Poilu Sets GWF-27 GWF-28 - has John "upped" the Quality? (1 Viewer)

ivanmoe said:
Forty percent killed, missing, maimed or died in captivity.{eek3}

-Moe
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French casualty figures are staggering and any study of their casualties from 1914 thru the April 1917 offensive makes the explanation of the mutinies almost unnecessary and leaves one wondering why the discipline problems didn't occur sooner. Everyone is familiar with the horrible losses suffered by the BEF on July 1, 1916 when almost 20,000 British and Empire troops were killed. How many know about the French losses on August 22, 1914, during the Battle of the Ardennes, when 27,000 French soldiers died? Not many, I'd bet. French losses in 1914 and 1915 totaled 967,000 KIA/MIA and 1,331,000 wounded for a gruesome toll of 2,298,000. Btitish losses in the same 2 years were 484,236, of which 206,304 were KIA/MIA. German losses were 410,072 KIA/MIA and another 1,132,541 wounded. These horrible figures illustrate the magnitude of sacrifice by those involved but really highlight how much higher French losses were than the other nations. On another plain, it also illustrates the enormous gap in military efficiency between the involved powers. I have not forgotten the Belgian contribution here, I simply don't have accurate casualty figures on hand, but that would make the gap between the powers even larger. French losses alone in 1914-15 exceeded German losses by some 755,000 men. By the end of the war, French losses exceeded 5 million men. -- Al
 
lancer said:
French casualty figures are staggering and any study of their casualties from 1914 thru the April 1917 offensive makes the explanation of the mutinies almost unnecessary and leaves one wondering why the discipline problems didn't occur sooner.
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What's wild to me was the attitude of the political and military leaders toward human flesh. It really was as though troops were viewed as just another kind of ordnance, something to be expended, wholesale, at the whim of generals. American military leaders in WW2 tended to be critical of Montgomery for not being more aggressive on the offense. However, I've read that the British army was essentially consuming itself from the invasion of Italy, onward. Whole divisions were being disbanded and remnants redistributed because casualties couldn't be replaced. Further, had any REAL reverse occurred, another "Dunkirk, if you will, and support for the war of "unconditional surrender" could have collapsed in the UK. I mention these two points because both the manpower shortage and a degree of timidity on the part of certain generals can be traced back to the terrible events of 1914-18. Regrettably, the staggering depredations of the Great War cataclysm left France with no such options. The great land-power of 1805 was spent long before the first panzer rolled through the Ardennes in 1940.

-Moe
 
ivanmoe said:
What's wild to me was the attitude of the political and military leaders toward human flesh. It really was as though troops were viewed as just another kind of ordnance, something to be expended, wholesale, at the whim of generals. American military leaders in WW2 tended to be critical of Montgomery for not being more aggressive on the offense. However, I've read that the British army was essentially consuming itself from the invasion of Italy, onward. Whole divisions were being disbanded and remnants redistributed because casualties couldn't be replaced. Further, had any REAL reverse occurred, another "Dunkirk, if you will, and support for the war of "unconditional surrender" could have collapsed in the UK. I mention these two points because both the manpower shortage and a degree of timidity on the part of certain generals can be traced back to the terrible events of 1914-18. Regrettably, the staggering depredations of the Great War cataclysm left France with no such options. The great land-power of 1805 was spent long before the first panzer rolled through the Ardennes in 1940.

-Moe
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Hi,
I also think the humiliation of France in the Franco-Prussian War played a big part in all of this.

Pete
 
chalklands said:
Hi,
I also think the humiliation of France in the Franco-Prussian War played a big part in all of this.

Pete
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Hi Pete,

That may well be, but France's difficulties may go back even further. Napoleon's levies against the draft-age population went on, year after year, for the better part of two decades. Most of the ranks didn't survive campaigning outside of France. I haven't looked at the stats on this, but did the French population ever recover relative to the German states and other European powers?

-Moe
 
ivanmoe said:
Hi Pete,

That may well be, but France's difficulties may go back even further. Napoleon's levies against the draft-age population went on, year after year, for the better part of two decades. Most of the ranks didn't survive campaigning outside of France. I haven't looked at the stats on this, but did the French population ever recover relative to the German states and other European powers?

-Moe
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Hi Moe,
You could be right there. Just goes to show that these conflicts can't be taken in isolation....WW1..WW2...Cold War...Formation of the EU....they're all linked.

Pete

PS Think the forum is about to crash....VERY slow at this end!
 
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ivanmoe said:
Hi Pete,

That may well be, but France's difficulties may go back even further. Napoleon's levies against the draft-age population went on, year after year, for the better part of two decades. Most of the ranks didn't survive campaigning outside of France. I haven't looked at the stats on this, but did the French population ever recover relative to the German states and other European powers?

-Moe
Click to expand...
Have gotten waist deep in the basic problem for France. Much smaller population to draw from than the Germans and this essential truth colored their war-planning in both world wars. It goes as far back as the post Franco-Prussian war planning as a matter of fact. France always had an eye to birth rates relative to future drafts on manpower. Part of the failure of France's Plan 17 can be laid at the feet of army size. Joffre was under the impression that the German Army would be fighting the initial stages of the war without it's reserves in offensive operations and this would mean that Germany would be fighting with a much smaller army that France could handle and restrict what the German Army could do offensively. Joffre was wrong, the Germans did use their reserves, and thus the German Army was much larger and capable than Joffre allowed for, stopping Plan 17 dead in Alsace-Lorraine while also executing the Schiefflen Plan. Obviously the huge losses of WW1 only made the situation worse for France in planning for the next war, thus the Maginot mentality that developed, using material and fortifications to replace men. The subject is deep and more complicated than that, as it also includes the French alliance system prior to WW2 as France attempted to use multiple countries to surround and outnumber Germany, but it just highlights the fact that manpower was always a major consideration for France. -- Al
 
jazzeum said:
Let me put in a pitch for what I think is an excellent book, Fear: A Novel of World War I by Gabriel Chevalier. This is a semi autobiographical novel by a Poilu and it is excellent. Published by the New York Book Review Classics, the book was published in the 1920s and has been out of print for 60 years until re-issued last year.
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I had to buy a new printer from Amazon, so I bought this book today too. I don't own any, but I agree with everyone that these are the best French soldiers I've seen.
 
lancer said:
French casualty figures are staggering and any study of their casualties from 1914 thru the April 1917 offensive makes the explanation of the mutinies almost unnecessary and leaves one wondering why the discipline problems didn't occur sooner. Everyone is familiar with the horrible losses suffered by the BEF on July 1, 1916 when almost 20,000 British and Empire troops were killed. How many know about the French losses on August 22, 1914, during the Battle of the Ardennes, when 27,000 French soldiers died? Not many, I'd bet. French losses in 1914 and 1915 totaled 967,000 KIA/MIA and 1,331,000 wounded for a gruesome toll of 2,298,000. Btitish losses in the same 2 years were 484,236, of which 206,304 were KIA/MIA. German losses were 410,072 KIA/MIA and another 1,132,541 wounded. These horrible figures illustrate the magnitude of sacrifice by those involved but really highlight how much higher French losses were than the other nations. On another plain, it also illustrates the enormous gap in military efficiency between the involved powers. I have not forgotten the Belgian contribution here, I simply don't have accurate casualty figures on hand, but that would make the gap between the powers even larger. French losses alone in 1914-15 exceeded German losses by some 755,000 men. By the end of the war, French losses exceeded 5 million men. -- Al
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I did a little more digging on the size of France's WW1 sacrifice in terms of comparison. In the 5 months of 1914, France suffered 528,000 KIA, along with 635,000 wounded to total 1,163,000 men (not counting PoW's). By contrast, the USA, in WW1 and WW2 COMBINED, suffered 524,074 KIA and 874,848 wounded for a 2 war total of 1,398,922 men. Simple arithmetic shows that France lost more men KIA in 5 MONTHS of 1914 than the USA did in 2 world wars combined, while the US total for the 2 wars casualties modestly surpassed the French total of 1914. I have never been able to wrap my head around the size of US losses in WW2, much less the colossal French losses of WW1. It is simply staggering. -- Al
 
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lancer said:
John simply has not updated his site yet. The GWF-28 is available as I and many others on this forum have it in hand. Our hosts, Treefrog, have it up on their site. -- Al
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OK..thanks a lot Al...can you help out again please as I am new to the finery of the Treefrog site...where do i find it on teh site? many thanks..Miles
 
lancer said:
Have gotten waist deep in the basic problem for France. Much smaller population to draw from than the Germans and this essential truth colored their war-planning in both world wars. It goes as far back as the post Franco-Prussian war planning as a matter of fact. France always had an eye to birth rates relative to future drafts on manpower. Part of the failure of France's Plan 17 can be laid at the feet of army size. Joffre was under the impression that the German Army would be fighting the initial stages of the war without it's reserves in offensive operations and this would mean that Germany would be fighting with a much smaller army that France could handle and restrict what the German Army could do offensively. Joffre was wrong, the Germans did use their reserves, and thus the German Army was much larger and capable than Joffre allowed for, stopping Plan 17 dead in Alsace-Lorraine while also executing the Schiefflen Plan. Obviously the huge losses of WW1 only made the situation worse for France in planning for the next war, thus the Maginot mentality that developed, using material and fortifications to replace men. The subject is deep and more complicated than that, as it also includes the French alliance system prior to WW2 as France attempted to use multiple countries to surround and outnumber Germany, but it just highlights the fact that manpower was always a major consideration for France. -- Al
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The combatants used men like they were drinking wine. They didn't realize that they were a finite resource, probably because many didn't think a war would go on that long. Max Hasting notes that between 20 and 23 August, 1914, 40,000 French soldiers died. By 29 August total French war death since the war started was 75,000 dead and this only in a month of fighting. On the Eastern Front, 1 in 6 Serbs died during the War.
 
What a great thread, and one helped rather than hindered by the tangents.
 
I think that there were periods in warfare in which the tactics of armies had not adapted to the weaponry. WWI was a good example. Frontal assaults into machine gun fire were hopeless and costly. But that is the way things had been done up to the point. It was difficult - particularly for older commanders - to accept that it wouldn't work. They likely questioned the courage of the men or held them in contempt for failure rather than understanding that the battlefield tactics that they had learned needed to change. Or at least in my amateur opinion. There is also the question of what options did they have? They were fighting a war. In some way, they had to engage the enemy. In 1914-1918 about the only way to do that was to order your men into a direct assault on the enemy position. Machine guns, however, made it almost impossible to do so without sustaining enoromous casualties. In WWII, they could use a number of weapons and tactics to avoid a direct assault. The combating forces would very rarely encounter one another in face to face combat situations.
 
Hi,
Back to the thread.....Once I receive the German prisoners, I am really looking forward to the rest of the Poilu's that we've seen previewed over the last couple of months!

Pete
 
chalklands said:
Hi,
Back to the thread.....Once I receive the German prisoners, I am really looking forward to the rest of the Poilu's that we've seen previewed over the last couple of months!

Pete
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Absolutely Pete . . . . . the walking wounded . . . . . what a marvelous display these will make . . . .
:smile2: Mike
 
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