Remember when the French went to field war in 1914 bearing the official costume with BRIGHT RED pants? Yeah you really forget about war when there is no war for a generation.
Well they did have unbeatable prices on this red taint from a producer in… Germany. Yup. Some people are actually good at war.
It’s not about forgetting about war. France was constantly at war from the fifty years preceding 1914 fighting colonial conflicts.
It’s about misunderstanding new technology notably machine guns or to be even more correct a military career structure and organisation which prevented people who understood new technologies and try to shake the boat to rise in ranks while putting conservative officers in control of the army.
It isn't as if there was no war for a generation. The Russo-Japanese war in 1904-5 was precisely the kind of brutal industrial conflict that foreshadowed the horrors of WWI almost to a T.
But Western powers were mostly unwilling to learn from such a distant war, and lessons learnt by junior officers who observed the carnage closely weren't taken seriously enough.
Well they did have unbeatable prices on this red taint from a producer in… Germany. Yup. Some people are actually good at war.