1916 - Year of Victory | William Philpott

[@TheMegacitygirl]

Great lecture, Bill was one of my lecturers at Uni :)

[@BlairMaynard]

Were you aware that napping in the day would ruin your night sleep routine?

[@alganhar1]

You should have heard my Coastal Management Lecturer (read Coastal Marine Biology at University of Hull). Phillpott is positively animated in comparison. Probably why I went on to field research rather than Coastal Management :)

[@thomaslutro5560]

Napping lecture? Now, I quit uni, but certainly not because of lectures like this. Philpott is, in a comparative sense, a fire spitting dragon of a professor. But it's a bit late now, to start studying history at 50. And I assume King's college won't have unpaying mediocrity just popping by...

[@graemesydney38]

Should be more correctly titled '1916 - Year of Strategic Victory'. At the strategic level it might be a good analysis but step back and ask 'were the (long term) national interests been achieved or served'. And the answer is 'no'. Unfortunately the Allies did a very similar analysis which is why Phillpott quoted an agreeable General Wilson at the start. If we or the belligerents asked the more fundamental and pertinent question the answer would have been 'no' and the answer for all of them would have been to seek an negotiated peace. The world, and Europe in particular, failed in its leadership and responsibilities. That is THE lesson and the lesson that should be applied today. But the lesson wasn't learnt and we repeat the same mistakes today.

[@MrNeunauge]

IF you want to call it year of strategic victory you can call it a strategic vitory from 12 1914 onwards ...

[@joeblow9657]

Remember, planning to win a war by grinding down another 4 million Germans is not a good strategy especially when you're not sure how long your country is willing to put up with the cost of getting them for what didn't seem to amount to much either strategically in terms of land gained nor achieving longer term political objectives. A strategy of mass attrition as implemented in WW1 is the dullest of strategies and requires no brilliance. It's one thing if Germany was either split into multiple states as was done after WW2 (initially 4 zones of control), but it wasn't. The only objective it achieved was destroying the ability of Germany to build a navy that could even start to mildly infringe on British naval supremacy. If you're in a position where you'd be better off with peace rather than winning the war than maybe you're doing it wrong.

[@davidworsley7969]

Oh God-he's turned another page!

[@wuffothewonderdog]

Why will platform speakers not realise that the microphone picks up every rustle of them shuffling noisy items? Damnable to listen to.

[@ellethekitten]

Not the easiest lecture for listening to...

[@davidworsley7969]

+Michelle www.ellethekitty.ca Must admit I found myself gazing blankly at the wall-reminded me of school!

[@Nounismisation]

Will - don't get too shouty at the beginning of each sentence. ba DA mo blu mem ba PA flo um bem bar PANG dumb um bum bar for eg. "KA BLAM" too passionately for too long about explosive issues and you'll cancel yourself out. Attritution in fact.

[@robred19]

The French army was in a state of mutiny, the Russian revolution would end their involvement. All in 1917...from a year of...errrŕ...victory in 1916?

[@skibbideeskitch9894]

The Entente, after a year of false starts, finally began to effectively deploy its manpower and industrial superiority to systematically defeat the German Army by using attrition to irreversibly bring about its decline and secure victory. All from a year of victory in 1916. Hasten to add that the French mutinies came about in the aftermath of failing to meet the hyperbolic expectations of Nivelle's offensive- an attempt to avoid attrition. The BEF reached its operational peak after the trying year of 1917.

[@gandydancer9710]

@@skibbideeskitch9894 I see, so Operation Michael was illustrative of the British operational peak in action? The German loss was inevitable WITHOUT more attrition than was necessary. Let the blockade do its work.

[@joeblow9657]

@@skibbideeskitch9894 I'd argue it reached it's operational peak in 1917 and lost it in 3rd Ypres and the German Spring Offensive of 1918. It gained some of it back but by then the war had changed back to somewhat open warfare and the German army was just not willing to keep fighting anymore nor could it rely on defensive