A suggestion to those who enjoy bashing the French Army...

Claven2

Claven2

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I'm on vacation till the end of the week and have been trying my best to relax. Just got back from a seaside trip to the cottage where I stretched out and re-read (for maybe the 5th time?) my favorite book:

The Guns of August by Barbara Tuchman. (ISBN: 0345476093 for those looking for an cheap paperback copy).

Especially those who think the British Army is invincible and the French cowards, you really ought to get informed. This book draws no conclusions and is presented as a narrative of the central facts of August and September of 1914. Probably the best book ever written on the subject.

And as a summation, I'll point out that per capita, the French lost more lives in the war than ANY OTHER BELIGERENT. 1 in 28 of ALL residents of the French Republic, including colonies, dies in the war. Next came the Germans with 1 in 32. The Brits only lost 1 in 56 and frequently tried to retreat entirely out of the western front in the opening months owing to the cowardice of the commander in chief, Sir John French.

DEFINITELY read it. It will open your eyes.
 
As an interesting sideline, "The Guns of August" was written in the 1950's with only primary sources - including official records, first hand accounts (many of the principles being then still alive), and memoires of the people involved.

During John F. Kennedy's presidency, a JFK signed copy was the official state gift for visiting foreign leaders.
 
French soldier can fight with great Elan' but their leadership has most often been terrible with a few bright stars standing out. The Free French in Africa fought a hard campgain.
 
Read it a couple of times. The French word of the day was " Elan ", this coupled with menality of geratic generals was recipie for disaster in an age when the dashing calvary charge ran into the machine gun.

Personally I think the French were very luc ky to have the English help them at all. England is an island nation, primarily concerned with protecting it's sources of revenue which were the colonies. This meant seapower.

That and given the fact that kings and queens and upper class still ran the government or atleast had a lot of power and that both the royal rulers of Germany and England were cousins.

The French had most often been the enemy up to this point.

Each of WWI and WWII did remove a lot of great breeding stock from the nations who fought.

KTK
 
Didn't the French lose something like 150,000 men in one battle


from their OWN artillery?

I'll have to see if I can dig up exactly what I'm trying to recall.
 
Grouse Man said:
Didn't the French lose something like 150,000 men in one battle


from their OWN artillery?

I'll have to see if I can dig up exactly what I'm trying to recall.
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I doubt ANY artillery engagement, except for possibly Verdun, can account for 150,000 casualties - maybe 15,000.

Verdun was where the Germans brought the railcar Skoda 305's and cemented in place Krupps 402mm fortress seige artillery to bear upon English and French entrenched forces in addition to a littany of 105mm and up artillery batteries. The Krupps and Skodas were the guns that reduced Liege's fortresses - thought impregnable at the time - in under 3 days. To this day, Verdun represents the largest attilery barage in history - mostly one-sided by the Germans.

Regardign Verdun, I'll rip a quote from an article about it I'm reading right now:

With great stealth the Germans planned a surprise attack on Verdun to begin on February 11, 1916. They would have achieved complete surprise, and probably have taken Verdun and its forts, had they been able to attack on schedule. But after German forces were in position, bad weather delayed the attack. The element of surprise was thus lost, enabling the French to transfer two divisions to defend the position.

The attack finally began on February 21 with a stupendous bombardment from 1200 German artillery pieces, including the 420 mm mortars used against Belgium’s forts. In the greatest artillery fusillade in the history of warfare, some 2 million shells were fired on the first day of the battle. It was later determined that the bombardment barely touched the underground forts which had significant earth cover as well as heavy concrete and masonry construction.
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Here's a pic of one of the 420mm mortars, a rarer "road mobile" model (most versions were less mobile and had to be embedded in concrete for firing, then blasted out again to be moved) as used at Verdun and Liege.
big_bertha.jpg


When the french started the war, they had less than a batallion of heavy artillery. Almost ALL their artillery at the time were 75mm field guns attached to individual infantry battalions. Given the limited range of these field pieces, almost no better than civil war era cannons, I doubt they accidentally shelled their own units very often or to great effect in 1914.

Interestingly enough, it is my hypothesis that General Joffre's below average intelligence and his friction with the Paris Garrison command created the very luck that drew the BEF and French 5th Army into the battle of the Marne and turned Von Kluck's left flank. Thus the German advance was finally stopped in September 1914 just 30 miles from Paris and prevented the total collapse of the French Army in Flanders.

Interesting stuff. But the French soldier cannot be blamed for poor staff generalship. They arguably fought harder than the BEF and German Imperial Army combined.
 
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Ken The Kanuck said:
Personally I think the French were very luc ky to have the English help them at all. England is an island nation, primarily concerned with protecting it's sources of revenue which were the colonies. This meant seapower.

That and given the fact that kings and queens and upper class still ran the government or atleast had a lot of power and that both the royal rulers of Germany and England were cousins.
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Realistically, England would have sat out WW1 if not for German violation of Luxembourg and Belgium's neutrality which the English had guaranteed before even the war of 1870. England's Entente with France was conditional upon the House of Commons agreeing that intervention was in England's best interest and they could well have sat it out - in fact the Liberal Party of the day was pushing to sit it out - had not Antwerp been threatened and thus a large portion of England's neutral trade through Belgium. Interestingly, Winston Churchill, then a Liberal first Lord of the Admiralty, played a very large roll in forcing the issue of England going to war with Germany.

They realistically entered the conflict more out of self-interest than owing to any particular loyalty to the French.
 
What a lot of people seem to forget was that the french were fighting some of the best trained soldiers of the war during the Nazi invasion of france and the low countries. These were soldiers that had been training during the 20's and 30's. Had already fought in the spanish civil war, and invaded Poland.

Plus this was the period when Hitler gave the most freedom to his generals, instead of micromanaging them. Rommel, Guderian, Bock, Manstein. . . the list goes on, all of them having almost complete freedom in how there were allowed to fight.

I'm guessing any nating in franc's position would have suffered the exact same defeat.
 
Unlocked. No bashing posts in this thread.

If you can't make a constructive or factual post in this thread, then please don't.

Keep the garbage posts in OT where they belong.
 
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Colin said:
French soldier can fight with great Elan' but their leadership has most often been terrible with a few bright stars standing out. The Free French in Africa fought a hard campgain.
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My personal favorite French WW1 General was Franchet d'Esperet. Very bold and had a strong understanding of ww1 era tactics - especially once he took command of the 5th Army in September 1914.

franchet.jpg


My favorite German General during the war was probably Hermann von Francois whose brilliant seizure of critical moments at the battle of Tannenberg had the effect of rendering the "Russian Steam Roller" a virtual non-entity on the Eastern front through much of the war.

francois.jpg
 
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Something I'd like to see before I kick off, in addition to the Canadian memorial at Vimy, is the Verdun Ossuary. It's 130,000 unknown soldiers' bodies and the dozens of other gravesites around Verdun with Identified soldiers' tombs, is a chilling testament to the enourmous loss of life in arguably the largest battle ever fought. In real terms, Verdun broke the back of the French Army - afterwards the central players on the Western Front were the British Empire and the American Army. France never again had a military power comparable to her forces pre-1916.

From the same article I quoted above on Verdun:
The Verdun Battlefield is dotted with forty-three military cemeteries, each containing the graves of 10,000-15,000 German or French soldiers. The central monument at Verdun is the great, solemn Ossuary (House of Bones) with its high tower (reminiscent of an artillery shell) and its long, polished gallery. At each end of the gallery, vaults beneath the floor contain the bones of unknown soldiers found across the battlefield since 1916. The great stacks of bones and heaps of skulls can be viewed through windows outside the memorial. The remains of 130,000 unknown soldiers of Verdun lie in these vaults. It is an appalling sight that stays with you for life.
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verdun_ossuary.jpg
 
I've been to Vimy, and it's an imposing memorial. I hadn't heard of the Verdun Ossuary before, but IMO, it would have more impact on the visitor, given the contents.
 
Claven2 said:
I'm on vacation till the end of the week and have been trying my best to relax. Just got back from a seaside trip to the cottage where I stretched out and re-read (for maybe the 5th time?) my favorite book:

The Guns of August by Barbara Tuchman. (ISBN: 0345476093 for those looking for an cheap paperback copy).

Especially those who think the British Army is invincible and the French cowards, you really ought to get informed. This book draws no conclusions and is presented as a narrative of the central facts of August and September of 1914. Probably the best book ever written on the subject.

And as a summation, I'll point out that per capita, the French lost more lives in the war than ANY OTHER BELIGERENT. 1 in 28 of ALL residents of the French Republic, including colonies, dies in the war. Next came the Germans with 1 in 32. The Brits only lost 1 in 56 and frequently tried to retreat entirely out of the western front in the opening months owing to the cowardice of the commander in chief, Sir John French.

DEFINITELY read it. It will open your eyes.
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I have a copy. A very good read!

Also worth reading about the start of WW1 is Dreadnought!
 
Grouse Man said:
Didn't the French lose something like 150,000 men in one battle
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Yes they did. The Battle at Vimy in 1915 they lost 150,000 men trying to take it back from the Germans with no luck.

The French and British had suffered thousands of casualties in previous attempts to take the ridge; the French alone lost 150,000 men at Vimy Ridge in 1915. The ridge, stretching from the town of Vimy to Givenchy-en-Gohelle, was a crucial point that allowed the Germans to control much of the surrounding territory. The ridge was the only major barrier keeping the allies from the wide open Lens-Douai plain.
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The Battle of Vimy for the Canadian Army was I belive the most important battle of the War for Canada and gaining a place as a major country not just "one part of the commonwealth".

The Canadian Corps' commanders were determined to learn from the mistakes of the French and British and spent months planning their attack. They built a replica of the Ridge behind their own lines, and trained using platoon-level tactics, including issuing detailed maps to ordinary soldiers rather than officers or NCOs alone. Each platoon was given a specific task by their commanding officers, rather than vague instructions from an absent general. They also employed older techniques such as the detonation of large mines under the German trenches.

On April 2, 1917, the Canadian Corps launched the largest artillery barrage in history up to that point. They shelled the German trenches for the next week, using over one million shells. The German and Prussian troops called this week the "Week of Suffering". The attack was loud enough that it could be heard in London. At dawn on Easter Monday, April 9, the 30,000-strong Canadian Corps began the attack, using a creeping barrage. The creeping barrage had been used by the British at the Battle of the Somme but had failed as it outpaced the soldiers. However, the Canadians managed to perfect the technique. Soldiers walked across no-man's land, just behind a continuous line of shells (an improvement over previous battles, in which both sides had often shelled their own troops). Several new and untested methods of counter-battery fire were also used successfully at the start of the battle. This disabled a large portion of the German artillery and protected the advancing infantry.

After less than two hours, three of the four Canadian divisions had taken their objectives; the fourth division, however, was caught by machine gun nests on the highest point of the Ridge known as Hill 145. The 87th Battalion suffered 50% casualties. The 85th Nova Scotia Highlanders, who had been intended to be in a supply and construction role, were sent into the battle and the division captured the hill by the end of the day.
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Both of my qoutes were from http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Battle_of_Vimy_Ridge :)

As for the bashing the French issue, I think its pure ignorance.

"People who fail to learn from history are doomed to repeat it" I forgot who said that but its a good qoute. :)

Dimitri
 
Gibbs505 said:
Even better is "Paths of Glory". Very good movie!
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I always liked both versions of "all quiet on the Western Front" myself...

I wish someone would make a good movie about Verdun or Vimmy ridge. Sadly, it won;t happen b/c not enough Americans died in either battle :rolleyes:
 
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