It's easy today to armchair quarterback the generals of World War I and accuse them of attacking machine gun bullets with their soldiers breasts, but there were very few options open to these generals in front of them and, behind them, the politicians left them even fewer options. Technology more than generalship was the blame for the stalemate and the casualties. Artillery was the biggest killer with machine guns and Barbwire contributing. If one looks at the statistics it was better to be on defense than on offense but not by nearly the disproportionate percentages one would expect.
At the end of the war the Germans contrived something that hinted at the blitzkrieg of 1939 but they were unable at that point to fully punch through. They infiltrated rather than stormed and they timed their artillery much better. They granted the smaller units independent control and thoroughly trained their elite soldiers in penetration. When that was combined later with airpower and armor, you have the blitzkrieg.
My point is that the generals were not stupid, they were handicapped by the state of technology. By extension, I am not prepared to say that these wars are, as a Marxists claim, a war contrived by plutocrats to enrich plutocrats.
Folly knows no class.
