 Good day. I'm Colonel Jerry Morlock, the Director of the Combat Studies Institute. You're about to use a video series which our instructors have prepared for the sole purpose of approving your presentation of M610, the Evolution of Modern Warfare. We've taken care to make the course that you teach as similar to the one taught at Fort Leavenworth as possible and choose to add these tapes to your libraries in order to give you every advantage as you prepare to teach this new course. These tapes are similar to the weekly train-up sessions which we utilize to prepare our instructors here at Fort Leavenworth. My intent for the tape sessions was to provide you insights and tips on ways to approach the lessons of M610 that were not available in the instructor notes. I've drawn various instructors, military and civilian into the sessions based upon their specific expertise and historical background. They were asked to just talk to the lesson structure and content, giving you some additional information on the historical context and differing views on how to approach the lessons. These tapes will provide you a wealth of knowledge and direction that will significantly improve your readiness to teach our new history course. One word of caution regarding how to use these training tapes. They are not designed to be substituted for your instruction during the individual lessons of the course. As instructor preparation tapes train the training material, if you will, they are inappropriate for direct instruction to students and are not intended for that purpose. Our intent with these tapes is to improve your ability to lead the students' seminars by sharing tips and advice from some highly qualified experts. The Combat Studies Institute stands ready to provide whatever additional expertise or assistance that you may require, and we've included the institute's phone, mail and email contact information on the tape if you should need it. Good luck with the evolution of modern warfare course. Have a good time. We're going to be talking about this World War I lesson and discussing some approaches to the lesson, ways for you to get into the lesson with your students, and also trying to give you some background information in terms of what does World War I mean overall and maybe give you some pointers on some places to go. That said, we might as well kick off. So the World War I lesson, if it was my druthers, we'd have like 12 lessons on World War I in this course, but that's not my position. What you're saying is it's going to be difficult to put everything of significance in World War I into one two-hour class. Is that what you're trying to say? That's what I'm trying to say. I suspect you're right there. It looks like we have our work cut out for us in that case. Yeah, I think we do. I'd offer a thing that one of the biggest problems with teaching World War I, in my opinion, is to spell the sort of myths and the stereotypes that are associated with the war. When you mention World War I, students will tend to say, well, it's all stupidity, the generals were stupid and the guys went over the top again and again and the machine guns, it was mud and trenches and that's all I need to know. And that's a hurdle that an instructor is going to have to get past. There's nothing to be learned from it because it's just a glaring example of military stupidity. Well, there's plenty of that involved too, but there's a lot more to it as well. Another problem you might have teaching World War I, there'll be a lot of people who want to talk about the origins piece because that's what general historians like to talk about. You know, what led to the war, the causes of it and also general historians will like to talk about what came out of it, the important things, whether it's the Russian Revolution, America's emergence as a world power, the destruction of the monarchies in Europe, for example. But in a military history, of course, we need to focus and you're going to have to push your students, I believe, into looking at the military developments in that period. And we all have seen this slide, I like to use this slide, at the end of Teaching World War I, where JFC, full of the famous British military historian says there were more changes, war is more different, or changes more in the period between 1914 and 1918 than it had during the entire previous century. And that sort of causes a high browse to come up and say, what's going on here? We go from, at the tactical level of war, mass formations, direct fire artillery, a lot of officers still contemplating the use of mounted horse cavalry, very, very limited role for aviation, if any at all, to by the end of the war, kind of going backwards, aviation has developed every one of the roles that it will eventually fulfill down the road. The mounted arm is already appearing to be tanks and armored cars. Artillery has gotten very complex in firing indirect fire roles. It's a three-dimensional battle. It's a very much a three-dimensional battlefield, and infantry is now performing much like infantry does today. Very dispersed, very open-order, squad level maneuvering. A variety of arms down into each infantry squad and company. Yeah, and all of that occurs in a four-year period. It's amazing. And that's at the tactical level. At the strategic level, and that's really where this lesson's readings focus more than anything else. Is it the strategic level of war? A lot of things change there, too. So I think maybe the approach to take with this lesson is to discuss change. How do armies change? And especially how do armies change in the crucible of a tremendous conflict with the stakes being very high? How do you go about choosing which way to change? One caveat, though, we must keep in mind, and that clearly is that what is obvious to us was not obvious to the commanders and to the national leaders in 1950 and 1916. Before we're too harsh on them, we must keep in mind that we have now a 75-year perspective on this. And it's easy for us to condemn them as to being blind, foolish, anachronistic, any number of other terms that we might wish to apply to them. But they were working within the context of how they understood warfare. So let's not judge them too harshly. They probably thought of themselves also as being very well educated. They were. And forward-thinking. And they were. So we're going to have some difficulty attempting to put them into their perspective. Your job as a facilitator is to get your students to talk intelligently about the readings that they've had for this week, and hopefully to link some of the readings from lesson to lesson. We do have a number of very fine readings this week. And I would suggest using them. Usually helps. It usually helps. We do have a piece by Gunther Rothenberg in Makers of Modern Strategy on the Schlieffen plant. I think you can get a lot of mileage out of that. At the strategic level, we also have part of an essay by Gordon Craig on what happens at the strategic and political level in Germany, France, and England in the first several years of the war, in which we can address the changes in war at the political and strategic level. Our good Sergeant Dr. Brum has provided us with an excellent essay on ground combat in 1916 and how warfare is changed by then. This is a very important essay, and you can use it to demonstrate how warfare has changed on the ground. And we also have three pages of Wigley, which I'd like to ask you guys about how to use it. And as an umbrella reading for the entire period, we have Larry Addington's overview of the war. So in light of this, I would suggest approaching the lesson chronologically, opening up in the same manner with the Schlieffen plant first. Their plans, their vision for allies, and the central powers, how they thought the war would go, how combats would go, and then the ugly reality of combat. And getting to 1918 and trying to escape the trap of trench warfare. So that's how I would approach it. Yeah, I think that's a nice link with the last lesson is to open up with, you might want to briefly review one of the causes, but you can't get locked into that, but to say what kind of war did they expect? And how does the Schlieffen plant answer the German problem? Why do they need a plant like that? It's the most famous war plant, arguably the most famous war plant in history, and I think having the students discuss what is it, is it a work of genius as some people consider it to be, or is it something fatally flawed that set Germany up for a catastrophic failure? Describe how it went and then how it eventually broke down. I think all things that students can spend some work while discussion time on. I would agree that that's the best way to approach it. If there's a weakness in this lesson, it's in the middle part of the war in the years 16 and 17. Yeah, my essay. It was adapted for this course, out of something else, saying it ain't so. Because it's very heavy on the opening piece of the war with the Schlieffen plant and all of that, and it's pretty good on 1918 and what the war has become and the strategic problems of Germany at that point and the position they're in. But the fascinating piece of the story in a lot of ways are all of those attempts really in 1916 and 1917 to figure out, okay, we've got this can of worms and how do we put them back in? For those of us who are thinking about new technologies being introduced today and how they will influence the military of tomorrow, it will probably be instructive to examine how some of these technological wonders of World War I were introduced and the process of how institutions receive these items. Yeah. I think that would be worthwhile in a way. One must not only focus on those that are successful, but on those that have failed. Indeed. You mentioned how to use the widely piece in here and I think it's natural for American Army officers, especially to say, how come this lesson doesn't really deal with the Americans a whole lot? And I really think that the response to that and because I mean we've got the three pages out of Wigley, essentially the talk about World War I. He gives a short shrift. He does give a short shrift, but the pieces of World War I that are most important for American military history is, one, just America entering the world stage is great power. And second, what we learn about mobilization in this modern age, because the American combat experience is very, very, very brief. In effect, we're players, big players on the western front really about the last three months of the war and European sources will tend to downplay it. You'll have students in the class say, hey, we want to talk about the American experience. We'd like to get into that more and if you're going to do that, that's going to be up to the instructor to carry it because there's not much in the lesson that'll let you work with that. A couple of things that I think are worth highlighting the points you make. What is the mobilization experience? What are the problems we have? How do we overcome them? How do we perform in the battlefield? What compromises do we make with our allies? These are all things that are worth talking about, but if you're going to do that, you're going to have to carry it on your own. I think a point worth making is it is, I'd argue, one of the greatest maybe the greatest force projection operation in history at that point to move two million Americans over to the western front by the end of the war and your students may tend to say, well, yeah, and it's the Americans then when World War I. I would tend to disagree with that. It's the potential. Yeah, I'd agree with Little Heart's point. Well, the Americans didn't win the war, but they guaranteed the allies would win the war. No, they guaranteed the allies wouldn't lose the war. Well, perhaps. That could very well be too. I think the ultimate conclusion is we're still in doubt of the spring of 1918. Summer of 1918. Well, maybe we're asking the wrong question. Maybe the right question is one of those reading questions on the second page, which is where are we at in the evolution of modern warfare? And you can use the American example as part of answering that question. But clearly, most of the focus is on most of the readings deal with the other European nations. On the other hand, in the sweep of this course, you're now getting to a period where some of the students will know something beyond what they have read specifically for this course. Many of them have little or no knowledge about 19th century European institutions and warfare, but they've all had something however unimportant that may have been focusing on the American aspect of this war in their high school or for college history courses. I think that's an important point. And you as facilitators should use this. There will be individuals with specialized knowledge about important parts of World War I. And go ahead and take advantage of that experience. I like to have my students see new and different perspectives of not just World War I but the other lessons too. And I use two essays in studies in battle come in. I don't know if you can see this. But I ask for volunteers. One each to brief on two essays. One on page 87 by Dr. George Gavrich called The Rock of Gallipoli about Camille Ataturk the Battle of Gallipoli. And on page 97 Lieutenant Colonel Silverstone's essay on General Monash and the Battle of Hamel which the Australian army goes on the offensive against the Germans in 1918. Different perspectives to show what's happening in the war. These are short presentations no more than five minutes. That's a productive way to get into the thing. One of the themes I like to get into the discussion right away and something that all students ought to be able to at least have an opinion on is the relation of political and military leadership and the sleeping plan allows you to get into that and then you can go a little farther with the Gordon Craig essay. This is arguably the first total war in history and the civilian leadership expected the military people to have the answers. Though no one had ever really mobilized an entire society and got into a war that drew on every aspect of society that tested every aspect of society in social, economic, political institutions. And Craig would suggest that civilian leadership expected a little too much of the military people. Sleeping plan is a good vehicle because when it got down to the nuts and bolts of what was going on the political leadership in Germany didn't know what the details really meant even the broad points of the sleep plan they didn't understand that and as the train started moving all of a sudden they found themselves in a situation they couldn't call it back this thing that they had unleashed and it's worth asking getting sort of a shameless ploy to draw relevance out of this course. What are the responsibilities of civilian leaders understanding how the military operates and how they plan and what you'll do, you'll see a completely different political and military culture at work in Germany and it might be useful to contrast that with how we do business here in the United States in a relationship of military and civilian leadership. Today, yes, I think it's a good mileage out of that but to return to Craig's essay we have three different governments in England, France, and Germany they will all face the same dilemmas and none of them do too well which isn't indicated there If the civilian governments expect too much from the civilians it may be because or from the military it may be because the military misled them in what they could expect or perhaps has too much prestige in society in society with too great a role in the decision making process Well, it begs the question I think how much should a political leader know about military affairs In another example in late 1916 you have a German government the German Navy comes in with a set of charts that says we can win the war in five months if you just let us unleash our U-boats What's a political leader supposed to say in that and how does he respond when a technical expert can lay it out chapter and verse and PowerPoint slides that, hey, I've got the answer right here In the Craig article they point out that Clemenceau had a military advisor who could whisper in his ear hey boss, I think the generals are giving you a line here and maybe that's where it gave him which maybe gave him the ability to challenge the generals when it came to making a strategic decision Perhaps that's why we've become awfully cynical of technical experts here at the end of the century There's an interesting analogy that you kind of mentioned when you were talking about the sleeping plan and the civilian reaction once that whole process began and that is that one of the most important books in the early 1960s was Barbara Tuchman's The Guns of August and that that book had a tremendous impact on American political and military thinking at the beginning of the 1960s because of the similarities in a lot of ways between the mobilization system that these countries used and intercontinental ballistic missiles that once you order mobilization you either have to go all the way through with the attack or you leave yourself naked as you try to stop the mobilization in the middle because the trains will be all confused the units won't be in the right place and you'll essentially be defenseless and if you launch ICBMs and you decide oops, we made a mistake you can't call them back the only thing you can do is destroy them in midair and at that point once again you're laying there defenseless in front of a still armed enemy so those analogies had a tremendous impact on the Kennedy administration and that might be another way to draw out the relevancy of this whole thing that World War I didn't really end in 1918 there are some things about it that are still shaped our whole century I want to talk about that, you can get into that in terms of the military aspect you've got to come back to what's the problem that the generals face after the war plans fail what do you do now and this is the test of all military institutions Michael Howard's famous essay whatever doctrine you go into a war with you're going to find it wanting in some way it's not going to pass the test in all accounts so the trick is to develop the mental flexibility the versatility to say test of battle now, here's how I'm going to change and apparently on the face of it you've got every army, major army in the world doesn't pass the test because you have a slaughter that goes on for years afterwards there's some additional CSI readings there's one listed in the in the student book the directed telescope reading by Colonel Gary Griffin but there's also a number of other related pieces Sam mentioned studies in battle command there's also Tim Lupfer's Dynamics of Doctrine although it is it is not two five page essays it's about a hundred pages sixty pages, thank you that deal with how the German general staff approached well change already happening on the battlefield and then there's Jonathan M. House's Combined Arms Combined Arms Warfare which is another CSI publication pretty succinct summation of what's going on in tactical battlefield, I strongly would recommend that to folks who want to get an overview of what's going on and of course if that's too much reading for your students and it is it's something that you may go ahead and either parse a lot to a couple students or just read yourself to give you the background to facilitate and lead this discussion and those publications can be had by contacting us here at CSI and asking for them and we can get them out to you not in a whole lot of quantity for nothing but we can get some out to you to help you out there so where else do we go here today to try and help these folks out? well a couple points I'd like to make about the trench warfare piece again which is locked in most students mind this is what war is about the war didn't happen exclusively on the western front a point worth making in passing there's fighting in China between Japanese and German in their colonies there's fighting in East Africa that goes on the entire war into 1919 in fact there's naval fighting off the coast of Chile and the Falkland Islands there is of course U-boat campaigns across there's commerce raiding into the Indian Ocean the British army is surrounded by soldiers in Baghdad or near Baghdad it is a world war but coming back to the western front it's more than guys running into barbed wire and getting shot down by machine guns as early as 1915 armies are starting to figure out the first part of the problem that is there's a three-part problem some authors would say it's not only do you have to break into the enemy trench system which is going to be deep by the end of the war it's going to be sophisticated you've got to break through the trench system and break out of the trench system and as early as 1915 they figured out the first part of that as the 16 and 17 come along they're figuring out the second part of it but it's not until 1918 that people have figured out really the third part how do you break into break through and then break out of a trench system out into the enemy's rear area and even then exploiting the successes you have how do you exploit in World War I you don't have the technological capability if you think about the problem as one of movement the problems of the attacker become real apparent as you look at World War I first you've got the area of your own trenches pounded by the artillery for a couple years so it's a mess then you've got no man's land full of craters and leftover gas of wire and all kinds of fun things not the best place in the world to move across you've got the enemy's trench system it's not a single trench it's a system of at least three layers which may be as much as two to three kilometers deep so we're not talking anymore and that area as well as chewed up you as the attacker have to cross no man's land cross the enemy's trench system and then try to break out through all of this difficult country and the only way you can do that basically is on foot the enemy meanwhile moving reserves to block you is moving behind his trench system in virgin territory where he's got a road and railroad network so he can move by rail and by truck he can move faster laterally than you can through the position that's right and it's extremely difficult and there's the command and control part of the problem how do you control this thing I draw it I draw it to the students if you're a brigade commander and you see the first wave go over the top and then disappear over the reverse slope how do you make the decision to send the second wave and third wave how do you make those kind of decisions do you rely on the carrier pigeons to get back in time all your schedule doesn't allow that if you're going to support the guys who went over the first wave there's not much to support that kind of decision making dilemma those guys we tend to think of them as stupid without looking at the real limitations they had to work with the killing technology is virtually the killing technology of today the communications and command and control and movement technology is not that is 19th century and that provides a real difficult problem for these guys to work out another part about the western front again to get past the machine guns mowing guys down in the barbed wire you have millions of there are other fronts going on as I said before in the Russian front you have you have millions of troops involved but because of the sheer size of the space involved that front moves back hundreds of miles throughout the war they don't have the stagnant trench systems what it is on the western front is just the sheer density of troops as you point out you can break into the enemy's trench system but he has a reserve formation behind reserve formation ready and move up and plug the gap that's the other piece the world has never seen armies that size thrown together from the English channel down to the Swiss we didn't even repeat those numbers in World War II on the western front didn't really approach the British and French and Americans are pushing 200 divisions combined by the end of the war on the western front and in World War II if I remember right between the British and Americans there is like 80 and 90 total so the density of forces is another significant factor well we also had to keep these various fronts in perspective the reason we talk so much about the western front is because it's pertinent to the specific objectives of our course it's not to say that nothing else happens this is where we find the origins of later World War II and after World War II doctrine so that's why we focus on this not because it's it's the only or the best war because it's pertinent to what we're going to look at later on in this course probably the biggest concentration of what we're going to look at later on Jerry would you like to talk a little bit about World War I aviation? of course there were airplanes prior to World War I we all know the story of the Wright brothers and for a decade there have been air forces of a sort being developed some of them more vigorously than others but it was certainly the war itself that gave the impetus to a lot of experimentation and development of the aircraft as an integral weapon of war we see this specifically in the case of France, Germany Britain, Italy which are the most progressive in developing their air arms the United States is extremely slow for a variety of reasons first of all it's a small army we don't have resources available to put a lot of money into air development even in the expedition down on the Mexican border in 1916 it's almost a pathetic use of the American airplane on the other hand very progressive for looking people in all countries who may sometimes claim that cannot be lived up to by the level of technology of that time but that provides a cutting edge and it does in fact bode well for the future of aviation because as stated earlier in our session here everything that you will see in World War II is available in some nascent form during World War I beginning with observation and scouting bombing, strategic bombing interdiction close air support and of course air-to-air combat all of that is available there's even limited attempts at some real resupply anti-submarine warfare anti-submarine warfare and by 1918 this arm has been transformed from a very, very primitive weapon into something that is quite sophisticated obviously what will happen later on is tremendous advances in technology power plants will improve airframes will become stronger heavier ranges and altitudes will grow but basically all the missions that we will see later are being developed and surprisingly enough some of the people doing experimentations are people who later on will not have such a major role the Italians are very progressive in their aviation industry the Russians are doing a lot of innovative kind of things even though they have very limited resources and once again because there are two specific individuals who have made a significant mark on the future of military aviation we tend to look at the western front that's not the only place that military aviation is developing at this time I find it significant that on the Italian front as you mentioned there's some Austrian-German bombing with Italian cities and the Zeppelins appearing over London cars in both places they'll let the exponents of air power later on say hey here's the key toward winning a war like this go over the trenches in Cracovillian morale you'll talk about that in the next lesson all of the big names in World War II military aviation will appear on the scene in 1917-1918 Douay is beginning to formulate his ideas which he will write down later on whether they appear to be court-martialed they have their problems they have their problems but guys like Trinsard and Harris all of these guys are getting their baptism of aviation fire as it were and perhaps beginning to build empires and Mitchell of course although he's not a major player he's much larger in retrospect than he was at the time is certainly gathering up his little bag of tricks which he will then come home and unleash he's a shulman even during World War I and he will continue that trade later on so all of these guys we will see later in the inter-war period and in World War II are all learning something about their trade especially in 1917-1918 how about the war at sea can we recommend perhaps having a student volunteer to refund some aspect of the war at sea yeah I would think so there are two pretty critical aspects of the war at sea that folks could look at the first one is the patently obvious submarine war and again the animals have the same problem the generals have they had all anticipated a war big guns battleships duke it out in a line of battle and that happens one time indecisively the real key to the war at sea is the new weapons on the sea torpedo boats, the submarines the mines the sea control kind of thing but there's the submarine piece or the and how do you keep Britain supplied the Germans have some very successful surface raiders that are out doing some briefly successful the British will hunt them down but at what cost hunt them down but it takes some tremendous resources to do so it's a big ocean they're hard to find you have to put an awful lot of ships to sea to find that one little ship out there that's creating a lot of mischief in mayhem so there's a cost to be paid but they do hunt them down but then there's the submarine issue of here's this new weapon that is not only pretty lethal but it hides pretty well how do you find it what's the what's the strategic level response to the submarine I do go to convoying your history for 250 years has said the price of convoying is too high because if the bad guys get into the convoy they're going to take it out plus waiting for ships to assemble a convoy just put such a damper on your commerce you don't want to pay that price plus it's a more manly thing to go out and chase a submarine rather than assign ships to escort duty which is pretty dull and boring and then there's the technical aspects of okay once you've decided how you're going to go about fighting them how do you develop the technological pieces to actually pull that off so that's one area that students could explore pick up on that some folks even suggest though that the dilemma, the U-boats themselves the limitations cause some tough problems if you're going to use them you're going to have to violate the established practice of naval warfare and I think this is the trick that Germans get in, do we risk bringing America into a war in early 1917 and when they're willing to take that risk, some people say that's to use one phrase that echo the Schlieffen plan you originally you have a war plan that will bring Britain in okay, if you're going to fight Britain you're going to have to have U-boats to make them effective you're going to have to use unrestricted submarine warfare and then again you run the risk of bringing America in again the Schlieffen plan or its effects come back to haunt you could argue come back to haunt the Germans again absolutely after the year of 1916 though clearly we saw the effects of attrition is that not a reasonable risk for the Germans to take if they can take Britain out in time if the Admiral's predictions are and in fact other than the movement of manpower which you've already referred to earlier the United States has great many problems with its industrial mobilization and it's possible to argue that the Germans take a reasonable risk like any risk sometimes it fails I'm not sure if I'm the German general staff and I'm looking at the American army in late 1960 I'm looking at an army that had a hard time putting an understrength division on the Mexican border and I'm saying wait I got 200 divisions on the western front and a million men in the east I'm not sure that I can worry too much about these guys this is not a reasonable risk I think it's a reasonable risk that the Germans take well not only that but they come fairly close to causing Britain Britain's within five weeks of starvation and there are five weeks of supplies left we talked about the American contribution to the war the psychological aspect of the American potential begins to play in 1918 but America may very well have contributed one of the most significant decisions to winning World War I in 1917 when the British asked for American naval help in the North Sea and the Americans say we'll be happy to give you help but we're going to start convoying and that was the Americans immediate reaction to the war situation Admiral Sims in London said this single ship sailing stuff isn't working we have to go to convoying and it was his pressure and the pressure of the American government that convinced the British to do it Lloyd George but it was when the American Navy came in and really weighed in the Royal Navy that the Royal Navy folded well on the Navy and our Navy by its very nature was more prepared to go to war than the army was since we have always relied up until this time on our Navy as our first line of defense the Navy was much closer to mobilization status and therefore we could put the Navy in the wrong kind of ships and everybody else but the thing is we were more ready to go to war at sea than we were to go to war on land one thing when we finish up the sea warfare piece the second different aspect for folks to look at is the impact of the Royal Navy that doesn't fight the battle it is dreamed of Jutland is just almost a few opening rounds it's not a real fleet to fleet of action they're structured for this grand climactic battle they never pull it off but what is the role of the Royal Navy in the first world war if you buy a little hard it's decisive absolutely because what it does is it enforces the blockade on Germany and in the end it's the blockade in Germany that brings the whole house of cards down you can argue that well that would that would tie something I think I think you need to talk about looking at Sarm room's article about 1916 by 1916 it's pretty clear you're not going to win achieving decisive results a neat Napoleonic battlefield result that will lead to a quick victory that's not going to happen so how do you win a war like that one solution the German solution we're done is if this is going to be a war of attrition we'll fight attrition battles that will lead to taking selected enemies out of the war you could criticize the guy who dreams it up look what a butcher he is on the other hand you can argue this is the guy who first sees clearly what kind of war you're in it's a war where you have to bleed the enemy death because you're mobilizing entire societies single battles aren't going to get it we're going to have to come up with a strategy that allows us to take out armies annihilation ain't going to work to follow Weigli's if you buy that annihilation versus attrition we're going to have to accept attrition what's the best way to fight attrition war coming back to the Royal Navy said we know how to fight an attrition war we'll starve them out Falconhine says we're going to kill enough of them in this case Frenchmen that they'll have to give up this is a critical point in tying the World War I together with the future lessons of this course and that is in World War II the French and the British neither one can stand to fight a war of attrition and that has a tremendous impact on how that war is going to be fought so there's a direct bridge here between these battles these attrition battles of 1916 and what happens in 1940 in France absolutely another issue that you can pull out of my article in there is the role of coalition warfare when when the French are on the ropes at Verdun and screaming for help the Russians reach awful deep down in the well and pull up the Bruce Law of offensive to help them out and at the same time the French are having problems at Verdun but they have this major offensive plan with the Kitchener's new armies of Britain and what's the relationship going to be between those two events and how does that set of stuff in a react not quite as much on the coalition effort between the Germans and the Austrians but you can probably dig into that a little bit I think the coalition issue is one you can make a lot of mileage in your article and also the Craig article what the coalitions give you on the positive side they give you help when you're in dire straits and I think it's significant the first major power to go out of the war is Russian 1917 they're the one major power that doesn't have somebody that can come to their rescue you know if it's French you can have the British attacking at the Somme if you're the Austrians you can have the Germans bailing you out again and again but Russia doesn't have that help and significantly they're the first guys that get knocked out of the war on the downside coalition partners can really put a corset on your strategic options one example is the Russians going on the offensive in 1914 long before they're fully mobilized and ready to go and one of the outcomes of that possibly is the fiasco at Tannenberg you have the British launching at Somme arguably before they're ready to go reaping some horrible results of that because the French are in such dire straits for done you have the failed attempt at Gallipoli to try to get aid to the Russians operation with a lot of potential but it doesn't pan out I think the coalition issue is one that deserves a lot of attention significantly coalition the coalition piece that we think we have down now and you can consider a coalition doctrine there that's not very well advanced in World War I and you don't see for example the Allies really working together a team until what I tell students is until the Germans hold a gun to their head you know that the spring of 1918 the Germans create three massive breakthroughs on the western front and the Allies see their backs being pushed up against the wall maybe we'd better have one single commander on the western front that's what it takes to get a real coalition command absolutely well anybody got any other burning thing we ought to let these folks in on? this is one of the most important lessons in the evolution of modern warfare in terms of decisive importance it's important to start off the lesson and end the lesson looking at the big picture where we start out where are we now where are we going at the end of World War I I try to make a transition for my students and it's an essay we don't use anymore but it's Lawrence of Arabia's first essay that he wrote in London when he got back from the desert in 1918 and he said when he was out leading the Arab armies he led an army into the field and it was routed by the Ottoman Empire and he realized that he could not fight against the Central Powers in a conventional manner the Ottoman Empire what we would know today is Turkey, although much larger used conscription had modern weapons and it had a general staff that sent hundreds of thousands of men out on railroads to exert force throughout the mid east and Lawrence said I could not stand up and fight this machine and these institutions but this in what appeared to be an enormously powerful machine actually had weaknesses because they had to get where they were going on railroads and he suggested that by using small groups of raiders to attack the railroad lines he could negate the enormous power of that empire its general staff in its entire synchronization matrix what's the significance of this well maybe somewhere along the line the relationship between man and machine starts to change in warfare and I don't know how far along that course we are today but I think somewhere along the line that begins men are still important women are important but they serve weapons and how far will that go how far will it go for us don't even think about it absolutely alright well thank you for watching us and I hope we were able to give you some help and a few pointers on some ways to explore the issues of World War I with your students thanks very much and have a good day