… the great British strategist, one of the “fathers” of modern armoured-mechanized-mobile warfare, Major General JFC “Boney” Fuller, wrote in the mid 1930s called Generalship: Its Diseases and Their Cure: A Study of the Personal Factor in Command. In it Fuller was harshly critical of what he saw as an old, fat (quite literally) and out of touch military command structure that was intent on fighting the last war, or even the one before that, and was unable to innovate or accept change. Too many generals, he suggested, were physically and mentally unfit for the stresses of modern war, they could not “rough it” with soldiers and actually needed to be in nice warm chateaux behind the lines while soldiers and colonels fought in the mud. This is related to something that the brilliant British soldier-scholar Field Marshal Lord Wavell said in his comments on “generalship:” commanders need to be “robust … able to withstand the shocks of war.” Fuller, especially, went to great lengths, and back two thousand plus years in history, to say that wars and military leadership require physical and mental vigour and that young people, often very young people can master both war and leadership. I suspect that both Fuller and Wavell would look at our modern Canadian Army, especially at our seasoned, experienced and relatively old sergeant section and tank commanders and so, “No, no, no! You’re wasting all that good training and experience at too low a level. Section commanders need only half that much training; those sergeants should be doing more and more important things.”
I believe that we, the Canadian public, need and deserve a more efficient and cost effective Army, and one way to make it so is to lower the ranks of junior leaders: tank and rifle section and tank troop and rifle platoon commanders. It should be harder but quicker for young soldiers to achieve the ranks of lance corporal, corporal and master corporal and command a tank or a rifle section ~ but the corporals and master corporals should be paid more. Junior officers should spend longer in the ranks of second lieutenant and lieutenant, and be paid more, while they are given the opportunities to master the basics of their profession. If you have first rate platoon commanders you’ll get good generals without too much trouble … if you don’t have a plentiful supply of really good tank troop and rifle platoon commanders then good generals will only appear now and again, by happy accident.
Ted Campbell, “The foundation (2)”, Ted Campbell’s Point of View, 2017-02-21.
November 11, 2018
QotD: “Chateau” generals and the modern Canadian Army
November 10, 2018
Emperor Karl’s last attempt for peace, 1917
Part of a post at Essays in Idleness from last month by David Warren:
As we approach the centenary of the Great Armistice, I see the plastic poppies circulating from the little boxes in the liquor stores. My thoughts turn to war qua war. Though sometimes necessary, it is not a good thing (“bad for children and animals” as the peaceniks say); and given the ambiance of our high-tech weaponry, little heroism is left to raise the tone. Contemporary battles are not confined to the soldiers, as once they could be. The devastation of cities and towns, the routine destruction of infrastructure, the civilian suffering that follows from that, must match or quite exceed ancient incidents of rapine.
While I’ve never thought war should be avoided at all costs, I recognize that the cost is very high. Opportunities for peace should not be overlooked, even while the carnage is in progress.
When, for instance, the newly-enthroned Emperor Karl of Austria-Hungary — “fanatic” Catholic Christian — discreetly proposed a separate peace to the allies in the spring of 1917, his agents were rebuffed, outed, and mocked. The Americans were coming to tilt our fortunes, the Germans were distracted overrunning the Russians, and while the Western Front was in catastrophic stasis, our nationalist politicians could now hope to utterly crush the foe. They would demand unconditional surrender.
The incident haunts my historical imagination. This was a serious opportunity to restore something close to the status quo ante, while resolving casus belli (very much plural) from Belgium and Alsace to Serbia and Constantinople on the principle of sweet reason. Drowned in the gunfire was this Blessed Karl’s expressly Christian plea. In an instant the decision was made, in the West, to persist till millions more were slain, and the conditions were assembled for international violence and totalitarianism through the next seventy years.
The gentlemen I call “the three stooges of the apocalypse” — Wilson, Lloyd George, Clemenceau — were all modern politicians, whose nationalist ideals were now buttressed by the vast democratic constituencies of countries at war, goaded on by the screaming headlines of a paper mass media. They wanted a New Europe, a New World Order, in which antiquated empires and all the sleepy old aristocratic polities would be smashed and replaced — with modern, ethically homogenous, democratic States. The consequences were unforeseeable to them, wrapped in their flags and the rhetoric of liberté, égalité, fraternité.
It was a war to end all wars! … Both the malice and the naivety were astounding.
War Graves: Honouring the Fallen of the First World War | The Tank Museum
The Tank Museum
Published on 2 Nov 2018On a visit to the Cambrai Memorial to the Missing at Louverval, Curator David Willey took the opportunity to explore the Allied First World War graves. In this video he explains how they were set up by the Commonwealth War Graves Commission during WW1 and why they look the way they do.
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November 9, 2018
Revolution in Germany – Armistice in Austria I THE GREAT WAR Week 224
The Great War
Published on 8 Nov 2018Unrest within the German Empire is spreading, resentment against the war, the hunger and the elites is turning into revolutionary action and with a mutiny in Kiel the wheels begin to turn quickly. Austria signs an armistice, the Macedonian Front collapses, Romania might enter the war again and the new German political leaders send a delegation through the lines in France. Their goal: An Armistice.
November 7, 2018
Romagne 14-18 Museum Tour
Forgotten Weapons
Published on 4 Nov 2018http://www.patreon.com/ForgottenWeapons
Jean-Paul de Vries runs a very interesting private World War One museum in the village of Romagne-sous-Montfaucon in the Meuse region of northeastern France. It is the exact opposite of typical modern museums, as it has a massive number of artifacts on display with almost no printed explanation. It is also unusual in displaying almost exclusively recovered artifacts of the war, the majority of them have been left on the fields or buried for decades. You will not find new specimens here; you will find remnants of war and weather.
That may sound dreary to some, but to me it is a very interesting way to approach the war and its history. You know that every item in this museum was actually used on the field of battle, and that can provide some interesting insights. For example, the American .30-06 Chauchat automatic rifles here indicate, contrary to most printed sources, that those guns were actually used in combat actions by American soldiers and not just for training. Tired of museums that have great open rooms with a single item on a glass case in the center? Then this is one place you will really appreciate!
The museum is an entirely private operation, and includes a small restaurant for sandwiches and such, and a shop offering books, reproduction items, and original artifacts for sale. If it located near the huge American Meuse-Argonne Cemetery, and I would highly recommend it to anyone traveling in the area with an interest in the Great War.
You can see the museum’s web site here:
https://romagne14-18.com/index.php/en/
Contact:
Forgotten Weapons
PO Box 87647
Tucson, AZ 85754
QotD: Gandhi and the fall of the Caliphate
… it should not be thought for one second that Gandhi’s finally full-blown desire to detach India from the British empire gave him the slightest sympathy with other colonial peoples pursuing similar objectives. Throughout his entire life Gandhi displayed the most spectacular inability to understand or even really take in people unlike himself — a trait which V.S. Naipaul considers specifically Hindu, and I am inclined to agree. Just as Gandhi had been totally unconcerned with the situation of South Africa’s blacks (he hardly noticed they were there until they rebelled), so now he was totally unconcerned with other Asians or Africans. In fact, he was adamantly opposed to certain Arab movements within the Ottoman empire for reasons of internal Indian politics.
At the close of World War I, the Muslims of India were deeply absorbed in what they called the “Khilafat” movement — “Khilafat” being their corruption of “Caliphate,” the Caliph in question being the Ottoman Sultan. In addition to his temporal powers, the Sultan of the Ottoman empire held the spiritual position of Caliph, supreme leader of the world’s Muslims and successor to the Prophet Muhammad. At the defeat of the Central Powers (Germany, Austria, Turkey), the Sultan was a prisoner in his palace in Constantinople, shorn of his religious as well as his political authority, and the Muslims of India were incensed. It so happened that the former subject peoples of the Ottoman empire, principally Arabs, were perfectly happy to be rid of this Caliph, and even the Turks were glad to be rid of him, but this made no impression at all on the Muslims of India, for whom the issue was essentially a club with which to beat the British. Until this odd historical moment, Indian Muslims had felt little real allegiance to the Ottoman Sultan either, but now that he had fallen, the British had done it! The British had taken away their Khilafat! And one of the most ardent supporters of this Indian Muslim movement was the new Hindu leader, Gandhi.
Richard Grenier, “The Gandhi Nobody Knows”, Commentary, 1983-03-01.
November 6, 2018
George Patton & Douglas MacArthur In World War 1 I WHO DID WHAT IN WW1?
The Great War
Published on 5 Nov 2018Check out Dessert Operations: http://bit.ly/TheGreatWar_DO
George S. Patton and Douglas MacArthur both served as senior officers in the First World War 1, a conflict that shaped their understanding of military strategy and tactics and formed them into the men that would become legends 20 years later.
November 5, 2018
French Tanks of World War 1 I THE GREAT WAR Special
The Great War
Published on 3 Nov 2018Check Out Supremacy 1914: https://www.supremacy1914.com/index.p…
French tank development started almost simoultaneously with the British. The French tanks were very different in design based on a different understanding of the role of the tank on the battlefield. Arguably, the first modern tank, the Renault FT was a result of this development.
November 2, 2018
Austria-Hungary Disintegrates – The Ottoman Empire Leaves the War I THE GREAT WAR Week 223
The Great War
Published on 1 Nov 2018The Ottoman Empire has been on the retreat in the Middle East since the renewed British offensive in September and now, as the allies are threatening the Turkish heartland and also Constantinople, the Ottoman Empire calls for an armistice. The Armistice of Mudros is signed as the remaining Central Powers also struggle to keep their Empires together.
October 31, 2018
Great Britain Before World War 1 I THE GREAT WAR Special
The Great War
Published on 29 Oct 2018Check out War2Glory: http://bit.ly/TheGreatWar_W2G
Great Britain was the center of a vast colonial empire and a rapidly changing world during the 19th and early 20th century. But what happened in the country in the years leading up to World War 1?
October 29, 2018
Baseball Season 1918 I OUT OF THE ETHER
The Great War
Published on 27 Oct 2018Der Deutsche Baseball!
October 26, 2018
Italy Attacks – The Battle of Vittorio Veneto I THE GREAT WAR Week 223
The Great War
Published on 25 Oct 2018After the Battle of the Piave, the Italian front had been relatively quiet and stable. But just as unrest and instablity spread through the Austro-Hungarian Empire, the Italian Army and its allies attack along the whole front. From Monte Grappa and across the Piave, the Austro-Hungarians are caught off guard.
October 23, 2018
Austria During World War 1 I THE GREAT WAR Special
The Great War
Published on 22 Oct 2018The Austrian part of the dual monarchy that was the Austro-Hungarian Empire experienced the war quite distinctly and the inner political machinations directly influenced the outbreak of the war.
October 22, 2018
Looting – Pilates – Suicides Among Soldiers I OUT OF THE TRENCHES
The Great War
Published on 20 Oct 2018Crisis Call Center (US): http://crisiscallcenter.org/crisisser…
Crisis Service Canada: http://www.crisisservicescanada.ca/
Mind (UK): https://www.mind.org.uk/
Deutsche Depressionshilfe: https://www.deutsche-depressionshilfe…
October 19, 2018
The Battle of the Selle – Ludendorff Resigns I THE GREAT WAR Week 221
The Great War
Published on 18 Oct 2018As the Germans are retreating further and further during the Battle of the Selle, Erich Ludendorff – the German Quartermaster General, one half of Germany’s military dictatorship and mastermind behind the last big German offensive in spring 1918 – resigns under pressure by the Kaiser and the Reichstag. The German upper class realizes that their days might be numbered if the war continues in the current form and Austria-Hungary’s Emperor Karl has the same epiphany.
