Why were the generals in WWI so retarded...

Why were the generals in WWI so retarded? Tens of thousands of their soldiers died solely because of the stupidility of their own commanders.

Generals from the new worlds tended to be good, like Australia's Monash.

European officers were usually not advanced based on merit, like in Canada and Australia, but rather because of class and connections.

>"The Canadian army was different in several respects from its European counterparts. It was an all volunteer force. They had a very different profile to the industrialized slum dwellers of Manchester or the estate workers of Germany. Canadians were unaccustomed to showing respect and deference to anyone who could not stand firmly on his own two feet without the supports of wealth or title." -General Sir Aurthur William Currie GCMG,KCB

>tfw Hemingway and Onassis joined forces to steal the gold of Montenegro during the Austrian attacks on Venice

Pic unrelated

But Britain and France had since adopted Meritocracy in the chain of command, and the Germans literally pioneered modern command structure.

Then I was wrong and have no idea

perhaps you should shut up then sweety ;)

Clearly

I'd personaly give it to two reasons:
Firstly, times were indeed very different. Many generals and other commanders had seen action in the field of battle prior to the 20th century, and many believed that everything they learned from that experience in war was still a good base for warfare in general. Those who understood that wars had indeed changed would become decent C.O.'s, but always seen as ignorants to the "true ways."

Secondly, I'd say that pride and honour were the main priorities of many of those men. Accepting that they knew nothing and that they would have to listen and understand other people, mainly people below his rank, was simply too much for them. And because of this ignorance, their pride and honour got destroyed way harsher for their extraordinary failures.

Take British General, Sir Douglas Haig, for example. He deeply underestimated machine guns. He could not accept that these sort of weapons were going to take the place of the trustworthy rifles, so he deemed them as unefective, overrated and a waste of resources. For that, his battallions had only 1-2 machine gunners. Then, in a front against Germany, The Battle of Loos, one entire British battalion was entirely killed, no men left alive besides their sergeant, by the hands of one German machine gun. The battle was know by the Germans and Leichenfeld von Loos, or, "The field of corpses of Loos."

>using Luigi Cadorna as example
What guy know how lose battles.

And because of meritocracy, every other general was put off charge? That's not the case. War was much more politics than the battle themselves.

Because you only ever hear about the retarded ones, therefore you think that all of them were retarded.

>using sweety any time
Please kill yourself

The same then applies to every country.

Plenty of the more infamous generals had the same kind of pants-on-head retarded ideas of warfighting that a lot of edgy armchair generals today have.

Cadorna in particular was infamous for not understanding how morale worked. Important concepts to keeping morale up like home leave, entertaining the troops, or even free time were heavily frowned upon by him and rarely allowed. Similarly, he believed the bravery of the soldiers would win them the day, and thus any failure was the result of cowardice in his eyes, regardless of how retarded the tactics involved were.

What is the problem that, sweety?

umm no sweaty :^)

try again sweetie????

Yo know if there were any Indian regiments present there it would have been like taking the Poo to the Loos.

t. Bruce Bottlebong

Mostly it's from inexperience in fighting a truly modern war, since Europe really hasn't been embroiled in a true continental war since Napoleon, very few nations practically applied new innovations like artillery advancements and machine guns and just applied the same Napoleonic tactics when engaging them.

France and Germany however were better prepared as a result of the Franco-Prussian War. Germany's Bismarck and von Moltke knew of the importance of transportation through railroads and the speed in which modern war needed to be executed, where France learned the hard way through being defeated by Moltke. The two at least had a better understanding of how modern war was going to be played out, which led to the stalemate on the Western Front.

Other powers however never got to practically apply new tactics with their new weapons. With Britain's last major war being in Crimea 60 years ago, Italy's with their independence wars against Austria 50 years prior, and the Ottomans near collapse in the Balkan Wars, these powers simply used what the same Napoleonic tactics they were taught at the academy, leading to disastrous results, and were forced to Innovate as the war unfolded.

Most powers did innovate and change tactics, Britain developed the tank, but still slammed their head against the Somme for almost no gain, Italy sacked Cadorna for Diaz who used more mobile mountain troops to outflank and surround the Austrians who failed to innovate, and the Germans developed the Stoßtruppen infiltrate defenses and hold them long enough for the army to move in.

>With Britain's last major war being in Crimea 60 years ago
You forgot about half of Africa and Asia

A lot of the countries were stuck in 19th century theory of war, cavalry was still focused on arme blanche in Britain because they ignored the experiences of the ACW and Boer War, the French curassiers still wore breastplates and cloth hats even after their dismal performance during the Franco-Prussian War, infantry used cloth cover or at best leather helmets in the early war

The Boer war is the only one relevant and even then it wasn't so much a war as a counter insurgency

This happened to most countries in WW1

Your attached pic isn't related to yfw?

France yes, Britain no. The British officer corp was infamous for being utterly useless due to being decidedly un-meritocratic.

Consider that the act of straight out buying a commission was only abolished in 1871, but everyone who had bought a commission before was grandfathered in. 2 centuries of incompetence caused by commission buying takes a long time to wash out of the system, and it basically took WW1 to do it.

Funnily enough, the British Indian army was better than the British home army for most of the 19th century and into the 20th. The British Indian army participated in more fighting after the Napoleonic wars, and recruited from the best of Indian society rather than the skegs of England. The officers who volunteered for the British Indian army were usually more driven as well.