Germany's position during WWI was hardly a good one so it required creative thinking from generals to have a chance of winning. Which of the three commanders did the best job during their term at helping to win the war? Also, I combined Hindenburg and Ludendorff since they basically worked together.
Which WWI Commander of the German Military Did the Best Job?
- Thread starter Octosteel
- Start date
None of the three are particularly inspiring options. I suppose I'd choose Falkenhayn, but more by default - Moltke deserves every bit of opprobrium heaped on him, & Ludendorff is significantly over-rated.
LordKalvert
Banned
The best that can be said of Moltke and Falkenhayn is that the both realized that the war was lost years earlier than Hidenburg and Ludendorff.
Ludendorff is the most overrated commander in the war
Ludendorff is the most overrated commander in the war
Deleted member 1487
That's fine for a tactician or specialist in that field like Lossberg, but its only a fraction of what a general at his position needs to be focused on and achieve. He was great at that part of the job, but was a terrible strategist, never intellectually advancing beyond the level of a regimental colonel and heavily relying on actual strategists like Hoffmann to do the strategic work. Falkenhayn was much more of an actual strategist and original thinker, despite his tactical misconceptions and grating personality:
http://www.amazon.com/German-Strate...=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&s=books&qid=1237677701&sr=8-1
A lot more in here about them
Driftless
Donor
Maybe Africa was a sideshow, but he did more with less, faced superior numbers, and was still fighting till after the armistice.
Deleted member 1487
The thread is about Germany's supreme commanders, not all generals.
EvF plan for 1st Ypres was the last realistic chance of Germany wining the war. He wanted to break through the not yet consolidated allied lines btw Arras and Ypres and swing southwest towards the Channel ports to cut off allied forces in Belgium and the BEF communications.
Bring the starting line back to the Ardenes and had a lot more allied forces to be cut off in Belgium and that's plan yellow. That he was willing to risk his green division in a bid to do it show that he understood the situation.
When that failed he started the process of bringing down the allied powers in the east and made the right call to start with Serbia instead of going after a premature victory over Russia.
His concept of wearing down the French through a limited offensive show that he understood that attraction was working for the allies, and that he had to change the variables somehow.
Germany from early 1915 was a boat that was taking in water and sinking. Luddendorf was the guy who kept pumping out water, seeing that he was pumping out water at a slower rate than was comming in and keeping on pumping anyway. Falkenhein was the guy who tried, and failed, to build a bigger pump.
Young Moltke just shot a few holes in the boat.
Bring the starting line back to the Ardenes and had a lot more allied forces to be cut off in Belgium and that's plan yellow. That he was willing to risk his green division in a bid to do it show that he understood the situation.
When that failed he started the process of bringing down the allied powers in the east and made the right call to start with Serbia instead of going after a premature victory over Russia.
His concept of wearing down the French through a limited offensive show that he understood that attraction was working for the allies, and that he had to change the variables somehow.
Germany from early 1915 was a boat that was taking in water and sinking. Luddendorf was the guy who kept pumping out water, seeing that he was pumping out water at a slower rate than was comming in and keeping on pumping anyway. Falkenhein was the guy who tried, and failed, to build a bigger pump.
Young Moltke just shot a few holes in the boat.
EvF understood that attrition was working against Germany, because even thou they were getting favourable casualty rates those were not favourable enough given their inferior resources, so he tried to implement an operational concept that would give him better rates, and that would wear out the French morale as well as resources.
Of course this is extremely difficult to implement, because it required the front troops to fight very well without having clear objectives on the battlefield.
So he was trying to change the attrition rates to avoid loosing, and he understood that morale his also susceptible of deliberate attrition.
marathag
Banned
it was
Which WWI Commander of the German Military Did the Best Job?
not
Which WWI Generaloberst of the German Military Did the Best Job?
or
Which WWI Chief of the General Staff of the German Military Did the Best Job?
Lettow Vorbeck was commander, of all 10,000 of them in Africa. And over 300 were actual Germans
Deleted member 1487
it was
Which WWI Commander of the German Military Did the Best Job?
not
Which WWI Generaloberst of the German Military Did the Best Job?
or
Which WWI Chief of the General Staff of the German Military Did the Best Job?
Lettow Vorbeck was commander, of all 10,000 of them in Africa. And over 300 were actual Germans
This came up in another thread and he clearly wanted to talk about OHL. I get your point in terms of semantics, but the spirit of the question was about OHL leadership.
it was
Which WWI Commander of the German Military Did the Best Job?
not
Which WWI Generaloberst of the German Military Did the Best Job?
or
Which WWI Chief of the General Staff of the German Military Did the Best Job?
Lettow Vorbeck was commander, of all 10,000 of them in Africa. And over 300 were actual Germans
Perhaps I should have said Supreme Commander. I didn't want to use Chief of the General Staff because Ludendorff was never that role and I felt he was important to include. I didn't use Generaloberst because I have no fucking clue what that means and German scares me.
it was
Which WWI Commander of the German Military Did the Best Job?
not
Which WWI Generaloberst of the German Military Did the Best Job?
or
Which WWI Chief of the General Staff of the German Military Did the Best Job?
Lettow Vorbeck was commander, of all 10,000 of them in Africa. And over 300 were actual Germans
The nature of the poll was pretty obvious from the choice of names.
We've had a "best German general of WW1" not so long ago that it couldn't be bumped.
Everybody likes PEvLV. The issue with him on that thread was wether he had been relevant enough to be considered, and wether his situation was so particular that he couldn't be compared fairly with the guys behind the trenches.
Deleted member 1487
You should be...very scared. Especially of adjective endings.
Caspian
Banned
How much can we trust Falkenhayn's assertion that Verdun was an attempt at a battle of attrition, rather than an attempted breakthrough or at least an attempt to actually capture the critical position of Verdun on its own merits? I generally feel that Falkenhayn simply said that he was attempting an attritional strategy as a way to excuse the German failure at Verdun, ala "I meant to do that."
If it was a breakthrough, what were they breaking towards?
What he actually did was say that his strategy had worked because he had managed favourable attrition rates.
Actually since the front commanders though too much in terms of seizing/holding objectives, the casualty rates were not favourable enough, and not as good as those the Germans managed defensively against the British on the Somme (they might have been better than the ones they managed against the French on the Somme, tough) But casualty rates on WW1 is a minefield.
Deleted member 1487
Documents predating the battle for one and others attesting to having the discussions before it started. I posted a link to a book that talks about the evidence that that was his strategy beforehand, not a rationalization.