Depth Study / Military Leadership notes - OCR Changing Nature of Warfare
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Course
Changing Nature of Warfare
Institution
OCR
Explores the First World War debate - how true is the statement 'lions led by donkeys?' Provides detailed notes in arguing for and against, as well as focusing on the leadership of Haig.
How true is the statement ‘Lions led by Donkeys?’ - the donkeys being the uncaring,
incompetent generals, responsible for thousands of their mens deaths through sheer
callousness.
It’s not true:
Generals were under much pressure:
The generals knew exactly what was happening on the battlefields, but they were under
pressure to produce results → With limited avenues for manoeuvre on the Western Front,
there were few lines of attack that didn’t involve an assault directly across No Man’s Land.
Many generals were killed, as well as soldiers:
It could be argued that generals had a good understanding of the pain the soldiers were
going through, as many generals died as well. Of the 1,252 British generals, 146 were
wounded or taken prisoner and 78 were killed in action.
Heavy casualties were often unavoidable in any offensive:
Offensive troops moved at around 1-2 miles per hour, whereas defenders were able to use
railway networks to move at around 25 miles per hour.
Communications also meant that the defenders had another edge in the conflict.
The field commanders had little way of finding out which units had been successful in any
push, and thus didn’t know where to send troops to support any breaches in the defensive
line.
Most of the approaches caused heavy casualties:
There was little manoeuvrability in this regard for generals. General Mangin, a French
commander, remarked that ‘whatever you do, you lose a lot of men’.
The war was a learning curve:
Before 1914, the British army had been primarily a colonial police force, small but efficient.
By 1916 it had expanded enormously, taking in a mass of inexperienced civilian volunteers.
The generals were used to handling small-scale forces therefore were quite unprepared.
The generals assisted with the successes in 1918:
The British Army certainly made mistakes between 1915-17, but the victories of 1918
demonstrated that they learnt from those mistakes. Haig encouraged the development of
advanced weaponry such as tanks, machine guns and aircraft.
It is true:
They did opt for tactical choices that jeopardised the lives of their men
needlessly:
German general Erich von Falkenhayn created a plan to “bleed the French white” at Verdun.
He thought the war could be won by exhausting French resources and manpower. He
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