The Humanity Of It All

In the spring of 1901, all of Europe was wound like a spring and fully prepared to release all of the energy on each other, once again. Both sides were fully aware of the economic damage that was being done on a truly epic scale and, oddly enough, this was not the usual physical damage that is associated with war, even if, there was plenty of that. The truth is that, despite being so widespread, the war was largely a rural one. The armies had not fought over any major cities and, with the exception of the Zeppelin bombardments, which were not as destructive as many have claimed, the physical infrastructure was largely intact. This seems at odds with many photographs that we have of the war, where more than one town was flattened, save maybe the ruins of a church steeple. The truth is that these were small towns that had the bad luck of being caught in no man’s land since virtually the start of the conflict. They had been constantly fought over but, the fighting remained localized to these strips of land.

What was falling apart were not the buildings, roads, factories, or anything built by humans. That is not to say that things were not starting to collapse but, the ultimate victim of the war was the human soul. War weariness had set in and all of the belligerents were feeling the pinch. The casualties that the spring and summer offensives generated certainly played their part in creating this situation but, there was far more to it than that.

Here we have to turn to personal journals and letters to get a glimpse of what was going on in the minds of the average man. I would have liked to cite opinion letters written to newspapers but, sadly, even in nations that had a free press, such opinions in public forums were lacking. The reasons for this could have been either that the newspapers refused to print them, or, the governments quietly forbid such dissension, or, people did not wish to be so public with their complaints. The most likely answer is that a combination of the above prevented such articles from appearing. The private thoughts are far more telling.

Over and over again, the word ‘normal’ appears in private correspondence. This was true when it was obvious that the authors of such letters were not even directly criticizing the war. People not only wanted things back to the way they were but, did not even seem to realize that it was too late for that. Their attitudes were definitely gloomy and the results of such things are hard to quantify and measure. Still we have some clue as to the effects of this. There are the obvious things such as labor troubles, of which, occurred across the board in the industrialized nations. There were also riots and demonstrations which happened even in nations such as Britain and the United States, where we seldom hear about them like their counterparts in Russia and France. These things were only the tip of the iceberg because the real troubles lie in many small behaviors that, alone, seem inconsequential but, as a whole, can be devastating.

This is where we turn to the industrial output of each nation. By 1901, all of the belligerents (and even a few neutrals) had converted as much of their infrastructure over to war production as was physically possible. Those factories also peaked in their output. Every nation was setting production records for war related materials and none of them would break those records. The peak had been reached. On the surface this would seem to suggest that war weariness was not a factor, however, that is only on the surface.

Thanks to post war studies, we have discovered that it was not the quantity of what was leaving the factories that was at issue. The real weakness was how much in resources it was costing to not only maintain production levels but, expand it. This was in both direct labor and material costs and, for reasons that are still unknown, compared to pre and post war schedules, it was taking more of both. This was not uniformly across the board because the efficiency of some businesses increased yet, at some factories, industrial consumption as much as tripled from their 1898 standards, and yet they were not producing anywhere near what they should have.

It is hard to explain such a thing and even harder to find an exact cause. That is why many a historian have dubiously ignored this. I can only venture an opinion here and that is, of course, that this was a definitive sign of war weariness at the most minute of levels. It was not just raising the cost of the war but, of just plain living for your average man and woman who were nowhere near a front line. Of course much ado is made of the high level of casualties that were being generated by active operations but, again, that is only scratching the surface. It is also horrifying to realize exactly how much higher those casualties could have been.

Despite what some say, I think it is more than adequately proven that the larger portion of humanity is willing to reasonably sacrifice for the greater good. People only become skeptical of such behaviors when these sacrifices no longer seem meaningful and, I believe, this is exactly what was happening in the middle of 1901. Every year people were hearing that this next push would break the enemy and, every year, this did not happen. Every nation had already paid a terrible price and, so far, they had nothing to show for it. Most of the national leaders were becoming all too aware of this fact and, those who ignored it, did so at their own peril.

It was this fact that locked most governments into a war policy that gave them no leeway at all. It was becoming a commonly held view, in the halls of government that, the war had to be an all or nothing proposition. To talk peace and stop with nothing to show for it could be disastrous on the home front. For the minority of world leaders who were democratically elected it would mean that they loose their job. For those who held power by heredity or force, they would loose their heads and, neither of these wished to face these possibilities. This would not only dictate national policy but, war strategy as well, and the 1901 offensives illustrate this perfectly.

While the military leaders of both sides tried to dress up their war plans as if they were new, the reality was that nothing had changed. This was not entirely the fault of the map studying generals because, no matter how much they looked at their maps, before or during the war, the land was not going to change and it was geography that dictated their goals. Their strategies were, more or less, sound and this could explain a great deal why no one bothered to change them. The problem really lay in the fact that it was not strategy that needed to be examined. Both operational and tactical concerns had been largely ignored before the conflict and the firing of the first bullet had not changed this.

The European operations of 1901 are a good case in point. The allies had virtually an identical plan as they did in 1900. They focused their efforts on knocking Russia out of the war. Moltke even commented, when he saw Waldersee’s plan, “the only changes are a few pins on the board.” What the plan boiled down too was that the allies were simply going to try and hammer the Russians into submission and the goal of taking Warsaw was, at best, a secondary objective that was almost irrelevant at this point.

Waldersee would not get his chance to put his repetitive master stroke into practice. Both Boulanger and Czar Nicholas had very good reasons for wanting to conclude the war as quickly as possible. As with the allies, the Entente did not really change any plans other than some vague promises to coordinate their efforts. This proved impractical since the allies were sitting in between them and neither French nor Russian military leaders seemed particularly enthused about the idea. The one thing the Entente did do better was with speed. They hurled their forces forward while Waldersee was being too meticulous about making sure that every last detail was finished before he moved.

The one thing that the Entente had changed was their focus and this gave them the early initiative in the Spring of 1901. Up till now, the main emphasis had been on somehow knocking Britain out of the war. They had now given up on the idea in the short term and both France and Russia decided to concentrate on Germany which was the more immediate threat to each. Boulanger was heavily relying on chemical weapons to allow his troops to do what they had not yet managed, capture the city of Strasbourg.

Russia had more room to move around but, unfortunately for them, Nicholas had began micromanaging the war and overruling his generals on a regular basis. As such he was ignoring basic military principles and practically negated the advantage of maneuverability in favor of using the space to mass more troops. Numbers look fine on paper but, the handicap became all to obvious to many Russian Generals, most of whom were being ignored.

Having a bad unit on the line might give you more numbers but, given the fact that they are largely ineffective, and you still have to supply them, they become a liability instead of an asset. At this point, Russia did not even have any reserve units left to deploy. All of the new corps that were being raised and deployed consisted of hastily drafted civilians who had, at best, a week of training before being sent to the front. This situation had hampered Russian efforts in the Balkans the year before. Now the problem, of using largely untrained troops, was far worse and becoming front wide. These new units were offensively useless, and when they were attacked, they would dissolve under very little pressure. They always took far more casualties than comparable pre war units and, most important, the larger percentage of their troops simply did not want to be there.

Despite these problems, and despite the fact that the French chemical weapons met with similar problems as did the American experiment, the Entente managed to make some gains in the opening rounds. French troops finally got to within artillery range of Strasbourg. The Russian offensive caused enough concern at the German General Staff that no one there wanted to be the man who had to brief the Kaiser every morning. The condition of both fronts would be enough to cause a shakeup in the German command structure but, that is for later. The real question that needed to have been asked was why all of this firepower, more than had ever been amassed by the human race, seemed impotent and never did as expected.

Later wars, that used more advanced models of these exact same weapons, did not create such a stalemate. One has to remember that while the newer weapons were later generations, the fact is, they were still the same weapons. With that in mind the real question becomes, how did this happen? There seem to be several reasons but, I think that two are more critical than the rest.

The obvious, and first, answer is that at the turn of the 20^th century, these weapons were so new that no one really knew how to use them properly. While the 20^th century usually gets credit for all of the advancements in our lives, the truth is, that it was the 19^th that saw the lions share of change. Put yourself in the shoes of a sailor like Jackie Fisher, who started his career on sailing ships that Christopher Columbus, of the 15^th century, could have stepped on and figured out with ease. Fisher ended his career with ships that moved under their own power and had radio’s that someone like Columbus would have thought to be witchcraft. By comparison, a sailor from 1901 could look at a modern cruiser from a century later and still identify it as such.

The same could be said for the armies as well. While the sword usually gets most of the fanfare, in war, the truth is, that the most common weapon used by soldiers, for most of human history, has been the spear. The Great War of 98 was to end this forever. While it is true that fire arms had been around for several centuries it was not until this war that they really came into their own. In all wars up till this one, infantry relied more on the bayonet than their accuracy with a firearm and that big long blade transformed firearms into the more ancient weapon, the spear. In 1901, you still had general officers who had yet to realize that the spear had finally seen it’s day.

Artillery saw a similar transformation and, I believe, it was also at the heart of the second biggest reason for the stalemate. Firing a big gun had always been an exercise in mathematics, specifically an exercise in trigonometry. Besides breach loading, better metal, and shock absorbers that allowed for greater rates of fire, the biggest advancement in giant guns was math. Further ranges meant more complex equations and, more to the point, how to teach these to non mathematicians who then had to do them rapidly enough to keep up with the rates of fire. This part was overcome but, no one had anticipated the side effects or the fact that this technology had rapidly outpaced the communications required to effectively employ it.

For decades after the war, most armies would deal with the issue of the lag time between reporting moving targets and the fire missions meant to deal with those targets. It would not be until almost twenty years later that an accident at Fort Leavenworth, Kansas was to shed some light on an almost crippling weakness that, up till then, no one had even dreamed existed. The culprit of this weakness was, ironically, math and it involved the artillery shells that were virtually identical from one nation to the next.

This particular accident went ignored outside of the military profession, for almost a century. Inside the profession it became critical. Several practicing guns fired a mistimed salvo and they struck a group of civilian sub contractors with what should have been a, devastating, direct hit. Everyone involved in the accident was shocked and relieved to discover that not a single contractor had been killed, yet they all realized, these men should have all been dead.

This prompted the US Army to test their remaining stocks of artillery rounds left over from the war. After a few years they had discovered the problem and were confused as to how this could happen. The reality was that the most commonly used artillery ordinance was largely harmless beyond the initial explosion. Most artillery shells rely more on shrapnel, to do the dirty work, than on the actual explosion. The metal shavings from these shells were being propelled outwards at a less than lethal velocity. It took several years to figure out how this could happen given that all pre war testing had told them otherwise.

As stated before, the answer was the math done in those prewar tests. Mathematicians always like to point out the absolute certainty of their peculiar language. Their formula’s and answers are resolute but, what they often forget is, that a formula can only be accurate if you have all of the variables and, in life, this is most often not the case. This issue was a most common mistake made by many 19^th century scientists who were so eager to apply their method to everything before they stopped and looked at what they had. It was a case of, did they search for the right question before seeking an answer?

The wooden targets used in the original artillery tests were constructed to be the exact resistance of human skin. In fact the records kept by the company that made these test dummies bragged about their ability to make exact tolerances. Again, this was a good case of how they did not know everything. The tolerances might have been identical but they were different kinds of tolerances. Human skin and wood strands are joined differently meaning that they split differently. Skin is also tougher than wood under certain types of impacts because it will give way to a certain degree, allowing it to take more of an impact and go unharmed. Wood will not budge meaning that the force of an impact is compressed into a much smaller space giving the source, that impacted it, more cutting power. The accident proved it, the pre war tests were invalid.

This means that all of the wartime guns were firing ammunition that was greatly reduced in it’s primary job. When you add the communications issues this might go a long way towards explaining the failure of “the king of battle” to win the war for any side. The final summary of the post war tests summed it up for a US Congressional committee when it’s author, Colonel George Marshall, added a personal comment, “the humanity of it all.”