[HN Gopher] Historical maps probably helped cause World War I
___________________________________________________________________
Historical maps probably helped cause World War I
Author : benbreen
Score : 104 points
Date : 2023-09-19 13:24 UTC (9 hours ago)
(HTM) web link (resobscura.substack.com)
(TXT) w3m dump (resobscura.substack.com)
| slowhadoken wrote:
| You'll never guess what happens next.
| tomcam wrote:
| I just knew those cartographers were a sketchy bunch. But did any
| of you listen to me?
|
| /joke
| denton-scratch wrote:
| > Keeping that in mind, return to the map above and take note of
| Portugal and Brazil.
|
| I took note: Brazil is absent from the map, which doesn't show
| the Americas.
| jibe wrote:
| Look again, it isn't to scale, but the americas are there!
| denton-scratch wrote:
| Oh my, so it is! The Americas is that little island off
| Japan.
| openasocket wrote:
| I mean, I wouldn't say that it CAUSED world war I. World War I
| was caused by political effects and the powderkeg that was
| European diplomacy at the time. Did it influence how World War I
| was fought? I'd say ... maybe, kinda, if you squint at it enough.
| The Schlieffen plan at its core was a classic envelopment. And,
| to be clear, that isn't a bad strategy. Enveloping the enemy is
| actually the cornerstone of modern warfare. Sure, it didn't go as
| expected in this case, but given the technology and doctrine of
| the time it was probably the most likely route to success. Or
| rather, it's very hard to imagine any plan for invasion by the
| Germans that didn't lead to the stalemate we saw, barring some
| massive blunder on the French side.
| moretrashplz wrote:
| Wars since the age of Napoleon have been caused by bankers, not
| maps. Let's be real.
| medo-bear wrote:
| causes proposed in lenin's book make more sense [0]
|
| [0]
| https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Imperialism,_the_Highest_Sta...
| boxfire wrote:
| Ugh the first paragraph kicks off with a missing bit of
| information. Min Nan has at least 5 subvarieties. In my spouse's
| it's pronounced "de" not "te" (and she is Min Nan as a first
| language). She laughed and said there's no way the people in
| Xiamen said "te", or any of the subvarieties she is familiar with
| within coastal fujian where she spent the first 25 years of her
| life.
|
| So failed look at archaic miss transliterations, kind of
| reminiscent of the entire theme of the article. The example map
| being built on an argument from a bad assumption (a historical
| error as a pretext for argument).
|
| Perfect irony.
| tdtd wrote:
| The "te" transliteration for Cha in Min Nan comes from the
| Peh-oe-ji romanization system
| (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pe%CC%8Dh-%C5%8De-j%C4%AB),
| which doesn't use the letter 'd' at all.
|
| As was common for Chinese romanization systems from before the
| 20th century, it used 't' for unaspirated /t/ (which we would
| use use 'd' for today in systems like Pinyin for Mandarin or
| Peng'im for Teochew), and used 'th' for aspirated /tk/ (which
| we sould use 't' for today in systems like Pinyin or Peng'im).
|
| This isn't an archaic miss transliteration, it's just an
| alternative transliteration strategy. In many languages that
| primarily use the latin alphabet, the phonemes associated with
| 't' and 'd' are /t/ and /d/, primarily distinguished by voice
| instead of aspiration (where aspiration is allophonic), so it's
| logical that the creators of earlier romanization systems
| focused on preserving that voice distinction, even if it's less
| common today for a variety of reasons.
| CorrectHorseBat wrote:
| de/te as in English or de/te as in pinyin? She and the article
| could well be both right if she's talking about pinyin
| pronunciation and the article not.
| bivargen wrote:
| While I do not doubt that your spouse, this is besides the
| point, the point is that Min Nan pronounces the first phoneme
| of the word for "tea" with a dental stop, other chinese
| variants/languages realize the same phoneme with a dental
| affricate.
|
| I do not know if the article author/cartographer ever studied
| linguistics or phonetics, but this is the main takeaway from
| the map for me, a linguist, the pattern is the message, not the
| somewhat imprecise data points.
| trynumber9 wrote:
| Battle of annihilation became the fetish of the German army well
| before WWI. As the Germans already did it successfully in 1870 by
| encircling two French armies leading to what was - at the time -
| somewhat of a surprise victory. Why would one credit this
| obsession to a 2000 year old tactical victory (Cannae) and not
| the 40 year old strategic victories of Metz and Sedan?
|
| Schlieffen plan had the same aim but shifted northward to deal
| with the fact that after the annexations of 1871 any offensive
| through the south (now guarded by the Vosges) was unlikely to be
| successful.
| TSiege wrote:
| This comment should really be higher
| ethbr1 wrote:
| It's curious how people are responding to the title, rather than
| the post, which touches on the title but is mostly about another
| thing:
|
| >> _There's something beguiling about the thought that a simple
| arrangement of lines might explain the world -- like seeing human
| history as an enormous game of Civilization 6. But of course,
| that's also the problem with using maps as a way of understanding
| history. If you're not careful, they go from being helpful tools
| to misleading simplifications._
|
| To which I think the blog post makes an interesting argument.
|
| I've always thought about maps from a Tufte perspective:
|
| (1) They are abstractions from reality. (2) Consequently, they
| simplify and omit select details. (3) Consequently, they are
| created with an inherent and _specific_ purpose in mind: details
| necessary for that purpose are included, those unneeded are
| omitted.(4) Ergo, we must be careful to understand a map 's
| _original_ purpose and ask whether its abstractions are likely to
| remain valid if we choose to employ it for another.
|
| F.ex. the tactical drawing of Cannae's double envelopment likely
| doesn't generalize to the strategic realm
| kqr wrote:
| I'm reminded of how all models are wrong...
| 2OEH8eoCRo0 wrote:
| All models are wrong, some are useful. The map is not the
| territory.
| Someone wrote:
| That isn't limited to maps, but applies to all models of
| reality, such as Newtonian physics, spherical cows, models of
| the economy that are used to guide policy or large language
| models.
|
| Also, oftentimes creators of models do not know what details
| are necessary for a model's purpose, and may omit ones they
| aren't aware of.
| [deleted]
| dkarl wrote:
| The intentions don't just affect the way the data is presented,
| but can affect the underlying data itself. For example, the
| "German Claims in Africa" shows vast areas as "German claims"
| on what must be very shaky justification. The presentation is
| very clear, but the data is misleading.
| mytailorisrich wrote:
| The justification to the European "scramble to Africa" is
| that they could. Claims were also starting points for
| negotiations among European countries based on relative power
| and perhaps give and take in other domains or geographical
| areas.
|
| Historically, and to a point up to this day, territorial
| claims are a power play. Either you're powerful enough to
| enforce them (through possession, defence, threats) or you
| are not. And the justification to seeking territory is of
| course to increase power and resources.
| ethbr1 wrote:
| Intentions absolutely affect both the data and presentation!
| Because one cannot summarize without editorializing.
|
| F.ex. the "German Claims in Africa according to Professor
| Delbruck" map appears to originate in a British publication
| [0], in the context of a "German aims in Africa" section
| [1]...
|
| >> [Beginning with] _" It might be thought that even the
| rapacity of Prussia could hardly fail to be satisfied with
| such wholesale spoliation of territory such as this, but the
| foregoing [European territorial] terms by no means exhaust
| the demands which are to be made of the striken foe."_
|
| >> _" The idea that at the end of the war Germany would make
| enormous acquisitions in Africa was just as popularly
| believed and lingered just as tenaciously in the Teuton mind
| as the delusions with regards to the European settlement. As
| late as the Summer of 1917 the well-known German historian,
| Professor Delbruck, gives the following interesting account
| of German's aims in this directions [... Prof Delbruck's
| quote...] [...] I have therefore reduced it to map form in
| order that a comparison may be made between these two
| pathetic tributes to the tenacity of German hopes (See Map
| 13)."_
|
| So the map that we're looking at is a _British_ graphical
| depiction of something a _German_ military historian said,
| provided in the context of demonstrating that German colonial
| claims in Africa are over-optimistic and -broad with regard
| to their military performance by the end of WWI.
|
| And yet the _intent_ behind the creation of that map is
| largely lost by viewers.
|
| The blog post captions it as "Putative German claims in
| Africa amounted to nearly half the continent" which is more
| or less accurate, albeit leaving out the fact that the map is
| apparently a British creation.
|
| The British component possibly affected the precise
| boundaries as drawn, as well as the decision to make British
| and German colors similar, so as to decrease the obviousness
| of British colonies and emphasize the monolithic nature of
| desired German African colonies.
|
| [0] Maps 12 and 13 from "The British Dominions Year Book
| 1918" https://maps.lib.utexas.edu/maps/historical/history_dom
| inion...
|
| [1] "The British Dominions Year Book 1918" https://books.goog
| le.com/books?id=wiI0AAAAMAAJ&vq=africa&pg=...
| hammock wrote:
| Incredibly relevant commentary today, in regards to the Ukraine
| conflict
| nonethewiser wrote:
| And to the Chinese map including new territory.
| cratermoon wrote:
| And Russian and Japanese maps of the Kuril Islands.
|
| Pakistani and Indian maps of Jammu and Kashmir and the
| Siachen. "thence north to the glaciers"
| kgeist wrote:
| >words for tea that sound like chai reflect a historical spread
| via overland routes, the argument goes, while words like tea are
| a legacy of maritime trade
|
| >A 2018 viral article by the data journalist Nikhil Sonad in
| Quartz first put this idea on the world's radar
|
| It was common knowledge for decades. At least among linguists.
| exabrial wrote:
| Any new form of communication usually provokes misunderstanding
| and often abuse by powers that be.
|
| To this day, people still believe things on the internet...
| icegreentea2 wrote:
| Cannae is undoubtedly the ur battle of annihilation in the
| western world (particularly in the relevant period). I think it's
| reasonable to argue that Schlieffen was heavily influenced and
| motivated by it, and that perhaps the schematic simplicity by
| which it was portraited may have led Schlieffen and other German
| planners astray.
|
| But to lean completely on Tuchman to characterize the military
| planning of the Germans is completely negligent. Simply saying
| that it's imperfect scholarship does not excuse you from lifting
| your main thesis straight from the book.
|
| It's clear that Schlieffen drew on Cannae as a model, but the
| argument presented in this article is just... missing a lot of
| stuff?
|
| First, the Tuchman quote: "Under Schlieffen, envelopment became
| the fetish and frontal attack the anathema of the German General
| Staff.". I don't think this is a fair characterization
| ('fetish'). Why WOULD Germany -want- to perform frontal attacks
| when envelopment was an option? In nearly all scenarios,
| envelopment is strictly better than frontal attack when possible!
| And the Germans were hardly afraid of frontal assaults even at
| the start of WW1. They straight up face-tanked the Belgium
| fortresses!
|
| And beyond Cannae, the Germans had plenty of recent military
| history where envelopment/flanking carried the day. In the
| Austro-Prussian War at the Battle of Koniggratz (arguably one of
| the major stepping stones to the foundation of the German
| Empire), an operational flanking maneuver carried the day. In the
| Franco-Prussian war (the actual founding war of the German
| Empire), the Battle of Sedan was a battle of encirclement (the
| Prussians basically totally enveloped the French).
|
| Perhaps Cannae was the archetype they were chasing, but they also
| had recent (and nationally significant) examples to draw on. They
| were not 'just' chasing a 2000 year old mirage - they were trying
| to live up to their own recent traditions and history.
|
| So when the author says, "Doubt never seemed to enter the minds
| of these military strategists of pre-war Germany. It did not seem
| to trouble them, for instance, that they were drawing world-
| changing lessons from a map of a battle of two thousand years
| earlier about which surprisingly little is known" - well, I'd
| argue that they weren't troubled because they weren't drawing
| world changing lessons from 2000 years ago. They were drawing
| world-changing lessons from recent world-changing events (they
| UNIFIED GERMANY! They MADE the GERMAN EMPIRE!) that their parents
| and grandparents just partook in.
| trynumber9 wrote:
| I agree but it's notable that Schlieffen, like many German
| officers who worked on war plans leading up to the Great War,
| wasn't even drawing lessons from his parent's experience - he
| partook in the Franco-Prussian War himself.
| Soupy wrote:
| Love it. The core point that I actually took away is driving home
| the fact that maps are not infallible and this goes against
| common sense for most people. I don't know if it truly led to
| WWI, but faulty maps have definitely caused endless problems
| throughout history. Look at Bermuda - the lack of this island on
| maps (or inprecise positioning) from the 14th-19th century has
| directly caused 350+ shipwrecks littering its shores. And
| countries didn't share updated positioning data/maps for
| centuries because it was a strategic advantage to horde it. Cool
| now, horrifying back then.
|
| Even today, official US govn topo maps are constantly rectified
| and reprinted as new surveys and aerials are taken into account
| and we realize errors were made. You can actually explore the
| differences in the reprints via https://pastmaps.com/explore if
| you're curious about it (for full transparency, Pastmaps is my
| own project)
| roussanoff wrote:
| > _It is said to prove a point about the globalization of tea:
| words for tea that sound like chai reflect a historical spread
| via overland routes, the argument goes, while words like tea are
| a legacy of maritime trade. A 2018 viral article by the data
| journalist Nikhil Sonad in Quartz first put this idea on the
| world's radar._
|
| This "idea" was on wikipedia since at least 2015:
| https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Etymology_of_tea&...
| zeteo wrote:
| For anyone who finds the sequence from Cannae to WW1 tenuous or
| hard to follow:
|
| - Alfred von Schlieffen, chief military planner for the German
| Empire during a crucial period (1891-1906), was obsessed with the
| battle of Cannae.
|
| - A Cannae-style battle seemed impossible in the east, as the
| Russians had plenty of space to fall back and had done so during
| Napoleon's time.
|
| - So Schlieffen focused all German planning on a decisive blow in
| the west. The Germans would encircle the French army and
| annihilate it Cannae-style.
|
| - When, in August 1914, the Kaiser wanted to mobilize solely
| against Russia, the generals told him it was impossible to do so
| and they had to attack France instead.
|
| - Schlieffen's Cannae-inspired plan had the further consequence
| of flanking the French through Belgium. This drew in Britain and
| made it a world war.
| jacquesm wrote:
| I remember crossing from France into Spain and back again
| somewhere in the early 80's, when Europe _definitely_ still had
| physical borders and not realizing I had done so until it had
| happened. My surprise stemmed in part from the fact that on the
| map there was a clear line and in real life there was absolutely
| nothing at all. It really helped me to understand once and for
| all that maps are just pieces of paper and that it 's the real
| world that counts. Of course a days walk further where the
| highway entered Spain you'd have been stopped and asked for your
| passport. But high up in the countryside nobody really cared
| about where precisely that border was, the path is then on this
| side of the border and a little while later on the other. And
| this was at a time when the Basque separatist movement was very
| active with regular bombings. So the lack of a border and
| associated controls was in a way something that you wouldn't
| expect at all.
|
| Now, with Schengen in full effect all over Europe crossing a
| border is something that usually involves seeing some buildings
| without a purpose in the middle of a highway. The only time I
| have been stopped inside the Schengen area for document checks
| was during the COVID era and it felt pretty weird not to be able
| to just go from Amsterdam to Riga without such checks.
| lo_zamoyski wrote:
| I'm not sure what the profound insight is supposed to be here.
| Everyone knows that borders are established by convention and
| agreement. That doesn't mean they don't matter.
|
| Borders exist for the sake of the common good, in a way that's
| analogous to private property, which also exists for the sake
| of the common good. I realize this must be a strange notion for
| those of us raised in a culture that's been shot through with
| liberalism and liberal/radically individualist ideas (I have
| here in mind the philosophical stance, not liberal
| institutions), where private property is understood as prior to
| the common good and where the common good is conceived as
| something that's grudgingly ceded from private property. But
| traditionally, the common good was taken to be prior to private
| property, and private property to be something the exists for
| the sake of the common good because it enables human
| flourishing. (Incidentally, this understanding resolves ethical
| problems concerning the use of what would otherwise be taken to
| be private property during times of crisis, such as whether the
| taking of food from a privately owned stockpile, by starving
| people, during a famine would constitute theft.)
|
| Now, how particular borders are enforced or respected or
| treated is a matter of prudential political judgement. Schengen
| is not borderless. It is itself defined by a border that is
| enforced by Frontex! It is precisely the Schengen border that
| enables free movement within Schengen. Member states have
| determined that free movement between them and them only is for
| the common good of these member states. Furthermore, just
| because free movement is now possible doesn't mean borders have
| ceased to exist. Administrative borders still exist because
| they circumscribe legal jurisdictions, and these may or may not
| coincide with ethnic boundaries or cultural regions. States
| have simply become more permissive about enforcing movement
| because of their membership in Schengen. But if a crisis were
| to occur, such as a flood of migrants that threatens the good
| of a nation's population, you can be sure that member states
| would control the flow of people over their borders again, if
| only temporarily, to contain the crisis and protect the common
| good of the population. Protecting the common good is, after
| all, _the_ job of the state.
| mikhailfranco wrote:
| Almost certainly did _not_ cause WWI.
|
| May have influenced German overconfidence and some of their
| tactics.
| TSiege wrote:
| The argument laid out in this post and in the title around maps,
| specifically the battle of cannae, leading to world war one is
| pretty weak. I buy that German generals were obsessed with the
| battle, but I don't see any evidence here that this caused the
| war. Going to war is first and foremost a political act even if
| it is followed by a military response. There's no mention of the
| complex politics of europe at the time with it's web of
| alliances, nor any talk of arch duke ferdinand. Sure German
| generals thought they could easily win the war following the
| teachings of Cannae, but they no more caused the war than the US
| military did with the invasion of Iraq
| gustavus wrote:
| So a couple of points of clarifications
|
| > specifically the battle of cannae, leading to world war one
| is pretty weak. I buy that German generals were obsessed with
| the battle,
|
| So not just the German generals specifically Schlieffen. The
| Schlieffen plan developed by it's namesake general was the
| governing document for the German plan of battle at the
| beginning of WW1. Schlieffen spent his entire life trying to
| figure out the plan that would eventually be his namesake, and
| he was also obsessed with Canne, so I could see an argument
| that was a contributing factor. If schlifen wasn't obsessed
| with the double envelopment he is less likely to send troops
| through Belgium and no Belgium means no UK involvement leading
| to a very different war.
|
| > Going to war is first and foremost a political act
|
| That is one of the fascinating things about WW1 is there are
| times where it seems as if forces more than men were dictating
| things. At one point after mobilization and but prior to the
| actual invasion of Belgium the Kaiser wanted to stop things as
| he believed a peace deal was reached and was told no, not only
| no but that such a thing was fundamentally impossible at that
| point because the military plans laid out by the generals many
| years ago had dictated so precisely how things had to happen
| that any change to the plans was close to impossible once they
| were set in motion. The same thing happened in the Russian side
| the Czar issued orders for mobilisation then stand down then
| mobilization again and then one general smashed his telephone
| so that it could not be rescinded. I think they is part of what
| made WW1 the war it was, it was one ran primarily by and for
| the generals (until the later years) with the political
| officials deferring all power and authority to them.
| mighmi wrote:
| > The Schlieffen plan developed by it's namesake general
|
| The Schlieefen plan didn't exist.
|
| > The Schlieffen memorandum of 1905, with its 1906
| supplement, was not a plan. It was not operational. It did
| not go into details or issue orders
|
| David Frmokin's Europe's Last Summer
|
| Terence Zuber's Inventing the Schlieefen Plan shows that the
| "plan" was written in a memorandum at his retirement, which
| his daughter kept in her family photos (even in August 1914).
| The memorandum also involved 20 divisions which never existed
| - 48 corps should have attacked France instead of the actual
| 34...
|
| The actual plan as described was a one front war against
| France... From Schlieefen's other writings were Germany at
| war with France and Russia, he suggested using interior rail
| lines to lure enemy forces inside, and then counteract by
| taking their supply lines (the move through Belgium and
| Northern France), quickly winning the war, which bears only
| the most superficial resemblance to the war as started.
|
| Mark Humphries and John Maker have gone into more detail on
| where the actual war plan (as followed) came from, von
| Moltke's beliefs etc. Even e.g. Gross who has strongly
| debated Zuber about this agrees that there was no official
| plan as such, instead arguing that Schlieffen's influence,
| staff rides etc. planted the seeds of seeing potential
| victory through such an approach.
| gustavus wrote:
| My friend, I have been eagerly gobbling up all the good
| literature I can get my hands on recently, do you have any
| suggestions on books that you feel do a decent job of
| examining the Shlieefen Plan?
|
| Besides The Guns of August which I just finished last
| month.
| rexpop wrote:
| > forces more than men were dictating things
|
| > one general smashed his telephone so that it could not be
| rescinded
|
| Seems like your "forces more than men" are actually just
| "more men."
|
| Arguably, though, you're describing ideology or mythos, eg
| "Der tag!"[0]
|
| 0. https://blogs.scientificamerican.com/anecdotes-from-the-
| arch...
| gustavus wrote:
| To an extant yes, but another example where it seemed
| forces more than men moved things was Verdun. Halfway
| through the battle both the Germans and the French generals
| commanding the armies wanted to pull out because it was so
| horrible, but the Germans were so close to a victory they
| couldn't pull out after all the blood that had been spilt
| being so close to victory, meanwhile the French couldn't
| give a single inch of ground for doing so would mean the
| loss of Verdun, which was a monument of national pride, and
| so for three hundred and three days below the sun the
| battle carried, father and son fell one by one.
|
| The war is replete with similar examples, and sure we can
| call it mythos or ideology or something like that, but it
| is clear there were times in the war that even had the
| generals and the populace wanted things to be different it
| was near impossible to change and men continued thrown into
| the meat grinder.
| TSiege wrote:
| From what I've been able to find, the importance of invading
| Belgium had more to do with capturing it's rail network for
| logistics, than recreating the battle of cannae
| gustavus wrote:
| I'd argue against that interpretation, the importance of
| invading Belgium had more to do with avoiding the French
| line of fortresses and hoping that the Belgians would just
| roll over than capturing rail networks that they wouldn't
| be able to use without a protracted war, which they had no
| anticipation of as they expected to be marching into Paris
| 900 hours after mobilization was declared.
| TSiege wrote:
| That also makes sense, and has nothing to do with the
| battle of cannae? Like that seems like a logical tactical
| decision. Offensive maneuvers are costly for the attacker
| against well fortified positions, so avoiding them by
| going around them makes sense as well as using the
| element of surprise. It also has nothing to do with the
| 2000 year old battle
| jakderrida wrote:
| > It also has nothing to do with the 2000 year old battle
|
| It has a little bit to do with it, I think, but only in
| two sense 1. It involved a decisive victory by
| envelopment which, completely unrelated to Cannae,
| Germany needed to avoid a two-front war. 2. It's just the
| go-to military general's example to refer to their own
| "masterpiece". aka. Schlieffen's Cannae.
|
| I'll agree, though, that it would be equally relevant had
| Schlieffen called it, "Pulling my goalie to put an extra
| man on the ice".
| Apocryphon wrote:
| "Convinced that Germany, surrounded by powerful enemies,
| would have to fight outnumbered and win, Schlieffen
| believed the key to victory could be discovered in an
| account of the Battle of Cannae, written by the German
| military historian Hans Delbrtick. Therefore, Schlieffen
| ordered the historical section of the General Staff to
| produce a set of Cannae Studies that would demonstrate
| that the principle of double envelopment practiced by
| Hannibal at Cannae was the master key to victory in
| battle."
|
| https://apps.dtic.mil/sti/citations/ADA622847
| Miraste wrote:
| The German military prior to WWI had far, _far_ more political
| power than the US military in 2003. Voltaire 's famous line
| "Where some states have an army, the Prussian Army has a state"
| didn't change in the intervening centuries, except that they
| acquired a whole empire in the meantime.
| leroy_masochist wrote:
| I agree with this assessment; the words "probably helped" are
| doing a lot of work here. Maybe a better way to put it would
| be, "probably were a factor in the timing of WWI". The German
| general staff was indeed very focused on the operational art of
| war and their working assumptions at the time of the war's
| outset (i.e., that they had an edge over the French via the
| Schlieffen plan) were certainly factors in Germany's overall
| calculus....maybe _one of_ the proximate causeS, but not the
| underlying cause, which was the cumulative history of intense
| great power competition in the decades leading up to 1914.
| jprete wrote:
| I'm not an expert, but I think for World War I the military
| strategy questions - and in particular the misconceptions -
| were very relevant to the decision to go to war. My
| understanding is that the various combatant powers believed
| that the war would be quick and decisive in the way that prior
| wars had been; none expected or prepared for a four-year slog
| of trench warfare, defensive supremacy, or total depletion of
| whole demographics of the population. I've read that the
| American Civil War pioneered many of the technologies and
| strategies used in World War I, and if European military
| strategists had paid attention they would have had a better
| idea of what they were in for.
| benbreen wrote:
| Author here - yes, this is what I was getting at. The false
| promise of a rapid victory over the French via encirclement
| from the right flank (in the style of Hannibal) really was a
| major factor in justifying the risks of war for the German
| General Staff. And because Schlieffen was preoccupied with
| the idea that an ancient battle could be a model for that
| approach, it distracted from the now-obvious technological
| changes of the period (machine guns=defensive warfare) that
| made the approach impossible.
|
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Schlieffen_Plan
| icegreentea2 wrote:
| How does machine guns = defensive warfare make the
| "Schlieffen Plan" impossible?
|
| The Germans were able to advance to the doorstep of Paris.
| They continuously tried to engage the Entente in a decisive
| battle (from the Frontier all the way to the Marne). They
| were unable to do so because the Entente refused to be
| engaged that way, and because the Entente had superior
| strategic/operational mobility (they were retreating onto
| their own logistics and infrastructure (railroads)). At the
| Marne (Paris), Germany was at or near it's logistical
| limits. Germany also transferred 200,000 troops to the
| Eastern front.
|
| The Battle of the Marne itself was not "Germany face tanks
| into prepared defensive positions and is stopped cold by
| Entente machine guns and fortifications". The battle was a
| retreating Entente force, bolstered by re-inforcements,
| turning around and attacking into the pursuing Germans.
|
| The "Schlieffen Plan" failed before the whole 'static
| warfare' thing started. In fact, it was the failure of the
| plan that induced the conditions for the race to the sea,
| and the whole western front shitshow.
|
| The "Schlieffen Plan" failed because Germany outran it's
| logistics, because Germany panicked when Russia mobilized
| faster than anticipated and transferred over a sizeable
| body of men, because France was able to use it's position
| (retreating onto its infrastructure) effectively (and they
| weren't dumb enough to try to engage the Germans at every
| opportunity), and I'm sure for many other reasons as well.
| Machine guns may play a part, but I think it's overly
| reductive to claim that "machine guns - defensive warfare"
| made the plan impossible.
| vkou wrote:
| Were machine guns really the cause of 'defensive' warfare?
|
| Rolling artillery barrages would send the front-line
| machinegunners hiding in the trenches. The wave of
| attackers behind the artillery barrage, when moving quickly
| had a very good chance of capturing the front line of
| trenches.
|
| The problem that they would face is that rail-deployed
| reinforcements on the defender side would pour in as a
| counter-attack... And those recently-captured front-line
| trenches were, by design, indefensible from an attack from
| the rear.
|
| So you'd get lots of bloody attacks, with horrific loss of
| life, where all the territorial gains made in them would be
| lost in an equally bloody counter-attack. As a net result,
| the front is frozen, despite both sides taking turns
| attacking (And making brief territorial gains, that are
| immediately reversed).
|
| Artillery and railroads, not machineguns seem to be the
| major influences, there.
| rawgabbit wrote:
| Hmmm. I doubt it was Cannae, it was more of the 1870 Franco
| Prussian war. The Franco Prussian war lasted only six
| months. That war destroyed the myth of France's military
| might (from Napoleon)and created modern Germany. Moltke the
| Elder became a warrior god in Germany. Schlieffen was
| tasked on how to solve the problem with a war on two
| fronts; he expected to knockout France in a quick blow just
| like in 1870 and turn around and fight the Russians.
|
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Franco-Prussian_War
| treis wrote:
| Not to mention that Cannae was famously a double pincer
| and the Schlieffen plan was not.
| TSiege wrote:
| If that's the case you're trying to present, your article
| should be clearer about that. That wikipedia entry also
| doesn't seem to bolster your case. It doesn't even mention
| the battle of Cannae, but it does talk extensively about
| the importance of capturing the Belgian rail network for
| the German logistics in fighting France
| jakderrida wrote:
| >That wikipedia entry also doesn't seem to bolster your
| case. It doesn't even mention the battle of Cannae
|
| In his defense, the Britannica entry does mention it.
| https://www.britannica.com/event/Schlieffen-Plan In your
| defense, you are right.
| gustavus wrote:
| I'd argue against Schlieffen wanting to recreate the battle
| of Canne, and say that was much more the result of Moltke
| giving the Crown Prince permission to advance. After all
| the original Schlieffen plan was to have the Alsace region
| slowly retreat and give ground enticing the French further
| in, whereas the right flank that was to wheel through
| Belgium and strike at Paris was to do all the work. If
| anyone was going trying to recreate Canne I would argue it
| was Moltke, as he was the one that allowed the left flank
| to start moving forward.
| jakderrida wrote:
| > After all the original Schlieffen plan was to have the
| Alsace region slowly retreat and give ground enticing the
| French further in
|
| That actually would be a much better analogy to Cannae.
| Enticing them to break your center, not realizing until
| they're surrounded that the victory they've charged into
| is actually an epic defeat.
|
| I still don't understand why they'd assume French
| generals would do that, though. It really assumes a
| hopeless level of ineptitude on their part for it to
| work. Seems obvious to me they're better off stalling
| till Russians are mobilized, no matter how enticing the
| bait is.
| AlbertCory wrote:
| I think there's something there, and I did enjoy your
| article. WW I had a lot of causes, at the head of which I'd
| put the Kaiser's stupidity and weakness.
|
| But yeah, Cannae did (and still does) exert a big influence
| on military planners.
|
| As others have pointed out, Schlieffen depended on massive
| luck and adherence to The Plan, neither of which obtained.
| It was not machine guns that made it fail.
| TSiege wrote:
| This is basically true of most wars. The war in Iraq was
| supposed to be quick and decisive.
| https://www.cbsnews.com/news/rumsfeld-it-would-be-a-short-
| wa...
| Miraste wrote:
| The war in Iraq was quick and decisive. The occupation
| afterwards was a mess in every way possible, but the
| organized war between states went exactly as planned.
| cmrdporcupine wrote:
| Absolutely, and so different from Ukraine, where I think
| pundits expected an Iraq-like situation. Initial rapid
| capture followed by years of instability. American
| advisors at the beginning looked like they were
| interested in mainly supplying Ukraine with guerilla
| warfare tools, etc. expecting that kind of situation.
|
| ... but reality went another way and now the west is
| sending in cruise missiles tanks and cluster artillery.
| TSiege wrote:
| The Iraq War ended in 2011. The initial invasion that
| toppled Sadam was quick
| cmrdporcupine wrote:
| _" none expected or prepared for a four-year slog of trench
| warfare"_
|
| Yet another parallel with what's happening in Ukraine right
| now. Both Russia (and some in NATO) I think expected this to
| end in days with an ugly military defeat, capture of the
| capital, and then years of guerilla and political battles.
|
| We appear to be at a similar juncture as WWI in geopolitics
| and military organization/technology, where the relative
| capabilities of various forces are not well understood.
|
| (And similar to WWI this seems to be primarily about imperial
| economics, within which smaller nations get caught up as
| battle sites and pawns and the issue of the self-
| determination of smaller ethnic nation states becomes one of
| the defining issues. At least that's how Lenin and others
| analyzed WWI, and it's notable that Putin went out of his way
| to namecheck and attack Lenin in particular at the start of
| the conflict...)
|
| Coffee brainfarts, sorry. :-)
| soperj wrote:
| The american civil war was a full 50 years before WWI.
| bjourne wrote:
| Yeah, but during the later stages of the American Civil
| war, machine guns mowed downs entire cavalry regiments.
| Many European officers didn't realize that made cavalry
| shocks useless and thus rapid advances would not be
| possible. Only infantry advances were possible and only
| under slower moving artillery cover. That made shock
| tactics mostly impossible until mechanized warfare became a
| thing in world war ii.
| soperj wrote:
| The germans used Calvary units in WW2 as part of of the
| blitzkrieg.
| aiden3 wrote:
| ...I guess, yeah? Although the article does a fantastically
| terrible job talking about which maps, specifically, caused WWI.
| Very little substance.
| ftxbro wrote:
| > the article does a fantastically terrible job talking about
| which maps, specifically, caused WWI.
|
| They argue (unconvincingly) that the map of the battle of
| Cannae caused it.
| thriftwy wrote:
| One of issues about WWI was German ressentment towards having so
| few colonies.
|
| If on these maps Africa, India and Americas would look larger, of
| course they will be super eager to start WWI and get their piece
| of now-visibly-even-bigger pie.
| ftxbro wrote:
| This blogpost seemed tenuous to me. - cannae is
| a famous historical battle - the map of the battle was
| drawn sixty years after the battle - a german military
| leader studied the battle - germany was in ww1
| gustavus wrote:
| The argument is a little bit stronger than that if your
| familiar with the specifics. Which goes more like
|
| - Field Marshal Alfred von Schlieffen is obssesed with the
| battle of Canne
|
| - Field Marshal Alfred von Schlieffen's entire life's work is
| to figure out how to beat France and Russia.
|
| - Field Marshal Alfred von Schlieffen writes a plan which
| becomes the sacred text of how the German army is to conduct a
| two front war against France and Russia. One of the critical
| parts of that plan is marching a truly massive German army
| through neutral Belgium.
|
| - When France Germany and Russia go to war Germany following
| the Schlieffen plan marches through Belgium triggering UK
| involvement in the war.
|
| Ergo if Schliffen isn't so obbssesed with Canne it doesn't end
| up being reflected in the Schliffen plan, if a double
| envelopment isn't the end goal of the Schliffen plan it's
| possible they don't go through Belgium, thus not triggering UK
| involvement and thus we have a very different war occurring.
|
| I don't agree but the theory is more plausible when you
| understand a lot of the details.
| jjk166 wrote:
| > - Field Marshal Alfred von Schlieffen writes a plan which
| becomes the sacred text of how the German army is to conduct
| a two front war against France and Russia. One of the
| critical parts of that plan is marching a truly massive
| German army through neutral Belgium.
|
| > - When France Germany and Russia go to war Germany
| following the Schlieffen plan marches through Belgium
| triggering UK involvement in the war.
|
| Neither of these points are true. Schlieffen produced several
| different war plans for different potential scenarios and in
| WW1 Germany wound up following a very heavily modified
| version of one of those plans. While Britain officially gave
| the violation of Belgian neutrality as its reason for
| entering the war, and it certainly swayed public opinion in
| favor of the conflict, they had signed a treaty with France
| in 1911 pledging military support in the event of a German
| invasion regardless; and more generally had been in an
| increasingly antagonistic relationship with Germany for
| years.
|
| Perhaps had Schlieffen not been so obsessed with Cannae he
| would have made different recomendations, but the fact is
| that the rest of the German general staff generally agreed
| with the logic behind those recomendations. Then when their
| plans were put into action, they were largely vindicated as
| the invasion through Belgium did allow Germany to gain a
| massive advantage in the opening weeks of the war and sieze
| territory from which it would take years and millions of men
| to dislodge them. Indeed the main issue was that the plan
| assumed Russia would be slow to mobilize, giving the German
| army time to defeat France before they would have to
| reposition forces to the eastern front, but to everyone's
| surprise Russia instead mobilized quickly. A generation
| later, when the men who were boots on the ground at the time
| now led the German military, and had decades to study the
| previous conflict, they decided on attempting a plan that was
| broadly similar and again had great initial success.
|
| It's possible that Germany employs a totally different
| strategy in WW1 if Schlieffen isn't obsessed with Cannae, but
| there's no real evidence that they would.
| 0xDEF wrote:
| It's remarkable how little of what Putin and Russian state median
| say internally to Russians is covered in Western media.
|
| They are obsessed with old maps.
|
| A few months ago Putin flaunted a map from the 1700s without
| Ukraine as proof as that Ukraine has always belonged to Russia
| and that "Russians" live in all regions of Ukraine (beyond Crimea
| and Donbas).
| throwmeouthn wrote:
| [dead]
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