[quote]GDollars37 wrote:
Zap Branigan wrote:
WW1 trench warfare is hardly modern warfare.
Then you learned modern warfare from the Germans and post-modern warfare from the Iraqis.
Not bad. But the problem is that we learned modern warfare from the French and not the Germans.
You are 100 years behind the times.
Read some history. Modern conventional warfare was born in World War I. Heavy firepower, the thinning of the battlefield, the industrial mobilization of the state for war, etc. Blitzkrieg doctrine was a descendant of German stormtroop tactics of 1918. A century is not that long. For example, the U.S. Army today still has basically the same personnel system it had before World War I.
And FYI, the “early modern” period begins about 1500. 1918 is certainly “modern”.[/quote]
Technically amigo, the American Civil War originated many of the things used in WWI.
Trench warfare was heavily favored by CSA General Pete Longsteet, as shown by the Battle of Petersburg.
Confederates in Charleston sunk the first ship with a submarine, also. Guerilla tactics were heavily used, and it was the first war where the rifle was used extensively instead of the musket. The accuracy was what changed things away from frontal assaults and massed infantry units. Rifled cannons were also used extensively.
The campaigns specifically aimed at breaking the back and spirit of the enemy through the destruction of land was also used, such as the March to the Sea and Sheridan in the Shenandoah Valley. The concept of “Total War”, which would be used for WWI and II, was laid out when Sherman said that he’d make Georgia howl.
The use of ironclads and mines, the use of repeating rifles, gattling guns, the mass transport of troops via railroad instead of marching… there’s a million more.
So although we know I’m not all that nationalistic, it could be said that Americans developed and demonstrated modern warfare first (although, of course, it was unfortunatly on ourselves).
