Early in World War I, Germany almost achieved victory. Why did it fail?
DC
"The Marne, 1914 - The Opening of World I and the
Battle That Changed the World" by Holger H. Herwig
(Amazon.com: http://xrl.us/Mar1914 )
.For more than seven decades Sewell Tyng's "The
Battle of the Marne, 1914" has defined how we view the
opening battles of World War I, and it remains a great
work of military history. Yet much material was not
available to Tyng - particularly the German military
archives that became accessible only after the Berlin
Wall fell. Mining them to good effect after a long
career studying the war, the Canadian scholar Holger
Herwig has now delivered an account of the Marne
campaign that supplants Tyng's and makes plain how the
German command failed to seize its victories and why it
retired from the Marne's close-run battles. Along the
way, Herwig demonstrates the resilience of the French
commanders, who took advantage of what defeat brought
them�short internal lines and an overextended enemy.
In a couple of paragraphs, Herwig handily dismisses the
"historian's war" that raged in recent decades over
German war guilt, and he rejects the idea that World
War I started by accident, because of a mechanical
series of military measures over which politicians had
no control. He shows, rather, that politicians in every
combatant country made willing decisions to go to war
in 1914...
Continued: http://xrl.us/Marne1914
JTEM
DC <remai...@reece.net.au> wrote:
[---snip---]
To answer your question: Tannenberg.
Though a (huge) tactical success, the
Germans threw too many resources (men)
into the battle, leaving a "modified"
(Read: Smaller) Schlieffen Plan.
The truth is that the Schlieffen Plan
never failed, it had never truly been
carried out.
...chiefly because of Tannenberg.
Ulysses at Langdale Tarn
~~~~~~
What about the so-called Rape of Belgium ?
Was not that a huge German success also ?
David H
~~~~~~
JTEM
Also? "In addition to"... what?
Ulysses at Langdale Tarn
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
IIRC the Germans WON the battle of the Marne and
they did not win the war. DC's thesis is they did not
follow the Von Schlieffen plan correctly. The plan is
something apparently separate from the battle per se.
When you throw in "Tannenburg", why not explain what
this means rather than assume we are smart as you.
This is not the first time someone has brought up
"Tannenberg." I read USENET to learn something and
not primarily to chase wild geese to source materials.
Cheers, David H
~~~~~
JTEM
Ulysses at Langdale Tarn <davidholi...@yahoo.com> wrote:
> IIRC the Germans WON the battle of the Marne and
> they did not win the war.
But the Germans didn't win the Marne. The French were
able to stop them.
> DC's thesis is they did not
> follow the Von Schlieffen plan correctly. The plan is
> something apparently separate from the battle per se.
You're confused.
The Germans did not follow the Schlieffen Plan.
By definition:
Winning/Losing a battle: Tactical
Winning war/Ability to fight: Strategic.
The "Schlieffen Plan" was not a tacticle plan, it was
not a plan for a battle, it was a plan for winning the
war. The idea was.... wait. Just Google "Schlieffen Plan,"
for crying out loud. You won't find anything about the
Marne. The objective was always Paris.
> When you throw in "Tannenburg", why not explain what
> this means rather than assume we are smart as you.
Seriously, am I the only person on the internet with
internet access?
Google it!
"Tannenberg" was an enormous tactical victory for the
Germans, but the strategic consequences ultimately
doomed them. They simply did not have the resources to
fight a major campaign in the east AND follow the
Schlieffen Plan. The result was that they lacked
adequate manpower to overcome French resistance, and
failed to reach their objective.
From that point on they had no "Exit Strategy."
Ulysses at Langdale Tarn
~~~~~~~
I forgot about the Eastern Front and that Germany had to fight
the Great War on two fronts.
Cheers, David H
~~~~~
JTEM
Ulysses at Langdale Tarn <davidholi...@yahoo.com> wrote:
> I forgot about the Eastern Front and that Germany
> had to fight the Great War on two fronts.
Cool. What had me worried was the idea that you were
going to come back with something like...
"So if the Germans had no 'Exit Strategy," as you
say, why did they fight for four more years?"
to which, I have no reply.
Except, of course, "Look how it ended. Of course they
couldn't bring themselves to accept THAT until they
had to."
Ulysses at Langdale Tarn
~~~~~
I think "exit strategy" sessions are something that grew out of
the U.S. failure to have one in South Viet Nam. Most of us
sensed the war would be unwinnable without using nuclear
demolitions. I think Goldwater as president would have been
willing to nuke one North Viet city after another to compel
Hanoi to surrender. The Democrats were more interested in
building Medicare and the Great Society, I think the exit
strategy doctrines developed from the Democrat failure and
the Nixon failure to save Saigon from takeover.
Cheers, David H
~~~~~
JTEM
Ulysses at Langdale Tarn <davidholi...@yahoo.com> wrote:
> ~~~~~
> I think "exit strategy" sessions are something that grew out of
> the U.S. failure to have one in South Viet Nam.
Huh?
An "Exit Strategy" would include "Let's win!" The Germans had
all but completely given up on victory in the west after the
Marne. They fought a chiefly defensive war.
> Most of us sensed the war would be unwinnable without
> using nuclear demolitions.
What the Pentagon knew was that Vietnam was unwinnable
because of Vietnamese nationalism -- good, old fashioned
Patriotism. Ho Chi Mihn had not only been THE national icon
of Vietnamese independence for decades, but he had already
driven out the French.
"Communism" meant very little -- or nothing -- to the ordinary
Vietnamese citizen. If they knew anything about communism
at all it was only that the communist had given them aid in
their fight against foreign oppressors, while no western power
would.
The time & place to "Win" Vietnam was Paris, 1918, before
Ho Chi Mihn turned to communism. He had showed up at
Versailles, after the war, lobbying for freedom from French
colonial rule. Problem was, the French together with the
British were far too busy looting what they could from Germany
and Turkey to worry about some yellow-skinned upstart.
They only way that "We" -- the U.S. -- could have "won" the
Vietnam War is if we had stuck to our guiding principles, and
backed Ho Chi Mihn in 1918.
Grady O
1918."
I disagree. We had another chance to stick by our principles in 1945. We
could have stopped the French, British, and Dutch from returning their
Japanese occupied colonies to the status quo antebellum quite easily at
that point, but Truman let the chance slide right by.
bria...@webtv.net
1914, at what Nazi Germany succeeded in 1940 ?
First - there was no Sclieffen plan. There was a Schlieffin idea:
attack in France, and stand in the East against Russia, then fight on
the defensive in France and concentrate on Russia.
But Schlieffin could never figure out how to win the 2 front war -
there were never enough German soldiers to do it. So he kept revising
mobilization - but he never really formed a war plan. No one has ever
found such a plan, showing mobilization and transport and attacks
leading to encircle men of Paris and victory in the West.
If von Kluck was supposed to encircle Paris, and the army beat the
French from the south, no one ever told von Kluck so. The existing
records don't show any such orders.
So what happened ? the Germans ran out of soldiers and transport for
military goods and infantry. The soldiers they got into France were
worn out by the marches, and never had the strength to beat the French
in 1914.
And the French figured out how to wear the German out more.
Remember the Marne was really 5 separate battles, all of which were
awful for the French. None of these took place on the Marne, or even in
the Marne valley. At least one French general never agreed that there
was such a thing as the Battle of the Marne in 1914..
But the Germans pulled back to defensible line, a ways back from
where they were, and set down to do pretty much what the numbers had
said from the first: fight a defensive war in France, and concentrate
offensively on the Russians. Why ? Same reason the Nazi state attacked
Russia in 1941 - to get the farm lands of European Russia - that i,
Poland, too - and the Ukraine. The Brest Litovsk treaty shows what the
Germans wanted from the first.
Only when Falkenhayn came in - and the Germans figured out the
couldn't beat the Russians so easily either - did the Germans actually
try to beat the French. The result was Verdun.
But the French and the British - fat lot of help they were -
couldn't beat the Germans either. The French army was not a very good
army - it was understrength, and poorly officered and trained. An
poorly equipped, too. The wonderful story is that the French uniforms,
the red trousers, used a dye - available only from Germany. That is why
the French uniform changed to horizon blue.
And no one could make enough artillery stuff, not even the
explosives Most of the toluene came from Germany. Only by pure luck
had the US steel industry built a new pile of coke production just
before the war - and a byproduct of coke production is toluene. So
America had the material for high explosive in 1914 - but that supply
had not existed in 1913.
Now - go read the good books on the Great War. Dennis Winter's
Haig's Command, and the Mosier's The Myth of the Great War. And enjoy.
BPC
PHIL
What was Germany's ultimate aim? I don't think that it was to carve
up France as they has more or less done this after the Franco /
Prussian war. The Kaiser was no Napoleon. He had to have known that
to beat England you would have to beat them at sea first. His little
timid fleet barely made it our of the Baltic ever. I know why they
got INTO the war... treaty obligations. Why stay in the war?
Also, from my understanding of my reading, the U.S. could have won
over Vietnam after 1918. The Vietnamese hated Japan and helped our
fliers when they went down. They modeled their constitution after
ours. If we picked them over the French after the war they may have
been our allies to this day.
phil
Ulysses at Langdale Tarn
~~~~~~~~~~~~~
JTEM,
Mon dieu ! Ho Chi Minh was not a party to the Versailles
conference in 1918. Ho Chi Minh was a cook or dishwasher
in a Parisian restaurant. His credentials were strictly proletariat.
He was not a diplomat from l'Indochine.
David H
~~~~~
JTEM
Ulysses at Langdale Tarn <davidholi...@yahoo.com> wrote:
> Mon dieu ! Ho Chi Minh was not a party to the
> Versailles conference in 1918.
I didn't say he was. I said that he showed up (he
did) and that he lobbied for Vietnamese independence
(ditto).
> Ho Chi Minh was a cook or dishwasher in a Parisian
> restaurant.
Trueman was a ruined haberdasher before entering the
Senate, and Ulysses S. Grant was a professional
failure before becoming a general and then President.
It wasn't about Ho Chi Minh. It was about us. The U.S.
We didn't live up to our very own principles.
JTEM
PHIL <PHILIPW...@comcast.net> wrote:
> What was Germany's ultimate aim? I don't think
> that it was to carve up France as they has more
> or less done this after the Franco / Prussian
> war.
Germany's great fear was a two front war. Their
strategy for the war, their one & only standing
plan -- The Schlieffen Plan -- was based
entirely on their fear of & avoidance of a two
front war.
Oh: That would be war in the east against Russia,
and war in the west against France.
> He had to have known that to beat England you
> would have to beat them at sea first.
Don't mistakenly believe that England's anti-German
thing was a two-way street.
England was scared shitless by Germany. Germany was
bigger than they were, Germany's industrial base
was overtaking their own and with the advent of the
"Dreadnoughts" even the naval gap between the two
nations was vapidly vanishing.
It is said that the German naval officers "Toasted
the day."
The British empire had been THE "super power" since
at least the days of Napoleon, but it was quite
clear that the Germans were not only rivaling them,
but set to surpass them.
> His little timid fleet barely made it our of the
> Baltic ever.
Nothing demonstrates the lack of strategy more than
the German fleet.
By only ever once challenging the British (despite
winning that one time), the British were effectively
free to travel anywhere, draw from the resources of
their entire empire.
Yeah, there were the U-Boats, sure, but that threat
was closer to mines than to surface ships.
YOU SEND IN SUBMARINES BECAUSE YOU DON'T CONTROL
THE WATERS.
> I know why they got INTO the war... treaty obligations.
It was all automatic.
From the moment war was declared Russia and France were
going to attack Germany. Germany had to knock out one
of those nations as quickly as they could. The view was
that France could mobilize much quicker, so it had to be
France.
> The Vietnamese hated Japan and helped our fliers when
> they went down. They modeled their constitution after
> ours. If we picked them over the French after the war
> they may have been our allies to this day.
Maybe. I could only speculate.
The reason why I'm careful not to claim we could have
won Vietnam after WWII is because Ho Chi Mihn and his
independence movement was Communist by then, the war
had them fully organized & militarized and they were
capable of fighting & winning that independence without
making any deals with foreigners.
Remember: They won. They beat the French, threw them
out. The war only ended when an agreement was reached,
one that offered a plebiscite which would decide the
fate of the whole nation.
That was the problem.
Ho Chi Mihn was their Adams, Jefferson & Washington all
rolled into one. He was the father of their country, a
physical manifestation of Vietnamese patriotism. He was
going to win.