Ten myths on WWI - debunked

[The Don]

When comparing battle statistics and casualties, it could be of relevance to note that this war at the time had one of the highest casualty rates from actual fighting compared to disease. Not only was the casualty rate much higher than most previous wars (Tai Ping Rebellion, An Lushan Rebellion, Combined total of Napoleonic Wars as possible exceptions), but far more of these died in the actual fighting.

Although I don't think anyone is really trying to argue that the fighting wasn't horrendous, on both the Western Front and the oft overlooked Eastern front, Its hard to know what perspective this list is trying to portray.

Or indeed the battle between Italy and Austro-Hungary where IIRC the casualty rates were higher than on the Western front.

 

[sarge]

Short answer: Not really.

Long answer: it depends on exactly when you are talking about in each WW. For the purpose of comparing 1916 to 1944, they would be similar (the WW1 division would have 12 infantry battalions as opposed to 9 in the WW2, but the WW2 division would have some extra stuff to make up the numbers in other areas).

(So, roughly the same for comparative purposes).

You are probably correct for British Infantry Divisions. That kind of comparison wouldn't work for US divisions, however. By way of comparison, I can recall a time when we gained 2 brigades, lost 3 infantry battalions, and had a net increase in divisional strength of almost 20%!

Your information makes sense, however. During WWI especially, Infantry divisions were more "pure" than they have been since.

 

[lobosrul]

Indeed. In fact, if you compare the deaths per division per week, between the Somme (generally seen as a bloody massacre of British troops) and the Normandy campaign (generally seen as a triumph):

The Somme:
Number of weeks 20.5
British divisions engaged: 53
Total dead: 95,000
Dead per division per week: 89

Normandy:
Number of weeks 11.5
British divisions engaged: 19
Total dead: 22,000
Dead per division per week: 100

Of course, there were a greater number, as opposed to rate, of casualualties in WW1... but that happens when you have a bigger army fighting for a more prolonged period of time... which happens when you (and the French) have to do the hard job of breaking the bulk of the German Army instead of having most of the work done by the Russians (which was the case in WW2). (In WW1 the proportion of the German Army assigned to the Western Front was typically 2/3rds to 90%).

You're calculating casualties for nearly half a year over a very wide front. Its not as if men were going "over the top" en masse every single day. The British suffered a staggering 19,240 KIA in the FIRST DAY of the Battle of Somme. Compare that to about 1,900 British & Canadian casualties on D-day (and that's the recently revised higher number).

Now, on the OTOH, and after reading a few books, it became clear to me that we (at least in the US) have a a bit of a romanticized view of the fighting in Western Europe and Africa during WW2, and think of WW1 as a meat grinder. You can look at the number of US KIA (~400,000) out of a total mobilization of ~16,000,000 and calculate only 2.5% died in combat, and then rationalize that it wasn't too bad after all. Unless perhaps you were unlucky enough to be at Omaha beach on D-day, or at The Battle of the Bulge. But the figures are very much skewed by the large number of men "in the rear with the gear" or mobilized and never even sent overseas. Those actually at the front, in a rifle company had it much much worse. In fact there were several entire US divisions that suffered over 100% casualties over the course of the war.

 

[Nessie]

I look this photo a number of years ago at the War memorial in Canberra. Compare the Turkish casualties with the sum of the rest. Lucky for us the Turkish did not send troops to fight in France.

[qimg]https://lh6.googleusercontent.com/-xfZiJXJZOmM/UuDV3gtDjII/AAAAAAAAHXM/0QKlHyTOrnM/s640/d060710-quest%2520-%2520war%2520momorial%2520%252836%2529.JPG[/qimg]

The Gallipoli myth is the one I really did not know about. I did enough history of WWI and had this chap as a tutor at university

http://www.amazon.com/First-World-Twentieth-Century-Palgrave-Paperback/dp/0333745353

with his interest in the War to have knowledge of the rest. That is why the article caught my eye.

 

[lobosrul]

You are probably correct for British Infantry Divisions. That kind of comparison wouldn't work for US divisions, however. By way of comparison, I can recall a time when we gained 2 brigades, lost 3 infantry battalions, and had a net increase in divisional strength of almost 20%!

Your information makes sense, however. During WWI especially, Infantry divisions were more "pure" than they have been since.

Its my understanding that US Infantry divisions during WW2 were, on paper, supposed to be exactly the same as each other (of course when in combat they were always under strength). 3 infantry regiments: each of 3 infantry battalions (each of 3 rifles companies + 1 heavy weapons company) + a small arty battery + an AT company. Plus various support units at various levels.

However, British and commonwealth divisions were less homogeneous, and built around brigades, which we didn't use back then.

See: http://www.bayonetstrength.150m.com/UnitedStates/united_states_army.htm for example.

 

[Border Reiver]

Its my understanding that US Infantry divisions during WW2 were, on paper, supposed to be exactly the same as each other (of course when in combat they were always under strength). 3 infantry regiments: each of 3 infantry battalions (each of 3 rifles companies + 1 heavy weapons company) + a small arty battery + an AT company. Plus various support units at various levels.

However, British and commonwealth divisions were less homogeneous, and built around brigades, which we didn't use back then.

See: http://www.bayonetstrength.150m.com/UnitedStates/united_states_army.htm for example.

Canadian Infantry divisions in WWII consisted of:

3 Infantry Brigades, Divisional Artillery (a medium regiment, with additional survey and target acquisition elements), Divisional Logisitic elements (fairly fluid in number, Military Police units (about a company or more), a Field Hospital, and Engineering regiment.

Infantry Brigades would have 3 infantry battalions (same basic structure as a US battalion - 3 rifle companies and a heavy weapons company), a field artillery unit, an antitank artillery battery, an engineering regiment, a service battalion and a tank regiment

 

[KDLarsen]

Well, the same two territories were taken back from Germany with Versailles, plus territories it held in the north were granted to Denmark who didn't even fight in the war, plus it lost territories to Poland, plus all colonies.

The territority granted to Denmark had been taken by Prussia in the war of 1864, and was only returned after a referendum had been held in the area to determine where the populace was overwhelmingly in favour of doing so. The vast majority of Schleswig-Holstein remained Germany territory.

Edit: And the referendum had been promised in the Peace of Prague in 1866 by Prussia/Germany, but it was never held.

 

[sarge]

Its my understanding that US Infantry divisions during WW2 were, on paper, supposed to be exactly the same as each other (of course when in combat they were always under strength). 3 infantry regiments: each of 3 infantry battalions (each of 3 rifles companies + 1 heavy weapons company) + a small arty battery + an AT company. Plus various support units at various levels.

However, British and commonwealth divisions were less homogeneous, and built around brigades, which we didn't use back then.

See: http://www.bayonetstrength.150m.com/UnitedStates/united_states_army.htm for example.

Not exactly, but fundamentaly correct. The US Infantry divisons for most of WWII were three infantry regiments as described (these included organic artillery, anti-tank, engineer, and military police forces), plus an engineer battalion, an artillery regiment (three arty battalions), a medical battalion, a reconissiance squadron, etc. And the band, of course. Total strength was over 14,000 men - although as you say they were very seldom full strength.

 

[sarge]

Canadian Infantry divisions in WWII consisted of:

3 Infantry Brigades, Divisional Artillery (a medium regiment, with additional survey and target acquisition elements), Divisional Logisitic elements (fairly fluid in number, Military Police units (about a company or more), a Field Hospital, and Engineering regiment.

Infantry Brigades would have 3 infantry battalions (same basic structure as a US battalion - 3 rifle companies and a heavy weapons company), a field artillery unit, an antitank artillery battery, an engineering regiment, a service battalion and a tank regiment

Really? Your Infantry Brigades had full tank and engineer regiments?

 

[Corsair 115]

So no myths about the aerial part of WWI?

(In terms of casualties, Bloody April was pretty tough on the Royal Flying Corps.)

 

[ddt]

I red the actual article, and found this rather cynical, under point 9:

The treaty was notably less harsh than treaties that ended the 1870-71 Franco-Prussian War and World War Two. The German victors in the former annexed large chunks of two rich French provinces, part of France for between 2-300 years, and home to most of French iron ore production, as well as presenting France with a massive bill for immediate payment.

Well, the same two territories were taken back from Germany with Versailles, plus territories it held in the north were granted to Denmark who didn't even fight in the war, plus it lost territories to Poland, plus all colonies.

Cynical is the only way to describe it, really.

McHrozni

Treaties like Versailles and the one at the end of the Franco-Prussian War were the usual way of settling wars and who had won and lost.

And the reparations required of France in 1871 were in its turn based on the conditions of the Treaty of Tilsit in 1807.

Exactly. Furthermore, the reparations were limited by "how much Germany could pay", indicating they amounted to everything Germany could pay, and a harsher reparation was as such impossible.

Germany lost approximately 11% of it's population due to territorial changes alone, excluding the colonies. That's comparable to US loosing California today. I certainly would call this harsh.

McHrozni

And have you compared that with the territorial changes due to Tilsit, or due to Versailles in 1871? The harshness of the 1919 Versailles treaty is rather overblown, IMHO, and especially the harping of the German nationalists over the so-called "guilt clause" is really dishonest. The same clause was present in the treaties with Austria, Hungary, Turkey and Bulgaria.

And Although not as a direct result of that treaty, more due to Germany's defaults on payments, Belgium and France ended up annexing the Ruhr, Germany's major industrial area (Which I guess also puts further question on the claim 'much of the reparations went unenforced')

Germany frustrated the payment of reparations and the government willfully chose to have hyperinflation rather than pony up.

This also ties in with the previous point, number 8. From the article:

The 11 November Armistice was essentially a German surrender.

Unlike Hitler in 1945, the German government did not insist on a hopeless, pointless struggle until the allies were in Berlin - a decision that saved countless lives, but was seized upon later to claim Germany never really lost.

Not "later". It was the social-democratic first president Friedrich Ebert who greeted the returning troops as "soldiers who had not been defeated in the field". With that, he ironically also contributed greatly to the stab-in-the-back legend. I think the two capital failures the allies made in 1918 were (a) to let civilians sign the Armistice instead of the generals, and (b) not to march French, British, US, etc. troops through the Brandenburg Gate and over the Unter den Linden.

 

[Ts4EVER]

I recently read a paper that argued quite eloquently that our perception of WW1 as static trench warfare and stalemate is skewed by the Western Front. According to this theory, the war on the Eastern front and the colonies was a classic maneuver war, where cavalry had a high value to exploit breakthroughs and destroy routed forces.
The paper goes on to say that the Western front was the exception rather than the rule and came about after the failure of Germany to prevent two-front warfare, causing them to adopt an almost purely defensive stand. It is notable that after Russia dropped out of the war, the Germans were able to break through the western front and reestablish maneuver warfare almost instantly, actually advancing further than in 1914.
If you look at the Spanish civil war and the Polish-Soviet war, you see almost no trench warfare and especially in Poland battles were decided by cavalry maneuvres and encirclements.
Only in WW2 cavalry was replaced by tanks as the decisive maneuvre element and part of the bad performance of the western allies in 1940 was their experience of western front trench warfare, which was shown to be obsolete.

 

[Giz]

It is notable that after Russia dropped out of the war, the Germans were able to break through the western front and reestablish maneuver warfare almost instantly, actually advancing further than in 1914.
.

By the standards of 1915-17, the German advances in early 1918 were impressive. by most normal standards... it wasn't much of an advance. And achieved at terrible cost.

Also, the advances were not won so much by maneuver as by an avalanche of raw force: the initial attacks of Operation Michael on March 21, 1918, involved the biggest/most concentrated barrage of the war (3.5 million shells in 5 hours) followed by 47 "mobile" divisions attacking 14 "new army" divisions. Victory by assembling superior firepower - not through mobility... and they were unable to exploit it.

 

[McHrozni]

No, the Taiping Rebellion was almost certainly worse, and the Mongol Conquests may have been too.

We can argue about that, see below, but the post you quoted was about peace treaties, not about wars. Yes, I know I wrote "war" where I should've written "treaty" or something to that effect, I apologize

With the Taiping Rebellion the death tolls are almost impossible to calculate above a certain number, although it seems to be agreed that an absolute minimum of 20,000,0000 people were killed, with some estimates going to 100,000,000!

I find it difficult to believe that a rebellion of a kingdom with a population of 30 million led to 100 million war deaths. The total Chinese population just before the rebellion is estimated to 430 million people, so nearly a quarter of population would have to be wiped out. By comparison, Poland, being overrun once by the Nazis and once (well, one and a half times really) by the Soviets, plus the Final solution, lost 'only' 15-17% of it's population. Okay, the rebellion lasted longer, but the difference is still a tad too great to be believable.

The upper end estimates are certainly out of whack, the low end estimate is probably much better (the number could be greater, but substantially closer to 20 million than to 100 million), but counts excess deaths in as well as war dead - and by that standard we must count the Spanish flu epidemic to WW1 as well at very least. One big difference is that the rebellion involved genocide, which partially explains the relatively huge number the low end estimate already is.

And have you compared that with the territorial changes due to Tilsit, or due to Versailles in 1871? The harshness of the 1919 Versailles treaty is rather overblown, IMHO, and especially the harping of the German nationalists over the so-called "guilt clause" is really dishonest. The same clause was present in the treaties with Austria, Hungary, Turkey and Bulgaria.

Yes, I have explicitly compared it to Versailes in 1871. I found the 1919 treaty notably worse, though one could argue it wasn't extreme.

Arguably, Tilsit was worse, but it took lands from a German king and gave it to other nobles (some German, some not, some kings, some dukes, etc). I can't say how comparable that is to taking land from one nation-state and giving it to another nation-state.

McHrozni

 

[McHrozni]

I recently read a paper that argued quite eloquently that our perception of WW1 as static trench warfare and stalemate is skewed by the Western Front. According to this theory, the war on the Eastern front and the colonies was a classic maneuver war, where cavalry had a high value to exploit breakthroughs and destroy routed forces.
The paper goes on to say that the Western front was the exception rather than the rule and came about after the failure of Germany to prevent two-front warfare, causing them to adopt an almost purely defensive stand. It is notable that after Russia dropped out of the war, the Germans were able to break through the western front and reestablish maneuver warfare almost instantly, actually advancing further than in 1914.
If you look at the Spanish civil war and the Polish-Soviet war, you see almost no trench warfare and especially in Poland battles were decided by cavalry maneuvres and encirclements.
Only in WW2 cavalry was replaced by tanks as the decisive maneuvre element and part of the bad performance of the western allies in 1940 was their experience of western front trench warfare, which was shown to be obsolete.

Isonzo front, Solun (Thessalia) front and Galipoli campaign were pretty much trench fronts as well, although Germany wasn't the main participant in them. What we certainly forget is that Germany was just one of the central powers involved.

One could say that WW1 was fought in trenchers and in maneuver, depending on the area in question.

McHrozni

 

[Border Reiver]

Really? Your Infantry Brigades had full tank and engineer regiments?

In the Commonwealth forces, a tank or engineer regiment is about the same size as an infantry battalion.

 

[sarge]

In the Commonwealth forces, a tank or engineer regiment is about the same size as an infantry battalion.

Ah. Makes more sense. What works, works - so our order of battle is more alike than different most often.

 

[Border Reiver]

Ah. Makes more sense. What works, works - so our order of battle is more alike than different most often.

Our divisions, at least here in Canada, were wartime creations only up until less than I year ago. The Canadians, in the fine British military tradition of "make it up as you go along" for anything beyond the battalion/regiment level, stood down the divisions at the end of WWII (which of course meant they didn't need to have the expense of divisional staffs, div arty, etc) in favour of the locally based "militia districts" and initially 4 (now 3 with our pull back from Germany) regular force brigades (one in Quebec that is French first language and two for the rest of the country). It allows for flexibility, but reduces effectiveness at higher level work - although to be fair, we haven't fielded anything larger than a brigade in an operational setting since WWII.

The lack of higher command though has hampered our ability to contribute to coalitions - in WWI and WWII, practically none of our higher commanders had lead formations larger than battalion during peacetime (a couple had lead brigades), which meant that the complexities of fighting with larger formations needed to be learned on the fly, which hampered their effectiveness and is the reason why it took at least three years for quality corps commanders to develop (Curry in the first go round and Simmons for WWII).

 

[catsmate]

I recently read a paper that argued quite eloquently that our perception of WW1 as static trench warfare and stalemate is skewed by the Western Front. According to this theory, the war on the Eastern front and the colonies was a classic maneuver war, where cavalry had a high value to exploit breakthroughs and destroy routed forces..

True, Allenby's campaigh is a good example of well conducted maneuver warfare too.

The paper goes on to say that the Western front was the exception rather than the rule and came about after the failure of Germany to prevent two-front warfare, causing them to adopt an almost purely defensive stand..

Also the volume of soldiers, both those who served and the casualties, on the Western Front, especially in Britain. Though it became part of the National Myth.

If you look at the Spanish civil war and the Polish-Soviet war, you see almost no trench warfare and especially in Poland battles were decided by cavalry maneuvres and encirclements..

I believe a lot of that was down to the space involved compared to the available troops.

Only in WW2 cavalry was replaced by tanks as the decisive maneuvre element and part of the bad performance of the western allies in 1940 was their experience of western front trench warfare, which was shown to be obsolete.

True. A study of French plans is particularly interesting to compare with the 1940 campaign.

The Taiping Rebellion thing has long been a favorite of mine to bring up when historical non-facts are put forth in conversation. Regardless if Taiping or WWI had the marginally higher death toll, the fact is that large scale warfare and suffering were not purely Western burdens. The Taiping Rebellion, too, helps when I try to talk to people (lately mainly my nearly-grown children) about the importance of context..

Very true, I've raised it a few time here and in meatspace and few people understand it.

It always reminds me somewhat of the disconnect between the Western perception of the Soviet Union during the Cold War and the reality; it was difficult to understand quite how hugely the Great Patriotic War loomed in Soviet minds and how this effected their policies.

Yeah, but that is more or less true, yeah?

Meh, there was a lot of stupidity and incompetence to go around. That said WW1 was just different to the wars previously fought by most participants; only in parts of the ACW were their direct comparisons.

Interestingly I was taught something similar in school in England(!) and was only contradicted a few years later by some Australians who told me that more British soldiers got killed at Gallipoli.

I tend to remind people about the Toughs and the Toffs.

Here in Osaka, there is an Australian chef who puts on an Anzac Day meal which is roast kangaroo, crocodile, lamb and Turkish food. I went there and asked where the British beef was if we were celebrating Gallipoli, although this year I'll have to ask him about escargot as well.

And Dublin coddle.

 

[a_unique_person]

Do you mean:



If so, then unfortunately, I must disagree with you. Regrettably, despite studying it as part of history lessons on-and-off for a few years at school, a dismayingly large number of Australians think that the Gallipoli campaign was exclusively waged by the ANZACS (Australia New Zealand Army Corps) against the Turks.

I'm Australian myself and I've actually had arguments (thankfully only verbal, not physical) when I've mentioned in conversation to other Australians that along with the ANZACS at Gallipoli Cove, there were large numbers of British and French troops, along with Indian and Canadian troops. I've been told flat out that I'm wrong and that there were only ANZACS there and that I'm full of rubbish.

It is certainly the impression you get from the Australian history I was taught. Paul Keating was correct to question the mythology that has been created about Gallipoli.

It must also be strange for Turks, who lost more people during that campaign, to have all these Australians turning up treating it like it is their sacred ground.