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4th February 2013, 01:33 PM | #201 |
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Have you picked up "Pursuit Of Glory" GMT's follow up on The Near East Campaings? They are covered in Paths of Glory, but Pursuit of Glory does so in much more detail. Good game.
And for your computer on a tactical level: http://johntillersoftware.com/SquadB...tWorldWar.html |
4th February 2013, 04:22 PM | #202 |
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I haven't yet, it's hard enough getting one First World War game on the table without adding more to the mix! (Seems like my group is far more ancients/classical, fantasy, Napoleonics friendly than WW1). (I've heard good things about Pursuit of Glory, though as a committed "Westerner" I don't know if I philosophically agree with making the big supplemental push take place in the East. Couldn't the resources have been used making something that focused on the Western Front?).
I'll take a look at the computer game. Slytherine have a strategic level WW1 pc game that I was toying with getting... |
4th February 2013, 09:57 PM | #203 |
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Incompetent and callous too, is the usual depiction.
I think it is a bit difficult to know exactly what they were really like from these depictions as some memes just become part of our mental furniture. For example, the movie Paths of Glory works quite well because we are so outraged at the stubborn foolishness of the French officers. I wonder if the depiction of them is also unfair. |
5th February 2013, 03:17 PM | #204 |
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5th February 2013, 04:19 PM | #205 |
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If we are recommending books then I did enjoy Gary Sheffield's 'Forgotten Victory'.
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5th February 2013, 06:03 PM | #206 |
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6th February 2013, 02:55 AM | #207 |
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This book, however, is not to be recommended:
British Butchers and Bunglers of World War One. I picked up a copy cheap at a remaindered store on Charing Cross road a decade or more ago, just out of curiosity. The first sentence og the Book Description should give you some idea of what to expect: " For too long, Dr John Laffin maintains, the military reputation of British Generals in World War I has not been examined critically enough, and he asks how those responsible for catastrophic defeats were able to retain their commands. " The chap clearly hadn't actually read many texts except, possibly, some of John Terraine's. |
7th February 2013, 10:07 AM | #208 |
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Priceless. I doubt that the Spanish Inquisition has been criticized as much as the British Generals of WW1.
I see that the only 5 star review of the book says: "I thoroughly enjoyed this book . When I read the reviews that it has received here I felt a mounting sense of anger . My fellow reviewers seem to have entirely missed the point . The conduct of the British high command in the First World War is not a subject to be approached without bias or prejudice " I might have to steal that line for debates on sundry topics in the politics forums: "What you fail to understand [person who disagrees with me] is that subject X is not a subject to be approached without bias or prejudice!" |
7th February 2013, 10:28 AM | #209 |
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I might have to dig it out again.
He actually uses the phrase "butcher and bungler"...lots...with every general he talks about. |
7th February 2013, 10:34 AM | #210 |
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Well the movie is based very loosely on real events by this lovely man:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/G%C3%A9raud_R%C3%A9veilhac Who ordered that his own men be shelled so they would leave their trench and attack. |
7th February 2013, 11:04 AM | #211 |
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Apparently at one point during the ill fated Neville Offensive of 1917, some French Commanders used a tactic that the NKVD did in Russia 25 years later:Stating troops with Machine Guns in the front lines, with orders to shoot at any retreating soldiers.......
No wonder this led to a massive mutiny by the French Soldiers in mid 1917 that almost led to the French army collapsing.. It is a miracle that the French managed to keep the Germans from finding out about it and taking advantage of it. |
7th February 2013, 11:22 AM | #212 |
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Although a lot of the stories of the mutiny are exaggerated (IIRC, the story of the mutinous French unit that was deliberatley shelled by it's own side is a fabrication) it was a huge event and was part of the reason for the sustained assault by the British at 3rd Ypres (which drew in something like 88 German divisions - in rotation, not all at once) which didn't really leave the Germans any spare resources for a "knock the French out of the war" push in mid/late 1917.
Both the French mutiny, and the crisis in German morale a year later seem to show the dangers in prepping the troops for "one last push to win the war boys!" - when you don't win, there is an even deeper disillusion than would have been caused by just the casualties. |
7th February 2013, 11:51 AM | #213 |
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Two chapters in and I have to categorically contradict you there.
It is an appalling book. So far its full of constant repetition of unproven hypothesis, supported mainly by anecdotes, which are then qualified and often enough contradicted by the author himself which leaves the reader baffled and disorientated. I'm beginning to get more than a whiff of sophistry here. Lord knows how I managed to get through two chapters, let alone how I might finish the thing. |
7th February 2013, 12:52 PM | #214 |
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8th February 2013, 04:42 AM | #215 |
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8th February 2013, 10:01 AM | #216 |
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Its his general approach.
To give an example, Travers is expounding how any officer who stood up to his seniors and advocated a less than offensive course of action would get binned. To support this he cites a few examples including Byng who argued for withdrawal from Gallipoli. Only "Byng's career was not blighted and he went on to lead an army". Oh dear. A particular irritation is his reliance on one source by the name of Edmonds whom Travers himself describes as "embittered". Obviously then he should not be relied on, yet Travers keeps coming back to Edmonds. Could this be because no one else much supports his hypothesis? The first chapter is dedicated to proving the existence of a system of personal favoritism for promotion. Travers even admits that such systems are pretty much universally present in any large organisation. Much of the second chapter is dedicated to sneering at Edwardian attitudes to society and morality and trying to blame them for the "Cult of the offensive" and again, Travers admits that offensive doctrines were universal features of all armies of the time. So the question is so what? Was the system of favoritism in the British army worse than in others? Was it worse by the standards of other contemporary organisations? What was the effect of this system? How did this translate to the structure, training, and equipment of the army and its performance in battle. What does it actually mean? And to second chapter, Travers never thinks to analyse why the cult of the offensive was such a universal feature of contemporary military doctrine in all armies, he instead descends into gossip and semantics and a somewhat prurient mocking of the then widespread ideas about 'national virility' and 'manly pursuits' with of course the obligatory swipes at Baden Powell. And he here comes seriously unstuck. Once again citing the "embittered" and this time almost certainly malicious Edmonds, who states he was "sceptical of Baden Powell's ability to defend Mafeking". Now what is the reader to make of this? Baden Powell's ability to defend Mafeking is proven beyond a doubt by historical facts. Mafeking was defended successfully, despite being outnumbered, isolated, and besieged for 217 days .Boer War experts like Packenham attribute the success of the defence largely to Baden Powell's leadership. Now we move to chapter three and this is the furthest I'm going to read this book life is simply too short to read books by ignorant historians. Because in chapter three, we are moving beyond anecdote and gossip and into the world of hard facts. In this case, machine guns. Travers berates the British officer corp for their reluctance to adopt the mitrailleuse, attributing this reluctance to their amateurism and silly Edwardianisms. He then extrapolates this to account for the 10 year delay between the invention of the Maxim gun and its adoption by the British army. Of course, it wasnt just the British who were reluctant to adopt the mitrailleuse. No one wanted to adopt the mitrailleuse, and they all didnt want it for exactly the same reason. It was rubbish. I wonder if Travers actually knows what a mitrailleuse is, because he certainly doesnt know what Maxim gun is. He describes it as having a a "gas operated recoil system". ORLY? Of course, the British army, like most armies, had been experimenting with other types of machine gun for some time. And with mixed results. Given that smokeless powder was yet to invented, machine guns caused enormous clouds of smoke causing serious problems for battlefield visibility, while the weapons themselves were prone to stoppages due to being choked with black-powder residues and the Maxim gun was no different. The Maxim gun only because truly effective once smokeless powder had been introduced. Yet, the British army adopted them long before that. Sorry, that book is going in the bin. |
8th February 2013, 10:57 AM | #217 |
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I haven't read this, but surely he can't be that foolish. You will know that the normal modern French word for machine gun in general, as well as for the specific weapon used in 1870, is "mitrailleuse". (ETA. See, for example, http://armesfrancaises.free.fr/les%2...ailleuses.html) Does he not simply mean that there was a reluctance to adopt machine guns in a general sense? I ask, because I haven't read the book, but surely he can't be as deluded as you represent him to be.
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8th February 2013, 11:25 AM | #218 |
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On this point, and further to my last post, the French Hotchkiss "mitrailleuse" (in their general sense) is described in my source as having a "Système moteur: action indirecte de la veine gazeuse, emprunt de gaz en un point du canon" so that it was powered by drawing on gas rather than recoil as in the case of the Maxim. Is he not therefore stating something, not entirely outrageous, but drawn from French sources, and poorly explicated, so that it might give a false impression to an Anglophone reader?
I stress, I have not read the work, and am purely trying to explain in reasonable terms the lapse you report. |
8th February 2013, 01:00 PM | #219 |
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He does "mean that there was a reluctance to adopt machine guns in a general sense" but he attempts to prove this by citing reluctance to adopt the French mitrailleuse of 1870-71 (and I quote).
Fine if he has evidence of a reluctance to adopt machine guns then he can state it. Reluctance to adopt the mitrailleuse is not the same thing. The mitrailleuse was a failure, according to, well, everyone.
Quote:
I might forgive some error of translation were Travers French, but he isnt French, he's just ignorant.
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9th February 2013, 03:43 PM | #220 |
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The British army did employ 'mitrailleuses', in the generic sense of manually operated machine guns. Specifically the the Gatling (adopted in 1874), the Gardner (adopted in 1884, ten years after its invention), the Nordenfelt (adopted in 1884, eleven years after its invention). The Hotchkiss was also used, though mainly as a naval weapon.
These weapons were chambered for either the .450 Gardner-Gatling cartridge or (after ~1887) the .450 Martini-Henry round. They saw quite extensive use mainly in the late colonial campaigns. Maxim invented his automatic machine gun in 1883 but production only began in 1887 after the design was refined; the guns were manufactured in .450 MH by Vickers. The UK government purchased three for evaluation. It was formally adopted in 1889 in both the .450 black powder chambering and the new smokeless powder .303 round. Large scale deployment began in 1891 and the first use was (of .450 versions) in 1893 in Rhodesia. Oficially the .450 versions were withdrawn when the .303 cartridge was fully standardised in 1897 though the guns served for many years later. On the subject of the reliability of black powder machine guns, the main problems were:
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10th February 2013, 01:08 PM | #221 |
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Yes, they did adopt machine guns including the Gatling used at Ulundi but they did not adopt the mitrailleuse in the specific sense of the 1870 to 1871 war which is what Travers is quite specifically referring to in his book and neither did anyone else because the mitrailleuse in the specific sense of the 1870 to 1871 war was fundamentally a piece of garbage according to absolutely everyone including the French. |
10th February 2013, 07:27 PM | #222 |
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Moreover the adoption of these early hand operated pre-Maxim guns invalidates the idea that the British Army didn't adopt machine guns. They already had early types in service before the Maxim came along. Only like everyone else, they eschewed the useless Mitrailleuse.
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11th February 2013, 05:57 AM | #223 |
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It's amazing what mental editing can occur over time...
I read Pakenham prior to this book, and have undoubtedly edited out the earlier chapter based on that, ie how they were used in the Boer War. It has stuck in my head pretty much solely as - Maxims and the like were considered bulky, poorly handled (controlled as they were by the RA) and seemed to be ineffective. This resulted in the reduced enthusiasm for them in the British Army by 1914, compared with Germany and France. It also tied in with the improved marksmanship brought about by the poor performance by the infantry in SA. The later stuff on tactical changes during the war, as with the Boer War stuff, tied in with what I already knew, so didn't really consider the earlier parts as overly suspicious. |
12th February 2013, 05:07 AM | #224 |
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1. The term "Mitrailleuse" has been used in several contexts, a generic term for a manually operated machine gun, a specific term for fixed multi-barrel automatic weapons (of several types manufactured from ~1850 and serving in various wars, including the ACW) and an even more generic term for any automatic weapon in French. It's even been used as a term for rapid firing revolvers.
2. I haven't read Travers book so I was speaking generically. 3. The poor performance of the mitrailleuses during the Franco-Prussian war has been disputed (e.g. Willbanks). When employed with proper doctrine they proved quite effective (as did the Gatling guns in French service); when used as the field artillery they resembled they suffered badly. Despite the claims of them being "garbage" they remained in French, Belgian and Dutch service after the FPW; the Reffye remaining in use in France until 1908 in some cases. 4. Mitrailleuses were rendered obsolete by metallic cartridge weapons such as the Gatling, Nordenfelt et cetera. Those were in turn replaced by automatic designs such as the Maxim. |
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As human right is always something given, it always in reality reduces to the right which men give, "concede," to each other. If the right to existence is conceded to new-born children, then they have the right; if it is not conceded to them, as was the case among the Spartans and ancient Romans, then they do not have it. For only society can give or concede it to them; they themselves cannot take it, or give it to themselves. |
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12th February 2013, 05:44 AM | #225 |
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Also strange that the otherwise excellent French Chassepot rifle, adopted in 1866, was designed to use combustible paper rather metal cartridges, though the latter were in common use elsewhere by that time.
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13th February 2013, 04:34 AM | #226 |
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Bertrand Russell once wrote about what may be called a shifted 19th cy.: 1814 - 1914, and Eric Hobsbawm himself once wrote about a short 20th cy.: 1914 - 1991, ending when the Soviet Union broke apart.
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Even in the first years of that war, President Woodrow Wilson did not seem inclined to change that policy. When the Germans sunk the ocean liner Lusitania on May 7, 1915, WW proclaimed that Americans are "too proud to fight" (Wilson's "Too Proud to Fight" Speech » The Lusitania Resource has the full text):
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13th February 2013, 06:54 AM | #227 |
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As human right is always something given, it always in reality reduces to the right which men give, "concede," to each other. If the right to existence is conceded to new-born children, then they have the right; if it is not conceded to them, as was the case among the Spartans and ancient Romans, then they do not have it. For only society can give or concede it to them; they themselves cannot take it, or give it to themselves. |
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14th February 2013, 12:51 PM | #228 |
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But the Prussian Artillery was much better then the French Artillery in 1870.
All in all it was pretty much a draw as far as hardware goes between France and Prussia. The Prussians won because of much better leadership,tactics,and doctrine. The French "Plan D" (We Will Muddle Through Somehow) finally caught up with them in 1870. |
14th February 2013, 01:10 PM | #229 |
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Could the French operations in August and September 1914, from the start of hostilities up to the Battle of the Marne, be characterised in that way? If so, the "Plan" worked better on that occasion, as the German scheme to knock France out of the war in a few weeks was decisively checked.
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14th February 2013, 01:12 PM | #230 |
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14th February 2013, 01:34 PM | #231 |
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14th February 2013, 04:08 PM | #232 |
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And the French were helped by the huge German mistake of deaprting from the Scheffelin plan and making the final wheeling maneuveur EAST (in front of) Paris instead of WEST (behind) Paris. Perhaps the single greatest military mistake by any side of the war.
In fact, the reaction to the German Turn by the French was delayed because the French Military had trouble believing that the Germans would make a mistake that big,and that the turn to the East was just a diversion. |
14th February 2013, 04:11 PM | #233 |
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Actually the US Army was using Springfield model 1861's Converted to Breech loaders. They were a rough Enfield equivilent,but not Enfields.
The US Army did buy and use quite a few Enfiled Muzzle loaders in the Civil War because they could not make Springfield's fast enough, but none were converted to breech loaders after the war. |
14th February 2013, 07:01 PM | #234 |
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Yeah, I never understood why it was "Plan 17". From my GCSE History education I learnt that Plan 17 was "everybody charge full-pelt at the enemy as fast as you can". I would have thought that would have been "Plan 1" which would have been tossed in the bin the first time someone said "machine gun", but I could be oversimplifying things a tad.
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14th February 2013, 09:46 PM | #235 |
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I was under the impression that the whole "charge the enemy and hope that elan trumps machine guns" tactic stemmed from the French defeat in the Franco-Prussian war. The French high command decided that their failure in that war was due to having abandoned the true Napoleonic way (elan, audacity, aggression!) and acting with vacillating timidity and hesitation. (And then that reading was reinforced by the success of the Japanese frontal attacks on Russian positions in the Russo-Japanese war of 1905).
I do wonder what the discarded plans 1 through 16 were like... could they possibly have been even worse? |
14th February 2013, 10:28 PM | #236 |
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The Germans' plan was the Schlieffen Plan. It was intended to be a knockout blow to France, followed by Germany fighting Russia. But for reasons described here and elsewhere, the Germans did not quite achieve a knockout success, conquering France before it could become fully mobilized.
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15th February 2013, 01:19 AM | #237 |
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The plans were modified/discarded when circumstances between the two nation changed or when technology changed (moving by trains, using reserves instead of only the active army and such).
Plan XV was defensive in nature. Plan XVI recognized the 'open door' that was Belgium. The great fault of Plan XVII was that it was not a real plan at all. It only described which units had to concentrate at which point on the borders, but said nothing at all what their mission would be. The only one who knew what to do when the armies of France were concentrated was Joffre (possibly with Thouzelier). That made the plan very 'flexible' (what Joffre used to sell the plan) and if it had to be changed due to circumstances Joffre could always say things still were going to plan. :-) Unfortunately the genrals in the armies didn't know what their mission would be. Where to go, or how far to go. When Joffre unleashed the Armies of France he only told them 'Attack in that direction'. No further directions about targets which had to be reached by a certain date (so as not lose contact with the neighbouring armies, or so as to use the available supplies as efficient as possible). Just attack. For planning the opening battle of the Great War Joffre was the worst of the possible generals that France had. And it showed. When things went pear-shaped (as they soon did) Joffre, of all the possible generals that could have been put in his position by the start of the war, was the only one though who could keep his cool and save the armies and France. |
15th February 2013, 02:41 AM | #238 |
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Are you sure? The Dreyse bullets had a sabot, and the Carcano ammunition some kind of obturation disc made of oiled felt. But I don't think the Chassepot cartridges used this. There was an obturation ring made of rubber behind the firing pin in the breech, to seal it against escaping gas when the rifle was discharged.
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15th February 2013, 02:53 AM | #239 |
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It's debatable whether continuing West would have helped the Germans, though. Communications between the armies was breaking down long before von Kluck made his wheel to the east of Paris. Quicker Russian mobilisation in the east, Ruprecht buggering things up in Lorraine, and supply and communication problems (the same sort of supply and communication problems that were to plague offensives throughout the war) really don't bode well for a successful sweep around Paris.
Had Kluck swept West he would have left an even bigger gap between him and von Bulow. Remember, it was this gap that was the chief cause of the German defeat at the Marne. Had that gap been bigger and, considering supply was breaking down, it is quite possible he would have been annihilated. |
16th February 2013, 07:13 AM | #240 |
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One of the factors that lead the French to emphasise artillery development after the FPW.
And the UK converted their Enfields in a similar way, though retaining the .577 calibre, using the Snider system. Yes IIRC the Chassepot used a rubber obdurator, the earlier Delvigne system used a wooden sabot. |
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As human right is always something given, it always in reality reduces to the right which men give, "concede," to each other. If the right to existence is conceded to new-born children, then they have the right; if it is not conceded to them, as was the case among the Spartans and ancient Romans, then they do not have it. For only society can give or concede it to them; they themselves cannot take it, or give it to themselves. |
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