Any consensus on F 14?

[Volcano Man]

Actually, you hit the nail on the head. The mindset of 1914 was that the tactical level was largely irrelevant (it sounds strange but it is true). The emphasis was instead at the operational level where, because of the size of the armies, it was thought that tactical success could be negated by operational level maneuver. A good way to think of how this might have been true is to think of a division, brigade or battalion that meets with local success, but those successes are made null and void because a corps on the flank gave way or the flank was open and an enemy corps moved around it. So, theoretically, if you could maneuver the armies well enough then you could overcome any tactical setbacks that were occurring anywhere along the front.

As a matter of fact, it was widely accepted at the time that armies could lose many divisions or even corps in a campaign and this would play no huge impact on the outcome if operational maneuver was such that it could overcome the loss. Of course the more formations that are lost then the harder it would be to compensate for it at the operational level.

A good book to read is _Stormtroop Tactics: Innovation in the German Army, 1914-1918_ by Bruce Gundmundsson. He goes into eye raising detail in regards to the evolution of this train of through throughout the war and he does a good job showing how the whole way of thinking was turned on its head by the war's end when it was (ironically) the successes at the tactical level that were bringing about a result to the conflict - essentially the birth of modern warfare.