BS: I am not an historian but........

Subject: RE: BS: I am not an historian but........
From: Jim Carroll
Date: 19 Dec 14 - 06:21 AM

Can we put the false names bi in context
Keith was the first one I encountered, using it to give himself support when nobody else would (surprisingly!!)
He was reprmanded by the site administrator and claimed he was doing so to expose a "troll" -(ie interfering with the rights of a non-member)
It's not a particularly savoury practice, but give us a break Keith.
If you have posted evidence of what yu claim - link us to it or stop making a fool of yourself - a joke's a joke, but!!!!
Jim Carroll

Subject: RE: BS: I am not an historian but........
From: GUEST
Date: 19 Dec 14 - 06:54 AM

I wish had remembered earlier.I knew a bloke that would spout forth whenever we were in the pub with all sorts of bollocks. Now, that's fine in itself, we all talk bollocks when we have had a few. Some of it is true, some isn't, but this particular bloke used to make his points by prodding you in the chest and emphatically stating "and that's a fact". You are doing the online equivalent of prodding people in the chest, Keith. This is a cautionary tale. He lost most of his friends.

Subject: RE: BS: I am not an historian but........
From: Jim Carroll
Date: 19 Dec 14 - 07:20 AM

"I knew a bloke that would spout forth whenever we were in the pub with all sorts of bollocks"
Tommy Kenny (the "lying veteran", according to this pair of jobbies) who we recorded in 1969, told us of how the officers in charge would occasionally select enthusiastic Tommies to give a pep-talk to the men - attendance was compulsory.
Invariably, the response was for the speaker to be drowned out by the loud singing of the Salvation Army hymn "tell me the old, old story".
The officers retaliated by threatening to put the culprits on a charge, so the men settled for humming it audibly under their breaths so they couldn't be identified.
Jim Carroll

Subject: RE: BS: I am not an historian but........
From: akenaton
Date: 19 Dec 14 - 07:21 AM

With "friends" like you and the "muskets" guest, who needs enemies?
You are far from unbiased, as can be seen from almost everything you post, the people who read these threads are not stupid.

The myths promoted by you people have been demolished by Mr T and Keith, end of story.

There has been not one satisfactory response to the view that the revisionism of the 30's was false and that the additional information available to historians and scholars over the last few decades validates the actions of General Haig.
Having been allowed to start, the war had to be won and Haig helped to accomplish that victory.

The Germans turned out to be bad losers, but not as bad as you lot!!

Subject: RE: BS: I am not an historian but........
From: Jim Carroll
Date: 19 Dec 14 - 07:32 AM

"The myths promoted by you people have been demolished by Mr T and Keith, end of story."
Where - perhaps you might provide the links Keith won't - no - didn't think so!!
Jim Carroll

Subject: RE: BS: I am not an historian but........
From: Keith A of Hertford
Date: 19 Dec 14 - 07:41 AM

Musket lied about what the historians in his programme had said, completely misrepresenting the message, but no-one minds.

You people ridicule the views of the historians as if you know more!
There is not one who supports you.
Your only reply is that they must all be lying!

That shows how totally closed your minds are.

Either the historians are deluded liars, or you people are.
That is the only dilemma in this.

Subject: RE: BS: I am not an historian but........
From: Musket
Date: 19 Dec 14 - 07:44 AM

The search box on the Mudcat main page allows you to look at what Akenaton said about war going back eleven years or so.

To be fair, we can all change our minds. Especially the bit about "fighting for equality."

Anyway, let's have a game of myth buster. Count the graves and read the accounts of men in the trenches.

Then look at the selective quotes about particular days of the war that Keith and Terribulus expand to conclude that the war was well led.

Demolishing myths.. That's what we do whenever the three of them print myths

😼

Subject: RE: BS: I am not an historian but........
From: GUEST
Date: 19 Dec 14 - 07:49 AM

You are far from unbiased, as can be seen from almost everything you post, the people who read these threads are not stupid.

3 points there. 1. Address the points, not the person. 2. You have not read 'everything I post' and 3. Some people are not, some people are.

Subject: RE: BS: I am not an historian but........
From: GUEST
Date: 19 Dec 14 - 07:52 AM

And Keith, still fighting while you believe you have won? Why? Explain to me what mileage there is putting the boot in after you believe the opposition has been disarmed.

Subject: RE: BS: I am not an historian but........
From: Jim Carroll
Date: 19 Dec 14 - 08:11 AM

Links will do the trick Keith simple as that
Jim Carroll

Subject: RE: BS: I am not an historian but........
From: Keith A of Hertford
Date: 19 Dec 14 - 08:36 AM

Jim, I have provided links and quotes for about a dozen historians.
You reject them all for various reasons, but you can not produce a single current historian to challenge any of them.
Nor will you.

Musket, you suggest "count the graves and read the accounts of men in the trenches."

We all know the count, and I have read many accounts starting with Sassoon and Graves.
The historians have researched all the accounts available.

On history, I believe the historians.
You people believe all the historians are deluded liars.

Which is the most rational view?

Subject: RE: BS: I am not an historian but........
From: The Sandman
Date: 19 Dec 14 - 08:41 AM

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=g_nh4wKKlhE

Subject: RE: BS: I am not an historian but........
From: Jim Carroll
Date: 19 Dec 14 - 08:46 AM

"Jim, I have provided links and quotes for about a dozen historians."
You are continuing to lie - you have listed about half a donzen and you have given no quotes whatever which back up your three claims - none
YOUR SOLUTION IS SIMPLE - INSTEAD OF CLAIMING YOU HAVE GIVEN QUOTES, LINK US TO THEM
Your claim that nobody has given examples of historians is a simple lie - you have been given dozens which you have rejected
What kind of an idiot are you?
Jim Carroll

Subject: RE: BS: I am not an historian but........
From: Keith A of Hertford
Date: 19 Dec 14 - 09:00 AM

I have done Jim, and everyone has read them over the last year plus.
The most recently repeated one was the Canadian historian Margaret Macmillan.
Is she deluded or a liar or both?

There are all the historians on one side, and you people on the other.

Sorry, but I still believe the historians.
For that you think it appropriate to ridicule and insult.

If it was an insult competition you would win.
As it is, you lose.
Sorry.

Subject: RE: BS: I am not an historian but........
From: Keith A of Hertford
Date: 19 Dec 14 - 09:03 AM

Your claim that nobody has given examples of historians is a simple lie - you have been given dozens which you have rejected

My claim was that nobody has given a single example of a living historian.
I know that there used to be some who pushed those old myths you cling to.
Now there are none.

Subject: RE: BS: I am not an historian but........
From: Jim Carroll
Date: 19 Dec 14 - 09:03 AM

You obviously have no intention of substantiating your dishonest claim, which is proof tht it is just that - dishonest
To revert to your own values, checkmate - think
Jim Carroll

Subject: RE: BS: I am not an historian but........
From: GUEST
Date: 19 Dec 14 - 09:16 AM

As it is, you lose. Yes, that's it Keith. Someone has lost, which means you win. Quit while you are ahead. Please!!!

Subject: RE: BS: I am not an historian but........
From: Jim Carroll
Date: 19 Dec 14 - 09:40 AM

You even lie about Margaret McMillan backing your case
She wrote only on the causes of World war on and said from the outset that the claaim of blame was "inconclusive"
She never wrote about support for the war or how it was conducted
Jim Carroll

While there is broad agreement about the consequences of the war, the causes have always been contentious. Who, or what, was to blame? What role do we attribute to underlying trends such as militarism, the arms race and imperialist rivalry? How important was the system of alliances that divided Europe into two armed camps? Then there is the question of which power or powers carry the greatest responsibility for the coming of war. The victorious allies stuck the blame on Germany at the Versailles Peace Conference, in the "war guilt clause". The idea that Germany was the prime mover has enjoyed a brilliant, if chequered career ever since. It was widely questioned in the interwar years, not only in Germany but in Britain and the US (although not in France). After Hitler's war, though, English-speaking historians were more likely to see a pattern of German aggression stretching back before 1914, and in 1961 the Hamburg historian Fritz Fischer made the controversial case (bitterly opposed by most German historians) that Germany had mounted a pre-emptive strike. The "Fischer thesis" became the orthodoxy for a while, but has been plausibly challenged in recent years by historians who have pointed the finger almost everywhere except at Berlin. The current consensus seems to be that there is no consensus. There is, finally, the question of the decisions made by a score or so of men (and they were all men) in half a dozen capitals. Did it matter that during the July Crisis both Austria-Hungary (Berchtold) and Russia (Sazonov) had foreign ministers who were weaker and less decisive than their predecessors? Would it have made a difference if Austria's chief of staff Hötzendorf had been less of a fire‑eater or German chancellor Bethmann-Hollweg less of a fatalist? In our post‑structuralist age, the importance of individuals within the decision-making process has returned to centre stage, along with counterfactual ("what if?") history.

Subject: RE: BS: I am not an historian but........
From: GUEST
Date: 19 Dec 14 - 09:51 AM

Jim. Musket Co-operative. Stop it please! Just let Keith do his little victory dance and walk off into the sunset. It is obviously important to him and will make his Christmas. Besides, just imagine another few weeks of this:-(

Subject: RE: BS: I am not an historian but........
From: Keith A of Hertford
Date: 19 Dec 14 - 09:58 AM

I have expressed no view about events before the German invasions, so why quote Macmillan on that?

Here are some more relevant quotes from her, covering all my 3 points, and the fact that historiography has moved on.

"Yet far more novels and memoirs at the time were either ambivalent about the rightness or otherwise of the war or, indeed, saw it as something that had had to be fought. And not everyone who had been in the war wanted to forget it."

"Now is surely the right time to challenge the accepted views. The wartime generals were not all cowards and incompetents as Alan Clark argued in his infamous The Donkeys (1961). A new generation of British historians, among others, has done much to explode such lazy generalisation and show that commanders developed both strategies and tactics that, in the end, worked. And was the war just a dreadful mistake or was it about something? At the time people on all sides thought they had a just cause. It is condescending and wrong to think they were hoodwinked. British soldiers felt they were fighting for their country and its values; "

http://www.ft.com/cms/s/2/7b6f0490-6347-11e3-a87d-00144feabdc0.html

Subject: RE: BS: I am not an historian but........
From: Big Al Whittle
Date: 19 Dec 14 - 11:58 AM

The mystery solved!

The Works (that great emporium of remaindered rubbish that once stocked my line dance album alongside Gerry Adams' memoirs) has got the at half a big picture book called The First War by the much vaunted Gary Sheffield. its right next to 50 Shades of Grey.

If only Haig and Von Luddendorf had had a 'safe' word.

Subject: RE: BS: I am not an historian but........
From: Keith A of Hertford
Date: 19 Dec 14 - 12:04 PM

What mystery does that solve Al?

Subject: RE: BS: I am not an historian but........
From: Keith A of Hertford
Date: 19 Dec 14 - 12:13 PM

It was published 12 years ago, and is described as a best seller.
That is a surprise if not a mystery.
A history book that costs £79 hardback or £21 paperback and it sold!

Subject: RE: BS: I am not an historian but........
From: Keith A of Hertford
Date: 19 Dec 14 - 12:21 PM

It has just been republished as an e book.
That will be why the printed versions are remaindered.
Amazing run for a history book though.

Subject: RE: BS: I am not an historian but........
From: Jim Carroll
Date: 19 Dec 14 - 01:01 PM

"I have expressed no view about events before the German invasions, so why quote Macmillan on that?"
Becayuse that is all she covers - she discusses nothing else - you claim her as a supporter - on what?
Where has she commented on recruiting, the blame for WW1 or how it was run?
Pratt
Nobody claimed the generals were cowards and no one has defended the "Donkey's" book
Sge clearly stated that the blame for the war was shared by all sides.
She is typical of all the historians you have claimed as supporters, as you have adequately illustrated - she supports nothing you have said - end of story
Jim Carroll

Subject: RE: BS: I am not an historian but........
From: Jim Carroll
Date: 19 Dec 14 - 01:08 PM

Your link to Margaret McMillan is totally irrelevant to this argument as she does not cover a single aspect of what is being discussed except to describe the war as one of "attrition" which you both have denied
More 'smoke and mirrors'
Jim Carroll

Subject: RE: BS: I am not an historian but........
From: Keith A of Hertford
Date: 19 Dec 14 - 01:16 PM

She says, "It is condescending and wrong to think they were hoodwinked. British soldiers felt they were fighting for their country and its values; "
And,
"Throughout the 1920s, the British mourned their lost ones as heroes who had fought in a good cause, not as helpless cannon fodder.
It was only at the end of the decade that doubts crept in;"

That is one of my points.

She says, "It is condescending and wrong to think they were hoodwinked. "

That's another of my points.

She says, "commanders developed both strategies and tactics that, in the end, worked. "

That is all my three points.

Subject: RE: BS: I am not an historian but........
From: Keith A of Hertford
Date: 19 Dec 14 - 01:27 PM

More quotes of Macmillan,
"But seeing the war through the poetry of Wilfred Owen, who came to prominence decades after his death, is dangerous. Most of the poets who were widely read at the time – notably Rupert Brooke – were writing patriotic verse, and the "futility of war" line only emerged later. "Britain certainly thought it had legitimate reasons for going in, and I think it did," she says."

"The great war was nobody's fault or everybody's," she writes. But "some powers and their leaders are more culpable than others. Austria-Hungary's mad determination to destroy Serbia in 1914, Germany's decision to back it to the hilt, Russia's impatience to mobilise, these all seem to me to bear the greatest responsibility for the outbreak of the war."
http://www.theguardian.com/books/2014/jul/25/margaret-macmillan-just-dont-ask-me-who-started-war

Subject: RE: BS: I am not an historian but........
From: GUEST,Som.. Err Ok, as Musket
Date: 19 Dec 14 - 01:28 PM

Does she address why the policy of sending waves of men into enemy fire wasn't "back to the drawing board" after the first tragic failure? Does she say why the only strategic change was to use more stretcher bearers and more admin staff to deal with the telegrams?

Sheffield does. And Taylor. Clark refers to it for that matter.

People who don't need historians for a ready made view may also take a view, given that happened.

Perhaps they may assess it in light of an absurd claim that the men were well led?

Subject: RE: BS: I am not an historian but........
From: Jim Carroll
Date: 19 Dec 14 - 01:39 PM

All out of context Keith
She claims that there was no evidenced to blame any single nation for the war
A contradiction to one of your points
She says that there in no evidence of overwhelming support for the war
A contradiction to one of your points
She says it was a war between Empires
A contradiction to one of your points

Subject: RE: BS: I am not an historian but........
From: Keith A of Hertford
Date: 19 Dec 14 - 01:39 PM

She says it is wrong to denigrate the leaders.
You disagree.
She is an eminent historian with decades of research behind her.
You are some bloke from Scotland sometimes called Musket.

You ridiculed and insulted me for saying just what the historians say.
I learned it from them.

You said "those historians should know better."
You really imagine yourself superior to them all.

You lose.

Subject: RE: BS: I am not an historian but........
From: Jim Carroll
Date: 19 Dec 14 - 01:43 PM

"She says it is wrong to denigrate the leaders"
She says it is wrong to denigrate any leaders or any single nation
You are deliberately choosing half statements to prove support
You are a moron to even claim having won anything - that is not what these discussions are about.
One thing is certain - you will be laughed out of existence if you ever mention the words "historian" or "you lose" ever again
Jim Carroll

Subject: RE: BS: I am not an historian but........
From: GUEST,Some bloke in Scotland
Date: 19 Dec 14 - 01:50 PM

i'm eminent too, according to my husband.

Have been for decades if you add my Mum's opinion.

Keith, any chance of extending your sources of where your learning comes from? More historians? History channel? back of cornflake packets?

Anything for crying out loud, but just open your eyes and mind. Your insular parochial patronising is getting on peoples' tits. How can we ever debate the atrocities, poor leadership, jingoism and propaganda surrounding WW1 whilst you keep chipping in with odd irrelevancies from cherry picked half sources?

Fer fooks sake.

Subject: RE: BS: I am not an historian but........
From: Keith A of Hertford
Date: 19 Dec 14 - 01:51 PM

She says, "The wartime generals were not all cowards and incompetents as Alan Clark argued in his infamous The Donkeys (1961). A new generation of British historians, among others, has done much to explode such lazy generalisation and show that commanders developed both strategies and tactics that, in the end, worked."

That is clearly saying it is wrong to denigrate the British Army leaders, and that the new generation of historians all say the same.

You people all ridiculed and insulted me for saying that.
You were wrong.

Subject: RE: BS: I am not an historian but........
From: Keith A of Hertford
Date: 19 Dec 14 - 01:55 PM

Some Musket In Scotland, are you also an acclaimed and prizewinning historian with a string of definitive books behind you?

I think that it is more likely that you are wrong, than that all the historians are.

Subject: RE: BS: I am not an historian but........
From: Jim Carroll
Date: 19 Dec 14 - 02:06 PM

"The wartime generals were not all cowards and incompetents "
Nobody has argued they "all" were, but her statement indicates that she believes some where
One more time - nobody has supported Clark's boot - a red herring
You claim Britain had no alternate - she says all sides failed to seek peaceful means
You claim that it was a war against German tyranny (your words)
She says it was a war between Empires and actually stared around 1905 with conflicts over territory
You say that it was German aggression which started the war
She says it was wrong to blame any one side, that all were to blame.
You continue to lie
Jim carroll

Subject: RE: BS: I am not an historian but........
From: GUEST
Date: 19 Dec 14 - 03:18 PM

Blind men describing an elephant...

Subject: RE: BS: I am not an historian but........
From: Keith A of Hertford
Date: 19 Dec 14 - 04:33 PM

Jim, I claimed that Britain had no choice but to resist the German invasions.
She said, "Britain certainly thought it had legitimate reasons for going in, and I think it did," she says."

I said that the people supported that.
She said"It is condescending and wrong to think they were hoodwinked. British soldiers felt they were fighting for their country and its values; "

I said that the army was well led.
She said, "A new generation of British historians, among others, has done much to explode such lazy generalisation (incompetence) and show that commanders developed both strategies and tactics that, in the end, worked."

Those were and are my only claims.
She supports all three and says that "new generation of British historians, among others" have "exploded" those old myths.

She also said that "some powers and their leaders are more culpable than others. Austria-Hungary's mad determination to destroy Serbia in 1914, Germany's decision to back it to the hilt, Russia's impatience to mobilise, these all seem to me to bear the greatest responsibility for the outbreak of the war."

Subject: RE: BS: I am not an historian but........
From: Big Al Whittle
Date: 19 Dec 14 - 05:39 PM

so Ian - you're not the gay bloke in Scotland....well that's a surprise. I thought you'd moved.

Subject: RE: BS: I am not an historian but........
From: Musket
Date: 20 Dec 14 - 02:24 AM

Had to give it up mate. Made my eyes water.

Must be allergic to midges......

Subject: RE: BS: I am not an historian but........
From: GUEST,Some bloke in Scotland
Date: 20 Dec 14 - 02:26 AM

bum bum.

Don't give up the day job...

Subject: RE: BS: I am not an historian but........
From: Jim Carroll
Date: 20 Dec 14 - 04:07 AM

"I claimed that Britain had no choice but to resist the German invasions."
History describe it as a war between Empires and points out that it led to the destruction of the Imperial system.
The "war against German tyranny" was no more than a wartime propaganda slogan to persuade the people that the slaughter of a generation was worthwhile.
Even those who you claim (and have yet to show) support your argument say exactly that.
You claim that it was well conducted, yet both of you are reguced to defending one General - Haig - French and Kitchener have been established as non-runner buffoons.   
You have both claimed that the "enormous catastrophes" that took place were down to the politicians and not the military - you haven't even bothered too deal with that claim with your mythical historians, but the fact that you have both stated it indicates that in fact that you are admitting that the war was appallingly run - how can you claim otherwise when you paint a picture of politicians and generals stabbing each other in the back while British youth are dying in the mud?
That is your own description of what was happening - straight out of 'Oh What a Lovely War'
You claim popular support for the war, yet you describe soldiers own accounts of the war as "lies" - that is sick.
We do know that the views of soldiers who returned wounded were heavily censored - Sassoon was committed to lunatic asylum for writing of his experiences and only released when he agreed to be silent.
A century after the war began, the contents of the forbidden diaries kept by soldiers on the front are still not general knowledge and have been made public in dribs and drabs, the overall picture of the view of those who fought are totally unassessed.
Paxman's programmes described the attitude of the war back home as "complacent" - soldiers coming home on leave to find the people acting as if there wasn't a war taking place, mass corruption within the rationing system and the better off being able to eat and drink whatever their wealth would buy them.
All the reasons for joining up in the were also well covered - you refuse to respond to them.
You have not made a single one of your points and you are now trying to add another historian to your claimed six.
You have refused to link us to your claimed support because it does not exist - your anachronistic view of the war is dead, apart from in the mind of you few flag-waving, National Anthem standers-uppers.
Even your revisionist historians (those who wish to revise the popular view of history) have not made the jingoistic claims you have - that is the stuff that Ukip and the B.N.P. go in for.
The only thing you have proved here is that you truley are not a historian and you never will be - that requires being interested enough to read a book on the subject.      
Once again you have come to a topic in order to prove the establishment is never wrong and you end up trying to save face.
I'm done here, unless you are prepared to produce proof of your claims of support - I've got better things to do with my time than waste it arguing with idiots.
Jim Carroll

Subject: RE: BS: I am not an historian but........
From: Keith A of Hertford
Date: 20 Dec 14 - 04:59 AM

Not one assertion in that whole post is true Jim.

This whole thing can be reduced to one simple either/or.
On WW1, either all the historians are deluded, or you are.

It hardly needs saying, but you lose.

Subject: RE: BS: I am not an historian but........
From: Keith A of Hertford
Date: 20 Dec 14 - 05:10 AM

I'm done here, unless you are prepared to produce proof of your claims of support -

I am Jim.
I have just shown that Macmillan supports all my three points.
Here is another from my long list of historians, William Philpott.

Were the Allied generals of 1914 unable to adapt to the evolving nature of war?
This is one of those long-standing myths about First World War commanders. Because the battles often took place in the same areas, people assume the generals were just repeating the same mistakes. That's far from what happened; they actually adapted very quickly. In 1915 the generals engaged with the tactical problems of fighting on entrenched battlefield. In 1916 they took those models and applied them to the bigger question of how to conduct a long, drawn-out battle to engage and defeat the enemy's army. In 1917 they were able to retrain their armies in new techniques, which allowed them to maneuver more effectively and ultimately win the war in 1918.

When you look at the way the armies were organized and equipped, the way the defense had to adapt to new offensive techniques combining infantry, artillery and new technologies such as aircraft, tanks and gas, you see that the warfare of 1917 was very different from that of 1915. Commanders came to grips with the problems and found solutions."

"I think the decisive factors were the Allies' development of the right techniques for taking on and beating the German army, and Allied superiority in munitions, weaponry and doctrine."

"They were willing to go through the conflict and make the sacrifice for their belief, which would result in a better world. In the early 1920s the Allied nations felt they achieved something of that goal; it was only with the advent of the Great Depression and the reappearance of belligerent nationalism and rearmament that the public attitude about the war began to sour. The memory of the war that we have is the memory of the 1930s refracted through the lens of World War II. I've tried to tell the story of the conflict from the mindset of those who participated at the time rather than through the lens of hindsight."

http://www.historynet.com/interview-with-world-war-i-historian-william-philpott.htm

Subject: RE: BS: I am not an historian but........
From: Keith A of Hertford
Date: 20 Dec 14 - 05:23 AM

All your assertions were false, for instance those about Paxman/Open University.

About 9 minutes in, Paxman to camera.

"Most people seemed to have accepted that the war had to be fought.
To honour treaties. To defend the empire. To protect Britain.
And, what else were they supposed to do?
To sit back and watch as Germany amassed an empire from Russia to the shores of the English Channel?
Now war had broken out, almost everyone backed it.
Most trade unions suspended strikes, which had been common."

43 minutes in. Paxman to camera.
"The war was dreadful, and it was bloody, but unless Britain was prepared to see the rest of Europe turned into some enormous German colony, it had to be fought, and most British people saw that."


37 minutes in. Paxman to camera,
"But it seems to me remarkable that a country which considered itself in the grips of a struggle for national survival, none the less allowed individual citizens to decide whether they could reconcile that struggle with their personal conscience. It didn't happen elsewhere in Europe."

29 minutes in. Paxman to camera,
"Britain now had a tactically smarter, better organised army, capable of deploying men and machines to devastating effect"

He and the team clearly saying that the army was well led.

57 minutes in. Paxman to camera, "
Later generations would contend it had been a futile war. The war was terrible certainly, but hardly futile.
It stopped the German conquest of much of Europe, and perhaps even of villages like this.

Never before in the nation's History had a war required the commitment and the sacrifice of the whole population, and by and large, for 4 years, the British people kept faith with it."

11 minutes in. Paxman voice over,
"The British High Command believed that Britain might be invaded at any time."
" the first British trenches were not in Belgium or France, they were here in England."

Subject: RE: BS: I am not an historian but........
From: GUEST,Some bloke in Scotland
Date: 20 Dec 14 - 05:50 AM

we seem to have added television personalities to the list of eminent historians now..

Where you said "he and his team clearly said the men were well led" where does he say that? How many minutes in?

Having the capability and using it are two different things. I could own a F1 car but I couldn't do a lap without spinning off on the first bend.

You mention the attitudes of people at the time. You mention that we were put in a position where fighting seemed inevitable. Attitudes based on what they were told. Situation based on incompetence causing the situation in the first place.

"Honour treaties, protect the empire."

Paxman was bang on. Pity you can't digest what you read....

Subject: RE: BS: I am not an historian but........
From: Jim Carroll
Date: 20 Dec 14 - 07:06 AM

William Philpott
"'This is a war of attrition," an anonymous British Army officer advised readers of a populist periodical, The Vivid War Weekly, in February 1915: "attrition in the trenches, in the home, in the markets, in the workshops, in the counting-houses and stock exchanges." In its most notorious form, attrition was the strategy pursued on the Western Front, defined by William Philpott as "the cumulative exhaustion of the enemy's fighting capacity". What this in fact meant was a mathematically simple form of combat in which opposing armies launched wave upon wave of attack and counter-attack with the notion that eventually one side would have too few men left to carry on fighting. As The Vivid's correspondent warned, it was "just a matter of slaughter and maiming and sickness for months and months, until at last the combatant men are thinned down to a lesser density".
n recent years the First World War has been fought over almost as much as Flanders was, with revisionist military historians involved in a heavy bombardment of entrenched public opinion, which stubbornly holds fast to its view that the war was futile, badly conducted and wasteful of human life. Philpott, who is professor of the history of warfare at King's College, London, may belong to the revisionist camp, but he takes a refreshingly balanced view of the war. No sneering at "whingeing" War Poets, no railing against Oh, What a Lovely War! or Blackadder Goes Forth, no Gove-like rants against the distortions of history by Left-wing academics. Instead the author provides a sober and sobering account of how the war started, how it was conducted, and how – eventually – it was lost and won.
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He shows that attrition was indeed adopted in other arenas than the battlefield, and that this too wore down the enemy's fighting capacity. As with the Army, which had pursued a war of movement until the Germans settled into defensive positions along the River Aisne in 1914, so the Royal Navy's period of engaging with the enemy in major sea battles was comparatively short-lived: thereafter its principal role was "disrupting the supply of war materials". In August 1915 Lord Selborne, president of the Board of Agriculture, promoted a policy of "economic and financial attrition", suggesting that though blockades may cause morale-destroying food shortages for the Central Powers (and in Germany during the winter of 1917 "almost all food consisted in whole or in part of turnips"), "the financial difficulties of both their government and of their commercial and industrial interests may bring them to their knees before their military force is exhausted". In the end, however, it was attrition on front lines that had most impact.
Much of the criticism of the conduct of those such as General Haig has centred on the notion of soldiers being regarded merely as manpower units rather than sentient human beings. Philpott criticises individual decisions and actions but does not see it as his job to defend or attack the strategy itself. "Attrition was controversial as a strategy then, certainly misunderstood, and morally questionable ever after," he writes; "but the slaughter of a large number of Germans and the reciprocal sacrifice of Allied troops determined the nature, course and outcome of the war more than anything else." This pragmatic approach to the subject will not please everyone, but then in essence waging war has always been about trying to kill as many of the enemy as possible."

Subject: RE: BS: I am not an historian but........
From: Keith A of Hertford
Date: 20 Dec 14 - 11:08 AM

Paxman has written a book on WW1, and the programme was made in conjunction with the Open University.

This whole thing can be reduced to one simple either/or.
On WW1, either all the historians are deluded, or you are.

It hardly needs saying, but you lose.

Subject: RE: BS: I am not an historian but........
From: Keith A of Hertford
Date: 20 Dec 14 - 11:27 AM

Jim, historians do not agree on much.
Philpotts ideas about attrition for instance.

On my three points he is with all the others.

"The contention that the British army was ill-prepared for war in 1914, and continued to muddle through the killing zone of the industrial battlefield, while still popular, lacks credulity with most historians of the First World War. While it was inherent in the nature of industrialised mass war that casualty lists would be long - and societal trauma deep - to ascribe those wounds to the incompetence of the military practitioners, in particular higher command, has been consistently challenged by historians of the British army's battlefield performance over three decades. Rather than 'lions led by donkeys' a paradigm of 'citizens led by soldiers' deserves to be substituted."

https://www.rusi.org/analysis/commentary/ref:C4AF97CF94AC8B/

Subject: RE: BS: I am not an historian but........
From: Jim Carroll
Date: 20 Dec 14 - 12:12 PM

"Jim, historians do not agree on much."
Tell you what Keith
You have had my analysis bases on my interest in European history and politics.
I don't ave to scurry behind the names of historians as you have done, nor do I have to invent opinions of others to hide behind, a you have also done - these are my understandings of the subject - nobody else's
If you disagree with them, feel free to put me right - not with words you have cut-'n-pasted (and edited to suit your case), but with your own opinions and your own understanding
Every single argument you have put here has been from a carefully selected and edited cut-'n-paste - every single ******* one - there is nothing you have put up here that has come from your own knowledge.
If you haven't the interest to have an opinion that you can claim to be your own, without hiding behind the supposed words of others, kindly fuck off and leave these discussion to those who have.
If I want an accurate account of what Margaret McMillan or Gary Sheffield or any other exert on the subject believes to be true, I'll go and read their books - your behaviour here had proved to us all that your interpretations are not to be trusted - the number of times you have been forced to write "I win" is evidence enough to prove you are a feeble-minded obsessive.
Jim Carroll.