1915 -- An Ecstasy of Fumbling - Richard S. Faulkner
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- Опубликовано: 30 май 2024
- Noted educator and Society for Military History Distinguished Book Prize winner, Lt. Col. (ret.) Richard S. Faulkner from the Command and General Staff College presents, "1915 -- An Ecstasy of Fumbling."
The presentation focuses on how the deadly stalemate developed at the end of 1914 and the various efforts armies made in 1915 to break the deadlock and grasp victory.
This program is part of the Lyric Opera Guild’s award-winning series, At Ease With Opera.
Recorded February 2, 2015 in J.C. Nichols Auditorium at the National World War I Museum at Liberty Memorial.
For more information about the National WWI Museum and Memorial visit theworldwar.org
Dr. Faulkner explains things so well and makes people and battles interesting.
I had a great uncle who died just a few years back, who was Canada's last living WWI vet. They must all be dead now as he was way over 100.
Last WWI vet died in 2011.
What was your uncle’s name? He’d be big
@@SawdEndymonI’d guess that they’re talking about John Babcock; he was 109 years old when he died in 2010.
During the Vietnam war, when I worked actively against the war, I several times found myself next to military officers on planes or at church and other social meetings. I always found them as sensible as this excellent man -- and they often held positions on the war pretty much identical to mine.
David Lloyd-Jones so you actively betrayed your country?? And undermined the men fighting in it? How much blood is on your hands??
@@MrDeengels The Vietnam war was lost day 1. It was total folly. I am not American but have talked to French Vietnam veterans in the past.
As long as China was helping (and the N Vietnam got Soviet help) it was a dead end like Korea ended up being. Vietnam never attacked USA,
there was no real "need" for Americans to fight for it.
@@PMMagro BS. The Vietnam War was a local war, a war of reunification and a civil war in nature, as well as a strategic war, and a geo-political war, all at the same time. You are so obviously focused only on the local war. America was never too worried about the local war or its outcome - America was not opposed to the reunification of Vietnam per se. America's real interest was the strategic war - to stop the spread of communism (a.k.a. the domino effect). The VN war was also part of the Cold War - a geo-political war of opposing ideologies with the nature of a war of attrition from post- ww2 until the break up of the USSR.
America never lost the local war militarily, but it did lose the PR war at home (as Ho Chi Min said they would), and thus lost the political will to keep a direct military involvement. In reality the South VN lost the war. They lost militarily and politically (they were seen as corrupt and not a viable VN govt when all VN wanted to be reunited.
The VN war stopped the spread of communism through SE Asia and was a major contributor to the success of the Cold War (the VN War cost RPC China and the USSR far more in disposable income and opportunity costs than it cost America). The 52,000 American lives and Billions of $$$$$$$'s losses were not wasted but just unappreciated by the emotionally driven, short term thinking, non-strategists and armchair critics.
@@MrDeengels he rather actively worked to save american lives... Ho do you war enthusiast sleep at night, knowing you supported a blood bath for your fellow american?
@@graemesydney38All wars are banker wars. Who do you think bankrolls the communists? Who do you think paid Karl Marx to write "Communist Manifesto" ? That's right, Karl Schwab's buddies. They have been playing the long game.
The great and legendary Richard S. Faulkner is speaching excellently!
France suffers 27,000 killed in one day - August 22, 1914. That is absolutely mind boggling. I think that was at Rossignol.
I think that France incurred those losses in what is called "The Battle of the Frontiers." This was during the part of World War I when troops did not normally entrench.
@@leifjohnson617 the battle of the frontiers was absolutely horrid.
Both my grandfathers were regulars pre 1914, they came through the war, one with gas affected lungs that killed him in 1926, the other with bullet and bayonet wounds, and shell shock, violence and drink persona, that scared the family others..
As usual an excellent talks. Another poem to consider: "I gave my life for freedom. This I know - For those who bade me fight have told me so." (Five Souls, look it up)
I liked how short the prespeaker was.
yes, unusual! and excellent
Good to see a presenter who needs no notes and is very confident, and interesting.
"The victor is the one who can believe for just a quarter of an hour longer than the enemy that he is not beaten." - Clemenceau
That's a pretty cool quote actually.
Great presentation. Thank you.
Thanks for uploading this EXCELLENT illuminating talk!
Good lecture.
It seems odd that he poses the question "after 1914 why didn't they just stop"?
How could France stop? It was being invaded by Germany - the war was being fought on French soil.
Have you studied other wars? Most wars end with one side partially invaded and only a partial victory or defeat, WWI and II were unique from most wars that a near complete surrender was required. If people had stepped back from national fervor and assessed the war with a rational mind they might’ve not fought all the way to 1918
@@creepincreeper9836 ehh if you have only read European history i guess... Most wars end with the execution of the ruling class and the subjugation of the working class of the defeated nation... its only when all the ruling classes are related and or the costs of war are too high that conflict does not end in annihilation of one political structure or another. Hence all the tiny pissing contest wars in agriculturally poor and inbred late mid-evil Europe that almost always ended when the peasants needed to go home to tend the crops.
@@boblee5556 that's not true at all. Sure, there have been empires built on the complete destruction of the societies they absorb (the Assyrian and Mongol empires come to mind), but that's far from the only strategy. By the time the thirty years war was behind us most European conflicts ended in a negotiated peace. But even imperialism elsewhere usually aimed to keep the society they conquered mostly intact.
@@boblee5556 "Most wars end with the execution of the ruling class and the subjugation of the working class of the defeated nation... its only when all the ruling classes are related and or the costs of war are too high that conflict does not end in annihilation of one political structure or another."
Utter nonsense. For most of history wars were seasonal affairs, glorified raids that were repeated year after year or even century after century. And, no, Europe was not an outlier in this respect.
A very hard hitting and moving lecture, many thanks.
“If only the czar knew” sounds very similar to things we hear from Russian military units today.
14:05 "Some things never change" ----> LOL!!!
An excellent survey.
The Germans used xylyl bromide gas at Bolimov in January of 1915 before it was used on the Western Front. But this was very, very good
Good introduction, 32 seconds.
6
14:06 Something's never change LOL!
Britain's army commanders, after a century of managing an army structured to police the empire, found itself fighting a European war, and instructed to co-operate with unco-operative French allies. The usual army of 250,000 men was inflated to 1,500,000. Such numbers need experienced staff officers trained to manage the transport, supply, training, communication and the hundred and one other needs to put and maintain fighting men in action. Just imagine the logistics required in moving a division of 15,000 men twenty miles to a threatened area, and they are needed now, not as and when.
The British army did not have those staff officers and the chaos of 1915 ensued. But by 1918 the British army had produced those staff officers and by August were rolling the Germans back to Germany.
Fair but the tanks, aircraft, better guns and shells, the arrival of the Americans and, most important, the German losses and the loss of morale in the German army after the failure of the 1918 offensives were far more important. Without those factors better staff work would not have produced the results of the Hundred Days.
My point was that the initial lack of staff officers lead to the losses and chaos of the fighting in 1915. Without the trained staff the BEF would not have weathered the 1918 Kaiserslacht.
Dav1Gv it was horrible but necessary
@@Dav1Gv The arrival of the Americans? The first battle that saw significant numbers of American troops in action was the Second Battle of the Marne, July 1918, this was *after* the French and British had already fought the Spring Offensives to a standstill. Pershing himself expected the AEF to the THE Army of 1919... Granted, the arrival of the Americans ensured the war would end in 1918, rather than in 1919 or 1920, but after the failure of the Spring Offensives the German Army had essentially lost its final gamble.
As for the rest, how do you think those better guns and shells, the tanks, the aircraft and the myriad other new weapons developed since 1914 get rolled into an army? Dont forget how an infantry platoon in all armies changed from an all rifle armed unit to a true combined arms force in only 3 years. That is not done spontaneously.
Yes, the extra and new equipment was nice, as were the new techniques, especially when it came to the use of artillery, but those things alone mean nothing if they are not combined into an effective tactical and strategic doctrine. That requires a trained and competant Staff.
In short, they are all as important as each other, and interelated. Take one of those things out and the British Army of 1918 would not have been anything close to as effective as it was, it was that mix of new and better weapons, better shells, better tactics and competant staff work that made the British Army of 1918 probably the best Army Britain has ever fielded.....
Better staff work would have amounted to nothing significant in 1918 if the German army hadn't gone rotten'
Sustained offensives against a well supplied and motivated foe were still a logistical impossibility.
Armies of Lions led by Donkies is a phrase that Max Hastings came up with in the 1960s. It was as far as my knowledge reaches used before Max Hastings came up with it.
The British Army had attacked trench systems in the Boer War a decade and a half earlier, and had come up with methods to deal with attacks on trenchs. Unfortunately in WW1 the trenches were continuous.
en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Alan_Clark
"The book's title was drawn from the expression "Lions led by donkeys" which has been widely used to compare British soldiers with their commanders. In 1921 Princess Evelyn Blücher published her memoirs, which attributed the phrase to OHL (the German GHQ) in 1918.[4] Clark was unable to find the origin of the expression. He prefaced the book with a supposed dialogue between two generals and attributed the dialogue to the memoirs of German general Erich von Falkenhayn. Clark was equivocal about the source for the dialogue for many years, but in 2007, his friend Euan Graham recalled a conversation in the mid-1960s when Clark, on being challenged as to the dialogue's provenance, looked sheepish and said, "Well I invented it."[5] This invention has provided a major opportunity for critics of The Donkeys to condemn the work."
Your knowledge can be improved by using a search engine. A Wikipedia article on the phrase mentions a 1921 memoir attributing the phrase to Ludendorf. en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lions_led_by_donkeys
Interesting.
"Live and let live" was never either an official or non-official policy, as this man implies. Quiet parts of the front were never quiet from 1916 onwards - it was always dangerous for troops to appear over a parapet lest they be shot by trained snipers and sudden death from a few artillery shells was an ever present possibility. To say "live and let live" was halted by the arrival of the Americans and their eagerness for battle might be good for American amour propre but unfortunately it is not true.
“Live and let live” was an arrangement conducted at a local level and occurred in sectors in which no offensive was underway or in preparation. In 1915 it is semi-official on both sides because quite sectors didn’t get the artillery ammunition to do anything else due to the shell shortages affecting all armies. By the time the Americans arrive the tempo of offensives is much higher so there are many fewer “quite” sectors. Also the US troops may well have not understood and abided by “live and let live” agreements to the same extent and that would explain their much higher “wastage” rate than the other armies on the western front.
“Live and let live” was an arrangement conducted at a local level and occurred in sectors in which no offensive was underway or in preparation. In 1915 it is semi-official on both sides because quite sectors didn’t get the artillery ammunition to do anything else due to the shell shortages affecting all armies. By the time the Americans arrive the tempo of offensives is much higher so there are many fewer “quite” sectors. Also the US troops may well have not understood and abided by “live and let live” agreements to the same extent and that would explain their much higher “wastage” rate than the other armies on the western front.
@37:00 "punishment and execution of civilians" didn't begin at ww1. In 20th century it was started by the british, on the Boer war.
The punishment and execution of civilians has always and unfortunately happened in every war
Absolutely wrong. Another modern reinterpretation of history to try and absolve poor old German of its brutality. The Boer war concentration camps were just that: concentration camps to keep boers away from continuing the war. There was no execution and no punishment of Boer civilians. Deaths were unfortunate and due to poor management and disease. To try and absolve Nazi extermination camps by comparing to British Boer War camps, you have to be a mental apologist of German brutality. By the way, the Boer War was not the first use of 'concentration camps'. The Spanish used them in Cuba before. In fact, armies have used them going back to antiquity.
The British deliberately neglected and starved the boers in the camps, over 26,000 women and children died in order to break and punish the enemy.
This represented 10% of the entire boer population
@@aneily wasn’t enough.
That's arguably not what he is saying. If you look at other set piece nation on nation European conflicts in the 19th century, there was reticence of targeting civilian populations. He isn't saying that civilians do not get affected by war; its that seeking methods to crystallize domestic opinion against war is not attempted. This is intuitive as the value of the object in individual state on state action is less than it is in great power war.
That said, Moltke the Elder was concerned this might change as France continues to fight and mobilize armies in spite of Napoleon III being captured and an end of conflict being negotiated. He indicates that in the aftermath of the Franco-Prussian War that achieving political objectives might include wars of extinction.
Kennesaw Boy representing.
Good presentation, to bad he is not accurate on many occasions !
I'm a novice in this period - What aspect(s) or point(s) of Dr. Faulkner's talk were inaccurate? Any sources would you recommend to someone looking to learn more?
I'm not a novice, I've studied the war as an amateur for 30 years and visited most of the major battlefields in France and Belgium. I'm a member of the Western Front Association in Cardiff (in Wales, just to the left of England), have heard many international level speakers eg Richard Holmes, Peter Hart etc. I have attended study days with speakers like Margaret Macmillan. I can' say I noticed any major errors. Perhaps you would be kind enough to list them for us so we can comment. Gavin Davies
For one, his date on unrestricted sub warfare is wrong. That came later. He also didn’t mention that the Lusitania showed up in Janes Fighting Ships as an armed merchantman.
@@Grandizer8989 And it was carrying munitions, but the subject is not whether its sinking was justified but whether it was carried out in accord with the customary procedures for executing a blockade: Stopping it, inspecting its passengers and cargo, etc. That was of course not practical and not carried out on the Lusitania. In what way do you imagine that what happened on 7 May 1915 differed from "unrestricted sub warfare"?
I don’t think that the Germans launched unrestricted sub warfare in 1915. They recalled their subs in November to regroup and figure out what to do with this new wonder weapon.
The Lusitania was sunk on 7 May 1915.
They stopped in 1916 at the request of President Wilson, in exchange for Wilson's intervention to break the British food blockade that was beginning to kill more and more German civilians. After a year, Wilson hadn't done anything, they restarted their unrestricted sub warfare but warning everyone about it before they did but Wilson, completely omitting his part of the deal used this to declare war on Germany and by entering the war, the US completely shattered the fragile balance of power established during the war that without US involvement would probably have ended in a truce without any of the terrible consequences the Versailles treaty ended up being the primary cause of.
I guess the major combatants thought they were just going to run over the enemy's military with little effort and their soldiers would all drive, not march, back home in a stolen new car.
6:05 Germany occupied a _lot_ of France's territory. *Important* territory. So obviously they didn't want to quit before reclaiming their territory (and punishing those who took it, and destroyed it).
6:27 The compassionate, _illogical_ mind says that.
For the algorithm
Good speaker but his lecture is marred by frequent over simplifications and myths.
And what might those be?
I agree - though to do just the western front 1915 justice would require a 3 hour lecture.
He said at the beginning that it was a very broad view of just one year of the war. He clearly believes that warfare is a cruel imposition on humanity by...humanity! His statement at the end that "people suck" is a good indication of his cynicism of humanity.
"I have been looking so forward to this"...good start!, "By 1915 a world war", not for america!. What is anartica?.
The continent at the South Pole.
Top of the planet. The Arctic.
Bottom of the planet. Antarctica.
Another lecturer here said that the Kaiser's words actually were:
"- You will be home before the leaves fall" [this autumn].
An today we see that at least Western generals expected that the war in Ukraine would be over "in days". They never learn.
Nope!
It was the Russian generals who thought the special military operation would be over in a few weeks.
Germany offered peace without annexation multiple times. Germany was not the villain. Britain was the villain.
Of course, Sir Edward Grey ahead of everyone else. The problem was that Britain and France had borrowed so much money from Wall Street, the only way to make sure they would get their money back was a German defeat so a negotiated peace was totally out of the question. No matter what Germany said or did, she would be crushed just the same. I am now reading a book called "Lord Milner's Second War" by John P. Cafferky, extremely interesting, you would love.
Respectfully, Dr. Faulkner, your remark about General Haig was way off the mark. It is the received view from popular retelling things like “Oh What a Lovely War” but I expect more from a historian.
Sure, Haig was brilliant.
Not.
41:08 “Just shoot their largest, most populous, and important city of the entire nation. Definitely surrendering 🤦🏼♂️
Churchill never said that.... Maybe the 'soft under belly of Europe' ... but not "Churchill said..."
Were the French really the spearhead of the allied offensive ?
On the Western Front, the 1 November 1918 :
French Army :
- 102 infantry divisions, 6 cavalry divisions
- 2,659,084 men , 630,440 horses and 80,000 trucks.
- 5,578 heavy guns and 1,626 trench guns
- 50,700 chauchats and 30,664 heavy MG's
- 1,272 tanks
- 3,609 planes
British Army :
- 60 infantry divisions and 3 cavalry divisions
- 1,721,890 men, 388,00 horses and 19,000 trucks.
- 2,197 heavy guns and 2,570 trench guns
- 20,000 lewis and 4,632 heavy MG's
- 611 tanks
- 1,678 planes (!!!)
American Army :
- 31 infantry divisions and no cavalry division
- 1,821,449 men and 151,250 horses
- 746 trench guns and 406 heavy guns
- 18,465 light MG's (most of them being chauchat CSRG 1918 and the rest being BAR's) and 6,239 heavy MG's
- 91 tanks (lol)
- 2,032 planes
I'd say so since it was literally their land they were fighting from
"THE allied offensive"?
Anyway, just count the dead.
Casualties and losses 18 July - 11 November:
French Third Republic 531,000
United Kingdom of Great Britain and Ireland 412,000
United States 127,000
en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hundred_Days_Offensive
@38:00 Wrong. Ottomans wanted to ally themselves with Britain, but Britain refused. Germany was the second choice..
Any sources??
Not true. The Ottoman Empire had strong links with Germany before the war via industrial investment, for instance the Berlin to Baghdad railway. Then early in the war 2 German battlecruisers ran for Istanbul and were allowed refuge there. At that point the UK activated clauses in the contracts to build two Dreadnaughts for the Ottoman Empire to requisition them for the RN. Germany then “gave” the two ships holed up in Istanbul to the Ottomans and those ships bombarded Sevastopol forcing the Ottoman Empire into the war on the part of the central powers. The Ottoman Empire’s main aim was to take territory from Russia so entry on the entente side was never possible.
@@davidwright7193 "...early in the war 2 German battlecruisers ran for Istanbul..."
The SMS Goeben was a battlecruiser but the SMS Breslau was a light cruiser
"At that point ..."
Nope. The British seizure of the warships Sultan Osman and Res¸adiye took place on on 31 July 1914, before the outbreak of the war.
@40:06 Adolf Hitler quote is also a myth..
"Deliberate starvation" of armenians was also out of question, as everybody was starving during that time..Turks, arabs, armenians, greeks, jews.. All starved.
BTW, whatever happened in anaotlia can never hold a candle to the things happening in iran. British army occupied iran in 1917, and requisioned (or, you can say stole) all the resources of the country, as the british had always done throughout their history. The result was a terrible famine, in which the lowest estimate of death is 2 millions.
So you’re saying there was no Armenian holocaust?
What is anaotlia?
Bonobo Brothel Bobbins Fake Physics PlayDoh Hour Turks are told it never happened and the Ottoman Empire was great glorious and the greatest civilisation too have exist if that’s true how did they conquer the Middle East and half the balkans and even had eunuchs for gods sake that fact is barbaric in itself.
@@normandate7696 he means Anatolia. Which is Asia Minor/Turkey today.
The Armenians didn't starve because of a general lack of food. They starved because they were marched off without food, with the foreseeable consequence that they starved when not just killed.