How Hot is Ukraine Gonna Get?

[dan/california]

51 minutes ago, JonS said:

Some innovations worked better than others, some armies and some commanders were more innovative than others, but nobody was fighting in 1918 like they had been in 1914. (Except the US - starting later left them consistently behind the curve compared to their peers.)

But neither side ever really achieved an overwhelming advantage on the land battle field. Innovations by one party were copied by the other quickly enough blunt truly major advantage accumulating. The Germans gave up because of the aforementioned blockade, and the growing weight of U.S. resources meant all their trends were going the wrong way. Unlike WW2 they managed to accept reality and not completely bitter end the whole thing.

Again their are huge parallels with Ukraine today. Drone and counter drone technology is iterating at the speed of light. The Russians figured out a glide bomb they could actually produce in quantity. NATO feeds Ukraine new material, and new tech, but not faster than the Russians can adapt, mostly. So the meat grinder whines on with lines almost static, even as both sides innovate as fast as they can. We are still waiting for it to become unsustainable by one side or the other.

[JonS]

54 minutes ago, dan/california said:

But neither side ever really achieved an overwhelming advantage on the land battle field.

Yes, but also no.

Things went slow until they went fast - by the second half of 1918, and certainly from Sept onwards, the German field armies in the west were all-but in freefall. Because of all that innovation. Britain and France had achieved overwhelming advantage in the land battle.

It was still really costly^, of course, because peer-on-peer major conventional war always is.

^ Oct 18 was the 3rd bloodiest month for the British, after Jul 16 (Somme) and Mar 18 (Michael). It was also 4th bloodiest month for France after Aug and Sep 14 (Frontiers) and Sep 15 (Artois and Champagne)

Edited October 11 by JonS

[Battlefront.com]

2 hours ago, JonS said:

I'm pretty sure that is a gross misrepresentation of what he's saying.

AIUI: The various nations all went into WWI thinking they knew how to win, even though all recognised it would be bloody because they'd been paying attention. They were all wrong (except for the Royal Navy; they were on the money with the blockade) so they innovated the **** out of it to come up with new ways to win. Some innovations worked better than others, some armies and some commanders were more innovative than others, but nobody was fighting in 1918 like they had been in 1914. (Except the US - starting later left them consistently behind the curve compared to their peers.)

And I am saying that doesn't jibe with my understanding of WW1, granted it is less than my knowledge of WW2.  Those at the highest level, the ones that made the decision to go to war (which was not the military theorists), thought was the war would be short and favorable.  So much so that leaders were dividing up the spoils before the war proper even started IIRC.  No nation I know of thought "this is going to be long, costly, and extremely risky".

As for innovations after 1914, sure there were plenty of them.  The introduction of mass use of tanks, aircraft, and submarines being just the headliners.  I don't think there was as much innovation in the first year as the last year, but I'm sure there was some.  My impression is that earlier innovations were more along the lines of "let's try more of the same thing on a larger scale and see if that works" and the later ones more "none of that worked, so we need fresh ideas".

Either way, this whole discussion was originally focused on nations going into a war ill prepared for it despite having the information necessary to know how to be better prepared.  The gap between knowledge and implementation being (roughly) chalked up to institutional reluctance of change.

Steve

[MikeyD]

WW1 had been preceded by the Franco Prussian war some 42 years earlier. Much shorter duration, very much different results, and started for much the same reason that Putin started the Ukraine war - Ultra-nationalist fantasies of a unified mono-ethnic state. Putin was willing to put up with Franco-Prussian scale casualties if, in the end, he got a Franco-Prussian style victory. 

[chuckdyke]

Western European countries post 19th century were geared up to fight colonial wars. To go to war against a peer adversary came as a shock. The Dutch were typical, and they remained neutral during the Great War. So, once they were invaded in May 1940 it was against an army at least 30 years ahead of them with technology. It was a miracle it even lasted 5 days. The terrain was in their favor as it was in the German's favor during Market Garden. Russia and Ukraine we can only guess. It should be all over by now in favor of Russia but it is not. They are in a Defacto relationship with NATO, IMHO the cause of this war. They have all the right to seek membership but as long as this war last it is against the NATO protocol. 

[MikeyD]

NATO caused the war? Not the guy who had Poroshenko poisoned and invaded Ukraine twice?

[Battlefront.com]

6 minutes ago, MikeyD said:

NATO caused the war? Not the guy who had Poroshenko poisoned and invaded Ukraine twice?

Yushchenko was the guy poisoned

As for the NATO thing... debunked here more times than I can count.  The fact that Ukraine clearly didn't want to be a puppet state of the Kremlin was the real cause of the war.  Ukraine was not even remotely close to getting NATO membership anyway, further putting the "NATO was a factor" argument into the dumpster where it belongs.

Actually, the issue that really got things started in 2013 was not NATO membership, rather it was the Ukrainian population's desire to have a closer relationship with the EU and not get roped into Russia's self serving Customs Union scam.  Even that was just the tip of the iceberg, because even if Ukraine joined the Customs Union the exploitation and subjugation would absolutely not stopped there.

Steve

[ArmouredTopHat]

5 hours ago, JonS said:

I'm pretty sure that is a gross misrepresentation of what he's saying.

AIUI: The various nations all went into WWI thinking they knew how to win, even though all recognised it would be bloody because they'd been paying attention. They were all wrong (except for the Royal Navy; they were on the money with the blockade) so they innovated the **** out of it to come up with new ways to win. Some innovations worked better than others, some armies and some commanders were more innovative than others, but nobody was fighting in 1918 like they had been in 1914. (Except the US - starting later left them consistently behind the curve compared to their peers.)

This is pretty much exactly my point, thank you. 

The politicians planned / anticipated for a short, easy war (reflected in propaganda) but its evident based on the professional writings from officers that they were very much concerned it would quickly turn into 1905. Which it did. The conclusions officers made from all countries from 1905 were remarkably similar....and bleak. If militaries were writing about quick victories it was either propaganda or wishful thinking. Clearly this was reflected all the way to the top with the attempts to figure out how to fight such a brutal war...with varying success. 

To say that the western front militaries were 'resistant to change' at this point is also pretty silly given the evolution you saw in just a year within the respective militaries, to say nothing of the four years in general. The armies of 1918 had more in common with troops fighting in the second world war than they did with their peers in 1914 in many respects. (Having air support, tank support, complex artillery support ect) You typically fight a war intending to win it, and that means embracing required change to gain an edge. France, Britain and Germany were pretty quick in rethinking their approaches when it became clear in 1914 that the war was going to take some time to resolve. 

Generals in 1914 were given a task quite literally impossible to solve with the armies and technology they had at the time. It is foolish to suggest they really could of done any better outside of avoiding the war in the first place. (The only winning move is not to play and all that)

Edited October 11 by ArmouredTopHat

[Battlefront.com]

28 minutes ago, ArmouredTopHat said:

To say that the western front militaries were 'resistant to change' at this point is also pretty silly given the evolution you saw in just a year within the respective militaries, to say nothing of the four years in general. The armies of 1918 had more in common with troops fighting in the second world war than they did with their peers in 1914 in many respects. (Having air support, tank support, complex artillery support ect) You typically fight a war intending to win it, and that means embracing required change to gain an edge. France, Britain and Germany were pretty quick in rethinking their approaches when it became clear in 1914 that the war was going to take some time to resolve. 

Generals in 1914 were given a task quite literally impossible to solve with the armies and technology they had at the time. It is foolish to suggest they really could of done any better outside of avoiding the war in the first place. (The only winning move is not to play and all that)

You are trying to have your cake and eat it too.

"Generals in 1914 were given a task quite literally impossible to solve with the armies and technology they had at the time."

And then:

"To say that the western front militaries were 'resistant to change' at this point is also pretty silly given the evolution you saw in just a year within the respective militaries, to say nothing of the four years in general."

So what you are saying here is that prior to WW1 the military knew how to fix their problems but somehow didn't convince their political overseers to give them what they needed until AFTER the war started and it was clear they needed it.  Or are you saying the militaries didn't know how to fix their problems and failed to get their leaders to understand that going to war "as is" was a really bad idea? 

What I find "silly" is thinking that the disastrous outcomes on the battlefields of WW1 were part of some grand plan that worked pretty damned well.

Also... I love how you somehow seem to not understand that Humans have a pretty strong track record of screwing up and then working hard to unscrew themselves up.  Innovation due to necessity is standard, in fact.  But to hear you talk about it, you're saying that innovation is evidence of thinking ahead, not making up for the opposite.

By your logic the US was totally prepared for Afghanistan and Iraq because, after both went poorly, they improvised and improved.  They still lost one war and barely got out of losing the second, but hey... innovation is more important than success, so let's all focus on that instead of the epic screwups that required all that innovation in the first place.

Let's also not forget that all that innovation was not why WW1 ended.  It's because the nations expended all of their resources trying to find a solution and the Germans ran out of options to keep going before the Allies did.  Tanks and aircraft did not win the war for the Allies, an economic and social collapse in Germany did.

Steve

[holoween]

6 hours ago, MikeyD said:

WW1 had been preceded by the Franco Prussian war some 42 years earlier. Much shorter duration, very much different results, and started for much the same reason that Putin started the Ukraine war - Ultra-nationalist fantasies of a unified mono-ethnic state. Putin was willing to put up with Franco-Prussian scale casualties if, in the end, he got a Franco-Prussian style victory. 

You are aware that france declared war right?

[Butschi]

On the topic of development up to and during WW1 I suggest to take a look at @Hapless ' excellent The War Room Series.

... and then, maybe, to move on, here.

[Butschi]

A little closer to the topic at hand: short comment on why neutral fact checking doesn't work against Russian (and other) disinformation campaigns: (German title but English language)

The gist is that by fact checking alone you spread the disinformation to people who would otherwise not have seen it.

I've read and seen suggestions that neutral reporting and fact checking don't help several times now. The suggested solutions seems to be that journalists  need to take sides and provide their own narratives which are supposedly better because they are true.

Not sure I like where this is heading but is there a better solution?

[alison]

11 minutes ago, Butschi said:

A little closer to the topic at hand: short comment on why neutral fact checking doesn't work against Russian (and other) disinformation campaigns: (German title but English language)

The gist is that by fact checking alone you spread the disinformation to people who would otherwise not have seen it.

I've read and seen suggestions that neutral reporting and fact checking don't help several times now. The suggested solutions seems to be that journalists  need to take sides and provide their own narratives which are supposedly better because they are true.

Not sure I like where this is heading but is there a better solution?

A solution could start with regulating anything that calls itself "news". If you want to produce a publication/TV network/YouTube channel that's full of lies, go ahead, but it should be clearly marked as entertainment or opinion/editorial at best. That wouldn't stop people from getting exposed to the nonsense, but at least it would be clear what outlets people can expect to contain at least truthful (if selective) reporting. Way too long media outlets have been blurring the lines between actual reporting and opinion pieces/conspiratorial garbage and it's exactly that which gives the media a bad reputation, as those who aim to undermine it can then cherrypick outrageous soundbytes from the talking heads to make their point.

The other thing we need is better education. Civics would be helpful, but many countries already have that. I think what's needed is better training in how to consume media in the first place. There are a lot of very smart people who have bent themselves into pretzels believing very stupid stuff because they have marinated themselves in echo chambers of plausible-sounding sophistry, without stepping back to consider if all the the stuff they're fretting over actually is a good reflection of what is really happening in the world. That is to say, I think people's media diet should be balanced more toward consuming reporting of actual current events than the output of folks who make their money fear-mongering. But when someone inevitably does consume that stuff and starts getting scared, they should know how to check high quality data sources to see if the thing they're scared of is actually happening on a significant scale or just blown out of proportion to further someone's agenda (which in many cases is nothing more sinister than earning money). Of course that eventually leads into the problem of people not understanding big numbers and statistics, and that then becomes an educational tangent beyond what we can or should expect the average person to explore. If only people still trusted experts, eh? Sigh.

[The_Capt]

5 hours ago, Battlefront.com said:

Let's also not forget that all that innovation was not why WW1 ended.  It's because the nations expended all of their resources trying to find a solution and the Germans ran out of options to keep going before the Allies did.  Tanks and aircraft did not win the war for the Allies, an economic and social collapse in Germany did.

Exactly this. Trying to “upside” WW1 by pointing to all that nice innovation is pretty much a “Well besides that Mrs Lincoln, how was the play” type of thinking. Where almost all senior military and political leadership failed in WW1 is planning for an attritional war of exhaustion based on the principle of Defensive Primacy, before the war, not being forced into it in the middle of one.

Edited October 11 by The_Capt

[The_Capt]

2 hours ago, Butschi said:

A little closer to the topic at hand: short comment on why neutral fact checking doesn't work against Russian (and other) disinformation campaigns: (German title but English language)

The gist is that by fact checking alone you spread the disinformation to people who would otherwise not have seen it.

I've read and seen suggestions that neutral reporting and fact checking don't help several times now. The suggested solutions seems to be that journalists  need to take sides and provide their own narratives which are supposedly better because they are true.

Not sure I like where this is heading but is there a better solution?

I am not sure this is a case for no longer fact checking. It is a case for how facts are presented. If you repeat the lie you are checking up on, of course it will spread disinformation. What you could do is simply present the facts as they are around a subject and stop attacking the lie directly. 

Of course we live in an era of on-menu truth. What do you want to believe? Ok, here are a bunch of “facts”. Neutral analysis and assessment based on neutral facts is what is dying. Largely because people have access to the “facts” and no longer need experts to do the analysis for them. Expertise has become collectivized - a community now provides the expert analysis and assessment. 

Not sure what the answer is, but more skewed noise doesn’t sound right to me.

[acrashb]

1 hour ago, The_Capt said:

It is a case for how facts are presented.

As one of my more-senior colleagues likes to say, "never bring facts to a feelings fight". So I'm agreeing re: presentation.
The solution to bad information is good information, attractively packaged so as to be more consumable.  This means with feelings attached.
 

[Centurian52]

15 hours ago, JonS said:

but nobody was fighting in 1918 like they had been in 1914. (Except the US - starting later left them consistently behind the curve compared to their peers.)

I thought this for the longest time too, and there's a grain of truth to it. But actually the US fought in 1918 using the same organization and tactics as the French and British. The US Army back home was still organized and trained based on pre-war standards (which is the grain of truth to the notion that the US fought in 1918 the way everyone else had been in 1914). But the AEF was retrained and reorganized before being sent into the line. I believe we mostly followed the French model.

Probably the best way to demonstrate this is to look at how a typical US infantry platoon was organized and equipped. Pre-war infantry platoons (and on up to companies, and even battalions to some extent) were completely homogeneous units consisting of only riflemen and no specialized weapons (actually battalions might have a machinegun section, but certainly platoons and companies were completely homogeneous rifle-armed units). By 1918 the French and British had pushed specialized weapons like light machineguns and rifle-grenades down to platoon level. And the US Army did the same thing before going into combat. I'll link the Battle Order video on the subject. But an AEF platoon had an HQ, a hand-bomber section, a rifle-grenade section, an automatic rifle section, and a rifle section. So it was entirely built around specialized weapons. It's far more complex and unwieldy than the organizations that the US and most other armies would be using by WW2 (actually not too dissimilar to the organization that Italian infantry were using in WW2). But it's a far cry from the rifle-only platoons used back in the continental US and by all other armies prior to the war.

But yes, your overall point, that WW1 saw an unprecedented level of innovation, and basically none of the armies came out of it using organization and tactics that were anything like what they went in with, is absolutely correct.

Edited October 11 by Centurian52
There's always a grammatical or spelling error somewhere

[dan/california]

 

Quote

 

https://www.nytimes.com/2024/10/11/opinion/ukraine-nato-membership-russia.html?unlocked_article_code=1.RU4.8y7y.9HA4s4SKo30D&smid=url-share

Give Ukraine NATO Membership. Peace Depends on It.

By William B. Taylor

Mr. Taylor was the U.S. ambassador to Ukraine from 2006 to 2009 and chargé d’affaires there from 2019 to 2020.

 

Link should work for everybody, I think.

[dan/california]

4 hours ago, alison said:

A solution could start with regulating anything that calls itself "news". If you want to produce a publication/TV network/YouTube channel that's full of lies, go ahead, but it should be clearly marked as entertainment or opinion/editorial at best. That wouldn't stop people from getting exposed to the nonsense, but at least it would be clear what outlets people can expect to contain at least truthful (if selective) reporting. Way too long media outlets have been blurring the lines between actual reporting and opinion pieces/conspiratorial garbage and it's exactly that which gives the media a bad reputation, as those who aim to undermine it can then cherrypick outrageous soundbytes from the talking heads to make their point.

The other thing we need is better education. Civics would be helpful, but many countries already have that. I think what's needed is better training in how to consume media in the first place. There are a lot of very smart people who have bent themselves into pretzels believing very stupid stuff because they have marinated themselves in echo chambers of plausible-sounding sophistry, without stepping back to consider if all the the stuff they're fretting over actually is a good reflection of what is really happening in the world. That is to say, I think people's media diet should be balanced more toward consuming reporting of actual current events than the output of folks who make their money fear-mongering. But when someone inevitably does consume that stuff and starts getting scared, they should know how to check high quality data sources to see if the thing they're scared of is actually happening on a significant scale or just blown out of proportion to further someone's agenda (which in many cases is nothing more sinister than earning money). Of course that eventually leads into the problem of people not understanding big numbers and statistics, and that then becomes an educational tangent beyond what we can or should expect the average person to explore. If only people still trusted experts, eh? Sigh.

I think you are underplaying how bad the education system is. My kids literally come home at least once a week and rant at me that most of their middle school doesn't know who Hitler was. And while that is awful, it is also mostly laziness and incompetence. Ponder how screwed up in Russia, China, and a great many other places where the the schools are pushing a government line that has no bearing on reality

I get there are places where it is MUCH better than that, but they are not exactly a critical mass.

2 hours ago, The_Capt said:

I am not sure this is a case for no longer fact checking. It is a case for how facts are presented. If you repeat the lie you are checking up on, of course it will spread disinformation. What you could do is simply present the facts as they are around a subject and stop attacking the lie directly. 

Of course we live in an era of on-menu truth. What do you want to believe? Ok, here are a bunch of “facts”. Neutral analysis and assessment based on neutral facts is what is dying. Largely because people have access to the “facts” and no longer need experts to do the analysis for them. Expertise has become collectivized - a community now provides the expert analysis and assessment. 

Not sure what the answer is, but more skewed noise doesn’t sound right to me.

I mean that is what we are trying to do here isn't it? But it works because the board is run by a benevolent dictator who tries to keep it on the rails with the minimum necessary enforcement. How you get to an equivalent in broader communities is one of the hardest questions of this century. 

Edited October 11 by dan/california

[dan/california]

 

Quote

 

https://www.reddit.com/r/DroneCombat/comments/1g18ipr/ukraines_1129th_belotserk_antiaircraft_missile/

 

Ukraine's 1129th Belotserk Anti-Aircraft Missile Regiment shot down 145 Russian reconnaissance UAVs in recent days, including 77 shot down using FPV strike drones provided by the Sternenko drone fund. (via Sternenko) Published October 11, 2024

 

That is not a small number.

[Battlefront.com]

3 hours ago, The_Capt said:

I am not sure this is a case for no longer fact checking. It is a case for how facts are presented. If you repeat the lie you are checking up on, of course it will spread disinformation. What you could do is simply present the facts as they are around a subject and stop attacking the lie directly. 

Of course we live in an era of on-menu truth. What do you want to believe? Ok, here are a bunch of “facts”. Neutral analysis and assessment based on neutral facts is what is dying. Largely because people have access to the “facts” and no longer need experts to do the analysis for them. Expertise has become collectivized - a community now provides the expert analysis and assessment. 

Not sure what the answer is, but more skewed noise doesn’t sound right to me.

Responsible journalism had a tough time adjusting to Trump's routine statements that are not accurate (distortions, lies, confusion, etc.).  Journalists seem to have settled on quoting/repeating what Trump said and then right after (sometimes in the same sentence) state it is false.  Sometimes with more commentary, sometimes just keeping it simple.  They have adopted the same strategy for his supporters and surrogates.  Sure, it spreads the disinformation, but anybody reading/hearing his comments in that form can see very clearly that it has been fact checked and fell short of the truth.

Unfortunately, this is not the same thing I see with Russian disinformation.  Unlike Trump's often blatant false statements, much of Russia's messaging is presented as opinion.  For example, Trump says something about not having lost the 2020 election.  That is objectively false and so it is called out as false.  Russia saying that the threat of NATO expansion caused them to invade Ukraine... well... not so easily fact checked.  People who have really looked into this know it's a bunch of horse poop, but there's still some conjecture because shy of Putin saying "yeah, it's all BS" there's no solid answer.  Now, Putin saying that there was some written guarantee that NATO wouldn't expand, that's factually incorrect and should be called out as such.  Unfortunately, it seems that journalists often don't dig deep enough to even know if it's true or not.

I've always had the opinion as Alison does which is real sources of news need to be branded as such (IMHO by a non government board of peers), everything else not.  However, I don't think this helps much because the people believing that Jews control the weather or that Harris is a Marxist don't seem all that interested in real news anyway.  In fact, anything labeled "news" by any form of oversight body would likely be outright rejected because "that's what they want to think!  I'm not a Sheeple!".  They will continue to tune into "entertainment" branded nonsense like Tucker or random podcaster because, in their twisted view, those sources aren't controlled by the government (and/or Jews and/or Elites, and or whatever paranoid delusion).

Steve

[Battlefront.com]

1 hour ago, Centurian52 said:

But yes, your overall point, that WW1 saw an unprecedented level of innovation, and basically none of the armies came out of it using organization and tactics that were anything like what they went in with, is absolutely correct.

As is that the war ended because the Germans collapsed, not because the Allies innovated a solution.  In fact, the Germans in 1918 were arguably as, if not more, innovative than the Allies.  As the saying goes, "fat load of good that did them".

Also to restate... innovation during a war is not indication of being properly prepared ahead of a war.  Smoke indicates fire, it doesn't indicate if the fire was set intentionally.

It reminds me of the age old meme before there were memes.  You know, when someone did something stupid and then would say "I meant to do that" to cover up the mistake.  WW1 was entered into, in large part, because everybody thought they had the means to win and do so quickly.  I don't think it's fair to just say that was a political miscalculation because it is the job of the military to make sure the political side is well informed.  It's been a long time since I've studied this topic, but I'd be shocked to find that the senior levels of any of the major militaries involved advised their respective governments that the war was going to be a disaster for their nation.

Steve

[billbindc]

10 minutes ago, Battlefront.com said:

Responsible journalism had a tough time adjusting to Trump's routine statements that are not accurate (distortions, lies, confusion, etc.).  Journalists seem to have settled on quoting/repeating what Trump said and then right after (sometimes in the same sentence) state it is false.  Sometimes with more commentary, sometimes just keeping it simple.  They have adopted the same strategy for his supporters and surrogates.  Sure, it spreads the disinformation, but anybody reading/hearing his comments in that form can see very clearly that it has been fact checked and fell short of the truth.

Unfortunately, this is not the same thing I see with Russian disinformation.  Unlike Trump's often blatant false statements, much of Russia's messaging is presented as opinion.  For example, Trump says something about not having lost the 2020 election.  That is objectively false and so it is called out as false.  Russia saying that the threat of NATO expansion caused them to invade Ukraine... well... not so easily fact checked.  People who have really looked into this know it's a bunch of horse poop, but there's still some conjecture because shy of Putin saying "yeah, it's all BS" there's no solid answer.  Now, Putin saying that there was some written guarantee that NATO wouldn't expand, that's factually incorrect and should be called out as such.  Unfortunately, it seems that journalists often don't dig deep enough to even know if it's true or not.

I've always had the opinion as Alison does which is real sources of news need to be branded as such (IMHO by a non government board of peers), everything else not.  However, I don't think this helps much because the people believing that Jews control the weather or that Harris is a Marxist don't seem all that interested in real news anyway.  In fact, anything labeled "news" by any form of oversight body would likely be outright rejected because "that's what they want to think!  I'm not a Sheeple!".  They will continue to tune into "entertainment" branded nonsense like Tucker or random podcaster because, in their twisted view, those sources aren't controlled by the government (and/or Jews and/or Elites, and or whatever paranoid delusion).

Steve

Simply put, there's no way to put the social media back in the bottle until average Americans feel the real consequences of buying loads of bull**** from folks who mean them harm. That translates effectively into meaning that it's an aging out problem. 

[Billy Ringo]

The key challenge is: who decides what is truth and what is false?  And, even if you get it right which I don't think is possible, how do you keep it from being coerced at some point?

Always find it interesting when someone tells me they go to Fox/CNN/PBS/The Economist, etc. for their news because it's "the truth."  In my humble opinion they are all biased to one extent or another AND are being fed dishonest BS by those trying to push an agenda.  And even the seasoned professional journalists aren't immune to being hoodwinked occassionally.

Side note, The Capt's post above starting with "I am not sure this is a case for no longer fact checking. It is a case for how facts are presented. If you repeat the lie you are checking up on," is f'ing brilliant.  The whole post, not just those sentences. Thanks.

[Centurian52]

1 hour ago, Battlefront.com said:

As is that the war ended because the Germans collapsed, not because the Allies innovated a solution.  In fact, the Germans in 1918 were arguably as, if not more, innovative than the Allies.  As the saying goes, "fat load of good that did them".

Also to restate... innovation during a war is not indication of being properly prepared ahead of a war.  Smoke indicates fire, it doesn't indicate if the fire was set intentionally.

It reminds me of the age old meme before there were memes.  You know, when someone did something stupid and then would say "I meant to do that" to cover up the mistake.  WW1 was entered into, in large part, because everybody thought they had the means to win and do so quickly.  I don't think it's fair to just say that was a political miscalculation because it is the job of the military to make sure the political side is well informed.  It's been a long time since I've studied this topic, but I'd be shocked to find that the senior levels of any of the major militaries involved advised their respective governments that the war was going to be a disaster for their nation.

Steve

There is a LOT of sloppy history surrounding WW1 (actually sloppy history surrounds most wars, but challenging it seems to be more controversial with WW1). It's really not a war in which you can lean on common knowledge and what you learned in school and from tv documentaries.

You're definitely right that innovation during a war is absolutely not an indication of being properly prepared ahead of a war. But it is probably more important. Frankly, I don't think it's possible to be properly prepared ahead of a war (at least not perfectly (though I'm betting that this is one aspect of warfare that will change in the future as simulations get more realistic)). You have to go in assuming that some of your assumptions will be wrong.

I'm not sure about the claim that the Germans innovated more. The Germans had certainly developed more elaborate defensive tactics (probably because they were on the defensive on the western front for most of the war). The Entente focused more on developing offensive tactics that emphasized limited attacks that did not attempt to push beyond their culmination point (basically recognizing that attacks could not succeed without infantry-artillery coordination, and compensating for the limited communications technology of the time by not pressing attacks beyond the limited infantry-artillery coordination that could be scripted in advance). As far as equipment the Germans did develop the first submachinegun. But the Entente started using light machineguns before the Germans (and their light machineguns were lighter), they developed steel helmets before the Germans (the French were the first to adopt steel helmets in 1915, while the British and Germans adopted them in 1916), and they developed tanks before the Germans (the Germans get credit for realizing that artillery, used in a direct-fire role, was an effective counter to tanks, and for developing the first anti-tank rifle).

And the innovations worked! The Entente figured out how to attack successfully against the German defensive system, and the Germans never figured out how to stop them. The Germans didn't agree to a ceasefire because they were tired of the killing (as the 2022 All Quite on the Western Front movie would have you believe (it opened strong, but I really wasn't impressed with that movie overall)), and they didn't agree to a ceasefire because their economy had collapsed (though that was definitely putting pressure on them), and they definitely didn't agree to a ceasefire because they had been abandoned and betrayed by the home front (as the Germans were telling themselves in the run-up to WW2). They agreed to a ceasefire because they had decisively lost the war on the battlefield. By the time the ceasefire went into effect they had been in constant retreat for four months with no prospect of ever being able to stop the Entente advance (we always seem want to focus on the tragedy of the war, and I suppose that makes it hard to remember the victories of the last four months of the war). 

Edited October 11 by Centurian52