good evening good evening ah you're Hershel it's great to see such a wonderful crowd here tonight I do have to apologize for the cookie shortage it won't happen again not on my watch so I hope you had a good dinner so tonight we have Sean Faulkner who is returning that this is his third time to speak with this group and he is a professor at command General Staff College at Fort Leavenworth where we get many of our excellent speakers and so it were really lucky to have that so close by and dr. Faulkner earned his degree her doctorate degree in history from k-state so some people here will be very happy yes and from 2008 so 11 years you have been this either a full professor of military history and teaching team leader does that fit on a business card not anymore so he's responsible for the coordination and overall quality of instruction for 12 instructors he's an expert on the American Civil War the French Revolution and Napoleon the Philippine insurrection and world war one that he'll be talking about tonight he is the author of two books and one in progress and tonight he will do a book signing afterwards Persians Crusaders the American soldier in World War one so after the program so tonight his topic is crossing no-man's land the trench stalemate and birth of modern warfare 1915 to 1980 eighteen in August 1914 all the great powers of Europe went to war expecting to fight sweeping battles of manoeuvre yet after only four months of fighting the war on the Western Front is settled into a stalemated conflict characterized by trench warfare the lecture will focus on why the trench stalemate developed in France and Belgium by the late fall of 1914 how the major combatants tried to break the deadlock and why in the end all these efforts never truly succeeded in breaking through the trenches so please join me in welcoming welcoming dr. Sean Falkner thank you well good evening and thanks for coming out on a cold cold night every time I've done it it's been a cold Kansas night so so blur can you maybe do us in the summer next time you know it's interesting before we were getting prepared she came up and said we're gonna be short of cookies do you have any live ammunition for those rifles so now just a question there's a little little participation we're gonna do tonight show of hands if I could put you in a time machine who would want to go back to 1914 1918 and be a row or one infantryman okay sure okay but please please raise your hands okay there's a reason why armies go with young people one there in great physical shape right okay they're fearless and most importantly of they're dumb so that is my nephew so I can I could get aware of that now there are a number of myths associated with World War one in fact a huge number and one of the ones we're going to talk about today is this one and this comes out early 1950s 1960s and the argument goes that the armies that go off to war in 1914 are armies of lions led by donkeys that the generals were were not very bright had no idea what they were doing and were callous and there's some truth to this out of this war you'll get something called Chateau generalship and the idea is while the soldiers were in the front you know I deep inhale as the poem went the generals are way back behind the line and a nice print Chateau drinking champagne bouncing Fifi on their knee having a really good time and there's some truth to that but we're off gonna see maybe why some of those things develop now first thing I understand is that in the 60 odd years between the American Civil War and World War one you have one of the greatest changes in military technology in human history to the point that I would argue if you were to take all the other military technological developments in the previous three millennia they don't add up to the amount and degree of change that are occurring and when a show here is just some difference on the left you have the weapon systems of the American Civil War then you have the weapon systems that will be predominant and World War one as a couple of big ones here one of the first big changes is this Frenchman up here Paul vo in 1884 you invent something called smokeless powder part of this you use black powder and funny thing if you want to develop new weapon systems new rifles you don't start with a rifle you start with the cartridge smokeless powder burns a lot faster which means the round is going to go further it's going to be a flatter trajectory and it's easier to train the soldiers how to use it you take that weapon system you make that with what's going on in the Industrial Revolution and by the time you get to World War 1 these are the state of and a arced infantry rifles American Civil War Ephraim is getting off three aim shots a minute if he is very lucky - about four to five hundred meters by the time you get to World War one soldiers are carrying these bolt-action magazine rifles this is the German Gewehr 98 their standard infantry rifle of World War two one of the biggest developments from the Mauser brothers is not actually the rifle it's the stripper clip okay you open this up you put it in the top you push in you reloaded this rifle with five rounds and roughly three seconds then you add more in Civil War infantryman three rounds amended by the time you get to World War one even the worst in fishermen is getting all 15 to 20 shots a minute some armies up to 30 shots a minute but there's more in steps the American Hiram maximun Maxim is a fascinating guy he's one of these people that the Republic throws up from time to time he is a self trained electrical and mechanical engineer he's got about a ninth grade formal education but he is so good with his electricity his work in electricity and mechanics that he's in Europe in 1884 to receive an award when he's there he runs an old friend of his and I love this quote one of my favorites from military history the friend says Hiram hang your electricity if you want to make a barrel of money invent something to allow the Europeans lists at each other's throat with greater facility okay now mahram Hiram being a good American like the challenge he wanted to make a barrel of money went back to his workshop and within two years he had perfected the maxim gun this is a British Vickers gun it's the grandson of the gun that Maxim designs this is the first true automatic weapon what Hiram Maxim does is he uses physics each action has an equal but opposite reaction when that new smokeless powder cartridge fires it creates a lot of recoil on the side of this weapon is a big spring when the rifle cartridge fires the recoil goes back ejecting the spent cartridge the spring catches the bolt puts it back into battery and by harnessing each action has an equal but opposite reaction that weapon is now capable six to eight hundred rounds a minute depending on the weapon that you get okay so there's a lot of stuff going out the last one and ultimately the most important is the first modern canons the French developed the first modern artillery piece the model 1897 75 millimeter howitzer in 1897 imagine that okay couple of things that make it modern it is a breech loader unlike the Civil War cannon very slick operating beech it fires fixed ammunition so just think like a big rifle cartridge that you're loading inside the cannon most importantly underneath the barrel is a hydraulic recoil mechanism you ever seen a Civil War cannon fire the minute you pull the lanyard what does it cannon do it goes rolling way back and the problem of course with that is the crew now has to laborious ly roll it back in and still load it from the muzzle this thing when it fires that hydraulic recoil mechanism keeps the cannon just like this what that means is that modern artillery piece can fire a surge rate of 20 to 25 rounds a minute in other words for a period of time the artilleryman can fire that cannon as rapidly as an infantryman can fire the rifle now that tells us that there is a lot of nasty things flying on this battlefield not only is there more nasty stuff flying in the battlefield but it's also hitting you it longer and longer ranges and for deadlier effect the question always ask my students is did the generals do the officers understand this change what do you think okay show hands these guys are lost okay donkeys right not true these officers are not dumb men they absolutely know what this technology is going to do they've seen it they see it in the Boer War they've seen it in the russo-japanese war they've seen it in two Balkan Wars they know that the battlefield is a much deadlier place the problem is what are you gonna do about it just for a question how many you think that cyber is going to have a major effect on the way that wars are run in the future cyber warfare do you know that for sure ah so many ways worth that same inflection point that these generals were you know a hundred years ago you know it's there you know it's gonna have an effect but what do you do about it so as these armies are getting ready for the war and they're all getting ready for the war they're just waiting for something to happen there's an understanding that this war is going to be very very bloody but they also come to convince themselves that it's going to be short and it's going to be short because it has to be they're afraid of what will happen to their societies if the war is not short they're not sure that their societies can put up with casualties they're not sure that their industrial base can keep churning out the amount of munitions required it's going to be short because it's got to be so they get themselves worked how can we get steal a march on our enemies how can we get the advantage to keep the war from turning into a large long attritional total war well easy how about this the army that mobilizes first moves first gets their troops on the trains and attacks first will be the army be the nation that makes sense right problem is everybody's thinking that the Germans come up with a great idea ultimately we called the the Schlieffen mokey plan and Churchill will say that this piece of paper is the most important document public document in the previous three centuries of human existence and it's all about the Germans idea of avoiding what they fear most a two-front war because you've got an alliance you've got the French and the Russians maybe the Brits if they show up against the Germans and the austro-hungarians Germany fairs encirclement this has always been the German fear so they have to make sure that they beat one side very quickly and then turn and beat the other and the whole idea behind the Schlieffen plan is to do that they know that the French strength is going to be here they know the French are probably going to attack and I'll say slow rain easy hit them where they're not while the French are focused over here the Germans will go through Belgium of course the minute they go through Belgium you've just assured that the British are going to come into the war but if you get the war you want you don't have to worry about it this plan falls apart it's built on such a tissue of assumptions that from the moment the German invasion begins all of the assumptions fall apart now you've got a problem these numbers are staggering nothing in the wildest dreams or nightmares of the politicians in the generals going into the night the war in 1914 could have imagined the scope of this carnage and the problem is now you don't have a plan B and by the time you get to November a hundred and one years ago about now you have two armies on the Western Front we're going to focus on the Western Front tonight that now extended nearly an unbroken line from the Franco Swiss border over 400 miles to the North Sea in Belgium this is going to be a problem never in human history has anyone been confronted with this scope and scale of war we're gonna ask for a little sympathy for the Devils here we can talk about these armies of lions being led by donkeys but once you get to this and the fall of 1914 nothing in these general officers previous experience nothing in their training nothing in their education has prepared them for this and all of their politicians are saying get it done now get it done now we're not sure how long our societies can wait but here's our issue by the time you start to get into this long 400-mile line when the fighting dies down in the winter of 1914 the armies as you can imagine with all of those casualties are exhausted this was going to be a come as you are war no plan for a long attritional struggle you're going to get the guys with the amount of conscripts that you have on the ground you're going to fight with the munitions that you have in hand and it's gonna be over but you've run out of all that ammunition just give you an idea that French 75 gun has a go to war stockage of 1,200 rounds I supposed to last you the entire war but I told you guys they can fire up to 25 rounds a minute once you run out of those rounds you're gonna get a promissory note okay we're going to give you more rounds it's just going to take a couple of months to get the factory's tooled up the lethality of weapons has now convinced the soldiers that this modern battlefield is a serious business and if you're caught out in the open you're gonna die very quickly there are no assailable flakes which is again something rare or something novel in in history and the soldiers are gonna dig in dig in just to survive now these are what these trenches look like in the late fall early winter of 1914 now if you ever had a chance as an infantry guys here okay I wouldn't admit it either I was a I was a tanker so my my trench always rolled with me but these are horrible trenches they don't have any overhead cover they don't have a lot of protection and if you had you know fresh troops and if you had heavy artillery and if you had a lot of rounds it would be easy to knock the enemy out of these trenches the problem is you don't have that sometimes the technology is lagged behind most of the artillery pieces that are being used to the artillery rounds in the early days or what we call shrapnel and shrapnel are these little LED balls turns of cannon takes an artillery sharp shell into a big shot gun goes over the top of the trench blows up okay it is perfect for troops and cavalry out in the open it is worthless against that what you need against that is this okay but the problem is you don't have this and it's gonna take a long time before you get that and by the time you get that those trenches turn from this to this now you've got a serious military obstacle because now it's not just a little cut in the earth it is cuts of trenches several layers deep and again nothing in your experience nothing your training and nothing your previous education is prepared it for you and now you've got to figure it out so the officers realize this this is Ferdinand phocion he will ultimately be the override Allied commander for the Allied armies in 1918 it takes the guys that long to figure that one out prior to World War one he had been an instructor in the French Ecole de guerre equivalent to where I worked the command and General Staff College and he was one of these early officers I said you know the only thing you really need is a rifle and a bayonet rifle bayonet there's the army charge by November of 1914 he's now a corps commander he's seen the reality and this is what he's telling his staff what I taught you is wrong and we're gonna have to relearn this but the problem with war if you're relearning something it's costing lives and these are what the trenches look like this is actually a British trench map from 1916 the first day of the Battle of assault there's some new things here that you wouldn't have found on a trench map or a map at all military map before first of all the entire map is now gridded off in a section because quickly you figure out that the biggest killer on this battlefield is not the machine-gun and it's not the rifle its artillery 70% of the worst casualties will be caused by shell fire but now that's going to be who can control the shell fire and make it work for you going into the war the artillery is going to be direct fired just like it was in the American Civil War just like it was in the time of Napoleon now you're going to do something called indirect fire where the artilleryman will never see the targets that they're shooting at they're going to use geometry trigonometry to figure out how to hit the target but if you're going to do that somebody still has to see where the enemy is and now we're gonna see this constant cycle in World War one this arms race that's keeping up with the Joneses the most important thing that aviation does in World War one is artillery spotting and observation drop the Mike now everybody knows this controlling the air allows you to see the battlefield allows you to gain intelligence allows you to use your artillery to its best effect but if that's going to give an advantage to your enemy and you've got to protect your own then you're gonna get in this vicious cycle war more than any other human endeavor is the mother of invention the first fighter planes in history is the falker eindecker comes out after only about seven months of the war and it's designed to shoot down those observation planes but now you've gettin this ketchup rights the minute that the Falcor eindecker comes out you have something called a falker scourge the Allies have nothing to match this and Allied planes are falling at a rapid pace and if you don't figure out a way to keep up with the Joneses you're gonna lose planes you're gonna lose pilots so the British and the French filled a new plane that can go maybe a little higher a little faster have more machine go and visit with a minute that they filled a new plane then the Germans are gonna filled another one the operational life of an aircraft frame in World War one an aircraft design is six months you've ever heard of an f-35 you know how long we've been messing around with that like like since I was a second lieutenant that's a long time ago very quick now let's talk about the challenges here when you look at the trenches it's not a set a trench it's not a single trench it's not even a couple the trenches put together it's actually a couple of trenches put together in a belt followed by another belt generally followed by a belt after that that's gonna create some problems now forward of the trenches before to these trench belts both sides have staked in barbed wire okay this is German barbed wire I actually believe it or not dug it up from about right there okay now this is a good car you know Kansas farm country that looks like your barbed wire doesn't it I mean that is some serious anal-retentive Teutonic barbed wire it's high tensile steel the barbs are very close together and the barbs are very long and sticky that's that's what my daughter's would call it sticky yeah and the whole idea behind this is you have the barbed wire staked in forward of your trenches and also your support trenches sometimes eight to ten yards deep and the only thing it's designed to do is to hold your attack and no-man's land so let's talk about what you're gonna have to do to win the war to break out of the trenches first thing you got to do easy get up out of your trench and cross no man's land simple right these guys are going oh yeah we'll do it okay there's a problem here right if you look at the technology that's been designed the balance has swung towards the defenders that maxim gun you start firing five six seven hundred rounds a minute you got a problem the barrel starts to melt Maxon's a smart guy to keep that from happening he took a hollow metal jacket filled it full of water this is what's called a water-cooled machine gun okay problem solved oh except after about 700 rounds of firing the water in the jacket starts to boil and if you don't find a way of capturing that all you're doing is delaying the amount of time it's gonna take before the machine gun jams again Maxim is a smart guy he puts a little water valve under the barrel take some radiator hose puts it in a can 700 rounds water starts to boil turns the same steam goes down the hose into the can wear it recommences into water not a closed system so about 750 rounds you unscrew the little thumb screw in the back here put it in a funnel pour it back in problem with that these weapons are heavy this Vickers gun is a lightweight it only weighs 96 pounds the Hotchkiss that the French use weighs one hundred twenty four pounds of the German MgO 8 again weighs one hundred and twenty-four pounds and what do you look like crossing no-man's land with 124 pound machine gun not a target a slow-moving target okay and a slow-moving targets of World War one quickly turned into well dead not moving targets okay if I'm defending in my trench I could care less how heavy this weapon is it's not going anywhere while you can fire six seven rounds a minute the actual rapid combat rate of fire is 250 rounds which is one box of ammunition but each of those boxes weighs 15 pounds so it's not just the weight of the gun it's also the weight of the water and it's the weight of the ammo again if I'm defending I could care less I've stockpile the ammo I've stockpile the water life's good if I'm attacking I now have to have a 10-man crew that carry all of that stuff ten slow-moving guys so as I'm crossing no-man's land I'm gonna have to find some way of keeping the enemy's head down to give me a hope and he'll acrossing that area the minute I step out how much of meat is the enemy see the full monty right how much of the inner do I see ooh so stacked up against me just like this thing on my ear okay excuse me I get that so first thing I got to get across no-man's land easy next challenge once I cross no man's land I have to break into the first set of trenches oh that's his territory right he knows his trenches for me even if I get aerial maps it's still going to be terra incognita they know the twist they know the turns and I got to fight my way through this I know that the Germans are going to do something a minute if I capture a trench the Germans are going to do an immediate counter-attack because once I've captured the trench that's where I met my weakest point as the allied attacker and the German can hit me there before I can consolidate he's got the better chance of throwing me out if I've got a chance to get here okay now to make sure that I can defend that trench I got to take a lot of extra stuff with me on the first day of the battle someone's 19:16 the advance wage the german infantry are carrying about 45 to 50 pounds of gear the wave right after them are carrying 65 to 80 pounds of gear most of that gear sandbags shovels extra barbed wire if you think about a trench the trench has something called a fire step because you want to be under the ground right but if the enemy's coming you need to be able to have a little step so you can step up and shoot if you capture an enemy's trench the fire steps on the wrong side so you got to now get the shovel and build that up really quickly before the other guy comes across so easy oh you can probably assume that if I have been successful at getting up and crossing no man's land and breaking into the first set of trenches I'm done I'm done I've said loss to many officers I've lost too many men I'm too short of ammunition I'm done I'm culminated problem is I still have two more trench segments to get through to more trench belts so what has to happen is rinse and repeat if I've captured the first one now I have to have fresh troops with fresh ammunition all that other supplies to now move forward and capture the next belt of trench but if they've captured that second belt of trench again they're probably done culminated so now I need to bring even more fresh troops to take the third belt oh by the way they still have to cross no man's land as they're coming across if I've done those tanks gotten up out of my trench across no-man's land broke it into the first set of trench and then broken through the subsequent belt the French's trenches then and only then can I break out into the green green fields of lay on allies know if you can throw the Germans out of the trench you have the material you have the manpower you can crush the Germans hmm I hope you guys can see this one this is an actual intelligence map from the Anzac or the Australian and New Zealanders from 1917 again you're flying over those German trenches you are gathering intelligence these what they're taking here for an attack are three German divisions in this sector each of those divisions anywhere between 14,000 and 16,000 men now each one of these little boxes here is a German infantry company again about 150 200 men that's a lot of people in a very small area Winston Churchill says if you want to understand World War one understand this the problem with the Eastern Front is there's too much land to a few soldiers Western Front too little land too many men traditionally army guys say if you're going to launch a successful attack you need to have a three to one advantage then so just to put this into perspective in this little area of the front of the 400-mile following front three miles deep four miles across the Germans have the equivalent of every man woman and child of limb Worth and Lansing Kansas where I'm from every man woman and child in that area 3 4 3 by 4 mile area ok now traditionally to take that out of the three to one advantage oh we would need the entire population of Shawnee County Kansas so everybody you know all your friends all your grandkids all those people shove together just to hopefully push through this little four mile long segment of the front okay oh but here's the catch because World War one the firepower advantages shifted the defender a three to one advantage is not going to work you really need about a five to six man advantage of the attacker over the defender so not only are we going to take the higher population of Shawnee Kansas we're gonna go down to Lawrence to get some of those hippies in the college right and shove them here on this attack think about that that's a lot of people now again artillery is what you are going to hedge this on our Tillery is what's going to give your guys the hope of getting up and crossing no man's land and breaking into the first set of trenches but you have to invent a whole science of indirect fire to make this work and you also have to now create systems warfare before four generals were sitting on the hill with a big map being inspirational I grant or like Sherman or like Napoleon that's not the way it works anymore what generals do now from that point to today is make systems work the first guy to figure this out is hungry Patong coming at the last minute to save the French at Verdun the Germans are crushing them they've lost command of the air the first thing to make the system work to make his artillery work is to gain control of the air battle he turns to his air commander guy named Carnot de ros and says rose.i and blinds sweep the skies and they managed to win the world's really first air supremacy battle now that that's done you can make the rest of this work photons most famous quote is true throughout the war artillery conquers infantry occupies but I got a mass the right number of guns but to mass the right number of guns I've got to keep that supply system going I've got to keep the trucks full of ammunition the railroads full of ammunition moving the stuff to the front and this is going to extend all the way back to every village in every town in France and every village in every town and Britain every village and every town and germ to feed this machine batons going to make the system but this is a new thing in world war one that for the first time in history you'll actually have more soldiers behind the lines as supply guys and administration guys as medical guys as you'll have in the front line to feed the beast Pathan comes up with what's called the Nuria system under this nasty firepower heavy battlefield units start to melt and his whole idea behind this is I can probably only keep a division in the line for about seven to fourteen days and after that they leave you're thinking too many casualties are so beaten up that they're no longer effective so the Noriega system is just that I'll put you in the line and I'm gonna truck you out put you in the line and truck you out and there will always be enough veterans living when I truck you out to build the new unit this is actually pretty smart the German solution of this is I put you in the line in I keep you in the line and here's some more replacements and at the time guys a smart guy right up until he liked the Nazis but that's okay now this is the magic number okay I want you to pay attention to this we have here the British fighting the battles in 1915 in 1916 and what you see is the amount of shells a pound of shell per yard of trench to try to crush the defenders to let their guys cross the no man's land and capture the first set of trenches okay think about that huh new Chappell oh by the way there are more artillery rounds expended and three hours of firing at new Chapelle than the entire British Army had expended during the Boer War these were screw up the magic number though is 660 think about that I have here a pound of shell a pound of shell I've been elegant catch and pass it around don't look at yourself it's sharp okay a pound of shell I want you to think about that a pound of shell per yard of trench hmm this is a yard of trench this is a yard of trench this is your to trench so there are 660 of those nasty little pieces of metal falling right here falling right here falling right here so here's the question if you figured it out 660 being the magic number why then the British drop after that think about how much production it takes for an attack to put 660 pounds of shell into a yard of trench you've got the solution but you're not sure you can continue to do this sadly though if you'll notice what's happening it's the ugly reality of learning modern war trying to find that sweet spot that spot that will give me the military victory crush the defenders but also allow my society to continue to function I'll let this one sink in okay how many people are repulsed by this quote show hands okay my son is an infantry specialist in Alaska this would infuriate me problem is he's actually telling the truth at this period of of history with this massive amount of technological changes with this unprecedented challenge of prints warfare with no assailable flanks sadly foix is right that to get this right you're gonna lose a lot of soldiers the problem is it's always going to be a moving target as soon as you think you've got it right the enemy moves the goalposts here's the other problem the law of unintended consequences if you're firing 660 pounds of shell per yard of trench you are physically changing the surface of the earth now create a dilemma for myself what I have to do to accomplish phase one and Phase two cross no man's land breaking the first set of trenches makes it damn near impossible then to do phase 3 and phase four because all those fresh troops have to cross all that area again and more importantly if I do manage to break out through all of those belts of trenches I'm still going to have to bring up more fresh troops I might have to bring up the artillery I'm gonna have to bring up supplies and before I can do that there's gonna be a lot of Engineers that have to smooth out the earth and in the time it takes to smooth out the earth the enemies drop back ten dug back in again we also have this problem when it comes to uneven technological development weapons technology is going crazy going through the roof but command and control technology what officers and sergeants have to do to talk to their soldiers has remained flat in fact the most modern piece of technology is the field phone but there's a problem with that it's a linking there's a wire that connects the headquarters so you're filled phone at the front the water--it wire is very fragile anything will break it artillery will definitely break it but on the attack you have this guy laying the wire that's a 50 pound roll of wire usually on the back okay and what do you look like carrying 50 pounds of wire crossing no-man's land oh yeah slow target please insert bullet here right now your soldiers will break this too because when they're crossing no-man's land you know what they're worried about DYI they're not worried about your wire so we've got an issue it's hard to command and control this thing and it's gonna lead to the war being exceptionally rigorously controlled today if a soldier gets into trouble somewhere in Afghanistan you pick up the radio and err is gonna be on station pretty fast World War one doesn't work that way the communications aren't reliable this is what's called the barrage map you'll see these little lines there but if you look really close there's times behind each one of them I can't rely on the communication so what I do is I plan out the fires to the nth degree the fire is gonna hit here on this line it's gonna stay here for four minutes and then it's going to creep up to the next line where it will stop and it'll creep up pre-planned if anything stops the infantry if anybody delays the infantry those fires keep rolling and they never come back everybody getting depressed now this is of course one of the most famous battles in World War one the battle dassault starts in the 1st of July the still the bloodiest day in British military history nearly 20,000 dead 60,000 total casualties most of those casualties fall within the first 30 minutes of the battle but as the battle goes on you will notice that by the time it's ended the casualties amongst the Germans are almost equal to the Allies now wait a minute three to one advantage the defenders should have a lot fewer casualties what's happening is what Foix is talking about by the time you get both in the Battle of Verdun and in the psalm the Allies now have the production going have all those cannons have all those shells and they're learning how to use it to the point that by you get to October November of 1918 the British officer says I don't like this grid square make you go away and it does and there happens to be a bunch of Germans in it so much the better the Germans are also screwing up here though they're on the backside of this development so when the battle begins this is what the chief of the German General Staff Eric Falkenhayn is telling his commanders hold everything you got we're too short of troops hold it if you lose it counter-attack and that becomes part of the part of the German trick too much so okay you ever had a kid's birthday party where you bring a magician okay magician pulls the rabbit out of the Hat the first time the kids go woo you pull the rabbit out of the second time they go you pull the rabbit the third time the kids are you know be playing a video game okay the Germans are suffering from this they make a a poor decision and the Allies start to figure out their stick you know the Germans are going to a counter-attack so you do something called a box barrage you capture a little segment of trench that you ring it in artillery fire when the Germans counter-attack into it they hit that wall but the Germans learn so in the middle of the war and in the winter of 1916 they change their defensive doctrine funny thing when you invade and take somebody else's land you can give it up so they actually willingly give up vast swathes of the Eastern Front to retreat back to better terrain they don't dig in a lot of trenches what they do is use concrete it in pill boxes on the reverse slope of the hill which means if the Allies can't see the German defenses they can't target the German defenses the French think they've got this down coming out of Verdun and in April 1917 they'll attack a place called chemin de Dom rich against this new German defensive system the new French commander makes a promise he never should promise hey guys we've got this down if we're not through with in I don't know 48 72 hours I'm gonna stop the battle don't worry about it we're gonna win firstly the attack occurs Fritz bust their face up against the defense second day they bust their face against the defenses third day they bust their face against the defenses fourth wait a minute what how many days fourth fifth sixth seventh day they bounced their face against the German defenses shortly thereafter half of the divisions in the French army will go into what they call collective and discipline or what we might call mutiny now as you're trying to get through this they are doing more and more technological development is a technological war we're gonna take a look at some of the technologies that the sides are fielding to try to get an advantage war is always about trying to get an asymmetric advantage some of them are quite basic this is the model 1915 show Shogun it's the world's first mass-produced automatic rifle the idea behind it is if I can't give you big heavy machine guns to carry and I can't guarantee the artillery is going to be there for you then I'll just give every squad an automatic rifle this thing has a 20 round magazine it'll loop to that magazine in about five seconds the idea is walking fire as you attack the gunner is firing about a three to four second burst every second or third time their foot hits the ground keeping the enemy's head down okay now here's the problem it's bad to be first when you want it bad you get it bad the French are making this in a bicycle factory in Paris you can probably see by the design okay it's being made out of welded and stamped parts one of the first time in history so you can make a bunch of them who do you think's making this women what woman making my show show guns yeah okay women are making this old guys like me are making this right young guys know you guys are at the front okay no no if you don't mind me asking how many 19:15 show show guns have you made okay okay there was French one involved okay and actually okay show hands women how many of you have built the nineteen fifty show show gun you actually have something in common with the French women in the factories who also have not made show show guns hey you also have the problem with design never let staff officers come up with a good idea this is a two-man weapon again it's full automatic you limp you that magazine in five seconds so the assistant gunner has to be ready to change out the magazine okay now let's have a good idea let's do something smart let's cut big holes in the side of the magazine so the assistant gunner knows when it's time to change makes sense right hey one word comes out about trench warfare what comes to your mind mud any little bit of muddy a little bit dirt that gets another magazine big stick no go boom okay good idea the technology is not quite there yet but you do start to see this change this is what a french infantry platoon would look like in 1914 yes rocking bright red breeches and a bright blue jacket that everyone except the officer is equipped with a rifle and bayonet only this is what that same French squad looks like by 1918 1917 1918 it's half the size so it's easier to command and control and now they have a vast array of new rifles they've got that show show gun they have rifle grenades they have hand grenades some of them even have automatic rifles as part of this too warfare is changing and it's not big groups of men crossing no-man's land it's little groups here and there taking every advantage they possibly can of the terrain to try to cross that deadly ground I'll be some other innovations World War one will be the first time that poison gas will be used in warfare and the first successful use of poison gas will occur on the 22nd of August Oh correction April 1915 at eat Bray in Belgium pretty simple idea if I put poison gas on the enemy's trenches he's either too dead to coughing out as long or to running away to shoot back at you the first gas that uses chlorine and when they use it it actually works beautifully knocks a hole in the allied lines seven miles wide two and a half nearly two and a half miles deep we know what happens next right the Germans in goo step into Paris and in the war ah here's the problem gas is dependent upon the weather the weather the weather this attack had been postponed time after time after time waiting for the white right weather conditions the Germans do not have the reserve of people to keep guys just waiting behind the lines and so by the time this thing has been cancelled now four times Falkenhayn takes the reserves for the attack moves them to Russia the other problem is completely human please tell me how you explain this to Hans the German soldier hey Hans we got a cool new up and we call it poison gas all you've got to do is follow right behind the bouncing green cloud jump in the trench and everybody's dead okay now if you're a German soldier what do you say what are you crazy right Michael Jackson moon walking across no-man's land and so by the time the German attack starts to go it's too late the Allies of counter attacked now the problem with poison gas is the cat is out of the bag no more surprise within 48 hours of the first use of poison gas you get the first gas masks it's nothing more than a cotton wadding pad you have a little bottle of bicarbonate solution you pour on there chlorine gas is water-soluble so as long as this is wet it works little pair of steampunk goggles to make you you know keep your eyes good okay here's the problem though I have studied military history but in my army my entire adult life and I figured out that people suck okay the minute that chlorine doesn't work they come up with another gas phosgene phosgene is actually the biggest killing gas the war because it is odorless and largely colorless if you get hit with chlorine you know it your body goes into convulsions as it tries to pull that out phosgene has no immediate effect it kills you two or three days later from a military standpoint that's not good they want immediate effect so finally in 1917 they come out with the worst gas of them all in my opinion mustard gas okay now mustard is what we call a blister agent so when it gets on your skin it raises these nasty chemical burns weeping chemical burns it tends to affect the most of the moist areas of the body most violently your eyes your nose your mouth armpits gentlemen you get mustard there you don't want to play army anymore right okay of course the problem is that's bad but if you breathe that in now those chemical burns are on your lungs what happens is the lungs try to flush it out fill the lungs full of fluid and you drown but of course the minute you come out with a new gas you come out with a new gas mask so it's this constant keeping up with the Joneses now last but not least when it comes to technology my favorite I was a tanker in the Army for 20 years and of course the tank is supposed to be that solution to the trench problem a tank then and now is simply nothing more than mobile protected firepower you take a tank you put it on those big tractor wheels tractor treads so it'll go across the mud it will crush down the barbed wire and you have machine guns or cannons generally both to destroy the German machine guns and positions the first time it's used in battles the 11th of September 1916 or an 11 September's is when they start moving towards a battle area when they do that 49 tanks is almost the entire number of tanks in the world when they first use it in battle on the 15th of September you see what happens only 32 actually make it to the start point and in the midst of the attack nine of them break down five more ditched which is world war one for helping me out falling and can't get up okay tank falls in the shell hole think tall's in a trench doesn't have the power to get out 10 or knocked out by enemy fire mostly shell fire but some of these have actually gone through knocked a hole in the ions and caused panic in the German army now you got to think about this with all new technology where you get a tank in 1915 to fill the 1916 as you look at an American Holt agricultural tractor but think about what you're doing on that tractor you're taking a Holt American agricultural tractor bolting on hillbilly armor and big heavy cannons no wonder they're breaking down now by the time you get to the end of the war you've got a lot more tanks but you still haven't fixed that problem the technology is there some of the ideas that we still use today in armored warfare are there but the technology hasn't caught up the Germans are fielding purpose-designed anti-tank weapon that is Guevara now a group Guevara T Guevara in 1918 is the world's first anti-tank weapon it's basically nothing more than one of these on steroids about this big firing a 13 millimeter cartridge to knock out the tanks but you notice you still have the same problem but I would tell you is if you were the commander of the tank corps you've got one more day of battle than you have no more tanks the idea is there the technology hasn't caught up and the Germans though they got to do something soon with the collapse of Russia they think they have the answer they can now move millions of men from the Russian front to the western front and in the war before the number of new young Americans show up to change the dynamic of the battlefield with these new guys I also use a new tactic become known as stormtrooper tactics you take select guys you take the best and the brightest of the youngest you can from your existing infantry divisions you put them the other and new organizations you give them a lot of heavy weapons and you tell them we're not going to attack the way we did before we're gonna use a lot of reconnaissance we're gonna find the weak points of the Allied lines and then we're going to infiltrate in hit them where they're not don't worry about taking machine guns out from the front go behind it and take the machine gun out there and once you've broken through the line better yet go deep take out the command post take out the artillery because if I can deprive the enemy of his command post I've destroyed the nervous system of the army and if I take out the artillery I've destroyed the thing that gives them the power good I did and it generally worked pretty well except you're still doing some heavy fighting and these stormtrooper units take enormous ly heavy casualties now we got a problem if you're the Germans you have stripped the best and the brightest and the youngest of the most aggressive from your infantry divisions to fill these up and when these guys are dead nothing else is left and these guys are showing up in very large numbers in the process of this massive bloodletting we invent modern warfare I love this analogy if you were to take an infantry of British infantry battalion commander from the Battle of Waterloo fighting Napoleon 1815 put him in a time machine and moved him to 1914 just before the war begins yeah the technology has changed but he understands a battlefield that infantry and artillery and cavalry still basically operate the way they did 99 years before but if you were to take an infantry battalion commander from 1914 put him in a time machine and move him for years to the future he's lost the pieces parts don't work the way they did before and the army that comes out of 1918 looks a lot like the army I fought with in the Iraq war of 1991 and very much like the u.s. army that we have today so how does it end when the Germans were on them in commensal was right victory and World War one hinges the last moment it's not really clear until the late summer of 1915 until August of 1918 excuse me that the Germans aren't gonna win this war come in soap exit the victor will be the one who could believe for a quarter of an hour longer than his enemy that he is not beaten okay folks I've covered a lot of material talked about some good gruesome stuff okay on a Friday night nightmares for everybody tonight what are your questions what I always wanted every group right yes sir yeah the the Germans will first use flame floors they will experimental in 1915 and then really hit them hard for their initial assaults and Verdun and February of 1916 the problem of course is you've got to get close to the guy to use it and so the it was a horrible weapon both sides figure out that if you target the the user if you can can shoot them down then they're really not that big of a of a challenge they're usually two-man crews one guy holds the nozzle while the other guy has the has the container so they're very unwieldy on the battlefield itself yeah good question ah that's part of the artillery spotting that you have these observation balloons all the way behind the front and they serve the same purpose as the the aviation flying and many ways they're more effective because they are stable they can watch the same area of the front and get a better appreciation for what's changing and what's not the downside is they're stable which means that they've become perfect targets for the other guy there's an American named Luke who'll go down to history is one of the greatest balloon Buster he just loves to shoot him down I will ultimately win a medal of honor for that so the bigger balloons the Zeppelin's will actually be the world's first true strategic bombers and so if you think of the Hindenburg it's sort of the same thing and they'll be used by the Germans to attack Paris and then later London but once you're talking about of the little small ones good question living conditions like in the trenches no we're sleeping eating bathrooms that sort of thing there's always one okay no it's it's horrible it's a troglodytic existence first of all you're covered with lice they take you out of the the out of after about two weeks to the frontline trenches you'll go back to the reserved trenches and from there you're going to the rest trenches and the rest trenches are oxymoronic you don't rest they actually use those guys to bring the ammunition and the food in every night so you never really get any rest while you're in the battle area you you have no bathing in fact we're in the frontline trenches you're told to keep on your uniforms and your equipment your boots at all time to be ready for the attack the food is whatever can be brought up to you you start off with cooked rations but you quickly figure out that if you get uncooked rations and make the guys cooking on the frontline trenches they got to create fire fire create smoke fire creates light fire tells the other guy drop the artillery here so increasingly as the war goes on the soldiers are eating canned rations when it comes to bathrooms they have latrines that they dig I try to put it in a an area away from where you're going to be living and most of the time the guys living underground so they will dig the Germans are really good at this and in the psalm the chalk actually allows them to dig their bunkers 18 feet below the ground which is completely impervious to anything other than their direct hit but it's miserable you know it's it's it is absolutely a troglodyte existence are you living with mud all the time the trench itself is always being reclaimed by Mother Earth so battle is actually operate occupying a very small amount of the soldiers life most of their time in the frontline trenches is shovel work to keep the trenches from collapsing on and flies yep going with those latrines and dead bodies and everything else and rats feeding off the corpses so it's horrible a trench foot when you can never get your feet dry absolutely yes sir is there anything from 1918 past 1935 that didn't change like from 1952 it took my destroyer three hours to get ready to go underway and who had today a ship as a steering wheel like this like this and the jet engine goes to 50 miles an hour when it works yes when you get to World War two some of the things that had been pioneered in World War one you come to fruition one of the things that allows Pathan to keep Ford unsupplied our trucks where before logistics was horse and it will still be mostly developed by horse but it's gonna show the way forward of motorized whoa there we go motorized logistics the tanks change of course in their design but some of the idea behind them especially by the time you get to 1918 sort of the same weapons of breaking through the frontline the only thing that sort of remains the same the Vickers will stay with the British armies of the 1950s the American Springfield rifle will be slowly phased out for the m1 but a lot of the concepts have already been pioneers and and even the concept of things like aerial combat that almost every mission that the US Air Force does today have been pioneered by the end of World War one only exception is like strategic lift strategic reconnaissance but close air support and strategic bombing and all that they had already played with and some of the fighter tactics like the mm n loop perfected in 1915 will still be used in World War one in Korea it's a good question thank you I have a question how did they get the information from the balloon down to the the balloons are tethered to the ground they're actually tethered they have big winches so when the one when the enemy aviation comes you're trying to quickly winch it down but one of the things that are tied when they're when they're tethered is there is a telephone link so there's a telephone the guys are actually on the phone calling back down by the time you get to 1917 1918 they're actually very small radio sparks sets that are going up in the airplane to using radio Telegraph using Morse code to send directions so they're pioneering things that was on that would have been incredible to them even in 1914 yeah pigeons are again that's a that's a technology they've been a Braun for years problem with pigeons they're slow it you ever heard of Cheramie it's a pigeon from the the lost battalion it gets a medal because and it's because the Americans are getting artillery fire from the Americans and so they use their last pigeon to tell the Americans to stop firing problem is that part of the story they never tell is by the time the pigeon actually arrived the shelling have been over for 20 30 minutes the problem with pigeons of course is you've got to get them for the front lines they come in these little wicker baskets okay and when the soldier is going forward in the battle when he gets under fire he's gonna jump in a hole and if the pigeon happens to be under him okay you ever seen a little pigeon gas-mask neither of I yeah and the American army has some problems the the logistics and the American army in the battle of meuse-argonne breaks down so soldiers are going days without eating so after four days of while eating the pigeon looks like chicken yep it's a good question yes sir America comes into the war late good does and it seems as if blackjack Pershing leads has a donkey that he has they paid no attention to what the French and English and the Germans have done prior to that time and he sends men against bullets death death death death until he stops being a donkey is that true well except for that stop or yeah Pershing an interesting guy look if you think about what the American army had been doing since the Civil War it was counterinsurgency it was policing the empire fighting Indians fighting Bandidos and Mexico fighting bolos and and in the Philippines and so we're not prepared for this in any way shape or form the American army itself and the National Guard when we go to war is less than 300 thousand men that's a bad day of wastage on the western front and our officers aren't ready for modern more we're not don't have the equipment for it if you look at the American army the vast majority the show Shogun which has a very bad reputation French gun it's the one we adopt the French 75 gun is the one we adopt we use French tanks we use British and French aircraft so the world's greatest industrial power can't filled modern weapons and it's a steep leading learning curve it well if you think about it we look like those armies of 1914 right there's part of that yeah and there's true and and I don't I'm not disagreeing with you I'm asking for a little sympathy for the devil though right that by the time that the United so up and really don't show up in numbers until the late spring of 1918 we're still kindergarten and the other armies have gone to the graduate school of warfare and so are our learning curve is so steep that there would've been almost nothing that there is a lot of arrogance and Pershing's headquarters blowing off with the French and the British recommend he does say rightfully that you can't trust them because what the British and French want to do is break up the American army put him in existing French and British formations and have them fight with them which you know no country is going to do that to their force but yeah I agree with you that I've written on that and because he commanded African American soldiers in the 1890s and in Cuba yeah there was yeah yeah that doesn't make an apprentice often but yeah absolutely but but in fairness to Pershing he talks a lot about what he calls open warfare which is these Brits these these Brits have got it wrong the Brits and the French have got it wrong and if you look at what they've doing you can say okay there may be some justification for that but his whole idea of open warfare is really to I think to stave off the attempts by the Allies to amalgamate American forces but if you look what he says he says independent infantry attacking with rifle and bayonet which is dumb but if you look what he does the division structure that we create is very firepower heavy so we do take some of the organization of the French so yeah good question though did we lose a lot with the mustard gas actually very little very few soldiers actually died to gas the numbers are pretty small again they if you are prepared for it it becomes a nuisance the Americans percentage-wise suffer more casualties from gas than the Allies simply because they're so horribly trained but the numbers are pretty small even the again the big killer the big Amer is artillery but still wouldn't want to go through it which is the big killer in fact if it wouldn't have been for the flu epidemic World War one would have had the dubious distinction of being the first war in human history where more people had died due to combat than disease but it sort of skews the skews the scale a bit yes sir this is more of a logistical kind of question you remember 660 pounds of for a yard of trench when they've actually had to fire a lot more than that given the number of unexploded shells that occurred at that time most of the time they do not think about that that if you look at the first day of the Battle of the Somme there is an estimation that of the two million plus rounds that they fire in the seven days prior to the battle as many as 20% of them didn't explode okay having gone through those battlefields with a metal detector I will tell you that there's a lot of stuff still there that will blow up and kill you so but but it doesn't come into there that is a minor thought that they have but but but even with a with the idea of misfire they know they can't continue with with 660 pounds good question though yes sir okay for some reason another the Zimmerman telegram came to mind sure which brings me to this huh do you know what the Germans ever broke the Army's cipher code not that I'm aware of Thanks yeah we're using mostly British and French codes and by that time had gotten gotten pretty good now they had gotten very good at tapping into the telephone lines and there's actually some inductions that you have bury the line it still radiates some stuff out through the soil so the Germans are very good at these listening posts and the Allies to at being able to figure out what's being said on the phones now most of that though that intelligence is ephemeral it goes away pretty quick so your question yes sir what about the snipers everybody does it and it becomes one of those realities of trench warfare when you can only say about that much it becomes one of those skills the Germans have an early lead mostly because of their optics industry the German optics are the best in the world and they had been training some of the snipers before it takes the British and the French a while to catch up with it and the Americans come in a little bit late but they do the same thing so they're they're always they're always nasty people hate them I'll tell you from the Americans when I do research German machine gunners who fight till the last minute and snipers never taken prisoner which which also hasn't yet which which hasn't changed by the way so yeah we're gonna end the questioning here I think we could spend all night all right okay okay thank you for making a very conflict [Applause] I just appreciate you sharing that vast knowledge with us and I know you're gonna stay around a little bit but we've got a dilemma because we've got a book signing and so I know people want to come up and look and these are not loaded and not operable not loaded and not open that's what I was told so after the book signing if people are still here I'm sure you'll talk to them about this but if he writes anything like he talks I think this book is gonna be fascinating pershing so a couple announcements monday is Veterans Day the museum yes yes I would like all veterans and active military to stand and be recognized [Applause] thank you thank you for your service since we're closed on Monday you're all free to come in on Sunday and see the exhibits so active military and veterans then we have a couple programs coming up after Thanksgiving on Thursday December 12th we have pictures with Santa and I want to see you all there and if you want to bring your kids and grandkids okay but that's a free day - it's 3:00 to 7:00 and come out and enjoy Christmas shopping but you're just enjoying Santa and then on December 13th is our next program and it is the author is Charlie pot ler who has spoken here before he's the director of Shawnee town in Kansas City and his topic is Lindbergh the Lone Eagle so should come on back and we will have cookies while Christmas cookies so thank you for coming please I'm gonna have you go out to sign the books because everybody will want to talk one more round [Applause]
