Who was to Blame for the terrible amount of Casualties in ww1 ( world war one )?

Question

I am really stuck on this one!!
Please can you give me an opinion on 'Who was to Blame for the terrible amount of Casualties in ww1'.
Any views would be appriciated! If possible can you give a reason to support your answer or try and back it up with factual evidence!

Thanks, you are all fabbityfab people
Beth..x

I also mean Generals and commanders such as Haig and people like that!

Beth..x

Answer 1

The generals weren't stupid. They were trained for a different kind of war technology. They tried to use their training and intelligence. They should have learned from a few Colonial wars first that human wave attacks are suicide in the face of mass machine guns. They never anticipated the value aircraft would have. Artillery had advanced beyond any time in history. The human population of Europe had grown to the point it could set up a totally defended border through half of it and at the time keep it manned. Some particularly hideous personal weapons had been developed, flame throwers comes to mind. But the kind of weapons that would allow fluid tactics in WWII had not. Effective submachine guns barely existed. Tank technology had not developed, fire and movement tactics did not exist. aircraft were primitive though they were on the verge of effective fighting forces by the end of the war. Automatic rifles did not exist at all. Attemps were being made to develop them like the American Peterson device. It barely worked. Even Squad automatic weapons were primitive. The French chachault was a piece of junk. It jammed and it sprayed fire all over except the target when it worked. The American Bar was a great improvement , but you still had to be a human giant to control it. On a tripod it jumped all over the place unles solid muscle controled it. Fired from the hip it rose to the sky. No matter how strong you were. The best way to use it was to get a real big, strong guy, to stand up, lean into it, wrap the sling around his wrist and fire. That way it could be aimed. The Bar was almost impossible to jam, but used twenty round magazines that could be emptied in a few seconds if not careful. The best way to use it was on slow cyclic. Then it was about like an 18 pound Garand in WWII. The best explantion for the casualties of WWI is the technology had reached a point the Generals did not understand. The population, particularly in Europe had reached a level they could sustain four years of being used as cannon fodder. The colonies were all fighting for their respective mother countries. Russia collapsed and let the last real German offensive happen in 1918. And the influx of fresh American troops basically won it for the Allies. It was the numbers and the fact the Americans had a basic understanding of fire and movement tactics that did that. But the big winner was the German people were starving and worn out from war. And nobody in history has won a war without a single casualty, technolgy, at any given time does not go that far.

Answer 2

The thing about WW1 is, there werent any reporters following the troops and there wasnt television covering it. That's why the number of casualties were always subject to question. There's also the fact that the weaponry was mostly hand to hand combat. There were tanks and some planes, but no where near the type that we have today or even in WW2. The conditions on the battlefields were extremely primitive for the time. Medical care was also not up to standards. Combine all of these things and it's a wonder there werent more deaths. Think about conditions during our Civil War. That wasnt very far removed from the Revolutionary War. Isnt it ironic that we've gotten better at fighting wars?

Answer 3

I'd say the military high command. But this book has a different villain:

"Mud, Blood and Poppycock"

"This really surprised me. But not so much as his contention that it was not the generals who were to blame for unnecessary bloodshed. Rather, the meddling politicians of the era, especially Lloyd George, had more blood on their hands than history admits."

but

"Like most people nowadays (I think), I no longer accept the 'lions led by donkeys' stereotype, but whether Corrigan is willing to accept it or not, there were some prize upper-class, public school twits in the higher echelons. Haig himself may not have been the bungler of legend but he was surely no Napoleon either. When an army of millions is led by a man who (by most accounts) had great difficulty communicating clearly and believed he was carrying out a mission from God, I'm afraid there's going to be tears before bedtime.
Having visited his grave, I was most interested in Corrigan's account of the circumstances surrounding the court-martial and execution of Lieutenant Edwin Dyatt (the highest ranking soldier in the war to have been executed). Unfortunately when I'd finished reading Corrigan's version of the episode I was no wiser! Talk about adding insult to injury! The witnesses' accounts of Dyett's conduct were not exactly a model of consistency. On the other hand Corrigan's narrative was certainly a model of muddle! All we can therefore be certain of is therefore, that Dyett was court-martialled and shot. Well we knew that anyway! "

The politicians, as usual, were the ones who blundered into war, but it was the incompetency of the generals, with their "over the top" into withering fire mentality that got so many needlessly killed.

So, I'd still go with the military high command

Answer 4

The fact that they had a large amount of casualties in the war was do to the modernization of weapons, without a corresponding change in how the military officers did the fighting. For example, they used horses to go up against tanks. They also used machine guns against people that were charging out of trenches.

Secondly, they used germ and chemical warfare in WWI to counteract the development of trenches along the front.

Answer 5

The high numbers of casualties in WW I, as compared to later wars is primarily due to the lack of medical expertise that has saved so many during more modern times. WW I was actually less bloody than our own Civil War and produced less dead because of the now seemingly primitive medical advances. Most casualties of war die because of infection and exposure. Faster medical response and better infection control have brought about less deaths, though there are now more disabled people as a result of war

Answer 6

Walking, are you familiar with the WWII, Gulf War, the Iraq War of the Coalition of the Willing, and are you watching National Geographic....more unnecessary casualties are not caused by honest intent of any warring parties. War as much as possible should be won without a single casualty but to let any of the opposing party to surrender or give up the fight.

Winning a war is not a way of inflicting more collateral damages, or destroying more lives, it is the prompt and early surrender of any opposing parties, or adversary.

I f you can have your enemy surrender or give up the fight by just using your power of words, then you are a good and powerful warring party and leader.

However bought side shall try their best to win by superiority of armaments, precision and well founded tactics and strategy based on good, reliable, and A-1 intelligence and counter intelligence informations, most reliably if there is an exact or in circle first hand intel info of the enemy positions, maneuver, and operation plans, and almost exact war resources of both parties.

At this modern time of precision warfare capabilities, casualties of war shall be limited as far as number of human resources, loss, but more of early paralysing and effacing the facilities of aggression. to reduce capability of either parties to counter offensive attacks.

In short the lack of those modern capabilities, precision of armaments, and modern facilities of warfare to locate with exactness, and the early detection of aggressions like radar, etc, made the casualties of WWI so unimaginable, particularly loss on the soldiery resources, as well as collateral damages.

Old ancient or barbaric wars of the past incurred almost killing all the manpower of the enemy, so much greatest casualties than WWI. So your premise is not even a 10% of the casualties of these most unforgettable wars of the ancient times.

Answer 7

Mother Nature. She introduced the Spanish Flu Pandemic which decimated armies on both sides. The US lost more fighting men to the flu than to any and all weapons fire from the enemy they faced. After the war troops returning to their home countries carried the flu with them; total deaths world wide may have been in excess of 40 million people, but records keeping was not an exact science.

Answer 8

In short :
The switch from horse to engine, from single shot to machine gun, from trumpets to gas.
They started the war on horseback, with officers trained to fight on horseback and whose understanding of a charge meant that the enemy could not shoot enough bullets to shoot everyone. Then, as they dug trenches and became unable to use moving tactics the generals just tried to push through. And push through. And push through. When the Americans arrived on the front in 1918 they refused to listen to the English and the French who had learned at last from their mistakes and made the same mistakes, and suffered the same kind of casualties.
As mentioned above, medical knowledge and the dreadful infections due to living in trenches which meant that the slightest scratch could become infected. Remember, no penicillin, no vaccine, and only the beginning of understanding blood transfusion.
The mustard gas, so horrible that not even the Nazis used them during WW2. Those who survived it coughed their lungs slowly in later years until they died.
The Spanish flu (it started in 1917 in the trenches, some historians say that the German army lost their last great push in part because so many of their men were sick).

Answer 9

well one it was the way the war was fought trench warfare two human nature inventing new ways in killing each other lets face it scientists and inventors love a good war and the British command led by general Hague i think that's his name believed that German bullets would bonce of British soldiers chests and the army was run by a bunch of Rupert's buying there commissions so a co toff with no know how on how to wage war were in charge of couple hundred men oh yeah you also got shot for cowardice dereliction of duty, mutiny and desertion so you either went over the top or were shot by your own men

Answer 10

According to the research books and Wikipedia dictionary, the millions of casualties from soldiers killed or wounded was almost equal to the civilians killed. Then there was the diseases. So besides the ineffectual leadership of the allies, there was only the inexperience of the soldiers to blame.
Spartawo...