Thread by @pegobry

I should note that after its notorious missteps of 1914, by 1916 the French Army was the most agile large organization on the planet, certainly at the time, perhaps in all of human history.

https://twitter.com/pegobry/status/1606638687063838720

To take one out of countless examples, a specific type of mortar gun went from idea outlined in a memo by a junior artillery officer to deployed in the field in five months. (cc: US DoD)

By 1918, the French Army routinely conducted combined arms operations, with fully-mechanized infantry, autonomous tank units, artillery, air superiority & air recon, all closely coordinated by radio, over the entire field of battle. This is something the US still struggles with.

Aviation pioneer Roland Garros’ 1914 memo outlining the concept of the single-seat fighter-interceptor was quickly acted upon, essentially giving birth to modern air warfare (the concept is still valid today).

After the awful slaughter of Verdun, and especially the coming into line of tanks and fully-mechanized infantry, France switched to a "body blows" strategy. With minimal artillery preparation, the French would appear at one point, do damage, and by the time the Germans …

… could reinforce the line, disappear, get into their trucks, and strike somewhere else. Over and over. Instead of trying to land the knock-out punch, body blows after body blows. It sounds like a simple concept, but the technological and logistical challenges are on a par …

… with the building of the pyramids or the Apollo project.

This relates to a fundamental difference in how the French and German infantries were organized. The Germans decided to build divisions of elite stormtroops, destined to do most of the fighting, while the rest of the troops, who had fewer equipment and military training, were…

… meant to simply hold the line. The French, meanwhile, very consciously eschewed the creation of such elite troops, instead deciding to train the entire infantry to the highest possible level. Therefore, the ability to strike unexpected on these lower-quality troops before …

… they could be reinforced by elite troops, and then disappear and do it again, proved extremely damaging.

Lest you draw too-easy political implications, I would note that while France was a democratic republic, most of the generals were Catholic monarchists. And before you fault the Germans for their short-sighted elitism, keep in mind that WW1 effected a complete revolution in …

… the art of infantry warfare. From the invention of the musket until 1914, all of what a non-specialized infantryman had to know how to do was march in formation in the direction appointed by his officer, shoot, take fire, not run. Which required incredible courage and …

… discipline, but little complexity. By 1916, infantrymen had to act, in the fog of war, as isolated autonomous platoons (another French WW1 invention still relevant today), often with no officer, or even NCO, to tell them what to do, deploying in coordination new and …

… comparatively complex equipment such as gas masks, grenades, machineguns, field mortars, etc. As the invaluable historian Michel Goya points out, the French infantryman of 1916 had more in common with his counterpart of 2022 than with his counterpart of 1914.

It’s hard to blame the Germans for thinking the French were crazy for thinking they could train millions of fresh conscripts into, effectively, elite infantrymen, and yet that is exactly what they did.

French generals had great faith in the inherent qualities of the French people as a people, and this faith was vindicated by events. (And I would add that this can very much be an aristocratic turn of mind as well as democratic. Good nobles know their people, and know when …

… to trust them with great responsibilities.)

The organizational and human challenge was immense. Infantry was typically rotated away from the front every three months, for three months of training, with only a week or two of leave. Each time they would typically have to learn new equipment, or new tactics.

Think of a 40th percentile eighteen year old today. Would he be able to do this? Our forefathers were giants.

It was also a conceptual revolution, to think of the basic infantryman as a skilled technician, like a sailor or an artilleryman, and not as a courageous, worthy, but basically low-skilled unit. The Germans do not seem to have made that conceptual leap.

So, while the Germans could field very impressive elite stormtroops, the overall quality of the French soldier was much higher than that of the average German, especially by the end when much of the stormtroops had been killed and they found it difficult to replenish the ranks.

Perhaps even more than, say, the aeroplane or mustard gas, this organization would have stunned Napoleon, who was fond of saying that an infantryman needed two weeks of training at most. No doubt as a genius he would have quickly grasped the point, but his initial reaction …

… would have been to cry insanity. I make the point because we now take for granted that all soldiers need to train ceaselessly, not just for drill and cohesion, but to continually adopt new technologies and techniques, to underline how radically new this was.

Meanwhile on the production side, by 1918 the French Army had more armored cars, more trucks, and more tanks, than all of the world’s militaries combined. Including smaller allies, who were mostly equipped with French donations (including the Americans).

This from a country that had one third of its territory occupied by the enemy, including much of its mines and its industrial base.

Hindenburg’s infamous secret speech to the Reichstag, explaining that the General Staff no longer believed it could win the war, cited French tanks as the primary factor, well ahead of American entry into the war (sorry Ameribros).

By the end, the Germans simply could not keep up with the technological, organizational and, frankly, human superiority of the French.

The French moved faster, hit harder, fought better. Over, and over, and over. And this is why they won.

What point to this thread?

I mean, apart from patriotic chest-thumping, and correcting some clichés about French capacity in fields such as organization and war-fighting, especially as compared to the Germans…

Well, first, as a student of history, to point out that World War I is much more interesting, and exciting, than we usually think. It’s the war we don’t like to think about, fought for goals we no longer understand, seemingly in a mindless industrial meat-grinder between…

… ghastly trenches. But the standstill trench aspect of the war was only one phase, and much more went on. The men who fought it were dedicated and patriotic and willing to go to nearly incomprehensible heights of daring and heroism. They deserve to be remembered and …

… understood better.

But also, extremely relevant to today, in an era of stagnant oligopolistic capitalism and decadent gerontocratic polities, the French Army of World War I is a unique historical example of organizational turnaround. The French Army of 1914 was a disaster. It was hopelessly …

… outclassed in every way by the Germans. After stabilizing by a supreme effort of will (I am informed that some Brits believe they played a crucial role there—by the time the front stabilized in 1914, they were still mostly getting off the boats, though their later help …

… is, of course, much appreciated), it completely turned itself around, under some of the most difficult circumstances imaginable, and became, as I said when I began, perhaps the most agile, innovative and effective large organization in the history of the world.

It should be studied by relevant scholars and students of relevant programs, way beyond history and military studies, and it should be a byword for human collective achievement and excellence, on a par with, say, the builders of the cathedrals, or the Apollo Project.

During the first four months of the war, the French high command relieved 162 generals. Generals relieved for insufficient results were typically assigned to the garrison at Limoges—essentially the city furthest away from the front—and this was so common that "limoger" has …

… become a French word for "to fire." Surely this has no contemporary relevance…

Speaking of French generalship, contrary to impressions fostered by works such as Paths of Glory, of psychopaths sitting in gilded offices robotically sending millions to their deaths, 42 …

… French generals died in the line of duty during the war, and most of them had sons on the front, and many of them had to grieve the loss of one or more sons. Some of the decisions they made were, as all decisions in war, questionable, but they were not made without…

… deep awareness of the so-often awful reality on the ground.

Meanwhile, an entire unit (crucially placed at the highest level, directly under general command) had as its entire mission to collect lessons-learned/after action reports, to solicit new ideas from the front, and then to triage and synthesize them and turn them into …

… new technologies, materiel, tactics, or doctrines, and then push them back down the chain of command. You could easily write a fascinating, important book just on the history of this group of extraordinary men, with high relevance for any large organization, but I am not …

… aware than any exists.

Since many are asking for book recommendations, the best that I am aware of in the English language is Michel Goya, Flesh and Steel.

I am told reliably that another good source is Elizabeth Greenhalgh, The French Army and the First World War

I have made an additional thread about the American contribution, to appease my Ameribros:

https://twitter.com/pegobry/status/1606714748812214272