ww1 generals incompetent

A serious problem that Haig had to contend with was the poor quality of ammunition supplied for much of the war by British factories. He was a teacher in the Chicago suburbs and Seoul, Encyclopaedia Britannica's editors oversee subject areas in which they have extensive knowledge, whether from years of experience gained by working on that content or via study for an advanced degree. Percival came out of it worse, however; he became the only Lieutenant-General in British history not to receive a knighthood. In late 1917 and early 1918 the Germans moved troops from Russia to the Western Front and began preparing for their own great offensive against a British army that had been so badly mauled it was compelled to reduce the number of battalions in a division from 13 to 10. Allied with Brock was the Shawnee chief Tecumseh, who was head of the most formidable pan-Indian military force the continent had ever seen. But if Haig had ever heard of Cold Harbor, he plainly did not believe its lessons applied to British soldiers. In World War Two, armoured vehicles were used for this purpose, but the tanks of Great War vintage were simply not up to the job. The result was that by 1918 the British army was second to none in its modernity and military ability. The new prime minister, Lloyd George, wanted to fight defensively on the Western Front while waiting for the Americans, now in the war, to begin arriving in Europe in decisive numbers. A combination of 'high tech' weapons (quick-firing artillery and machine guns) and 'low tech' defences (trenches and barbed wire) made the attacker's job formidably difficult. Daring becomes impetuosity. They are artists of a kind, blending in one person intelligence, intuition, courage, calculation and many other traits that allow them to see what others cannot and to act when the time is right. He earns his place here for mismanaging the 1807 Buenos Aires expedition, a costly sideshow of the Napoleonic Wars. It is rare in military history for a commander to be faced by such a range of options, notes Geoffrey Regan, any one of which guaranteed success.. Argentina, Brazil, and the Brazilian puppet government in Uruguay formed an alliance, and on May 1, 1865, they declared war on Paraguay. The magnitude of the battle still stuns the imagination. As Paul Fussell writes in his indispensable volume The Great War and Modern Memory, In a situation demanding the military equivalent of wit and inventionHaig had none.. Overwhelmed. A ferocious battle ensued, MacCarthys troops holding their own until ammunition began running out. He was popularly portrayed as a hero and given money and titles, but never another job. At the time, he was leading Germany in battles on two different fronts against the powerful Russia. But Douglas Haig may be the great exception to this rule. Behind the Scenes: 12 Real-Life Characters of, 9 Questions About the American Civil War Answered, 9 Noteworthy Bog Bodies (And What They Tell Us). Haig, popular thinking goes, attacked and kept on attackingeven when the ground his men gained, yard by bloody yard, was useless by any military measurein order to wear down the Germans. Top 10 Military Generals of World War I - World History Edu https://www.historynet.com/field-marshal-sir-douglas-haig-world-war-is-worst-general/, Jerrie Mock: Record-Breaking American Female Pilot, This American Banker Adopted His Adult Coworkers to Rescue Them From Saigon, The 20th Maines Little Round Top Hero Had a Hardscrabble Life. Approaching his 60th birthday and exhibiting a timidity that had no place in a general about to lead an invasion, Hull also had the misfortune of facing two of the most gifted commanders ever to operate in North America. Howe managed the Battle of Bunker Hill in June 1775, winning a tactical victory only after suffering 30 percent casualties. Franz Conrad von Htzendorf of Austria couldnt decide which country he wanted to invade, so the German General Staff eventually took his armies away. In the opening month of World War I, Ludendorff and Paul von Hindenburg scored a crushing victory over the Russians at Tannenberg. General Sir Frederick Stopford was put in command, despite a lack of experience in the battlefields of World War One. Nearly 20,000 of these were either dead already or would die of their wounds, many of them lingering for days between the trenches, in no mans land. This made the already difficult task of coordinating movements over large frontiers even harder. GCSE History WW1 Generals (Rough draft) Rebekah Dawson. World War I provided a forum for any number of truly horrible commanders to assert themselves. Driven into exile in 1845, he contacted U.S. Pres. Hull responded by ordering the evacuation of Fort Dearborn, and the garrison was promptly massacred by a Potawatomi war band upon leaving the fort. Indeed, in no land battle in history did so many men die by drowning. Where Our WWII Leaders Spent WWI | National Archives At this point, things somehow got worse for Hull. Thus in July 1916 Haig fought on the Somme largely at the behest of the French, although he would have preferred to attack, somewhat later, in the Ypres salient where there were more important strategic objectives. Patrick Macrory characterizes Elphinstone as [seeking] every mans advice he was at the mercy of the last speaker. Fatally indecisive, he allowed Afghans to kill envoys Alexander Burns and William Macnaghten, capture his supplies and snipe at his men without response. 10. (It failed even on that score, since the Allies lost more men than the Germans.) Dressing station at Gallipoli during WW1, 1915. Credit: Wellcome Library /CC BY 4.0. Scott claimed that Pillow was ''the only person I have ever known who was wholly indifferent in the choice between truth and falsehood. When talk of secession reached Pillows home state of Tennessee, he helped organize the state militia and was appointed a brigadier general in the Confederate army. Then came the inevitable reappraisals. When, during the war, the Allies made breakthroughs, they lacked the resources to capitalise upon them - as in their failure to consolidate the first assault at Cambrai in 1917, in which the Germans were driven back. Villeneuve was then to return in secret and help establish naval dominance of the English Channel in preparation for a land invasion of Britain. While British cannons shelled the fort from the Canadian side of the river, Tecumseh marched his warriors through a forest clearing in an endless parade. He even forbade sorties on the grounds that withdrawing afterwards sapped morale! Howe then offered a passive defense of Boston, playing cards instead of campaigning and ultimately abandoning the city without a fight. He was killed in combat on March 1, 1870. Eschewing a direct overland march to the Confederate capital of Richmond, McClellan orchestrated an impressive amphibious landing of more than 100,000 troops at Fort Monroe, at the southeast end of the peninsula between the James and York rivers. German prisoners after the Battle of Amiens, 1918 The Imperial War Museum and the National Army Museum have interesting galleries devoted to the Western Front. After two days of desperate fighting, the army was overrun and massacred, with all but 500 men killed (Hicks included). Haig was cruelly mocked, first in the satirical musical Oh! The Japanese overran Hong Kong, Malay and Burma in lightning campaigns. Routed by U.S. forces under Winfield Scott, Santa Anna was again driven into exile. And why were they allowed to keep their post for so long ? And Haig had given him every reason for believing this. The United States entered the war, forcing Ludendorff to accelerate his time line for a conclusive battle against the Allies on the Western Front. Visiting the Somme battlefield in northern France is largely a matter of going from one Commonwealth Graves Commission cemetery to another. The generals Douglas. However, Ludendorff and German General Staff chief Helmuth von Moltke had altered the Schlieffen PlanGermanys overall battle plan for fighting a two-front warin a way that had weakened the attacking army on the Western Front. This is, obviously, a problematic quality when ones title is general-in-chief of the entire Union army. The deplorable conduct of Charles Lee at the Battle of Monmouth has been immortalized by Lin-Manuel Miranda, and Benedict Arnolds name is synonymous with traitorous behavior. And after this one, the sea changes set in motion by the first of the world wars became starkly apparent. It was a modern battle, the prototype of combats familiar to armies of our own times. Elphinstones army, accompanied by thousands of camp followers, staggered through the Afghan mountains. MacCarthy mismanaged the resultant campaign in bizarrely comic fashion. After several initial victories, stiffening Turkish resistance and heavy casualties stopped Townshends advance. Ordered to withdraw to Basra, Townshend instead hunkered down in the village of Kut. Great Britain has a long, storied military history. Henri-Philippe Ptain (1856-1951) was a World War I French general who was later imprisoned for treason. There have been famous portrayals in recent years by Blackadder, with Stephen Fry playing the part of General Melchett, an incompetent commander in charge of Blackadders regiment. It wasn't: outside of a few searingly-incompetent standouts like Italy's Luigi Cadorna, the majority of World War I Generals were nowhere near as callous or stupid as they have become known in popular imagination. Worst World War I Generals | Bad Generals in WW1 - Ranker That battle is generally, and incorrectly, remembered as one decided through attrition. This reality of coalition warfare also helps to explain why Haig never contemplated halting the Battle of the Somme after the disastrous first day. Little Mac would prove himself to be a superb organizer who kept his army well supplied, efficiently run, and happy. The result was a bloodbath: 2,000 men fell, including nearly half of the famous Black Watch Highland regiment, and the attack was repulsed. He arrived in Kabul in 1842, with disaster looming. Naturally, the French tended to call the shots, even though the British C-in-C was an independent commander. The elder Lpez had bequeathed to his son a relatively powerful military by regional standards but had cautioned Francisco against using it to settle diplomatic issues. Publicly though, he leaped at the chance for glory, dreaming himself Governor of Mesopotamia. How Have Zoroastrians Been Treated in Muslim Iran? Ultimately, he was denied his final showdown with the Allies by German political leaders who realized that the Americans could produce soldiers faster than Germany could produce bullets. Defending commanders could use telephone lines to summon troops to the breach, while attackers had no way of doing the same thing. Hannibal, daring. Published: March 27, 2019 at 10:15 am. ThenBEF commander Sir John French was exhausted, demoralized and lacked confidence in himself and that of his immediate subordinates. The victory in 1918 was the payoff. Tsar Nicolas was also horridly incompetent, event. Lads of 18 and 19, elderly men up to 45, the last surviving brother, the only son of his mother (and she a widow), the father, the sole support of the family, the weak, the consumptive, the thrice woundedall must now prepare themselves for the scythe., There was no alternative. Jamie founded Listverse due to an insatiable desire to share fascinating, obscure, and bizarre facts. Lincoln relieved McClellan but reinstated him after the devastating Union defeat at the Second Battle of Bull Run. This is not to suggest that generals were blameless. Why did generals in WW1 think it was a brilliant idea to walk - Reddit While Maximus was conducting negotiations with the Cimbri, a Germanic tribe that had invaded the Roman province of Transalpine Gaul, Caepio rashly attacked the Cimbri army on October 6, 105 BCE. GCSE History WW1 Generals (Rough draft) - Academia.edu Warrens lead brigade smashed into the teeth of the Boer position, becoming pinned down between two Boer forces. For more information, please see our Hull was thoroughly outclassed. The tank was a British invention which had made its debut on the Somme in September 1916. They were, supposedly, 'donkeys': moustachioed incompetents who sent the 'lions' of the Poor Bloody Infantry to their deaths in futile battles. We will send you the latest TV programmes, podcast episodes and articles, as well as exclusive offers from our shop and carefully selected partners. Field-marshal Sir Douglas Haig, Kt, Gcb, Gcvo, Kcie, Commander-in-chief, France, From 15 December 1915. Read more. After the war, the phrase lions led by donkeys came to be associated with the British army for what should be obvious reasons. 1. Did the Generals learn from their mistakes? Sorry, this post was deleted by the person who originally posted it. That dubious distinction falls to William Hull, the only general officer in American history to be ordered before a firing squad for cowardice and dereliction of duty. Haig's decision to continue with the fighting at Passchendaele in 1917 after the opportunity for real gains had passed comes into this category. (1853 -1930) Up until the fi. The Incredible Story of William J. Bankes - Adventurer, Collector, Spy, A Tudor Discovery Thomas Cromwells Prayer Book, The Lost Sailors - Solving a World War II Mystery, Castles That Made Britain Ludlow Castle, Cecilia Payne: The Trailblazing Astronomer Who Unraveled the Universe, Heirs of Spartocus: How the Bosporan Kingdom Became the Jewel of the Black Sea, 10 Facts About the Battle of Normandy Following D-Day, How the Assassination of Archduke Franz Ferdinand Unfolded, Historical Trips - Book your next historical adventure, 10 Best Ancient and Archaeological Sites in Crete, 10 Facts About Mary Shelley: The Woman Behind Frankenstein. With limited avenues for manoeuvre on the Western Front, there were few lines of attack that did not involve an assault directly across No Mans Land. Every window housed a sniper, an artilleryman or an angry local with a pot full of boiling oil. The British blockaded the port at Cdiz with a numerically inferior force, and Villeneuve, upon learning that he was to be relieved of command, rashly struck out at Nelsons fleet. Hull, convinced that he was hopelessly outnumbered (he wasnt), surrendered Fort Detroit and its 2,000-man garrison without firing a shot. While Hull dithered, Brock captured Fort Michilimackinac, establishing British control of the Straits of Mackinac. Reddit, Inc. 2023. But the Afghans hated English rule and quickly revolted. He was ignominiously cashiered upon returning to England. He served as a National Socialist member of the German parliament before authoring a book about how humanity exists in a state of perpetual war and why that is a good thing. He first demonstrated his ineptitude during the Mexican-American War, where he had received an appointment to the rank of major general from his friend Pres. His fantasies of cavalry charges across open country were matched by his insistence on sending infantry against the enemy in neat ranks at a slow walk, the better to maintain control. Sheltered in their luxurious headquarters,they had no idea of the horrors of the war and threw their men into machine gun fire like they are all like ants that can easily be replaced. Third Ypres was the battle that gave rise to the story of Haigs chief of staff being driven to the front and, as he viewed the muddy wasteland, breaking into tears and saying, Good God, did we really send men to fight in that?, It gets worse, his driver said, farther on up., Fussell, among others, finds that story a little too good, and some of Haigs defenders consider it a slander to imply the field marshal and his staff were so blithely unaware of actual battlefield conditions. Presiding over it was Lord Raglan, a former aide to the Duke of Wellington completely out of his depth. It took 50 years of intermittent warfare to subdue the Ashanti. A brave man who loved action but feared responsibility for the lives of others (Byron Farwell), Buller was Britains equivalent of Ambrose Burnside. Assigned to suppress the Mahdist Uprising in the Sudan, Hicks led what Winston Churchill called the worst Army that has ever marched to war a rabble of Egyptian prisoners and ex-rebels, some shipped to the front in shackles. If there was deep mistrust between civilian and military leadership, Haig was to blame for it. Top 10 Outstanding World War I Generals Last updated: September 2, 2022 by Saugat Adhikari The First World War, also known as the Great War, which lasted from 1914 to 1918, saw one of the worst losses of human life in history. why so many soldiers survived the trenches, how Pack Up Your Troubles became the viral hit. The British and the French had squandered millions of men in futile offenses. The great commanders of history fascinate us, and we read their biographies looking for one or more character attributes we believe accounted for their success. Field Marshal Sir Douglas Haig: World War I's Worst General - HistoryNet Viewpoint: 10 big myths about World War One debunked - BBC The German army trained its officers with an assumption that once trained they would know intuitively how to respond to situations on the ground, which today is known as Auftragstaktik, or mission-type tactics.
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