Tell me Veeky Forums, who was the best general in WWI?

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More than just the technology, the logistical base was lacking. Most generals understood that suppression of enemy defences via artillery was key to a successful assault, but most nations simply did not have the industrial capacity to produce shells on a scale to sustain even an hour long bombardment.

>Foch
>Not Pétain, le héros de Verdun..

The lack of motorized transport and field radio was also a huge obstacle.

Everything was moved by horses. So your top speed to solidify a breakthrough was only as fast as your horses could lug supplies through rough terrain. The lack of field radios also made it difficult if not impossible for commanding officers to know where and when to send reserves in the event of a breakthrough.

Black Jack

Paul von Lettow-Vorbeck?

Austrians btfo

>Boroevic

Underrated as fuck. It's a travesty what happened to him after the war

The colonial generals like Currie and Monash are generally regarded as some of the finest. McNaughton as well on the Canadian side.

For the Brits, Allenby and Maude did well in the Middle East, as well as Byng when he was in charge of the Canadians. The French had Franchet d'Esperey and Gallieni, in addition to Foch and Petain as mentioned earlier.

For the Central Powers, Mustafa Kemal was quite good, as was Liman von Sanders. Falkenhayn is underrated due to Verdun, but did very well in 1915 and against Romania. Hipper and Scheer did quite well at Jutland.

Haug was good despite the whole garbage of lions lead by donkeys that people for some reason believe.

Von Lettow-Vorbeck was too based. One of the few undefeated generals of WW1.

His post WW1 experiences are doubly based as well.

>tells Hitler to fuck off, doesn't die
>bros it up with his rival Jan Smuts after WW2
>his fucking soldiers stil remember him even after all these years

Fuck, there's dust in my eye now.

Haha what ? The preparation of artillery lasted one week and fired almost 2 millions shells. The intensity peak one hour before the offensive was 3500 shots per minute

BRUSILOV

Call me biased, But Arthur Currie was pretty decent

This, He literally reversed our fortunes, repelled the Austrians and BTFO'd their army

Paradoxically, the length and intensity of bombardment was reduced during the last stage of the war in profit of sharper preparation of artillery combined with infantery assault. This way your infantery is covered and can charge correctly instead of wasting ammos on trenches you cannot correctly destroy

At the somme* fuck

Exception that proves the rule. It took literal months to gather that amount of shells require for just that brief but very intense barrage. All-out artillery barrages were used very sparingly prior to big pushes as they could not be sustained logistically for long periods. For the most part, artillery during the war was a relatively sparse but was maintained over time.

I mean brief as in it ate up what was usually months' worth of shells in only a week.

mah brusilov nigga

>Falkenhayn is underrated due to Verdun
This but he did fucked up at Verdun pretty bad

mah boi himmie

>idiots
Once mankind fights its first war with fronts in outer space, intricate cyber campaigns against other countries' computer systems, and laser weaponry we'll see how well you are able to adapt and properly choose a course of action that doesn't make you look like an incompetent fool to everybody 100 years later. They'll be making fun of our militaries for "wearing Iraq War-era uniforms onto modern battlefields" and using outdated 20th century weapons like tanks against whatever sci-if thing we have to blow shit up then.

>all those idiots that couldn't understand modern war
there were very few idiots who didn't understand modern war in the ranks of generals in ww1

Fun Fact: 97 British generals died in WW1 (and about 150 more were casualties - wounded or captured).

Of those whose circumstances of death are known, 34 of those were killed by artillery. 22 by small arms.

The first one to die was Neil Douglas Findlay on September 10, 1914 (artillery). Also one died in a plane crash.

For more information BTFOing the ridiculous and retarded notion of 'lions led by donkeys', see Bloody Red Tabs: books.google.cz/books/about/Bloody_Red_Tabs.html?id=_eRmAAAAMAAJ&redir_esc=y

You're fucking retarded.

Ultimately ALL of this comes down to the low mobility of firepower. The infantry might advance a few miles but it took absolutely forever to lug the artillery forward and the defenders would invariably get the reprieve they needed to prepare for another attack. Tanks, mobile artillery, and aircraft brought new types artilley that could continously support the advance in WWII.

>gets millions of civilians kileld
>forces thousands/hundreds of thousands to be his carriers
>based

I'm not surprised kids on here think he was based.

>von der Goltz
Criminally underrated.

This.

underrated.

>Luigi "Maybe if we charge again, it'll work this time" Cardona

>2016
>Still believing in Vichy propaganda

How do you like your Austrians?

what ethnic minority

Arthur Currie.
Vimy Ridge, nigga.

Was this the guy that ran around in africa while the brits tried to catch him?

I think the caucuses campaign disqualifies him from this discussion.

He was pretty shit. Ataturk did good in Gallipoli tho.

> Ataturk did good in Gallipoli
Weren't most his successes due to British fuck ups? I mean he did have the advantage of a fortified position.

Communication side was worse.

You've had situations like when Joffre had no idea how is the battle of Frontiers going or ENORMOUS amount of friendly fire accidents through all the war. Problems in communications made repelling the counter-attacks after taking over the enemy's defence line(or exploiting the breach) almost impossible.

But there are many more factors to be fair.

The difference was that they've had the Balkan wars where they could see almost everything that awaited them in WW1, except lasting for little shorter while. You've even had Bulgarians trying out creeping barrage.

Then you've had idiots like Cardona who couldn't accept the new reality.

>Guys, I am the best Austro-Hungarian General. Let me offer mys services to you
>LOL FUCK OFF RACE TRAITOR!!!!

Dat creeping barrage...

>I plunged Europe into war so my waifu would love me

>did quite well at Jutland

The got their T's crossed TWICE

It British gunnery hadn't been piss poor and had they used proper signaling systems the German fleet would have been scrap metal

Not a general but the captain of the SMS Emden,Karl von Müller was a pretty kewl guy, he sunk Allied ships and wan't afraid of anything.

Also not a general but Hellmuth von Mücke the first Lieutenant of the SMS Emden was a pretty kewl guy, he pulled off a mighty escape from allied forces and brought his men home to Germany from the eastern side of the Indian ocean

desu waiting for a movie about both of them ;_;

Carpathian offensives.

Literally the worst general in the war

That man single handedly destroyed an empire.

this guy knows what's up

But the british had naval superiority.

>MFW someone praises Hindenburg near me.

Fuck yes.

Greatest runaround ever. Never caught.

>Buying into the led by donkeys myth

I mean look at this strapping sonuvabitch.
Plus he had the stones to tell Hitler to go fuck himself. That takes some serious brass balls right there.