HIST 3320 Lecture Notes - Lecture 10: Getgo, Fort Douaumont, Erich Ludendorff
18 Nov 2016
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Paul von hindenburg and eric ludendorff are in charge of the eastern front. Deliver 200,000 casualties on the russian front in a single battle. Russians were numerically superior to the germans but their equipment was terrible: weapons didn"t work, uniforms were shoddy, often fought with only their bayonets as the duns didn"t work. Austro-hungarians are also poorly equipped: struggle from the get-go, lose 1/3 of their troops in galicia against the russians, germany"s only ally is austria-hungary and they can"t help them. More important that the rifle or the bayonet. Trenches turn the war into a defensive war. A war of attrition: waiting for the other side to fail instead of delivering a knock-out-blow. Trenches allowed for the armies to hunker down and wait. Forward trenches so close together that you can make out facial features of the enemy without aid. Forward trenches were usually filled with corpses, rats, lice, and mud.
