Thread: Somme

Originally Posted by Tarek Morgen

unqualified suggestion: The disaster of the Galipoli campaign might have a similar effect on the idea of large scale landings for the Allies in WWI like the battle of crete had on the Germans wrt Airbone assaults in WWII.

the Royal Navy had 200 years of experience landing expeditionary forces wherever they damn well liked. Even with the mistaken landing site Gallipoli came within a gnats whisker of succeeding: the failure was in command.

chogy,

There is a legend that says the high commands of both sides considered the number of men needed before the Maxims either overheated or simply were starved of ammo. And the artillery that was supposed to cut the barbed wire... didn't.

The whole thing is mind blowing. Military professionals today have a hard time wrapping their brains around the bull-headed single-mindedness of WW1-style frontal assault. Was maneuver warfare so alien a concept? Properly exploiting a gap, a weakness?

several things-- 1. the whole of europe was so built up that maneuver warfare on the western front was nigh on impossible after the trench lines were constructed in 1915, 2. the large volunteer cadres of 1915 onwards simply did not have the training or the time to get maneuver warfare down. this was true from the men on the front line to the artillerymen.

it took till 1917-8 for both sides to have the ability to properly do fire/suppression/advance, as well as artillery good enough to isolate one sector and appropriately precede the infantrymen.

there were simply no good choices. most of the generals involved weren't actually incompetent, but there were limits as to what they could do.

there was plenty of maneuver warfare on the eastern front, which was simply too big for the trench system to work well.

Here's a naive question... With effective control of the sea, why didn't the allies land forces well behind the front line on Continental Europe? Hit the Belgium coast abeam Brussels. Germans respond by pulling forces from the Ypres area, fatally weakening Germany's right flank. Would it have been Gallipoli all over again?

IIRC the allies considered an amphibious landing around hamburg. however, the experience of gallipoli soured the allies and the british high command feared that the resources needed to shepherd a landing force/sustain it would leave the island wide open. moreover, the french weren't enthusiastic about any of the proposed british adventures-- they just wanted to mass troops in france.

pari,

I'd argue that sometimes it's a better choice to do nothing....

france couldn't allow it. the initial german grabs of 1914 seized france's richest provinces, both in terms of farmland and industry.

the french populace would not have stood for staying on the defensive, and it was only after the shocking Nivelle Offensive in 1917 (where french morale came perilously close to breaking) that they stopped their penchant for the offensive.

the germans understood this quite well and their strategy from 1915 on was for the most part defensive attritional warfare-- see verdun.