Posted on 10/14/2009 2:13:38 PM PDT by mojito
Many years ago, I went to the Central Lobby of the Houses of Parliament in London to keep an appointment with the almost picturesquely reactionary Conservative politician Alan Clark. He was the son of Kenneth (later Lord) Clark—the art historian and author of the Civilisation series—and the heir to Saltwood Castle, in Kent. He was also the author of a 1961 book, The Donkeys, which was a history of the British General Staff in the First World War. The title came from a famous comment that had supposedly been made at that epoch by a German military strategist. Told by the highly impressed Quartermaster General Ludendorff that “these British soldiers fight like lions,” General Max Hoffmann had responded: “Yes, but lions led by donkeys.”
Probably no historical image would be harder to dislodge from the collective memory than that of the teak-headed, red-faced, white-moustached general, his tactics derived from long-ago cavalry maneuvers, sitting in a château headquarters well behind the lines as he orders waves of infantry across minefields and through barbed wire, forcing them like the Light Brigade itself “into the jaws of death, into the mouth of hell,” and into the waiting German machine guns.
(Excerpt) Read more at theatlantic.com ...
Thanks for the tip.
I put myself firmly into the Terraine school of thought, and so suspect that I would largely agree with Hart as well. I will have to read his book.
That said, I snatch up every scrap of wartime verse that I can find, for those words capture so well my own experiences of infantry warfare from another era. War at the platoon and company level is a visceral and emotional experience that sears one’s soul whether it be at Agincourt or Khandahar.
Combat at the personal level is an entirely different experience than at the political or command level. They are different worlds. The tragedy of World War I was that technological advance of the machine gun had not yet been matched by the ability to mass through coordinated indirect fires and maneuver in order to counter the advantage of defenders with machine guns. But, everyone from Private to General worked to solve that problem and largely had done so by the time the Armistace came. World War II was an entirely different war because of what happened in France in 14-18.
The British, French, German, and even American leaders had their share of blunders, to be sure. I think that Terraine points out in considerable detail the lengths that the British Army went to avoid such blunders. Consider the alternative had Germany won.
Oh What a Lovely War is a great movie despite its stereotypic theme. Its available on DVD, and the songs can be viewed on You Tube - there are some good ones.
As much as I’d like to despise Hitchens completely, I must admit he has a well rounded intellect and his writing reflects it.
A bloody and wasteful war, that WWI.
The mindless viciousness of it all. Who’s idea was it to destroy Europe and kill the best of the world?
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Also, I highly recommend John Mosier's The Myth of the Great War: A New Military History of World War I....a 1961 book, The Donkeys, which was a history of the British General Staff in the First World War. The title came from a famous comment that had supposedly been made at that epoch by a German military strategist. Told by the highly impressed Quartermaster General Ludendorff that "these British soldiers fight like lions," General Max Hoffmann had responded: "Yes, but lions led by donkeys."Just adding to the catalog, not sending a general distribution. |
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You got that right. Glad to hear it's on DVD as I've been nursing an old Beta copy for years. BITING sarcasm.
I suspect one sleeper is They Wuz Only Playing Leapfrog as a not-so-veiled jibe as the homosexuality prevalent among the officers then.
Maggie Smith does a beautiful/cynical job of getting "the boys" to enlist in We Need Recruits.
And Joe Melia is the spooky "Photographer" who is always smiling/leering at the camera as the travesty of WWI plays out. Frigging outstanding film.
The best guy they had was Kitchener and he was past his prime too.
I always say thank the Lord for J.J. Pershing. He determined to have Americans fight as a unit not fed piecemeal into British and French units to be slaughtered.
All of the British Generals were Boer War leftovers. And while its possible to argue that one versus another might have been a better solution, I think that the difference would have been on the margins. Even von Hutier was not able to change the outcome.
All of the British Generals were Boer War leftovers. And while its possible to argue that one versus another might have been a better solution, I think that the difference would have been on the margins. Even von Hutier was not able to change the outcome.
Yes. (Twice).............;^)
Bump for reading later....
“Your fascist is a little middle-class creep who worries about his dividends and rents. The true National Socialist feels that the ruling class has a debt and a tie to the working class. We sent the British workers off to die en masse in the trenches along the Somme, and then we rewarded them with a slump and mass unemployment, and then that led to another war that gutted them again.”Too many Americans these days do not make the important distinctions between Socialism, Communism, Fascism, National Socialism, etc., and it makes it sound like we are just throwing out slurs. It also blurs the focus on important similarities, such as the eerie similarity of Bush/Obama's Corporatist bailouts of financial and large manufacturing sectors to Mussolini and FDR's.
Hart succeeds in showing how the gunners got steadily better (as did the guns).
And ammunition quality assurance/quality control.
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