The feeling seems to have been that once Russia was out of the war and the French army was incapable of the offensive (in Haig's view) the British army was insufficient to defeat Germany. Especially what with all these sideshows in Italy, Palestine, Salonika, etc that were uselessly draining resources from the only important theatre.
The idea about the attack was that you'd wound a lot of people with the artillery, and then if you'd neutralised the machine guns, cut the wire, and got a decent attack going you'd get a lot more prisoners along the way. It seemed to work a lot, though when it went wrong it could go wrong quite badly. It's why the Germans moved to having the front line only lightly held, with the main defences further back: a heavily-held front line would just leave more prisoners for the initial attack. Tanks helped, of course.
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timeasmymeasure
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Date: 2013-02-18 10:23 pm (UTC)The idea about the attack was that you'd wound a lot of people with the artillery, and then if you'd neutralised the machine guns, cut the wire, and got a decent attack going you'd get a lot more prisoners along the way. It seemed to work a lot, though when it went wrong it could go wrong quite badly. It's why the Germans moved to having the front line only lightly held, with the main defences further back: a heavily-held front line would just leave more prisoners for the initial attack. Tanks helped, of course.