Discuss @David Flin 's latest article here
Astonishingly, the Germans never realised what was going on. It’s never been explained how they suffered from such as lamentable display of Intelligence, but it was one of the big failures of a war that had more than its fair share of failure.
One explanation that has been put forward for this failure of Intelligence is that German attention was taken up with the British attack at Passchendaele. If that was the case, then despite the losses, and the failure of the British attacks to make any headway whatsoever, Passchendaele succeeded in its primary aim of taking pressure off of the French.
what we 'know' about Passchendaele (horrific pointless bloody slog) is wrong, it did have a big impact.
because that theory is correct, what we 'know' about Passchendaele (horrific pointless bloody slog) is wrong, it did have a big impact.
I wonder if part of the German intelligence issue might be that by this point 'the enemy's morale is low, they will break at any moment' had been repeated so often it wasn't believed.
The whole 'Lions led by Donkeys' polemic is losing ground. Not a minute too soon. It's becoming more and more accepted that opposing Wilhelmine German militarism was both worthwhile and necessary.
Indeed, that claim comes up a lot in amateur AH, often as a justification for a Central Powers victory in which everything turns out better than OTL.A good article. Because of the 1917 mutinies the French are usually dismissed as being about to collapse.
The whole 'Lions led by Donkeys' polemic is losing ground. Not a minute too soon. It's becoming more and more accepted that opposing Wilhelmine German militarism was both worthwhile and necessary.
Different things.
And tbh I still think its right that WWI is not seen generally as a morally upstanding conflict given how much of it was wrapped in Imperialism, ethno-nationalism and brinkmanship.
Because German Militarism doesn't really stand out that much when you consider the armies that crushed it didn't appear overnight.