Mind if I ask a stupid question?
Why was the lining soldiers up the preferred method of battle? It just seems like a firing line. Wouldn't breaking the troops down into smaller, dispersed units have been more effective?
The closest example I can think of is that in open ground, with professional army vs. professional army, troops were thought of in the way we may think of armor columns and units today..
The large scale strategic maps of today with unit boxes and markers representing divisions etc. was scaled down in mentality to lines and formations of individual foot soldiers.
A lot of it was worldwide institutional idiocy.
A lot of it was also
pragmatic. We have to consider an era with single-shot weapons, bladed/melee weapons stil counted for a great number of battlefield casualties, and no motorized logistical train, or any industrial logistical base backing them up. There were also no communications better than line of sight semaphore. No telegraph, no telephone, no radio. Everything else was horse messenger/runner. So everyone had to be within audible command range for large units of men.
So a lot of those things like standing in ranks, and treating men like disposable cogs in formations made sense. In those days if an entire nation or side tried to fight a war with small unit movment tactics that the entire world has used since WWII, you'd quickly overstep your logistical chain, and command/control would dissolve almost instantly.
In limited circumstances small unit raiders/harrassers/snipers could cut a traditional formation to ribbons. But if you tried to fight an entire war that way, you'd outstrip your supply lines, and communication lines, or your ability to coordinate. So the one side that tried all small unit concealment/cover/manuver tactics would dissolve into a starving mob, while the other side still had an
army.
The absolute meat grinder of WWI was where everything changed. Radio, telephone, telegraph, and aircraft, modern artillery, and armor came into play, and fixed formation and trench paradigim of warfare finaly died. (The American Civil War was a hint of things to come, but not enough to change the paradigim)