, that is the lack of communications. Previously a Commander could sit on his horse and direct the battle, and by the time of WWII, radio and wireless enabled a Command to pass his instructions down to at least company level and receive information back. Front line troops could also communicate with the artillery, armoured and aviation support directly. The other factor that is never mentioned is education, the average British soldier in WWI, had left formal education at the age of twelve, with only very basic reading writing and mathematical skills, and thus had had to be taught everything he needed to know by drills and rote. By WWII, the equivalent soldier would have had three more years of formal education, as the school leaving age was now fifteen. And thanks to his exposure to the cinema, a much better understanding of technology, some of which he will have seen on the big screen.
Maybe they could have retreated from the fixed trench line and fought the Germans in open country, but that would have meant retreating in the face of the enemy in the donkeys minds, and they didn't like to retreat an inch even though it would have improved their position. Hitler did exactly the same thing in WWII. Neither WWI generals or Hitler could conceive the idea of a tactical retreat.
Also for comparison, the average size of a WW1 soldier was the same as a 12 y.o., today. There are piles of abandoned boots, left on the Somme - they are tiny.
@@Poliss95 retreating from the fixed trench line to get a better position to defeat the advancing enemy was exactly what the Germans did in 1917. And what did they do? They built more and better trenches, because trenches work. There is no 'open country' to fight in when artillery was as powerful as it was and trenches were as effective at keeping people alive as they were
@@Poliss95 Not sure what you are taking.....
You also have to remember, as was mentioned in the video, Britain was subordinate to the French military command and they would never willing give up ground on their own territory which exactly why the Germans choose Verdun the French in a battle of annihilation (in their planning it was only meant to happen to the French)
I think the biggest problem was that communications did not keep up with weapon technology. Field telephones and flags were no match for artillery and machine guns.
There were lessons that could have been learnt from previous campaigns, such as the US Civil War and the Boer War, but many campaigns were still fluid at that stage. WW1 was a "learning" War - where mistakes were always going to happen. Fire and movement tactics were only perfected in the last years of that war.
I doubt many modern commanders would have performed any better than their WW1 counterparts throughout 1915 to 1917
WW1 generals were obsessed with the idea of a esprit de corps that could overcome any obstacle. I think the modern general has a much more nuanced idea about psychology and the ability of the fighting man to endure
@@Brockza So how do you explain the endurance of British units throughout the war if they had a poor idea?? I doubt the modern soldier from the west could face what they faced, nuanced or not.
@@dulls8475 some decided to endure because if they didn't they would have been shot. The generals believed that a well motivated soldier could overcome any obstacle. Which is a fine idea when the only people the British army fought until the Boer war were people whose only weapons were arrows and shield. A machine gun seems to care very little about your spirit. The SAS, despite having the best esprit d core in the British army, doesn't send their soldiers to fight with weapons that don't work and tactics that can't achieve victory.
@brock296 in fairness the French, Russian, German and Austro-Hungarian leaders all thought exactly the same as the British leaders.
@@desperateneedofscotch the Zulus, the Mahdists in Sudan, the Boxer Rebellion in China. All examples of poorly-armed foes going up against machine guns, artillery and fast-firing rifles.
It boils down to:
1. They're not supposed to be at the front too much. They're supposed to be at HQ connected to telephone and telegraph wires, doing their proper work, not swanning around looking like heroes in the trenches. They should be at the front just enough to get refreshed on conditions. British generals did that, resulting in respectable combat fatalities for the class.
2. Junior and field grade officers are supposed to be leading at or near the front. British officers consistently and bravely did all that.
3. A lot of the accusation was that they weren't trying new things. Oh yes they were. Every year. That was part of the cause of casualties. But one has to try something. IIRC Haig would seriously have considered not doing an offensive in 1916 but after all, Lloyd George was insisting on seeing some action taken, and he was the civilian leader ultimately responsible for policy, plus something had to be done to take the pressure off the French. Inaction by Britain in 1916 would likely have meant defeat.
The Somme disaster gave rise to a change in tactics and in particular the development of the rolling barrage. The attacking troops attacked behind a rolling barrage of artillery fire aimed just in front of them. WW1 generals did learn and change tactics as the war progressed
I'm sure 68 men of Royal Newfoundland Regiment who attended roll call on July 2nd 1916 would be appreciative of your nuanced view of the Somme offensive, but I suspect the other 732 who participated in the attack the day before might have felt less charitable.
But the British Army never again suffered casualties anywhere close to July 1st 1916 for the rest of the war so that tells me that they adapted and lessons were learned
A significant number of those were officers, funnily enough. There's a difference between not adapting tactics, because of unknowingness, and wilful murder.
What people don't realise is that in 1918 there were more casualties than 1916 and 1917 combined.
@@Warspite-1915 Oh really? Read the history of 1917 as it is clear that you haven't
@@davidcolley7714 i have. show me casualties in the british army close to the first day of the somme
I judge on the results - 850,000 British and Commonwealth dead and all we got from it was WW2.
Then blame the politicians
@@stigmontgomery7901 Generals ARE politicians.
@@TheStephaneAdam Rubbish
That was daladier and chamberlains fault.
Good to see the Bristol fighter. My maternal grandfather was a mechanic on them at Boscombe Down. He was fortunate having been gassed at Ypres during 1916 & left totally blind for over 6 weeks & invalided back to Blighty. The army wanted to send him back to the front but with a bit of help from his brother he managed to get a transfer to the RFC
I heard nothing that would shatter the "lions led by donkeys" analysis. The video only demonstrates that the same was true for the German side and that the British leadership was not "that bad" by comparison. But that is something we knew before.
And no comment about the orders at the Somme for the troops to walk across no man's land...
What you probably missed was that despite you not hearing something, the British Imperial forces were good enough to win the War during the 100 days in 1918 with some help from the French and minimal assistance from the Americans.
@@petergaskin1811 Wow. The Brits won the war all by themselves with a tiny bit of help from their allies. You must be stuck in the propaganda dreamland of 1920 Britain.
@@jodij2366don’t tell me you believe that Hollywood bs about “charging through the no man’s land”. You try running through massive artillery craters filled with water and mud, destroyed trees and alike and just normal mud plus dead bodies from previous assaults while getting shot by machine guns. Units had to stay in close contact in order to not get lost because of the smoke and debris and they would crawl to the other trench, yes crawl, as soon as enemy fire started (forgot to mention the artillery shooting you) soldiers would drop prone and start crawling. How do you even run while prone ?!
Surprised Luigi Cardona wasn't shot by an ex soldier after the war
The casualty percentage of officers was higher than that of the other ranks. Even colonels and generals feature as casualties killed.
There were around 250 British generals killed in WW1.
A junior officers life span on the Western Front was 3 WEEKS, while the enlisted men could expect to live for 8 WEEKS. The junior officers (subalterns) trained their troops PERSONALLY and lead them 'over the top'. Those are NOT 'donkies. Read CONEMPORARY ACCOUNTS of soldiers there in the line - dont bother with the ridiculous rubbish written by later 'authors' who would not know one end of a shell from the other!
@@donaldduck4888 The number was 78.
@@wuffothewonderdog donald duck seems to be, maybe, an American. Americans don't care about the truth, they take any facts, forget where the info came from, and triple the figures. Americans do that a lot.
I think you've missed the whole point of the saying. It means brave men led by incompetent officers, not brave men led by cowards. The saying wasn't that they were lions led by mice or rabbits. Have you been watching Shrek maybe?
"There is, however, one small problim....."
"Everyone always gets slaughtered in the first ten seconds"
"Exactly! And we're worried this might be bringing the men down a tad"
Never true words ever spoken.wars are caused by little men behind desks.while the real men and women fight and die for weaklings sitting at their desks with brandy and cigars.
@@michaelrankine1825 A myth if there ever was one. Wars are started for all kinds of reasons. Most of the people responsible for starting WW2 were themselves front line combat veterans. It's easy to sit in judgment over those in leadership when you have no responsibilities of your own.
@@michaelrankine1825 Given the massive frequently massive death rate of officers during wartime, I’d say thats a massive caricature.
Good old General Melchett 😉
Very funny, humorous line from a great show. But not really worth using for historical research.
The lion of lion’s was General John Monash…. Why didn’t you give him credit of formulating the strategy that broke the Western Front…. He cared about the men under his command. Not only his Australian forces but the Americans and British as well. He was Knighted in the field for his service, the King came to him to Knight him.
Add Arthur Currie and the Canadian Corps. They mastered combined arms and were the spearhead of the last 100 days along with the Anzacs
What nonsense the Germans had to surrender as they had given all. The Allied blockade was forcing many into starvation but still the modern day General Blimps have it that it was purely force of arms that defeated the Germans
Because he was not the only one who formulated the strategy, and he did not formulate all of it. Just as Sir Arthur Currie did not. While both outstanding officers neither can claim all the credit.
The reality is the strategy and tactics used by the British, ANZAC's and Canadians in the last 100 days of the war were learned and developed over the course of the war by multiple people. Monash's tactics at Hamel for example were not unique to him, what *was* different is that it was the first time ALL of those lessons were gathered and applied in the same battle.
Trying to claim everything was either Monash or Curries brain child is belittling the very real efforts of British officers who also developed many of those same tactics.
HEAR HEAR- I couldn't remember his name, even though I have a Australian Postage Stamp with him on it. After his marvelous plan worked, Haigh ( having previously rejected it) copied the plans and took the credit.
yep one a the very few to think his way to a win. a very smart man the war would have been over in 1917 if he had been running it.
The late Richard Holmes wrote with great clarity and insight on the misconceptions surrounding British commanders of the First World War in his excellent book “Tommy”. I highly recommend it to anyone with an interest in the British Army during that period.
Also "The Forgotten Victory" by Gary Sheffield and "The Unexpected Victory" by J.H. Johnson.
The U.S. army had to undergo a similar rapid expansion from a tiny pre-war force (just 127,500 officers and soldiers) to an army of over 4 million. As with the British army, there was a core of well-trained officers, but not _nearly_ enough, and therefore a lot of what would, in later wars, be called "shake and bake" officers and NCOs as men were rather hastily trained to fill those roles.
But it's hard to think there wasn't some pure dunderheadedness, or bloody-mindedness at play when, at the end of the war, when the armistice had been agreed upon, but had not yet taken gone into effect, men's lives were being expended in totally pointless attacks against objectives that they would be able simply to walk into in a few hours or days. American Expeditionary Forces in France suffered more than thirty-five hundred casualties on November 11, 1918, Armistice Day, even though it had been known unofficially for two days that the fighting would end that day and known with absolute certainty as of 5 o’clock that morning that the war would end at 11 a.m. These casualties were, I think, down to the ambitions of careerist officers, who saw a fast-fading opportunity for glory, victories, and especially promotions in the postwar army that they expected to shrink back to its small, prewar size (which it did). The excuse invariably given was that, with rumors of enemy capitulation in the air, this was no time to relax but rather to tighten the screws. Maybe that was understandable _weeks_ prior to the armistice, when they were just rumors, or even once the rumors started to become reliable intelligence, but not in the last days and hours, when it became incontestably clear the armistice was going to happen. After that, it was just throwing lives away.
In questioning Brigadier General Fox Conner, in postwar congressional hearings, Rep. Oscar Bland (R) of Indiana, pulled no punches.
Bland: “How many generals did you lose on that day?“
Conner: "None.“
Bland: “How many colonels did you lose on that day?“
Conner: “I do not know how many were lost.“
Bland: “How many lieutenant colonels did you lose on that day?“
Conner: “I do not know the details of any of that.“
Bland: “I am convinced, that on November 11 there was not any officer of very high rank taking any chance of losing his own life."
That statement infuriated Gen. Conner, but as far as I'm concerned, it was a _completely_ accurate statement of things.
Alas, the U.S. army was not alone in such behavior. The British army felt some inexplicable need to retake the city of Mons on the war’s final day, and suffered 2,400 casualties. The French also conducted attacks that day, and took an estimated 1,170. The Germans suffered some 4,120 casualties. Indeed, losses on Armistice Day, 1918 exceeded the total number of casualties sustained by all the combatants on D-Day, June 6, 1944. But the men who fell in Normandy on D-Day were giving their lives to win a war. The ones who fell on November 11, 1918, lost theirs in actions that changed _nothing_ in a war the Allies had already won.
An incident late in the Somme which in previous comments the actual time and occasion of the event was told, but anyway British soldiers were ordered to attack these German lines, the British officer in charge refused due to enfilading machine guns, he was then re-ordered to attack to which he responded no, it’s pointless come down yourselves and see, so senior officers did come down and agreed it was pointless to attack. News got back to Haig and he insisted in an attack anyway and many soldiers died without reaching enemy lines.
Three of my great uncles, all from one family were killed in WW1. 2 were MPs and the third a professional army officer who, incidentally, was one of three who refused to join the Curragh mutiny shortly before. They were from an immensely wealthy family. You can go around Berrington Hall to see where the family lived. One, Harold Cawley is commemorated by the name of a crater in Gallopoli. Cawley's Crater. He died because he wrote to his father, also an MP, telling it as it was. Asquith was then informed and this suicidal act sent him to the front where, in an act of lunatic bravery, he died. Put Cawleys Crater into google. A disproportionate number of officers were killed in WW1 compared to the general futile and appalling slaughter.
Important to remember that Asquith lost his son Raymond, on the Somme I think it was. So he was probably well informed of much of what was going on. We know Lloyd George was an absolute scoundrel writing to his wife, his real one, to do her utmost to keep his sons out of uniform whilst urging the sons of other mothers to join up.
It wasn't totally futile. Germany lost the war.
@@spacemanclips Had Germany not invaded Belgium, Britain would not have entered the war at all. So it is ironic that the Germans showed the seeds of their own destruction not just once, but twice.
Mind you, one cannot say the Germans have learned since then, can one given their antics of today.,
@@spacemanclips No one really wins a war, only some lose less than others. Because some are thought more culpable and dangerous than others does not change this fact. I am of course glad Germany was defeated in WW1 but everyone lost in the process. There is no such thing as a good war despite the fact there is something as a necessary war.
Man deserves a plaque in the Curragh Camp. Thanks for the (brief) story
The book "Mud, Blood and Poppycock" by Gordon Corrigan (Cassel, 2003) dispels a lot of the myths regarding the British army on the Western Front in WW1.
So does the excellent 'The War the Infantry Knew' by Capt J C Dunn. Captain Dunn was a long serving colonial medical officer who served as MO for the Royal Welch Fusiliers between 1914 and 1917 on the Western Front. His book collects his own memories and those the (mostly) officers he served with and was first published in 1938. There are aspects in Dunn's book that Corrigan fails to mention or even denies - I was genuinely surprised to see it was not in his bibliography as it is a non-critical first hand account of the First World War. I recommend it .
I agree fully - _Mud, Blood, and Poppycock_ is essential reading for any WWI historian, professional or otherwise.
It's also biased.
Before the start of the 100 Days Campaign the Royal Artillery had used sound location devices to find the positions of the German artillery. So when the artillery opened up on the first day only a few positions of the German artillery were not hit.
My paternal grandfather served with the Royal Garrison Artillery 60 pounder guns in WW1. So when I see the film footage of the 60 pounders I often wonder if he is amongst those in the film.
The sound ranging was perfected and first used at the battle of Vimy Ridge. Col. Andy McNaughton engaged the scientific people to use the technique to locate German guns. That and flash spotting were used to great effect. By the time the Canadian Corps rose out of their trenches to assault the ridge, 80% of the German guns had been silenced.
@@arniewilliamson1767 Thanks, Arnie
@@arniewilliamson1767the precision and weight of artillery increased a hundred fold.
@@knoll9812Yes and it was a deciding factor at Hamel etc.
Yes Big Blue!
The habit of new German artillery units moving to a sector and firing a few rounds to "range" the guns was used to "spot" their positions, and mathematics used to "reverse engineer" the fall of shot to enable British fire control to pinpoint German artillery positions without needing air recon. However, air recon was still used to confirm what the fire support maths was telling us.
British artillery became adept, best in the world in fact, at counter battery fire in the initial bombardment. This silenced the majority of German artillery support and paved the way for British guns to be able to deliver all sorts of fire support "plans" that just would not have been possible without first obtaining a superiority in artillery support
Ah come on....we learnt in south Africa that artillery was near useless against well dug in infantry..our general staff rested on its laurels.
Haig survived in command throught the course of the war. He was incharge when this new mechanised warfare took off and adapted to suit. Introducing aircraft, tanks and new techniques.
The idea that, quote, "Magazine-fed rifles and machine guns were brand-new" is blame washing at its worst. Both weapon systems had been extant since at least 1870, if not before (think the American Civil War). The British and French had at least forty years prior to the opening of the Great War to examine the effects, and wasted that time creating new tactics.
@@eviloverlordsean there are always a lot of different new technologies. Realizing which ones play out is hard. Especially as first prototypes are unreliable and expensive. A lot of stuff shows it will not get reliable and useful, even if looked different first.
Understanding which differences in tactics and operations had to been done is a hard task to accomplish. As you not just have to get the understanding, but structure it and teach it to the troops.
You can see this problems with drones as "new" weapons in the war in ukrain.
Drones are not new, but how they play out in this masses in a war army against army, is new and evolving.
While that may be true, Britain hadn't really seen an extended great power war since Crimea in the 1850s and France since their war with the Prussians in the 1870s, well before those technologies became prevalent.
Much of the institutional memory at the outbreak of WWI consisted of experience fighting colonial wars against technologically inferior and/or irregular opponents (Zulus, Zanzibar, Dahomey, Boers, etc), which didn't lend itself well to the task of fighting an industrialized war against near peers.
If the tensions during the Scramble for Africa had escalated into a proper interstate war, then maybe the general staffs of each country might have learned valuable lessons. But then again, WWI partly began because the European powers hadn't let off steam in a while and were itching to try out their new toys without fully understanding their implications.
@@maltekoch1632The difference here is that it was British officers who had already developed an understanding of the use of machineguns and an understanding of the futility of massed infantry against them. Machine guns had been wining battles for them in the colonies for decades. The proper army of course ignored the warnings of officers from the colonial forces
WW1 was a horrific, barbarous war .
Cull
So what was World War 2?
@ANTHONY EATON same. Just bigger.
WW1 was a transitional war, and without making excuses for the massive loss of life it resulted in, the reality was that no one was prepared for what the war would become, and very few were capable of transitioning to a modernised way of thinking. My family lost three sons, Gallipoli, Paschendale, Somme.
4:10 I love how the still are throwing snowballs at each other while marching through the trench
My grandfather was in a Canadian regiment , he lasted just over a month before being killed .
..we will remember them...
Rest In Peace for your grandfather ❤❤❤
'Don't worry old boy, if you falter im behind you" - General Douglas
'About 35 miles behind you' -Blackaddar.
Because that's an insult to donkeys ...
An old relative served in the Artillery at the Somme & others. He would never talk about it, changing the subject whenever any questions were asked.
Certainly during the war's early years there was the deadly combination of the facts that military technology of the day heavily favoured the defender and that as Germany had invaded and occupied lands in France & Belgium, allied war aims were to expel the invader from theses territories. Therefore, the Western Allies were compelled to attack despite tragically predictable losses.
Or they could have waited and developed the weapons they needed to go on the attack. Recognising the advantage of defense is what put Ludendorf so far ahead of Haig as a modern general.
@@tellthemborissentyou The French lands that were lost to the Germans were where some of the best industrial assets of France were located, getting them back was a priority. There was also no way of knowing if weapon technology would develop to the point that an easy victory could be achieved. The Germans could equally have developed that technology. Also, Ludendorf was on the losing side. Von Hindenburg and him were ultimately unsuccessful in the one big offensive that they attempted in 1918. He also never accepted that the Entente won and he helped create the stab in the back myth, which the Nazis exploited to start WWII.
Most generals in ww1 were not "lions led by donkeys", however the most influential generals were. Examples are Robert Nivelle, Erich Von Falkenhayn, Luigi Cardona and Conrad Von Hotzendorf.
Haig is still pretty high up there. Man caused 57000 casualties in a day. That's literally absurd
well said!
@@tbuxt3992 you didn't watch this, did you?
@@HarryFlashmanVC I did. I stand by my statement
I think many and probably Haigh knew that the almost one attack method of going over the top would result in huge casualties. But in 191 what other options did they have
Well, not going over the top - for 1.
War Museum gloriyfying generals who send others into death. "Poor descisions".
That's the generals' job, though the vast majority try to limit their own casualties.
You're also wilfully ignoring the fact that all the generals would have been sent to their deaths at some point by someone else, but managed to get away with it.
what the heck? a sandwich box made out of actual silver? A silver sandwich box?! I want one!
WW1 is far more interesting than the popular myths, the British army had to order generals at the Somme not to be at the front as they were losing a shockingly huge number to snipers and artillery.
For me the real amazing story is how the army developed from a small colonial empire force to the coordinated modern force of 1918.
That was done, while the RN maintained a strategic blockade which slowly strangled the central powers economies.
As for the mysterious war causes, it came down to the pretexts and opportunism of powers seeking advantage through violent force. Not so different from the reasons for fighting WW2 or supporting Ukraine's struggle for freedom.
Yes, deterrents failed and mistakes were made.
Those seeking power through division and nationalistic mind sets should take heed of the historical consequences of such rhetoric.
Division and a nationalist mind set are precisely what have led the Ukrainians into their current disaster. Their struggle is for ethnic cleansing, not freedom, and they are losing.
How did that dispel the myth?
Did you even watch the video?
@@Warspite-1915 Yes
Predictably, this vid shows the IWM as apologist for the British upper class. There are more Red Herring non-issues cited than sardines in a sardine factory. Haigh's only redeeming feature was he was no worse than so many other donkeys in the British, French, German, Russian, Italian, American, Austrian, etc etc armies, government and diplomatic corps of the time.
dont let facts or common sense get in the way of a dearly-held opinion.....Generals and staff officers of the 1914 period had no idea how to fight a modern war simply because no one had ever had to do so up to then........weapons, tactics and circumstances were all so very different from anything that had gone before, no one knew what heavy artillery, tanks, flamethrowers, heavy machine guns, barbed wire, poison gas and planes could do, no one knew how to use them properly or how to combat them, so it's so easy for armchair generals a century later, with all their accumulated combat experience from playing "Call of Duty" on their computers safe and warm at home, to be so critical and scathing about generals and armies a hundred years earlier who had REAL deaths and REAL carnage, REAL bullets and REAL bombs to face.....the Military High Commands did the best they could under appalling circumstances, the senior officers were there at the front and they learned the harsh lessons well........the 100 days offensive in 1918 proves THAT point quite conclusively. As for the myth of "chateau generals" which seems prevalent these days, I draw your attention to these figures, all fully authenticated and genuine, and not the works of "apologists for the British Upper class" .....during the Great War, 4 British Lt-Generals, 12 Major-Generals, and 81 Brigadier-Generals lost their lives, and another146 officers of General rank were wounded or taken prisoner........whatever else they were doing, British General Officers were at the sharp end, at the front, and NOT sitting safely in Chateaus and warm Barracks like so many people want to believe......as a footnote, if Haig were so incompetent, uncaring and callous as modern writers paint him, why, when he passed away, would over a third of a million people visit his body as it lay in state and pay their respects at his passing?... I suggest you stick to facts, not fiction.....
@@MichaelHill-we7vt Your first statement is not correct. European countries including UK had sent observers to the US civil war and saw siege works, trenches, barb wire & use of artillery. Sadly the British and other concluded that it was not applicable to Europe. There is also the decision to limit the number of machine guns provided compare to say the Germans who had about 6 times as many. The idee fix of the British commanders was war of movement and the importance of cavalry. It wasn't until late 1916 that tactics started to change. You also overlook the fact that the British army nearly mutinied in 1917 like the French Army did due to the slaughter. One last point, there was a great deal of resistence to the ideas of how best to use tanks developed by Major-General JFC Fuller (and that carried on into the start of WW2)
Haig a Corp commander under Sir John French was involved in the reorganization of the British Army from 1909, taking on the lessons of the Boer wars. While the Germans took on the lessons of the Franco-German war. So after a long retreat from Mons , to seeing the BEF decimated at the Marne , Haig who was in overall command of British Empire forces on the western front, had many errors as to. what was needed. The Kitchener's pals battalions paid the price for it in 1916. Failures to Cut the wire by artillery bombardment and mines, nor destroy sufficient deep bunkers , with experienced Spandau crews , must go to a clockwork devised plan of his and the General staff's making. The creeping barrage took 3 year for British artillery to get right , with doctrine from the Napoleonic wars of direct fire being hastily altered. Many British positions at the Somme were overlooked from higher ground , allowing German artillery spotters to more accurately direct fire , well beyond the front lines. Neither was the idea of landships to break the deadlock forwarded by Haig nor the British Army, but a naval proposal. Taking experienced staff from the munitions factories and replacing with untrained female staff to make up for manpower shortages and leading to many dud rounds fired, also a Donkey move. That has to lie on the heads of the Armies General staff. Foch the overall Commander's refusal to rotate his infantry until it sustained heavy losses , was not addressed until Verdun So plenty of Asses heads to go round.
It's easy for future generations to criticise the past - after all, they've never had to live it, so could never understand the ins and outs of the numerous unique situations at the time.
All wars are started by the most selfish beings alive whom would never risk themselves or those closest to them in any way shape or form.
And those that benefit the most risk the least.
Credit where credit is due you say - but you haven't given any credit. Maybe generals like Plumer who really was able to get the whole combined arms thing going and Monash who methods during the 100 days you described in your video could get some credit. Goughs was more of the donkey type general. It would be useful to note that the significant problem in 1915 was the shortage of ammunition as far more was expended than expected in pre war planning and that the artillery lacked high explosive rounds relying on shrapnel which was not very effective in trench warfare.
Donkeys are brave AF. Clearly whoever figured that was an insult had never seen a donkey whooping wolves before.
The main difference between the end of the War and its beginning was the thorough integration of Artillery into the all arms approach to tactics. Key to this was the development of RFA "flash spotting" and "sound ranging" observers and the scientific "shooting in" of the British Artillery [edit: without revealing what they were doing to the Germans] which led to the ability of the RFA at Amiens to obliterate the German artillery batteries in virtually the first salvo and not have to spend hours of counter-battery firing.
I read 101AB Don Burgett's memoirs, and I think it was in the one taking place in Holland where he observed a British major march his battalion into German MGs, complete with bagpipes and fifes. The troops were cut to pieces and their commander said something like "It was a bloody good show while it lasted". A book on Monte Casino quotes that the British troops didn't have much trust in their officers who kept ordering frontal assaults up the mountain and sent tanks into the clogged rubble strewn streets of Casino town itself. There definitely seemed to be a big learning curve in understanding modern warfare.
78 British generals killed in WW1.
How many of the general staff?
How many generals did they need?
Haig was unpopular during ww1 and its an outright lie to claim he only began to be criticised years after the war.
How about the French high command? Did they learn as well?
Yes most high commands learn from the combat experience.
Foch remarked that has a training instructor in 1914, all the lessons he taught were wrong and needed to be relearned. However he stayed in command throughout the war, and delivered the crushing blow, along with brilliant successes from other French generals. I think it's fair to say they learned
No the French army was in fact in a worse situation.
The Verdun meat grinder had cost them far too many good troops and junior officers, such that the French officer corps was reliant on junior officers with little experience, and the army from 1916 was so poorly led by Foch and Petain it was subject to an almost general mutiny by it's troops and had the Germans been aware of this they could have been in Paris in 1917!
At least Haig was capable of maintaining some disipline and had officers who could get supplies to the front for the men- it's one of his few successes of the entire war where the British and commonwealth forces achieved in-spite of it's senior commander, not because of him.
Yes, they all did
No
That’s why the French army muntied
The definition of insanity is doing the same thing over and over expecting different results. Now saying this if you say you dont know what was happening on the ground ,you were either a lunatic or a moron, ask the multidues now dead who where asked to repeat the mistakes of haig and his cronies. sadly weve just kept on making the same mistakes nothing has changed
I mean they did try different things
@@oceanroad1584 it was just the nature of the war even if they try to change up tactics they didn't have tanks until way later so no heavy cavalry to break through the lines
None of that really challenged the "led by donkeys" part.
While many veterans were still alive the notion of lions led by donkeys was commonly accepted, yet once those men had mostly passed the revisionist history became more widely accepted. We’re the actual veterans wholly wrong? I doubt it.
Even if WW1 had the greatest generals on earth millions still would have died and half of Europe would be in ruins.
The generals did as best as they knew how. Its silly to assume they didn't care about losses. Even a complete psychopath would want to minimize losses for his own benefit.
I mean thats what it comes down to, no one would have died if the war never happened in the first place. At least the generals did the best they could.
That there were massive losses due to pointless charges from the trenches led by an officer class who were often appointed just due to their social standing, ie a lord, viscount, etc...
The historical insight of an eight year old.
Most of the upper class officers were dead after the first few years of the war.
@@SJ-np4cz Oh yeah? And yet what I state is well known... But hey, you carry on tugging that forelock and being a happy pleb if you wish, others know better.
@@originalkk882 Yup, the idiots were, which probably saved countless lives.
Excellent, I visited the Somme twice in the sixties with my parents to find the grave of my father's brother, I too saw the massive cemeteries of not just English troops but Commonwealth as well and came away thinking what a colossal waste of life and that High Command had a lot to answer for, Black Adder would later reinforce that belief
“ a fine body of men “
“ soon to be fine bodies of men “ .
Tell what do they have to answer for?
@@dulls8475I , Blackadder 'Is your secret plan to march the men slowly towards the German machine guns in line abreast?'
General Melchett "My God man! How did you know?'
Much truth in jest, Dulls, howabout you read a couple of books.
@@timfirth977 Go and join the Western Front Association. They do an episode on Blackadder for people like you.... You still told me nothing and quoted some fiction.
@@dulls8475 Oh go bite your bum! It wasn't Father Christmas that came up with the British Army's method of assault on enemy trenches. It was made worse by the British Army's attempts to avoid any consequences of their own poor decision making. If you want to look up that aspect of it, I recommend Lloyd George's memoir. He may have had an axe to grind, but his description of having to work with General Haig is eye-opening.
One thing I loath is trenchant history revisionists. The what if's, but howevers and on the other hands, this maybe from watching my Grandfather weeping as he described his father's death from wounds a few years after the Somme while he was a small boy.
It isn't that Haig did not care, he clearly did; it is just he was not up to the job.
8:12 Hmm Silver sandwich box and drinks flask. Really roughing it with the troops on the front line.
Contrast that to Churchill and De Gaulle in WW2 who had to be kept away from the battle.
Men like Herbert Plumer, Edmund Allenby, Henry Rawlinson and Julian Byng were among the best of the British army leadership.
@Bernie_Gores There was a lot of learning to do .......no one was an expert on this new type of warfare. They did better than your armchair.
Add Smith-Dorrien to that list. Probably the best commander on the Allied side at the outbreak. Flexible and not tied to 19th century doctrine. He was interested in what acheived goals and was willing to defy French when he knew that French's orders, if carried out, would lose the war.
But Haigh was not .
@@johnreed8336 Haig built up the British army from practically nothing, trained it, deployed it, and led Britain to victory with it. He deserves more credit.
Yeah, Rawlinson was in command for the Battle of Amiens and spearheaded the 100 days offensive in 1918, which crushed the German Army. He definitely learned lessons from the Somme
I watched your video with interest 🙂
I ask , as you sound like a well learned man - please explain this term in light of Gallipoli
Churchill went on to become a "great man " in the UK after the Gallipoli tragic massacre
lions led by idiots (Donkey is no stupid animal )
I would agree that Haig was unfairly vilified after his death. He did his best in the worst circumstances, and I note that he later mentions his torment(I can’t remember exactly how he phrased it) at the loss of life under his command.
War is hell! I’ve known this as long as I can remember from my grandfather(we were extremely close) who served in the 2nd AIF during WWII. I joined up in the 80s anyway…
One name which should be mentioned in this video in regard to combined arms tactics is General Sir John Monash! He was the true architect of that first breakthrough, and he used brand new tactics, such as concealing the sound of the advancing tanks by having the noisiest aircraft he could find to fly overhead to conceal the noise of the approaching tanks, a week of gas artillery attacks at the same time every day in the lead up, of course the creeping barrage mentioned in this video, and the first ever airdropping ammunition to advancing troops. The week of gas attacks made the German troops don gas masks automatically on the day which inhibited their ability to fight, but there was no gas used during this offensive.
The entire operation was planned to take 90 minutes. It took 93.
Wait.. the historians of today, many related to the generals and leaders of this time, are questioning if they should get the blame.. I wonder why.. ?!
The generals had gone to war college in eighteen eighty. And now they were fighting the war with automatic weapons and modern artillery Is plus barbed wire. Expect disaster.
Not a fair comment. Many of them had experience in the Boer War (for the British) or similar, and most militaries paid a lot of attention to any current wars to see what was developing and how tactics and technology were being developed.
The unfortunate thing is that your enemy has also been learning.
Don’t forget how much industrial production and logistics influenced the war. The tactics used to win in 1918 could not have been used in 1915 because many of the elements simply did not exist early in the war.
@peterwebb8732 Agreed to a point. The generals had been trained in classical tactics, like cavalry for mobility and communication. No one was ready for modern industrial war, where 1million artillery shells were fired as a preliminary bombardment. It is not a knock on their ability. But millions of men were killed, maimed, and burned with mustard gas to learn those lessons.
@@brianschmidt704 Yes. It was and will always be a tragedy. To what degree it was a tragedy that could have been avoided by British Commanders is another question.
The "Lions led by donkeys " myth was written in a book of the same name by a Tory by the name of Alan Clarke. He claimed a German officer had described the British soldier thus. Many years later when asked where he got this information he admitted he had made it up.
The German officer who said it was none other than general Erich Ludendorff according to Evelyn, Princess Blucher. The phrase was also the title of a 1927 book by Captain P.A. Thompson.
Maybe you need to do more research?
@@Poliss95 Or Alan Clarke needs to cite his sources better?
@@markgrehan3726 Difficult , cos he is deceased
@@stevenweasel2678 He can't get out of it that easily
@@stevenweasel2678 Lol, true but we can dig him up I guess.🧟♂
I started reading "The New Zealand Division, 1916-1919: A Popular History Based on Official Records" in about 2015.... I still have not finished it.
It does show the development and change in the tactics of the New Zealand Division, even in the Battle of the Somme (they joined that later in the battle)
It is an 'official' history so is factual rather than literary, but does cycle through events at different levels, down to individual actions and people.
It is a slog.... like the war I supose. Even now as I read, they are in the 'last 100 days', it is no picnic.
In that sense it is profoundly depressing ... with the end only now coming into sight... (That is why I keep stopping - then picking up again)
I have been profoundly blessed as the 1st generation not required to go to war nor experience family going to war (both my grandfathers served - 1st and 2nd world war, but I never knew them).
It terrifies me that my grandchildren might have to step up one day.....
I've been trying to get through that as we speak, mainly to piece together what happened to my grandfather's brother who died on the Somme and is buried at Flatiron Copse in Mametz, I have also been resourcing the battle diary of the No. 2 NZ Field Ambulance. It is interesting reading and gives a better understanding of what these soldiers went through.
It took the British commanders a long time and huge human casualties to consider altering their tactics, these people were the decision makers baked up by firing squads and imprisonment and front line duties, for me Lions led by Donkeys is an accurate portrayal of the British military 1914 onwards
Carry on not having a clue, then...
@@andrewflindall9048 I consider you also deluded in your thinking. The phrase is appropriate.
@@johnnewington6635 The difference is that I have actually thought about it.
Your reference to firing squads is telling. Only around 300 were shot in the whole of the Great War, and that's out of around 3000 who were so sentenced. The numbers were negligible in an army of millions.
But, yeah, whatever...
Yes, the armies of 1914 were trained to fight a 19th century war - but generals of any intelligence would have known that every army (including the relatively small British Army) would be much, much larger than those armies had ever been before. As societies industrialised, fewer and fewer human labourers were required to keep agriculture and manufacturing going. Mass armies could be formed - and the generals wanted them. Yet, as you point out, there are consequences for command and control of dramatically increasing the size of an army. Unlike Wellington, Haig (or any other general) could not see the entire battlefield.
One valid criticism of most WW1 generals is they failed to think through the complications of controlling the huge armies they'd wanted. They also failed to think through the impact of modern artillery (much different to Wellington's short-ranged muzzle loaders) and machine guns. There were times in the 1904/05 Russo-Japanese war when units took enormous casualties because of artillery and machine guns. The observing generals who thought infantry with good morale could overcome modern (for 1914) weapons were just plain wrong.
Many WW1 generals were 'donkeys' because they failed to prepare for industrial war - a type of war they wanted. They thought bigger armies and modern weapons would give them a key advantage, without asking 'what if everyone's army is bigger?'
You critique Haig for being 'over optimistic' and continuing offensives beyond the point of 'diminishing returns'. As you would be aware, those 'returns' were soldiers' lives. Haig does not seem to have reconciled himself to conducting limited offensives - within the capacity of foot-soldiers to march and fight, and within the scope of WW1 communications technology to control.
Is there any evidence Haig did some deep thinking about these things?
Interesting…..but why am thinking Whiter than the Whitewash on the wall ? Regarding Chateau Generals , this was certainly the view formed by Montgomery.
I will never stop believing it, I remember my great uncles saying it, they fought in that war, ten of them in my extended family paid the ultimate price and lay buried in Belgium/France. I'm a veteran myself from the 70s and 80s and believe me I met some real donkeys in my time, full of arrogance and aloof and to this day in civvy street I still run into it. Most of the people who are fighting against the saying are probable from the elite officer classes . One lad was shot at dawn because he was so sick and ill he fell asleep at his post, if that aint arrogance and aloofness I don't what is .
IWM I love your videos and keep it up! I use your videos and online articles as a talking point for my high school history courses. One of my students was struggling and he found himself enthralled with WWI and I believe it's in no small part to these videos.
I'm afraid I don't think this video is particularly useful as an educational or informative tool and this is why - to argue the case for Haig may be one thing but to use that ONE story to say that there were no donkeys or donkey-like decisions is astonishing - a) because they are separate issues and b) because there were MANY incidents of pointless attacks etc etc. And it wasn't only the French who overruled Haig about his ideas re the Somme - it was the British High Command too!
So I'm afraid I think this is actually a very poor and misleading video - fine if IWM etc want to make a video about rescuing Haig from the ranks of donkeys but not to make that an argument against the fact that there were not plenty of donkey-like decisions made in local incidents or those on a wider field. Those are two separate matters.
Sorry if I sound negative but I am concerned about perceptions as my grandfather fought on the Somme but would never talk about it - which made me want to find out what it was like - firstly as a teenager and now , in later years too 🙂
I've just finished reading Armageddon Road, the diary of Maj Billy Congreve VC who was killed in 1916. In it he describes MANY incidents of pointless attacks or attacks doomed to failure because there was no back up or not enough ammunition or of incidents where those higher up refused to listen to those nearer the front. One ordered attack he simply calls 'murder'. And no, Armageddon Rd is not a one-sided rant against the injustices of so-called 'donkeys' - Congreve was definitely 'officer class' and was latterly Brigade Major - but it is one of the more truthful books about WW1 that I have read.
Incidentally, and relevant to the context of this video, is a rather telling event when Congreve's father General Sir Walter Congreve was relieved of some of his command in 1916 because he was thought to be 'not dashing enough' - but by all accounts he was loved by the men he cared about.
I hope this is of interest or helpful.
A thought provoking assualt on a standard view of events in WW1, but I think that this assault, helpful as it is in understanding some key elements of events accross the war, will fail. It's still just too hard to imagine the thinking behind ordering those first attacks when everyone knew that machine guns were in the theatre, and that they would be used, and they must have known how these weapons performed and what they were capable of. And even if we overlook the ordering of the first attacks, what about the susequent ones? Sure, it's an example of how the army learned and developed, but they learned slowly, and at such catastrphic cost. Sorry, I remain unconvinced.
they had machine guns but no tanks, making it a hopeless situation for high command and the troops in terms of tactical options.
Remove the politics on both sides and the generals knew that war should be ended after six months .
I am very glad this is being looked at again. So many of the records we have are from the young men who were there; and naturally they had a dim view of their experiences. But in truth you need to zoom out and see the bigger picture about how things are working. The Brits had a lot of good leaders...they just aren't as famous as the bad ones like John French.
God forbid the records show what the men who were actually there thought eh.
@@AthelstanKing frontline soldiers don’t understand strategy and logistics
@@AthelstanKing I knew someone would wilfully misunderstand what I said. Those records are important. My great grandfathers diaries of his time are very precious to me.
But frontline soldiers and officers have a lower grasp of the bigger picture. Nowhere did I say those records were not valuable. But they DO skew thinking when used alone; which is how we end up with this myth of Donkeys leading in the first place.
@@AthelstanKing exactly we need modern
'historians" to rewrite what the people said and retcon history to fit their narrative rather than what actually happened. No one wants to read about the boring old facts, they want something that goes against them because that gets clicks.
@@rustybollocks3827 nonsense
I'm confused by Wakefield's statement that "the advantage was very much with the defender." Wasn't the source of the trench deadlock that the *attacker* had a big short-term tactical advantage, but that it was impossible to turn short-term tactical victories into long-term operational gains, largely because the side that lost ground could só easily counter-attack?
No, it was because of the defensive advantage, especially the massed use of machine guns that brought about the trench systems. You start seeing the digging in in the aftermath of the Battle of the Marne when the Germans fell back, and then the failure of the Entente to dislodge the Germans caused them to dig in as well.
Modern warfare looks for the attackers to have a 3 to 1 numerical superiority at a minimum, and that’s with All Arms tactics. At the start of 1918 the Germans we’re pretty confident of victory after the collapse of Imperial Russia and the capitulation of the Soviets to secure peace ASAP so they could focus on the White Russians. The release of the troops from the Eastern front would allow them to go on the offensive along with “new” specialised assault Storm Troopers that’s why they succeed before their they ran out of steam
@@ImperialGuard322nd no, the trenches were primarily to avoid artillery. Machine guns were important as a method to defend trenches against attack; but quite often, those attacks succeeded despite the machine guns, & the attackers would successfully take their enemies’ forward trenches. But the enemies would then successfully counter-attack, benefiting from access to their artillery in their back trenches
Reality was the both sides would lose men and front would not move
12:25 Credit is due to Sir John Monash for the 100 Days, A Loin leading Lions 12:25
Well that will include the British then,Thanks. By the way it was the brilliant British army and the British Army Service Corps that facilitated that quick short battle. It was all down rifles and bayonets.
Oh dear, nothing in this piece suggested to me we were not led by donkeys. And, even worse still, the Versailles Treaty ensured it was all continued in 1939.
The Versailles Treaty was the work of politicians.
…… and could you have done better?
@@peterwebb8732 Well they clearly decided they couldn't make the same mistake at the end of WW2...hence the Marshall Plan. Maybe a lesson for Israel.
The highest proportion of casualties was among junior officers, who would have belonged to exactly the the same public-school-educated class as the "donkeys". Might even have been related to them in some cases.
I wonder if the parents of all the young men killed, thought their sons death was a “strategic necessity “?
Well put. That's exactly what's wrong with the "numbers game" used in this type of historical approach.
I think this video is attempting to resurrect General Hague's reputation. My Grandad fought from 1914 to 1917 ( when he was captured) He despised Hague, thought he was an uncaring unthinking unempathetic fool who just kept doing the same thing, with predictable carnage ridden results. He would be appalled by this video.
This whole video is just apologism for an officer corps that didn't know what they were doing and it was the grunts who paid the price.
In a nutshell you have it all. These people are having a laugh at the simple minds that parrot everything they read.