I've realised that racism is a pretty big factor in the morale and success of an army.

It can boost morale and/or increase complacency.

E.gs

1) Gallipoli: soldiers beleived that the Turks were inferior beings and fighters...result: Allies are masticated.

2) Pacific War:
    Allied soliders beleive that the Japs are racially inferior and are sub human.
Ruthless fighting....
Result: Japs are smashed.


A.

I think racism is too strong a word. Propeganda would be better. It sometimes has been racially motivated. but in general its not. Just remember as Doug said, to the Germans/ Japanese we were the evil enemy. Your hardly gonna want to kill your enemy if your being told their a bunch of nice guys who dont have anything against you.

I'd have to disagree with you on the Gallipoli front there Andrew.  The truth of the matter is that the Turkish forces in the peninsula were (initially at least) very low quality troops.  The Brit's invaded with some of the finest troops that we had.  A large quantity were regulars in addition to several battalions of Royal Marines and of course the ANZAC contingent.

Gallipoli failed because it was badly planned and badly lead.  If you look at the terrain that was fought over it is clear that a 90 year old granny with a blunt tooth pick could have defended it.

Gallipoli is a stain on British high command that will never be wiped clean.

Good point Andrew.  Most of the peninsula was not defended at all until one or two days after the landings.

The troops came ashore and stopped as they had no orders to continue.  If high command had taken their collective fingers out from their bottoms it would have been a different story.

The story of the Gallipoli landings has always fascinated me.  Bleedin' depressing tho'

Will

The thing you have to remember about WWI is that generals who had learnt their trade in a time when infantry fought with muskets and at best single shot rifles were planning battles with machine guns, artillery and tanks. They simply didn't know how these weapons worked and how effective they were so in a way it isn't exactly fair to blame the generals entirely for what happened.

Just remember, intill the first world war no two armies equipped with machineguns and repeating rifles had met on the battlefield. Up intill then Germany hadn't really had a chance to fight anyone while the british could only use their machineguns on tribes that were armed at best with muskets. Basically no one knew how to fight a war against modern weapons and it's just a damn shame it took them over three years to learn.

Maybe so. But I'm not suprised that no changes in tactics came about through that battle. One bloody defeat doesn't always mean that your fighting in the wrong manner. Cause if that was so then think about what reforms would have been made to the army after Isandhlwana.

We did learn after Isandlwana.  We learnt that Zulu armies can cover "impossible" terrain and then chew up a couple of thousand British troops.

One of the Generals involved in WW1 was one of the survivors of Isandlwana.  I forget which one though   Sir John French dumped on him from a great height.

Quote:


Not quite, he survived.  It was unlikely that he would have been promoted so high had he been a festering corpse.

The first time it can be forgiven .

My point was more to do with Gallipoli than the Western Front.  Andrew was asking if we felt there was a degree of rascism behind the failure in Turkey and I don't think that there was.  The western front was acknowledged by the general staff to be a battle of attrition, it didn't matter if an assault took four months to take a mile of German line at the cost of 5000 lives because the Germans lost 7500 men so we won the battle.

Will

I don't doubt for a second that the attitude at the time was that the Turkish troops were inferior on racial grounds.  My point was that we didn't lose that fight because we doubted the abillity of Johnny Turk to fight but rather that the planning and execution of the plan was so bad.

I hate the attitude that seems to prevail that the British had a low opinion of the native troops that they fought.  If anyone reads the diaries of the troops on the ground you can see the respect that they held for them.  They certainly felt superior but but it was edged with acknowledgement of the fighting qualities of those they opposed.

My Great Grandfather spent 15 years in the Army and left in 1905.  He fought at Omdurman and once beat the stuffing out of my Grandfather (Who was 7th Division Light Middleweight Boxing champion 1916,17 and 18) for suggesting that the Sudanese were easy compared to the Germans.  His view was that anyone willing to charge at a man armed with only a spear was as hard as nails and bloody dangerous at close quarters.

If it was Racism then it is the same racism that makes modern armis call the Iraqis "Ragheads" and the Viet Cong "Gooks". 

I quote Doug:

Quote:


This sums it up nicely.

Will