The Donkeys theory of the War

[RodB]

I've been reading Holger Herwig's "The First World War. Germany and Austria-Hungary". He makes out Conrad (Austria) to be the biggest donkey of the lot, closely followed by Cadorna (Italy), and then Ludendorff ("never rose above the intellectual level of a regimental colonel commanding infantry"). Personally I think that's a little harsh, he didn't start the war but was asked to win it after it was already lost. In football terms, he was sent on the field when his team was already 10 points behind, with no gameplan and no coach (Coach Moltke and quarterback Falkenhayn had already left the stadium, team manager Bethmann Hollweg had no answers), got back to 10-10 and nearly won.

But Conrad appears to have inhabited a different universe from everybody else - his grandiose campaign strategies bore no relation to his resources or the terrain, he couldn't get it into his head that Russia was his primary opponent, not Serbia or Italy, he refused to learn from or cooperate with Germany, and wanted to be a great conqueror to impress his girlfriend Gina. Or so says Holger Herwig.

[Justin Moretti]

The problem with Clark and Laffin and Winter and co is that they write as if Britain had a complete monopoly on idiotic commanders, as if the Kindermord and other such German setbacks never happened, as if Scheer didn't stick his neck in the lion's mouth twice in the same afternoon (never mind that he was skilled enough to get it out before that mouth could do more than scratch him) and then run home for a change of undies with a pack of damaged dreadnoughts and mangled sailors...

There are those (and I believe Haig was one) who did their utmost with what they knew and what they had, with the strategic and tactical and human-factors overlays of their entire careers guiding them with a certain inescapable amount of 'dead hand of the past'. They made horrible mistakes, and sometimes they overlooked things and made stupid blunders, but they had not the benefit of hindsight. But they tried. And they gave a damn.

Then there are those who simply did not give a damn. And they are the donkeys.

All armies have their share of long-eared equines.

If I could go back in time and introduce just one anachronism, I would walk up to Douglas Haig and give him, for Christmas 1915, a mobile phone network with one hundred thousand handsets. To Jellicoe, I would give one radar-equipped heavy cruiser.