In it’s day, it was very effective. Not everyone in no-man’s land was injured or killed by artillery or machinguns. The entrenched riflemen took out quite a few.
Your point about massed infantry charges in the face of dug in and prepared infantry with supporting arms has been true since at least Bannockburn.
I totally agree with you that the senior command were fighting the previous war, but that is almost always the case.
I don’t think those tanks accomplished much of anything in 1918. We’re familiar with victory narratives in today’s politics, we can apply it to history too.
I’ve been inside a Mark V WW1 tank. The engine stack vents inside the tank. I don’t see how those were effective weapons 30 minutes after they started driving.
He had to make the turn: to do otherwise was to leave a large, well-disciplined and well-armed French Army loose in the wild. And for what, Paris? Joffre was not going to charge in and save Paris, and I don’t see von Kluck getting himself bogged down with the care and feeding of a major metropolis when the war hadn’t been won–and let’s not forget that the Commune was within living memory (i.e., Parisians have a long and bloody history of civil unrest. When the barricades go up, leave as quickly as possible via the nearest exit). Add to that that General Gallieni, the military governor of Paris, had been readying the city for a siege, and you have a situation ripe for disaster. Best to chase down a retreating and presumably disheartened French Army and finish it off before taking Paris, no?
The Battle of the Marne was singular. Von Kluck later said something to the effect that the Military College had never covered the possibility that an army routed and in retreat could ever regroup and launch such a ferocious attack, so he was leading his troops into an entirely unexpected situation–up to and including the little Taxis of the Marne bringing in fresh troops from Paris.
I love me some Taxis of the Marne, I will not lie…
I do understand that it was the starvation back home that final broke the German will to resist, and the tactics the Allies came up with for their tanks were not the successful ones developed for WWII, but Cambrai showed the Old School Generals that there was something better to throw at the machineguns than human flesh, tanks like the Whippet hinted at the value of tactical mobility and by the 1918 Battle of Soissons the Allies managed to put almost 500 tanks into action supporting the infantry attacks.
The Allies’ biggest mistake was probably attaching their tanks too closely to their infantry, but at least they were innovating and trying new things. The same weapons were being used in new ways, and the next generation would leverage this to Blitzkrieg and eventually full-blown combined arms operations, with air, armor and infantry working together and a full supply chain to feed them all, so I give those early armoured pioneers some credit for getting the ball rolling.
I have huge respect for your uncle’s service and the damage he took. That I criticize the conduct how any particular battle happened has nothing to do with the valour of those involved.
Ehhhhhhhh…? WWI used a lot of literal horse-power: it weren’t little Model As hauling around those 75mm cannons. Cars were only good for paved roads, and there were not a lot of those in 1914. Also, wouldn’t different rail gauges work both ways? If the Germans couldn’t use the French railways, that would mean that the French, in return, couldn’t use theirs. So, it doesn’t strike me as any real shortsightedness on their part, since the French would have been faced with the exact same problem if they had done what Foch wanted and marched to Berlin in 1918–something, something, the best offense is a good defense?
I will have to disagree here. The WWI tanks were all anti-infantry systems designed and intended to break out of static trenches and open the war up to maneuver. The best way to do this is for dismounted infantry to follow closely behind the tanks, a tactic that was used to good effect as recently as the Vietnam War. Today, a tank-infantry team has all of it’s infantry behind tracked armor. That doesn’t mean the tactic is no longer useful because not all infantry is mechanized. There is still a place on the battlefield for light infantry.
There were no opposing tanks, so anti-tank operations made no sense.
Absolutely understood, no criticism detected or implied and I’ve quite enjoyed this exchange. My family served in both wars in both the US and Australian armies, grandfather, uncle, dad and mom so the history of the wars was an integral part of my youth. Dad served in New Guinea and always spoke derisively of “Dugout Doug” MacArthur and uncle Albert served as the perfect symbol of what Haig did at the Somme (and yes, Churchill at Gallipoli). You can love the sacrifice, and the technology, and still acknowledge that Generals were collectively just privileged upper class twits who had absolutely no idea what they were doing. It led to the destruction of so many of the established governments, and laid the foundation for Hitler and Stalin, but my parents’ generation did eventually “save the world”. Pity so many of my generation turned out to be so selfish and squandered the gifts that were left to us. I’m hoping that my kids and their generation learn something from us about how not to do it again. Judging from the early voting numbers I’m seeing, I’m starting to feel upbeat again for the first time since 2016…
True, but it wasn’t the French invading Germany, so the reverse case isn’t relevant.
Martin Van Creveld’s book “Supplying War” is the one we used in Officer Basic.
That is the british army system, up and through wwII. Keep trying them until you find one that can do the job. About one in four.
Oh, I agree and did praise the initial tactics as groundbreaking and there were apparently plans for more armoured initiatives scheduled for 1919 before the German collapse. I was referring more to the fact that because close infantry support was such a success from the start, some commanders at the start of WWII had not picked up on the fact that things had moved on.
From what I understand, French doctrine in particular suffered from this failing, as they assigned most of their numerically strong tanks across multiple infantry divisions, rather than grouping them as the Germans did into specific armoured units, thus sacrificing the inherit advantages of speed and mobility. It’s my understanding that DeGaulle, as the commander of a tank unit when WWII started, resisted this strategy but the fundamental national doctrine was stuck back in 1918. Lessons were learned and we did win, but it didn’t serve the French well in 1940…
Interesting take. However, much depends on doctrine, the intended tactical use of the tank, and whether one is preparing for defense or offense.
In the US system, we break the massed armored units down into combined arms teams of infantry and armor (a company team is the smallest formation, with either three infantry platoons and a tank platoon, or three tank platoons and an infantry platoon).
A group of nothing but tanks is at a serious disadvantage against dismounted infantry (today’s tanks are largely intended as anti-tank platforms, not infantry support platforms–that’s what the Bradley is for). So, breaking down armored formations to support defending infantry isn’t the worst option in the world, especially if high command is planning on a fairly static defense a la Maginot Line.
By the way, this has been a very interesting conversation for me. I’d forgotten I knew any of this stuff. I don’t use it anymore.
Again I agree completely. I was making my original comments from the perspective of the generals at the start of WWII not foreseeing that things had moved on from 1918, but your comment illustrated that things moved on from the early German successes with cutting the armour free to dash ahead. This worked against the “static” mindset of the French in 1940, but was found wanting on the Eastern front and of course by 1944-45 failed miserably in the Battle of the Bulge when the German armour failed to take Antwerp and good portion of it had to be abandoned when they ran out of gas.
What you describe as today’s doctrine makes perfect sense, but we also have the added concepts of taking control of the air, being able to resupply to a degree undreamed of a generation ago, heck we’re flying drones on the battlefield from Kansas! We’ve come a long way (in both technology and in this thread’s discussion! 
) from the bolt action rifle to tanks, Humvees and combined arms deployment.
And yeah, this has been fun. Vietnam ended before I turned 18, so I never went past my initial cadet corps experience, so a tip of the hat and a thank you to you and all the others for your service.
The Nazis did that, too. They used Stukas in close air support.
What I think we should all take away from this is that tanks, airplanes, artillery, and whatever else are just tools. Doctrine helps us minimize the amount of explanations we need to give to subordinate units for how we want to achieve something and concentrate more on what we want to achieve. But, we should never let doctrine become a strait jacket or a prison for our minds.
Yeah, the British have always had the advantage that the Royal Navy could pick them up and take them back until they found the one in four - worked at Dunkirk, worked in Greece, until eventually they got to Monty (not my favorite Allied General, but better than his predecessors and he did stop Rommel when none of his predecessors could figure it out).
Absolutely, and that brings us full circle to my original misunderstanding of @occamscoin 's point about the bolt action rifle. It’s just a tool, and in the right circumstances it can be incredibly effective. The Aussies held out at Tobruk for 241 days, but of course in addition to the Lee-Enfield rifle, they did have effective artillery and control of the port so could stay supplied while the Germans were stretched thin, as they were only just starting to learn about the limitations of the “dash out in front and the supply trucks and infantry can catch up later” approach.
And of course, the Germans also found that the Stukas were sitting ducks when they were sent into the Battle of Britain without fighter escort. It was all a vivid example of “Darwinian Selection” in action at an incredible pace.
I’ll close out the night with that famous line from “Band of Brothers” the one guy yelled at the German prisoner-of-war column as they marched past and he spotted the horse-drawn wagon - “WHAT. WERE. YOU. THINKING! You have horses! We have Ford, and General Motors!” To quote the old saw - “amateurs talk strategy, professionals talk logistics”.
And in there defense, the Germans did have more than just horses. Petroleum was an issue for them, but they did also have some weird wood gas powered trucks, just not enough of them to replace all the horses they had in service throughout the war… 
Which is what drove them to violate their treaty with the USSR by implementing Operation Barbarosa. The Nazis were desperate for petroleum products. It was just a matter of choosing how they wanted to lose.
Maybe your experience, mine however was the opposite.
Yes, we hit targets that were very close but we’d much rather hit them as they approached and assuming they had time. 300 to 400 meters was something we practiced on the range and in action over and over, none of this spray and pray but targeted shots. By the time they hit your 100 meters we were pulling out to our already prepared secondary positions for another 300 to 400 meter shoot. We were prepared to continue that all day if necessary, however, all but a very few engagements lasted beyond our second position. The other thing we trained daily on was not to try for a kill shot but rather to wound, the screaming and need to care for comrades was demoralizing and favored us. My unit spent 65 to 67 in-country practicing what I describe with every ambush we established. Were we successful 100%, never, but I truly believe of the 557 men I commanded not a one would have wanted it any other way.
Well done, sir. And well done to your men. Where in Vietnam did you get 400m shots? Were you defending a firebase?
Barbarossa was planned and intended from before their pre-war treaty with Russia, and was about Lebensraum and removing an enemy with a pre-emptive strike. They knew damned well it was just a matter of time before Stalin attacked, and they struck first. It might have gone better if they didn’t delay some crucial months bailing out Italy in their misadventures. As for oil, there was none to be had until they got into the caucasus. They prioritized moscow and leningrad over the push to the caucasus (over 1000 miles from the starting point), and never got that oil.