Lessons: In the era before computers, you couldn’t halt a war once the order was given because there were no pre-made logistical plans for halting a mobilization. The Germans over-tinkered with their battle plan and weakened it—if they’d stuck with their original plan they might have conquered France. Epic amounts of stupidity everywhere—it might have been the greatest parade of multisided folly in all human history.
The Guns of August by Barbara Tuchman.
Subject: World War I.
Lessons: In the era before computers, you couldn’t halt a war once the order was given because there were no pre-made logistical plans for halting a mobilization. The Germans over-tinkered with their battle plan and weakened it—if they’d stuck with their original plan they might have conquered France. Epic amounts of stupidity everywhere—it might have been the greatest parade of multisided folly in all human history.
It was an epic event. Did it have any higher a stupidity quotient than anything else at the time?
I suspect yes, given the actors and the stakes; but at any rate it may be one of the best-chronicled displays of multisided folly in human history.