Nobody Was Ready For This

WWI. Machine Guns. Generals totally unprepared.  Sounds like a mess.  It was pretty clear from the onset of the war that old military strategies were not going to work anymore.  With the new technology, namely the machine gun, the old strategy of massing troops at a weak point to break through became obsolete.  Three guys on a machine guns could mow huge amounts of soldiers by themselves.  You got to love the perseverence of the commanders.  Despite learning early on that charging machine guns is a BAD idea, they continued to do so.  I know it sucks to have your learnings become obselete but come on guys get with the program.  We all know the definition of insanity.  I guess WWI commanders missed the memo.

Finally Some Action

The first month and a half of this class has been all about the causes of WWI.  BORING!  We spent hours discussing reasons, ultimately resulting in different viewpoints for each person.  Finally we can move on to the war and facts.  Communication is a beautiful thing.  It has the capability of making a relationship stronger, or completely fall apart.  The serious lack of effective communication is obvious from the outset of the war.  Just look at the Schlieffen Plan.  Despite extensive knowledge that the plan was a certain failure, the German's immediately imployed it as soon as war broke out.  Just stupid.  Austria-Hungary was loosely told that Germany had its back against the Russians when the Russians were done mobilizing.  Unfortunately, this did not come to fruition as the Germany did not have enough troops to keep their promise.  Stupid decisions defined the early part of WWI.  Can't people just talk?