Foreseeing World War I
Nov 13, 2015 14:35:25 GMT
Post by bixaorellana on Nov 13, 2015 14:35:25 GMT
There isn't a history section in Anyport, although there is a good bit of discussion on historical topics spread throughout the forum.
At any rate, I found this most interesting:
Thirteen years before the start of the First World War Britain’s military establishment was warned explicitly that offensive operations in a major conflict in Europe would be unsuccessful and that such a war would end only when one side was exhausted.
The prediction was delivered in 1901 at the Royal United Service Institution (now the Royal United Services Institute), a military think tank and discussion forum in Whitehall founded in 1831 by the Duke of Wellington. The warning came in a lecture given by the unlikely figure of Jan Bloch, or Jean de Bloch as he was later known. Bloch was not a military man, but a banker and financier, who was born in Poland in 1836 and rose to an influential position in the Russian empire, of which Poland was then a part. He was an important figure in Russia’s railway system and took an interest in international affairs. He called for arbitration to replace warfare as a way of settling disputes and organised a peace conference at The Hague in 1899 to further that aim.
...
His argument was that, in modern warfare, soldiers could not reach the enemy because the last few hundred yards had become so deadly. First, there was the increased range of the smokeless rifle: 3,000 or 4,000 metres, or two to three miles. Then there was the fact that a rifle now had a magazine: ‘The possibility of firing half a dozen bullets without having to stop to reload has transformed the conditions of modern war.’ At that stage he was not aware of how much more destructive the machine gun would be. Third, there was artillery, already so powerful that a shell could ‘effectively destroy all life within a range of 200 metres of the point of explosion’.
Bloch dismissed the bayonet, comparing the generals’ attachment to it with the fondness of old admirals for sails, but he predicted the development of trench warfare: "Everybody will be entrenched in the next war. It will be a great war of entrenchments. The spade will be as indispensable to a soldier as his rifle. The first thing every man will have to do, if he cares for his life at all, will be to dig a hole in the ground."
Read the full article here.
At any rate, I found this most interesting:
Thirteen years before the start of the First World War Britain’s military establishment was warned explicitly that offensive operations in a major conflict in Europe would be unsuccessful and that such a war would end only when one side was exhausted.
The prediction was delivered in 1901 at the Royal United Service Institution (now the Royal United Services Institute), a military think tank and discussion forum in Whitehall founded in 1831 by the Duke of Wellington. The warning came in a lecture given by the unlikely figure of Jan Bloch, or Jean de Bloch as he was later known. Bloch was not a military man, but a banker and financier, who was born in Poland in 1836 and rose to an influential position in the Russian empire, of which Poland was then a part. He was an important figure in Russia’s railway system and took an interest in international affairs. He called for arbitration to replace warfare as a way of settling disputes and organised a peace conference at The Hague in 1899 to further that aim.
...
His argument was that, in modern warfare, soldiers could not reach the enemy because the last few hundred yards had become so deadly. First, there was the increased range of the smokeless rifle: 3,000 or 4,000 metres, or two to three miles. Then there was the fact that a rifle now had a magazine: ‘The possibility of firing half a dozen bullets without having to stop to reload has transformed the conditions of modern war.’ At that stage he was not aware of how much more destructive the machine gun would be. Third, there was artillery, already so powerful that a shell could ‘effectively destroy all life within a range of 200 metres of the point of explosion’.
Bloch dismissed the bayonet, comparing the generals’ attachment to it with the fondness of old admirals for sails, but he predicted the development of trench warfare: "Everybody will be entrenched in the next war. It will be a great war of entrenchments. The spade will be as indispensable to a soldier as his rifle. The first thing every man will have to do, if he cares for his life at all, will be to dig a hole in the ground."
Read the full article here.