Was the Four Years on the Western Front the Generals’ fault
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Trench warfare is always going to be long because of its nature to make the attacker always have the disadvantage and the defender to always have the advantage in most cases. This means that most attacks would be a failure so the tactics cannot always be at blame. An example of the defender having the advantage is the Somme. Haig used 27 divisions, 750,000 men whilst Germany used 16 divisions. Although the British had 11 more divisions attacking, Germany still came out on top of them. In the first day, they had 58,000 casualties. Haig continued to attack although they were being slaughtered.
Haig did experiment with different tactics like the creeping barrage, which made the final breakthrough and mining tunnels and rigging them with bombs, which was very effective. However, with some of the tactics like the tank and the mining were very effective but Haig did not send through men to take over the trenches that the tanks destroyed.
Von Moltke was probably the general to blame for all of the trench warfare as he went east around Pa ...
