Re: [OT] French was: [SG]Artillery

On Mon, 27 May 2002, John Atkinson wrote:

> Furthermore, the majority of the French Army had been
> defeated by 1916 and was no longer good for anything
> but static defenses.	In fact, there was a mutiny in
> 1916 which resulted in this conclusion being more or
> less formally reached by the French High Command.

Yes and no. The French army had been abused to such an extent in useless
and incredibly badly managed offensives that the french did indeed
refuse
to be used in such capacity anymore. This says everything about their
high
command and very little negatively about the troops. As you said, the
troops DID still hold their lines, and the knowledge of this mutiny
never
reached the german high command till years later.

Furthermore, once the french general staff had been overhauled and
proven
themselves to the french soldiers to be much more adequate, the french
did
resume limited (and in the context of this war, much more realistic and
useful) offenses.

 > > In 1918, without the addition into the line of fresh
> US forces and the promise of more, the entire line
> would have collapsed (as it nearly did anyway) and
> there would have been no assets available for the
> counteroffensive that finally knocked the Germans out
> of the war.

The american entry certainly tilted the balance for good. However, the
german final offensive ran out of steam quite on it's own already. As
for
armies making big messes in WW1, the same can be said for the british
high
command as has been said about the frenchhigh command. The americans
came
into the war with something of an 'unfair' advantage; they had the
advantage of having seen their allies make all the mistakes already, and
didn't have to make all those mistakes again, themselves.

Cheers,

    Derk