They "Underestimated the Power of the Machine Gun" (the purpose of the First World War was to kill one's own men).

Richard A. Koenigsberg

It is the task of the soldier to perform acts of self-sacrifice. General Douglas MacArthur told graduating West Pointers in 1962 that they as soldiers “above all other men” were required to practice “the greatest act of religious training—sacrifice.” Soldiers--required to “die for their country” when asked to do so--are designated sacrificial victims.

Historian Modris Eksteins (1989) describes the typical First World War "battle:"

The victimized crowd of attackers in no man’s land is the supreme image of this war. Attackers moved forward without seeking cover and were mowed down in rows with the mechanical efficiency of a scythe, like so many blades of grass.

“We were very surprised to see them walking,” wrote a German machine-gunner describing the British attack at the Somme.

“The officers went in front. I noticed one of them walking calmly, carrying a walking stick. When we started firing, we just had to load and reload. They went down in the hundreds. You didn’t have to aim, we just fired into them.”

In spite of the absurdity, futility and massive casualties that resulted, this way of fighting continued throughout the war’s duration. Most historians agree that the endless battles produced insignificant results apart from the monumental wastage of lives.

Writing about the first two years of the war, Eksteins says that the belligerents on the Western front “hammered at each other in battles that cost millions of men their lives but moved the front line at most a mile or so in either direction.”

Even the best historians are mystified, struggling to explain what was going on—the perpetual, senseless carnage. The problem is that their thinking is conventional. They assume nations were trying to “win” the war; a question of victory or defeat

When pressed to explain the suicidal battle-strategies, commentators claim Generals were held in thrall by an antiquated battle strategy, or that they "underestimated the power of the machine-gun." They often simply throw up their hands in despair flaccidly declaring that the Generals were “stupid.”

We move toward viewing warfare--not as an institution whose primary purpose is "conquest" or "winning," but as an occasion when a society sacrifices (kills) its own soldiers in the name of the nation.