[OT] WWI and change of doctrine

From: <laserlight@quixnet.net>
> "Each year, roll 1 die.  On a 1-4, your doctrine remains the same, no
matter how bad the results are or how obviously wrong it is to you, the
wargamer who has 50+ years worth of hindsight.	On a 5-6, you are
permitted
to change the doctrine to better suit reality.	DRM -1 if your generals
are
appointed on the basis of political connections or inherited office. 
DRM -1
if you have already changed doctrine within the last 10 years."
>
> It is very easy to have the attitude "This worked last time..."

Well, it DID work last time, and you are never sure that the new ideas
will
work, in spite of all the theory, training and testing. And you get
worried
when your (or your subordinates) life depend on it.
In a lot of e-mail discussions discussing present-day military
innovations
(e.g.for the US the OICW, wheeled AFV, black berets) you get an awful
lot of
comments along the line "That's fine in theory or the training ground,
but
it won't work in the field". Is that much different ?

Specifically with regards to WWI, there are some often overlloked
aspects:

The last major European war - 1870/71 - had been over 40 years ago and a
lot
of things had changed in the meantime. The minor wars (Balkans, Boer
war,
colonial actions) were only partially instructive, and the
Russo-Japanese
war was far away - though it was studied by European staffs. So there
was a
lot of untested theory around - not all of it bad. For example, I have
got
hold of a 1903 German text (Balck "Taktik") that has a lot of
interesting
and reasonable-looking ideas. Certainly not the stereotypical upright
mass
charge - though he criticizes French doctirne for on over-reliance on
'elan'
and the Russian for poor flexibility (now, where have I heard that
before?).

The fact that all the major participants took very long to come up with
usable tactics and strategies points, IMO, to the difficulty of that
task.
Keegans "The First World War" has some interesting discussion of this.
For
example, without portable radios and given the smoke, sound and shelling
of
the typical battlefield, it was basically impossible to control large
bodies
of troops once they had left their trenches to attack. Coordinating
artillery and infantry was equally difficult.

Greetings
Karl Heinz