WW1 Plausibility Check: Getting Rid of the Cult of the Offensive?

Is there any way to get the politicians and military types of the early twentieth century to discount the cult of the offensive? I'm pottering around with the idea for a time line where at the start of the Great War the British decide after a few goes of banging their heads against a wall on the Western Front to try and arrange it with the French for a division of labour - the Grand Fleet continues to blockade the High Seas Fleet in the North Sea whilst the Army concentrates on what were known as the side shows in IOTL and the French pick up most of the Western Front. The general strategy is starts off with the BEF and initial deployments as IOTL but then seeing the Ottomans and then the Austrians as the weak links of the Central Powers 50% of their resources gets put into defeating the Ottomans and opening the straights to the Russians, 25% to the Balkans to help Serbia and Romania and pressure Austria - and once the Ottoman Empire surrenders the troops there to move to the Balkans to help knock out the Austrians, and 25% on the Western Front so the French and Belgians don't feel abandoned although in more of a defensive posture.

Of course this all falls down if everyone is still in the thrall of the cult of the offensive as they'll be wanting to attack attack attack at seemingly any cost. Is there any way to get someone senior enough unwedded to the idea to make it viable or will I have to resort to Bob the freindly neighbourhood ASB? The only idea I have is possibly the Siege of Port Arthur in the Russo-Japanese War going much worse for the Japanese for one reason or another and it turning into a bloody debacle with the Japanese losing such silly amounts of men some strategists start to have second thoughts about the idea.
 
The "cult of the offensive" is a rather persistent misconception. Properly, it should only be used to describe the winning side in the French debates about strategy in a war against Germany at the end of the 19th and beginning of the 20th centuries. The reason why "cult of the offensive" is used to describe this is because it is odd that a country less populous, less industrialized, and with no real strategic advantages such as shorter lines of communication, etc. would declare that its war-winning strategy was to attack its stronger opponent.

Just because most offensives in WW1 (and those, in particular, on the Western and Italian Fronts) ended in failure with thousands of casualties didn't mean there was a "cult of the offensive" amongst the world's powers. It just means that you have to go on the offensive to win. You can only get a draw by remaining on the defense, which is why the powers involved had to keep attacking: forswearing offensive action is forswearing victory.
 

Cook

Banned
Perhaps if the French had fought a war around the turn of the century similar to the Anglo-Boer War 1901-1903 their appreciation of modern tactics and camouflage would have been better going into the First World War.

2211710874_d1ed7e2898.jpg
 
Perhaps if the French had fought a war around the turn of the century similar to the Anglo-Boer War 1901-1903 their appreciation of modern tactics and camouflage would have been better going into the First World War.
Wouldent that make them think attacking was a better plan even more because now they think they have the advantage using camouflage (which ive heard would be really hard to make back then)?

edit: Nice pic by the way i knew the uniform looked something like that but... The buttons make it look weird.
 
Jesus wept those uniforms look both hideous and absolutely awful from a military perspective. So the cult of the offensive wasn't as wide spread or ingrained as we're sometimes lead to believe? Hhmm, that might make it easier for my side-shows first idea.
 

Cook

Banned
Wouldent that make them think attacking was a better plan even more because now they think they have the advantage using camouflage (which ive heard would be really hard to make back then)?

edit: Nice pic by the way i knew the uniform looked something like that but... The buttons make it look weird.

Several times during the Boer War the British advanced over open ground on entrenched Boer positions, and got massacred.

The British Professional Army that went into 1914 had Officers, Warrant Officers and Sergeants who hat been junior officers and NCOs in the Boer War. Their experiences were invaluable to the BEF. Sadly their knowledge was diluted and lost in the massive expansion of the British Army and the inclusion of officers who could at best be called amateur.
 

Deleted member 1487

The need for improved camouflage was recognized by the French, but internal politics prevented money from being allocated for that purpose. It turns out the dye for the new uniforms was only made in Germany, so this put the kibosh on changing them, as the dyes for the current uniforms were made in France. Buy French really screwed over the military when the war started...
 

Cook

Banned
Jesus wept those uniforms look both hideous and absolutely awful from a military perspective. So the cult of the offensive wasn't as wide spread or ingrained as we're sometimes lead to believe? Hhmm, that might make it easier for my side-shows first idea.

Actually that’s not the worst of it.

The French cavalry were in the exact same uniform they’d worn in 1815, complete with polished helmet and plumes and the infantry soldier carried a stainless steel cooking pot on top of his pack. A young Lieutenant Rommel wrote letters home to his family about being how easy it was to see them even in tall corn fields.
 
In that case I might not have to break out Bob to create the PoD which would be nice. Might actually make more sense to organise the division of labour with France pre-1914 before the experienced types have been diluted, I figure one part military strategy and one part self preservation of letting the French walk into the meat grinder could convince people to go that way.
 
The reason why "cult of the offensive" is used to describe this is because it is odd that a country less populous, less industrialized, and with no real strategic advantages such as shorter lines of communication, etc. would declare that its war-winning strategy was to attack its stronger opponent.
Up to the 1913-4 German army reform, the French army was numerically stronger than that of Germany. It also conveniently had a very strong ally that would also be attacking Germany in the east at the same time.

Operationally, the French army had a tremendous advantage in their Lorraine fortress network, an ideal jump-off point for an attack on German Alsace-Lorraine. They also had an advantage in the fact that Germany had failed to modernize most of its border fortresses. Of the German fortifications in Alsace-Lorraine, only a few could be considered "modern" and resistant to high explosives: the Diedenhofen-Metz complex, the "Festung Kaiser Wilhelm II" complex along the Rhine, and the Strassburg fortified area. This left a huge game in Lorraine that the French were aware of and always planned to exploit.
 
So one part logic one part bullshit flattery might work, "You have a much larger population/army than we do, we're much more of a naval nation, your army has such elan" etc. and the like.

How long did the various governments seriously expect, not how long they told the public, the Great War to drag on for?
 
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