Ww1 Myths Debunked......

[ToraToraTora]

some interesting stuff here:
http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/magazine-25776836

[emmie]

they had a small force to start with, built to a much larger one, but Pershing conceded command if you read this, they got in but only just, and lost many a man to foolhardy decisions

http://clevelode-battletours.com/the-first-world-war/the-usa-in-ww1/

[jake-the-peg]

Yes read this earlier.

Some of the arguments don't make a lot of sense

for example the argument that tactics didn't change and that as evidence for this it is cited //men in cloth caps charged the enemy without the necessary covering fire//

But they might have added another myth that this was the first modern war - The American Civil war saw use of Gattling guns and trench warfare!

http://www.pbs.org/civilwar/war/map19.html

So the question is why the hell were troops in cloth caps charging trenches without covering fire half a century later?

The officers commanding like Kitchener and Haig had built experience in Africa and India and thought that qualified them for a war against another European army.


Another key question - and this continues to some extent still - why do British Army officers come so predominantly from the upper classes?

If the Navy operated like this Nelson would never have been given a chance.

The Army was clearly not a meritocracy at that time - I'd say it's trying to change with limited success

[emmie]

wiki,
he was hardly a pleb

Horatio Nelson was born on 29 September 1758 in a rectory in Burnham Thorpe, Norfolk, England, the sixth of eleven children of the Reverend Edmund Nelson and his wife Catherine. His mother, who died on 26 December 1767 when he was nine years old, was a grandniece of Robert Walpole, 1st Earl of Orford, the de facto first Prime Minister of Great Britain.[2] She lived in the village of Barsham, Suffolk, and married the Reverend Edmund Nelson at Beccles church, Suffolk, in 1749.

[stewey]

I recently finished reading this book. I realize that it's a novel; however, the amount of history that the author weaves into the plot is amazing: great research. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fall_of_Giants

[sunny-dave]

That's a really interesting article - thanks for the link TTT.

dave

[stewey]

Yes, TTT: an interesting article which resulted in some interesting posts.

[emmie]

if you read their early family histories, neither Haig nor Kitchener were gentry, they got to their positions by dint of service, and the titles presumably the same way.

[jake-the-peg]

No but Haig's father was immensly rich out of the Whisky business Kitchers father was a Lt Colnel land owner in Ireland.

Nelson may have been a great great grand nephew of Walpone but he was the 6th son of a clergyman and went to a grammar school.

But that's beside the point

The point is that the British army seemed completely unaware how warfare had changed at the start of 1914 by the way they were carrying on.

You've also got people like Sir John French who was replaced after the Battle of Loos - Loved by his men but deeply out of his depth as a general

[emmie]

and why would that be unexpected, after all wars were fought in a bloody but generally unmechanised way, at least not machine guns, tanks, submarines, bombers, that came because man found the way to kill much more efficiently, and en masse, now we have nuclear weapons which could wipe out billions, or cause the earth's demise.

[bert_h]

Emmie, that article at your link to the ...historylearningsite... is dreadful rubbish. If you find a decent write-up about the Zimmerman Telegram, you will understand that it was that, and hardly anything else, that brought the USA into WW1, principally by the huge shift in public opinion that followed Zimmerman's public admission that its text as published actually was true. Unrestricted submarine warfare, which the linked article claims was the major reason, was a related issue but actually a very minor one.

[stewey]

That incident is also brought up in the book which I mentioned at 15:04...It's a great read: a combination of fact and fiction...which of course is really what history is composed of:)

[Zacs-Master]

Very good article TTT. Thanks.

[Gromit]

Thanks for posting that Tora, very interesting.

[ToraToraTora]

glad to be of service!

[Hypognosis]

A good find, TTT. Thanks

@youngmafbog

//Yes, some interesting stuff and uncomfortable reading for lefties.//

No, not uncomfortable at all.

'Lefties', as you put it, are open to new and - in this case - corrective information at all times. Prior to this article, there was only the myths in circulation for lefties to respond to (and complain about, at great length).

Granted, it has taken some wind out of their sails but we should all be happy that a more balanced view is emerging, with the passage of time.

WWI has never been the material for 'comfortable viewing' - you have to be in the right frame of mind to sit through the documentary series (about 13 hours, iirc) - so the film-makers have had the upper hand in putting out their 'war is unjust' message. Unjust in the sense of the oligarchy ordering the lower classes to fight their equivalents from another country (who they'd far rather just play football against).

There's one particularly harrowing film which was screened on BBC in the late 70s which has never been shown (in UK) again - "Johnny Got His Gun". Modern horror-genre fans would probably be underwhelmed (total absence of gore) but a key plot point touches on an issue which has been the subject of lively debate in the past couple of years (I'm trying to avoid plot spoilers) and thus it might be deemed inappropriate for broadcast. Whether you'd describe it as a 'leftist' viewpoint is up to you.

One of these days, I'm going to have to write down all the myths that we've been collectively subjected to, in my lifetime. I am overwhelmed with the number of them which have been dispelled since we've had the internet.
:-)