Why were there so few good World War I generals? Is this just popular perception?
Or is it because the “Defense > Offense”, so a good general would just defend every time, but the politicians would fire said general because every country other than Serbia had some offensive goal?
Corvid187 on
Attentional War is not about fucking gaining land. The point is to force an unsustainable expenditure of resources to exhaust the adversary economy, industry or society. Any land captured is only important in so far as it forces that expenditure.
The success of attritional battles like the somme or verdun were not measured in how many yards of land were taken, but in how many manhours, lives, tons of materiel etc they forced the other side to give up.
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Why were there so few good World War I generals? Is this just popular perception?
Or is it because the “Defense > Offense”, so a good general would just defend every time, but the politicians would fire said general because every country other than Serbia had some offensive goal?
Attentional War is not about fucking gaining land. The point is to force an unsustainable expenditure of resources to exhaust the adversary economy, industry or society. Any land captured is only important in so far as it forces that expenditure.
The success of attritional battles like the somme or verdun were not measured in how many yards of land were taken, but in how many manhours, lives, tons of materiel etc they forced the other side to give up.