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Originally Posted by Buehler445
Well said DJLN.
Again, for those that haven’t listened to Blueprint for Armageddon podcasts in Dan Carlin’s hardcore history do it. Now. The manner in which he explains and describes WWI should be required listening for everyone involved.
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Max Hastings has some really good stuff on it as well. Catastrophe 1914: Europe Goes to War is a really good one. Not always an easy read; can really get itself bogged down at times, but a ton of good information in there.
Inferno is a similar treatment for WWII and suffers the same problems. Really good road trip audio-book but hard to pound through on paper at times.
Where Carlin really shines is demonstrating the geopolitical aspects of it. Man, there just isn't a 'good guy' or a 'bad guy' in that story. Every nation involved had a reason to do what it did. Every nation involved had good reasons to NOT have done what they did.
WWI is a goldmine for analysis and often gets overlooked in favor of "There were a lot of stupid generals that ran guys into machine guns because they were stupid..." It's far more complicated than that. Much of it simply came down to the fact that we could kill people but we couldn't move well yet. So even an army that was losing and was looking to cede territory couldn't. And an army looking to take advantage of a routed opponent ALSO couldn't. The logistics involved at the time made that kind of prolonged stalemate almost inevitable.
And when people say "well why'd they just keep doing the same thing?" -- they didn't. All those offensives started differently. They were all based on different concepts and strategies. But they all fell victim to the same realities on the ground.
There were few truly stupid or apathetic leaders involved in this thing - there just wasn't a hell of a lot they could do. Killing technology was FAR beyond infrastructure and mobility. Siege tactics were far better understood and capable of being implemented than the commando style tactics we see utilized today.
I don't think any treatment of WWI is unnecessary - few people have near the understanding of it that they should.