WWI: Is There Any Chance of a Trench Mutiny?

No

It was the same kind of mutiny that ended the 1917 regime, without the immediate shift into something much worse following.

In 1917 the soldiers committees took over the army. See how that went!
In 1991 the officer corps was in charge and stayed in charge. So, no mutiny.
 
Can you name a case in wich a general mutiny by the armed forces led to a peacefull productive society?

Yes. Probably not a template for a WWI trench mutiny, but the Carnation Revolution shows that a military revolt is not always a force for evil.
 
April 25?

Yes. Probably not a template for a WWI trench mutiny, but the Carnation Revolution shows that a military revolt is not always a force for evil.

If you're talking about the Portuguese 1974 revolution that was a coup. A mutiny happens when an Army looses control of it's own soldiers, a coup when a government looses control of it's army. A coup can turn good or bad, a mutiny can only go bad.
 
If you're talking about the Portuguese 1974 revolution that was a coup. A mutiny happens when an Army looses control of it's own soldiers, a coup when a government looses control of it's army. A coup can turn good or bad, a mutiny can only go bad.
By that definition of the Army losing control of it's own soldiers, I'm pretty sure it started out as a mutiny with the lower ranking officers and turned into a coup after Caetano refused to surrender/hand over power to anyone but Spinola.

If the troops on the front line had tried that then the generals on both sides would have just turned the artillary on them.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/French_Army_Mutinies_(1917)#The_French_High_Command.27s_response
Occasionally, you hear about whole French divisions being marched out only to be fired on by their own artillery.
 
In 1917 the soldiers committees took over the army. See how that went!
In 1991 the officer corps was in charge and stayed in charge. So, no mutiny.

Not quite. Land reform, rather, collapsed the army.

Snake, I looked it up and those soviet paratroopers were pulled back, they didn't mutiny. The General in charge was sent to Frunze, to teach others how to do it maybe, and it was another case of the army deciding it was not going to fight the party's battles. In 1991 the Red Army was aware that change was coming, and decided to play it safe. But it was the army, not mutinous soldiers, calling the (not)shots...

That's what happened in the February Revolution of 1917, too, if we want to start splitting hairs about it.
 
1974 and 1917

Regarding the Portuguese revolution, the imediate originator was the 1973 book by Portugal most prestigious General, António de Spínola, called Portugal and the future, that basically called for a new government. When Spinola was sacked the Army leadership was spilt in two. A large segment of career officers (mostly captains and Liutenents who had been at the Academy at the same time and served in Africa toguether), organized a movement that sided with Spinola and the other Generals who had been "purged" and against the old Generals who sided with the regime (Know in the Army the Rheumatic Brigade) In 25th April this movemnent took control of the Army and seized the country, mostly without oposition. It then called back Spinola and Costa Gomes (Pretty senior Generals at the time) to take over. Then things got messy. The Comunist party had started an infiltration of the Army and tried to take control of the Armed Forces. In the "hot summer" of 1975 there was a clandestine struggle to see who could control more units, and in 25th November 1975 the "blue" units, under control of their officers, ckosed down the "red" units. That was the point from wich democracy became fully viable. Civil war was narrowly avoided.
For people who are not in the Army the line between coup and mutinny might seem blurred, but for professional soldiers its one of those uncrossable moral lines. A coup is like sleeping with somebody elses girlfriend (morally questionable but shit happens) and a mutinny is like raping your kid sister (totally unthinkable hang the bastards who did it stuff)
If you call the 25th April revolution a mutinny in a Portuguese Officers club you better be a fast runner...

Regarding the spring of 1917, who knows if Karensky could have led to democracy. The Bolchevisks ruined it all a few months later...
 
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Regarding the Portuguese revolution, the imediate originator was the 1973 book by Portugal most prestigious General, António de Spínola, called Portugal and the future, that basically called for a new government. When Spinola was sacked the Army leadership was spilt in two. A large segment of career officers (mostly captains and Liutenents who had been at the Academy at the same time and served in Africa toguether), organized a movement that sided with Spinola and the other Generals who had been "purged" and against the old Generals who sided with the regime (Know in the Army the Rheumatic Brigade) In 25th April this movemnent took control of the Army and seized the country, mostly without oposition. It then called back Spinola and Costa Gomes (Pretty senior Generals at the time) to take over. Then things got messy. The Comunist party had started an infiltration of the Army and tried to take control of the Armed Forces. In the "hot summer" of 1975 there was a clandestine struggle to see who could control more units, and in 25th November 1975 the "blue" units, under control of their officers, ckosed down the "red" units. That was the point from wich democracy became fully viable. Civil war was narrowly avoided.
For people who are not in the Army the line between coup and mutinny might seem blurred, but for professional soldiers its one of those uncrossable moral lines. A coup is like sleeping with somebody elses girlfriend (morally questionable but shit happens) and a mutinny is like raping your kid sister (totally unthinkable hang the bastards who did it stuff)
If you call the 25th April revolution a mutinny in a Portuguese Officers club you better be a fast runner...

Regarding the spring of 1917, who knows if Karensky could have led to democracy. The Bolchevisks ruined it all a few months later...

Wish I could find a better source, but Wikipedia is what I have at hand at the moment; Spinola's wiki page is at odds with what you're posting. Says that he wrote the book in 1974. Not only that, he published the book after he was removed from his post. The MFA also started out as more of a protest against a 1973 military law.

I've also talked to a few Portuguese people about the Carnation revolution and it appears more along the lines that Spinola wasn't initially involved in it, but he became the representative since he was the only one that Ceatano would surrender power to. Of course this could be a view point formulated after seeing the April Captains, which paints that picture.

http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0120626/
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Marcello_Caetano
 
IIRC, The French just refused to attack. They still defended their trenches.
Who can blame them?
And before the cheese eating surrender monkey joke start they bore most of the fighting on the western front with 1.5 million dead and 4 million wounded on a popullation of 39 million it is huge.
 
Versions

Wish I could find a better source, but Wikipedia is what I have at hand at the moment; Spinola's wiki page is at odds with what you're posting. Says that he wrote the book in 1974. Not only that, he published the book after he was removed from his post. The MFA also started out as more of a protest against a 1973 military law.

I've also talked to a few Portuguese people about the Carnation revolution and it appears more along the lines that Spinola wasn't initially involved in it, but he became the representative since he was the only one that Ceatano would surrender power to. Of course this could be a view point formulated after seeing the April Captains, which paints that picture.

http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0120626/

There are many narratives about the 25Th April revolution. The one I gave can be said to be "the Army Version".
Remenber that career officers (as opposed to concripted or short term comission officers), being all graduates from the same military academy see themselves as being "family" and representing the Army. The diference btw a Colonel and a Captain, if they're both Academy graduates, is purely age, they share all the rest. Since the Movement was stricly a career officers thing it can be said to have been done by army "insiders". That was one of the reasons they would not fire on one another and there was close to no bloodshed even in the wild days of the summer of 75, when the comunists nearly managed to spilt the army.
After 75 a number of politicians tried to claim the "revolution" for their own colours, enhacing the role of the civilian oposition and minimizing the army role. Most active were the Comunist party hardliners, including many historians (the portuguese history colleges were bright red in the 70/80s). A lot of what you read, particulary on the web, comes from those people. The Army never claimed anything in return for handing over a democratic state to the people, going back quietly to it's units. Currently the radical left in Portugal, wich includes not one but the two comunist parties (one leninist and one trotskyst) with more elected members of parlamient in the world except for China, has made an habit of painting the April events as a sort of portuguese 1917...
Bear in mind that the Portuguese Comunist party was led in the 70/80 by probably the smartest and most charismatich man in portuguese politics in the XX century, Alvaro Cunhal.
Maria de Medeiros film is a romanticized versions of events.
Spinola was working solo even when he was still Field Commander in Guiné, working behind the scenes to try and get a peace deal (the guerrilas backed off at the last minute, some say on orders from Moscow, and killed the portuguese officers they had invited to a clandestine meeting)
Spinola's book, when it was finally published, was his way of issuing a final warnning shot to the Caetano regime. The Army had turned his way by then.
Caetano had to surrender because the national guardsmen holding the Carmo barracks would not stand to the Army. He was merely surprised to see that facing him was just Captain Salgueiro Maia, since he was expecting someone senior.
The military law you refer to was an atempt by the governement to reduce the control the career officers had over the army by promoting people who had not graduated from the academy faster and for longer terms. It helped alienate the career officers, but it was their conviction that colonial war, dictatorship and international isolation were ruinning the country that turned the army against the regime.
I might sound a bit to "hot" on the subject but for reasons you might deduce this is kind of a "family" issue for me...
 
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sources

http://www.25abril.org/a25abril/

That's the oficial site of (some of) the people who did it. It tells the consensual version of events. Many people wrote books from their own perspective, and it's still very much a open debate in Portugal. There was a major media fuss a few years back just because the current president does not wear a red carnation on his lapel on April 25th. Now all you need to do is learn portuguese and take a few days off to read all the stuff...
 
Spinola

From the sources above, you will verify that the movement, by early 1974 very much an open secret in the Army, was aproched by General Arrriaga (right wing) and invited Spinola and Costa Gomes (Generals, pro democratic, Spinola a conservative and Gomes more of a liberal) (through intermediates so not to compromisse them) to have leading roles before the Coup. (Arriaga, who tried to recruit the movement to his cause, was allegadly also trying to get support from nom career officers to stage a different, right wing coup, what shows why aparently routine military law was so politically sensitive)
 
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Who can blame them?
And before the cheese eating surrender monkey joke start they bore most of the fighting on the western front with 1.5 million dead and 4 million wounded on a popullation of 39 million it is huge.
39 Million? How the hells could they only have 39 million in 1914? The UK had more than that, and was much smaller.
 
39 Million? How the hells could they only have 39 million in 1914? The UK had more than that, and was much smaller.

France was a lot more agrarian than the UK. However, all the sources I've got say the French population was 41 million in 1914 to Great Britain's 46 million.
 
Actually I don't. Conditions in the trenches were hardly luxurious but equally they were hardly horrific, especially compared to Stalingrad or the Kokoda trail in WWII. I found Gary Sheffield's Forgotten Victory: The First World War - Myths and Realities quite fascinating.

I've been reading the CHARLIE'S WAR GN's, based on an old comic strip of a BEF soldier in the trenches. Trust me, "horrific" is mild. Given the extreme incompedence of Army leadership I'm surprised it took the French so long to revolt, and the BEF apparently had a few small revolts of their own but nowhere on the same scale.
 
France was a lot more agrarian than the UK. However, all the sources I've got say the French population was 41 million in 1914 to Great Britain's 46 million.
Yeah I checked and it is indeed 41 million in 1914 but was reduced to 38 million due to the war and the spanish flu in 1918 and 39 million in 1919 thanks to the return of Alsace-Lorraine.
 
I've been reading the CHARLIE'S WAR GN's, based on an old comic strip of a BEF soldier in the trenches. Trust me, "horrific" is mild. Given the extreme incompedence of Army leadership I'm surprised it took the French so long to revolt, and the BEF apparently had a few small revolts of their own but nowhere on the same scale.

Historiography has moved on since 1979-85.
 
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