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Since war is one of only two human endeavors whose purpose is the total destruction of an opponent's way of life (the other being marriage), it enjoys a special place in all our hearts. So why not talk about how it all works? About Me I'm the proud holder of a newly minted Master's Degree in Military History from Norwich University. My primary research projects focused mainly on the military history of Russia/USSR and so-called "Ways of War," but I'd be happy to delve into anything from the Atomic Bomb to the Hundred Years War, to Xenophon and the Ten Thousand. I love talking about this stuff, and I'd like to keep myself in good form as I go out for interviews! Why Military History? I tried Cultural History, but examining the History of the Penis just wasn't for me. Military History, on the other hand, offers interpretations of some of the most violent, disruptive, and ultimately significant events from our past. Plus, it's about guns, swords, cannons, phalanxes, legions, etc. Some might say, "Why waste your time on such barbaric nonsense?" Well, as the well-known aphorism goes, "Those who do not know history are doomed to repeat it." This article is a good introduction to the problem of widespread misunderstanding of humanity's military past. In my opinion, the currently fashionable concept of a "Western Way of War" is the direct result of poor understanding of both Western and non-Western Military History, and has had a truly tragic effect on the way Western nations have approached military conflicts in the recent past. So what are some possible topics? There are a lot of things to talk about here. Not all Military History involves the "pointy end of the stick." Logistics, technology, philosophy, and many other fields all play a part. Want to know why Rommel was basically doomed from the start in North Africa? How about why firearms were adopted in Europe more rapidly than in China, even though gunpowder was invented in the Orient? What was the Greater East Asia Co-Prosperity Sphere? Who's that Clausewitz guy Gene Hackman jokes about in Crimson Tide? It's all fair game. Full Disclosure There are some topics that I have developed strong opinions about, such as the aforementioned "Ways of War," as well as other subjects mostly related to the impact of culture on warfare. If one of these topics comes up, I will always declare my opinon in advance, then proceed to try and present both sides of the argument in a fair way. So ask away!
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Apr 28, 2010 15:36
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Okay, some really good questions here! Veor's question about the Revolution in Military Affairs is a rather sticky subject, so I'm going to wait until I have a little more time to delve into that one, but I'll answer some of the others right away. First, quote:I'd like to hear a third-party view on the border conflicts between Finland and Soviet Russia (Aunus expedition and the "kinship wars") in the aftermath of the first world war (1919 I believe) and how they are seen both in Russian/USSSR history context and western anti-bolshevik effort. The Heimosodat, or "Kinship Wars," between Finland and the newly formed Russian Soviet Federative Socialist Republic received little attention outside the actual area concerned, namely the Karelian Peninsula. In truth, most of the Western Powers of the time (Britain, France, and an emerging US) were perfectly happy to see some upstart Finns keep the Bolsheviks occupied. Indeed, they had little immediate impact even within the region itself, since all the gains made by Finland were basically annulled by the Treaty of Tartu in 1920. Because this string of what basically amounted to ethnic border disputes had no real bearing on Western Europe and the US, they are basically ignored here. In the Soviet Union, however, they eventually became very significant. The troubles along the Finnish border coincided exactly with a war between the Soviet Union and Poland. This war was of much more interest to Western powers, as it presented the Soviets with an opportunity to extend their influence right up to Germany's borders. Indeed, they almost did. It was only a dramatic battle outside Warsaw that eventually stopped the Red Army. In any case, the difficulties presented by these numerous border conflicts convinced some elements of the Soviet government that more attention needed to be paid to consolidating Communist power at home before further expansion was attempted. The growing power of this group eventually led to the downfall of Leon Trotsky and the rise of Josef Stalin. This change in emphasis from fomenting revolution across Europe to creating a Communist fortress in the Soviet Union itself was a turning point in the course of International Communism's development. Furthermore, the regional tensions persisted throughout the 20's and 30's, eventually erupting in the Winter War of 1939-1940. During this conflict, the Finns heroically resisted a Soviet invasion, basically stopping the Red Army dead in its tracks. This war saw the advent of the Molotov Cocktail, among other things. While the Soviet defeat was largely the result of inept leadership, Stalin and his cronies forced the military to completely revamp their tactical doctrines in favor of his "permanent operating factors." As a result, the Red Army was in a state of doctrinal chaos when Germany invaded in 1941. As to whether or not the Finns had any chance of succeeding, it's unlikely. The goal of the "Kinship Wars" was to unite ethnic Finns and free them from Russian oppression. Given the power of the Russian military even at that time, I doubt the Finns would have been able to retain the entire Karelian Peninsula had they been able to take it.
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Apr 28, 2010 20:34
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quote:I've watched the show "Deadliest Warriors" a few times and have often cringed at their "science". Deadliest Warrior is a show that I absolutely love to hate. Their tests are basically pointless, and their conclusions are no better. Even so, I'd be lying if I said I didn't get a kick out of it. Anyway, it's basically impossible to make meaningful comparisons between such widely varying combatants because they're taken entirely out of context. It's unlikely that anything like Teutonic Knights ever would have developed in mountainous Greece, while the Helot system that allowed Spartans to train so extensively for war never existed in Germany (unless you count Prussia). In any case, the disparity between different "ages" of weaponry can be misleading, as your allusion to Iraqi insurgents suggests. Using your example of Teutons vs. Spartans, cavalry, no matter how well armored, would be ineffective against the front end of a phalanx since horses will refuse to charge a solid object bristling with spear points. Against the flanks or rear, however, they would have a better chance. But, if the combat was taking place in Greece, the Spartans most likely would have positioned themselves between two impassable pieces of terrain to avoid such an event. Think Thermopolae. Even if the Teutons were able to get around the flanks, though, Spartans were renowned for their ability to seeminlgy flee in panic and then, as a cohesive unit, turn around and face a totally unprepared enemy. Could Spartan spears find chinks in German armor? Possibly, given the huge amounts of time Spartans devoted to training. Remember that the Huns and Mongols, both using primitive weapons and organization, were able to make mincemeat out of numerous European armies that were using all the latest military doodads like catapults and stirrups. This was because the nomadic steppe people practiced war as an extension of everyday life. They literally lived on their horses and needed to be expert archers to survive. It basically comes down to how well adapted a soldier is to his current combat environment.
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Apr 28, 2010 21:01
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quote:How does having the U.S. Army commander-in-chief being a civilian affect the logistics of U.S. involvement in wars? Civilian leadership of the military absolutely has an impact on how wars are prosecuted. For example, Franklin Roosevelt decided very early on that the primary focus of American involvement in World War II should be in Europe. This was despite the fact that, in military terms, Germany posed virtually no threat to the United States, while Japan had already dealt a near crippling blow and continued to defeat American forces throughout the Pacific. From a military standpoint, then, Japan was a much more immediate problem. Another thing to consider is that, in modern history anyway, military dictators are usually failures when it comes to military undertakings. Most of Hitler's victories occurred before he took direct control of the army. Stalin was an abysmal failure as a strategist and tactician. The military governments of Egypt and Syria were totally defeated by Israel in the Six Day War. Argentina's military junta fatally miscalculated in its invasion of the Falklands. Part of the reason for this is that military leaders often fail to grasp the overarching political situation. In Clausewitzian terms, war is an extension of politics by other means. In other words, if you don't have definite and realistic political goals, you won't be successful if you undertake an offensive war. BIAS ALERT As far as the United States' involvement in Iraq and Afghanistan, I think civilian leadership has certainly affected the progress of those conflicts. To begin with, the "War on Terror" is a civilian idea that doesn't make much sense. Terror is a tactic, nothing more. So, declaring a war on terror is akin to declaring a war on flanking. What are the actual political goals here? Has anyone really articulated them? Until some solid political goals, instead of vague ideas like freedom and democracy, are stated, it's not really possible to direct military effort effectively. As hard as it may be to believe, our political leaders have failed to do this.
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Apr 28, 2010 21:34
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INTJ Mastermind posted:What do you know about the border skirmishes between the PRC and Soviet Union during the Cold War years? The border tensions between China and the USSR actually began during the waning years of Imperial China. In 1915 Russia forced China to recognize the autonomy of Outer Mongolia. Although this treaty was formally renounced by the Bolsheviks when they came to power in 1919, they actually reiterated its terms in secret clauses of a new agreement. At the same time, they prompted the conversion of Outer Mogolia's government into a mirror of other Soviet states. Eventually it became the Mongolian People's Republic, and a Soviet satellite. During the early years of World War II, the USSR hammered out agreements with Japan that further diminished China's authority over its northern territories. These had largely to do with the puppet-state of Manchukuo that the Japanese had set up in mainland China, but the effect was that the Soviet Union made numerous inroads toward establishing further influence in Chinese territory. When Mao Zedong's communists gained control of China in 1949, he traveled to Moscow to meet with Stalin. At this meeting, the two leaders agreed to respect all former Sino-Russian and Sino-Soviet treaties, making changes "as needed." To Stalin, this meant that if there were no future negotiations, there could be no disputes. Mao, however, expected future talks to settle what he considered unresolved border demarcation problems, including the status of Mongolia. As the 50's progressed, the Soviet Union sided with India in its border dispute with China, thus increasing tensions. Furthermore, China's leadership strongly disapproved of Nikita Khrushchev's attempts at "peaceful coexistence" with the West. These disagreements culminated with the Sino-Soviet split of 1960, in which each government began to openly disagree with and criticize the other. Throughout the 1960's there were literally thousands of small border skirmishes in which China tried to reassert its control over historically Chinese territories, while the USSR did the same to cement its hold over them. Making matters worse, Leonid Brezhnev sent Soviet troops into Czechoslovakia in 1968, thereby signalling his willingness to interfere in, and even invade, other communist countries. So, by 1969 tensions were very high between the two nations. It was at this point that the storm broke. In March of 1969, a small contingent of Chinese soldiers invaded the Soviet controlled island of Zhenbao (Damansky to the Russians). After a brief skirmish, which left 20-30 Russian casualties, the Chinese retreated. The Soviets then retaliated two weeks later. In the ensuing nine hour battle, the Russians and Chinese fought back and forth across a frozen river until Russian artillery finally broke the Chinese formations. The Chinese retreated, having sustained some 800 casualties. This incident was to have significant consequences. The Chinese felt that their People's Liberation Army had fared much better than might have been expected, and therefore found new confidence in its abilities. They still doubted their chances in an all out war, however. So, who did they turn to for support? Yup, the good old United States. It was at this time that Richard Nixon decided that China was less of a threat than the USSR, and so China and the US decided to team up against poor old Leo Brezhnev. The result for the USSR was a real problem. The Russians now faced significant threats to both East and West, and found it necessary to triple their miitary presence along the Chinese border. This meant weakening their deployments in Eastern Europe, which subsequently meant greater a emphasis on new technologies was needed to make up the difference. This eventually played right into the hands of Ronny Raygun, who proceeded to taunt the USSR into spending more than it could sustain in a new arms race, thus hastening the fall of the Soviet Union.
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Apr 29, 2010 00:29
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Reset_Smith posted:What kind of horrifying, insanely gory stuff can you tell us about the American Civil War? And blood you shall have, as soon as I get a chance to look up some first hand accounts! As a quick glimpse of the nastiness of the Civil War, I can tell you that there were many instances where the fighting devolved into hand-to-hand combat. Men of course used their rifles as clubs, but biting, clawing, and eye-gouging were certainly not uncommon. There are multiple accounts of second and third wave assaults having to crawl their way up mounds of first wave corpses in order to assault enemy ramparts. Artillery craters, which offered some cover on the battlefield, were often filled with men hiding among the remains of their comrades who had been standing in the way of the incoming shell. Add to this the propensity of leaders on both sides to present nice, orderly lines of fresh meat to gunsights of the enemy, and you've got lots of gory mayhem!
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Apr 29, 2010 00:41
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BUCKET OF FARTS posted:What's your opinion of how awesome the British are. This is it, right here This also answers Omits-Bagels posted:war. what is it good for? Admiral Snackbar fucked around with this message at 00:56 on Apr 29, 2010 |
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Apr 29, 2010 00:54
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ThisButch Banner posted:Former history student myself, but never got a straight answer on this one. In the battle of Agincourt, could a British longbow actually penetrate a french full plate armour like traditional history books wants it to? Or was Englands victory owed to other factors? and this Lincoln posted:We always hear about the longbow being one of the greatest military leaps ever. What are some of the other less obvious ones? are somewhat related to this Veor posted:Describe the modern Revolution in Military Affairs as it applies to fighting insurgencies. so I'll try to give a comprehensive answer. I don't intend for this to be a specific response to Veor's question, which I'll try to provide soon, but rather as a general response to the idea of "Military Revolutions." I'll begin with the longbow. The most immediately impressive thing about a long bow is, in fact, its length, sometimes in excess of 6 feet. This allows an extraordinarily long draw on the string, which, in turn, enables very long arrows to be used. In contrast, a typical recurve bow spans about 4 feet, with a correspondingly shorter draw. The extended draw of the longbow resulted in a draw weight almost four times that of a typical recurve. Greater draw weight = greater range and speed of the arrow. These, combined with the increased mass of the arrow due to its greater length, resulted in a projectile that could, in fact, puncture plate armor of the time. So far, so good. An equally important factor in the longbow's construction, however, was its simplicity. A longbow is made from a single piece of wood, unlike a composite recurve which is made of a layer of horn, a layer of wood, and a layer of sinew. As a result, longbows are far easier to craft. Indeed, English archers often fashioned their own bows, since they were primarily huntsmen to begin with, and therefore accustomed to such necessities, but also because each bow had to be made to match its user's height. So, the longbow was a very effective and easily obtained weapon. Effective + Cheap = Great, like an AK-47. The downside to the longbow was that it was incredibly difficult to provide sustained fire since its use was very tiring. In order to compensate for this, large numbers of archers were necessary to provide constant volleys. Again, this was not too much of a problem for the English, since a large portion of the English male population learned to use the bow from a very young age. Given the fact that the longbow's design was not particularly remarkable, I think it goes without saying that it was not revolutionary. What was different was the way the English employed it. This new tactic was fundamentally a defensive one. It could not be used in the offense, since the basic formation was not a mobile one. Therefore, the English had to establish themselves on a hilltop and await an enemy attack in order to have any hope of success. Who would be stupid enough to fall for this, you ask? Why, The French, of course! Bound by the ideals of chivalry, heavily armed and armored French knights did not concern themselves with those lowly woodsmen to either side. No, they had their eyes on the real prize: the English nobles in the center! "Hey Pierre, if we charge right up the middle, we can capture ourselves some Riche Anglaises and ransom them for Beaucoup Euros!" "Oui Oui, Francois! They're not even on horses, so they can't run away!" "Alons-y!!" Well, those stubborn French knights did indeed charge up the middle and subsequently got slaughtered by arrows on many occasions, the three most famous of which were Crecy in 1346, Poitiers in 1356, and Agincourt in 1415. The funny thing is, on each of these occasions the English were actually on their way back out of France! Remember how I said that the English tactic was a purely defensive one? Well what happened was the English army would enter France on a Chevauchee, or large-scale raid. The French would wait to pursue the English until they were burdened down with all their newly acquired loot, and then try to catch them before they got back to English soil. Unfortunately this meant that the English army was almost always on the defensive when an encounter finally occurred! So basically the French pretty much shot themselves in the foot. And the head. Repeatedly. For a hundred years. Now what does this have to do with Military Revolutions (or Revolutions in Military Affairs in the modern lingo)? Well, from one point of view, it was the longbow that enabled the English to defeat numerically superior French forces on multiple occasions. Such victories would have been impossible without its use. The longbow's introduction to the battlefield therefore constituted a Revolution in the way battles, and therefore wars, were fought. Is this accurate? I don't think so. BIAS ALERT In my view, the longbow would not have made a lick of difference without the proper tactics, which were developed gradually over time. Twenty years went by between the first really purposeful use of English archers at Boroughbridge and the mature tactics used at Morlaix. A revolution that took twenty years? And remember that the longbow had already been in use by the peasantry long before its military use became widespread. This is where the idea of Military Revolutions becomes really problematic. If you really look into the component factors of different RMA's as they're sometimes called, you have to keep expanding the amount of time it took for these factors to actually mature into something "Revolutionary." Eventually, the Revolutions end up occurring over decades, or even centuries. Not much of a revolution, in my opinion. The Gunpowder Revolution is an excellent example of this, and one that I'm sure we'll hit on eventually. Admiral Snackbar fucked around with this message at 05:07 on May 10, 2012 |
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Apr 29, 2010 02:38
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Slo-Tek posted:Talk me some Battle of Tsushima Strait. Actually, the Wiki Page on this is pretty thorough. The only thing I would really hasten to add is that Tsushima was not really the first time an Oriental naval power surpassed a Western one. In the mid-1600's there was a Chinese pirate named Zheng Chinggong, or Coxinga, who maintained a personal fleet of more than 3,000 ships. Coxinga actually kicked the Dutch off the island of Taiwan and created his own pirate kingdom, which lasted only a short time after his death. Even so, his life gives lie to the idea of inherent Western military superiority in the early modern period. Jarlaxle posted:Is the concept of a "special forces" unit a fairly recent invention (as in, post-1800's or so) or does it go back further? If so, where did it get its start? Not trying to be a goony armchair green beret here, I just find the highly-trained small strike team a little more interesting than the usual rank & file of other units. "Special Forces" have actually been around as long as regular forces have. For example, if you take Homer's Iliad to be at least partially representative of actual events, the men stationed inside the Trojan Horse would qualify as "commandos," infiltrating an enemy stronghold and creating an opportunity for regular forces to prosecute a successful attack. A more certainly real example would be Thebes' Sacred Band. This was an elite group of 300 hoplites, arranged into 150 male-male couples. The idea here was that if each member of the group was the lover of another, he would be more compelled to fight fiercely in order to protect his mate. This group had a very impressive battle record, even defeating the Spartans at the Battle of Leuctra. DumbWhiteGuy posted:What are your thoughts on the conspiracy theory that the Allies knew Pearl Harbor was going to get attacked and let it happen in order to force America into the war? I don't know much about it but my friend was talking about it the other day so I'd like to see what you think. I think that if this was the case, it was a really dumb idea. If the point was to have an excuse to enter the war, the simple fact that the Japanese attacked would have been enough. Letting them cause such incredible damage to boot would not have been at all necessary, and would have constituted an enormous risk that was unlikely to be worthwhile. err posted:Who is the greatest military-tactician/leader in history? ODC posted:... how does this correlate with someone like Alexander the Great or Napoleon? Was the political goal total domination or was the ominous goal the reason for the failure? To some extent, Napoleon was similar. While there are some who would argue that his conquest of Europe was intended to form a sort of proto-"European Union", and therefore represents very forward political thinking, his invasion of Russia suggests otherwise. I think that he simply lost touch with political reality and embarked on a fool's crusade to satisfy his own ego.
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Apr 29, 2010 14:12
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Gabriel Pope posted:This is kind of a broad question, but what's your general opinion on the effectiveness of spear and pike tactics? It seems among a lot of casual strategy gamers that any sort of long pointy stick throughout the ages has a reputation as being what you handed out to your untrained peasants who weren't worth training with "real weapons", and if you mention anything about Switzers or tercios then you get the response "yeah well if pikes are so great how come Rome based its legions around swords " Is this attitude justified, or is it merely general sword fetishism? First off, Rome was not the only polity ever to establish an empire, so appealing to Roman practice is by no means a final answer to any question. Secondly, while spears are simpler and cheaper to manufacture than swords, their effective use depends just as much on solid training and tactics as a gladius. To examine the spear's effectiveness vis-a-vis the sword, let's approach this somewhat chronologically. The spear certainly appeared as a weapon long before the sword, since its construction can in fact be as simple as a "long pointy stick." Indeed, the spear has been ubiquitous throughout the world, in some form or another. So, given the ease with which spears can be constructed, the question is how best to employ them. Well, the problem with a spear is that it is really only effectively used in a stabbing motion. This limits offensive capability to one dimension: straight ahead from the wielder. Also, the wielder's sides are virtually unprotected. So, the somewhat obvious answer to the problem is to have a whole bunch of guys stand next to each other and hopefully extend your line beyond the ends of the enemy's line. As a bonus, if you make your spears a little longer, you can have two lines engaging the enemy! There are some significant constraints here. First, population is a concern. If you don't have enough men to extend your line further than the enemy's, you're probably going to be in trouble. Second, terrain can cause a problem. What if the battlefield is so narrow that both lines end up being the same length? How do you avoid a stalemate? These problems were addressed by different nations in different ways. The Persians, for example, simply conscripted enormous slave armies in order to guarantee numerical superiority. This was possible because they were situated in a highly populated region, and had been able to subdue numerous smaller populations, thus providing a large pool of manpower. The Greeks, however, had no such luxuries. The mountainous terrain of Greece virtually assured narrow battlefields, and individual poleis rarely had large surpluses of manpower. So, the Greeks focused on perfecting the cohesive othismos, or "push." This meant that when two phalanxes met, they would literally try to push each other off the battlefield. Of course, the pushing was always accompanied by stabbing, bashing, biting, kicking, and whatever else it took. In any case, unit depth and cohesion were the primary factors here. A phalanx that was not able to function as a solid unit would not be able to maintain the osthismos and would likely disintegrate, allowing the individual members to be quickly pursued and slaughtered. This version of spear-based phalanx warfare persisted for centuries in Greece, and was responsible for the major Greek victories at Platea and Marathon against much larger Persian armies. The phalanx, however, had not yet reached its full potential. The king of a backwater greek polis, namely Philip II of Macedon, began to build a new type of army based on the phalanx. First, he used a new type of spear, the sarissa, which was 14 feet long compared to the typical 6 to 9 foot hoplite spear. This allowed Philip's phalangites to make contact with the enemy with near impunity. However, it greatly reduced their tactical mobility since maneuvering such a weapon was very difficult. Philip also added the important element of cavalry to his army. Thus, the Macedonian phalanx would approach the enemy in a straight line, pin him down by attacking while still out of his reach, and wait for the cavalry to swing around the enemy's exposed flanks. The phalanx no longer represented the real offensive strength of the army, but rather was the anvil to the cavalry's hammer. This was the army used by Philip's son, Alexander the Great, to subdue the mighty hordes of the Persian Empire within the course of a decade. So, spear based tactics are obviously not something to be blown off. Now let's examine the Roman legions. First, it's important to understand that the Roman Legion was not some type of immutable ultimate war machine. The legions changed their makeup and tactics over time just like any other military force. In its earliest form, it actually resembled a Greek hoplite phalanx, though probably less expert in its activities. Over time, Rome gradually subdued its neighbors with this phalanx and added their manpower to its own strength. This was a very important factor that differentiated Rome from other polities, but I don't want to go too far into it here. More to the current point, the legions began to change from a strictly spear-based unit to a more flexible organization based on maniples. The exact organization and use of maniples is not known, but we do know that there were three primary types of manipular soldier: The Hastatus (pl. hastati), the youngest and most lightly armed; the Princeps (pl. principes), older and more heavily armed; and the Triarius (pl. triarii), the oldest and most heavily armed veterans. It is relevant to point out that the Triarii were considered the backbone of the army, and still wielded spears as their primary weapon. Indeed, if a battle went so badly that even the triarii were hard pressed, it was considered to be a desperate situation, which gave rise to the Roman saying, "It has come down to the triarii." So, back to the actual maniples. These were tactical subdivisions of the legion that were capable of basic individual action. So, rather than having one large mass of men, the Roman legion was divided into smaller, more flexible units. This meant that the entire legion did not need to engage the enemy simultaneously, but rather could constantly reinforce itself while withdrawing fatigued units. It also allowed flanking maneuvers. This ability gave the legions an important advantage over the Greek phalanx, as exhibited at the battle of Cynoscephalae in 197 BC. In this battle, a mid-ranking Roman officer noticed a weakness in the Greek phalanx and immediately took several maniples around the phalanx's side to exploit it. This ultimately caused the phalanx to fall apart and be totally defeated. The important thing to note here is that it was organization and tactical flexibility, not any particular weapon, that led to the Roman victory. Indeed, the familiar Roman legion consisting of thousands of men all identically armed with a gladius and scutum (shield) did not develop until the Marian Reforms of about 107 BC, almost a century after the Romans had conquered much of the Mediterranean basin. Even then, the legionaries carried short spears called pila which were thrown at the enemy before hand-to-hand contact was made. So it is clear that spears played an important part in the victories of the Republican legions. It is also important to note that it was these same armies of the Republic, not the Empire, that added the largest portions of the Mediterranean to the Roman hegemony. The fact is that an army's organization must match its circumstances and environment in order to be viable. If the terrain is primarily flat fields bounded by rough impassible terrain, such as Greece, Switzerland, or the spaces between small villages in Early Modern Europe, tightly packed units of spearmen will function quite adequately. In fact, the Byzantine, or Eastern Roman, Empire employed special units of spearmen called menavlatoi for the duration of its existence, right up to 1453. If, however, the terrain is less regular, such a body will fall apart during the course of a battle. There is no inherent strength or wekaness that is always in effect.
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Apr 29, 2010 17:11
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Ensign Expendable posted:Could you give a brief (or maybe not so brief) overview of how infantry doctrines changed between the creation of rapid-firing firearms, through WWI and up to the end of WWII? Maybe tanks too, in case my existing knowledge has gaping holes I'm not aware of. I'm not sure how brief I can make this, but I'll do my best. The introduction of breech loading rifled firearms to the battlefield in the mid-1800's created a tactical dilemma that was well recognized at the time. Casualties during the Crimean War and the American Civil War were quite horrendous, and proportionally far higher than in the period of the Ancien Regime, when smoothbore muskets ruled the field. By the time of the Franco-Prussian War (1870-1871), the appearance of the American Gatling Gun and the similar French mitrailleuse increased the rapidity with which these casualties occurred. For example, at the battle of Mars-la-Tour in 1870, a Prussian battalion lost all its officers and over 600 men, almost 75% of its strength, in about 15 minutes. If you do the math, that's about 2800 casualties per hour, or 45 per minute (almost one per second). This obviously had serious repercussions. Not only were entire units quickly chewed up and spit out, but the men that remained experienced serious psychological effects. Some men experienced what came to be called "Nerve Attenuation Syndrome" (shell shock) during World War I, losing all ability to act decisively. Others became raging berserkers, full of battle frenzy and rage. In either case, unit cohesion was jeopardized, making further action very difficult. While infantry weapons' range and accuracy improved, so did that of the artillery. Eventually, artillery batteries were able to actually fire on each other, a situation that had been somewhat rare previously. This presented a tactical dilemma: if a battery stopped firing at its enemy counterpart long enough to support friendly infantry, it risked annihilation itself. Two solutions to the twin problems of infantry and artillery fire were developed. On one hand, infantry units were made more independent and dispersed across wider areas. This reduced the need for artillery support, and also reduced the rate at which casualties were incurred. Unfortunately, it also presented serious problems in terms of coordination. On the other hand, coordination was emphasised, meaning meticulously organized actions were expected. Thus, an artillery barrage was timed to fall just before a massed infantry assault began, so that the enemy artillery would hopefully be overrun before it had a chance to respond. Obviously, this required clockwork precision and excellent communication, both in a time before digital watches or radios. In Germany, these two camps became known as Normaltaktik (standard tactics) and Auftragstaktik (mission-based tactics). The former was well suited to large conscript forces, while the latter depended on well-trained units and leaders who were used to working together. In accordance with the Auftragstaktik principle, German artillery batteries were gradually decentralized throughout the 1890's so that they would have a better opportunity to coordinate directly with local infantry commanders. Local subordinate commanders were encouraged to act on their own initiative. The idea was to be able to achieve a local artillery superiority which would then be used to support an infantry assault. Unfortunately, these efforts were severely hampered by existing commuications technology. Although Aufstragtaktik was a promising idea, a real solution to the industrialized killing fields of the late 1800's was still elusive. The Boer War of 1899-1902 was a grim foreshadowing of what was to come in the approaching Great War. (As an aside, it was during the Boer War that Lord Robert Baden-Powell noticed the poor physical condition of many new British army recruits. Upon his return to England, his solution to the problem was to found the Boy Scouts, as a way to inure young boys to the rigors of outdoor life.) Some went so far as to say that the increasingly inhuman environment of the modern battlefield would soon make war virtually impossible, since no man would be able to bear its stress. Such feelings were, in fact, not limited to the realm of warfare. A general feeling of unease in the presence of technological innovations such as airplanes, motorcars, and telephones manifested itself in the art and literature of the day. For example, the well-known painting The Scream of Nature by Edvard Munch was produced during this period. In music, the Second Viennese School, led by Arnold Schoenberg, was seeking out ways to expand traditional tonality, sometimes producing strange and unsettling sonorities such as in Schoenberg's opera Erwartung and later Igor Stravinsky's Rite of Spring. Anyway, back to guns. This period saw significant advances in metallurgy and recoil handling mechanisms, allowing automatic infantry weapons greater range and speed, and artillery guns to become firmly and safely entrenched. Smokeless powder was also introduced. The result was what many professionals called the "void of the battlefield," where soldiers dispersed over a wide area, concealed in camouflaged positions and drab-colored clothing, and firing smokeless weapons were virtually invisible. “The soldier who cannot see his enemy,” remarked one military theorist, “ends up seeing him everywhere.” In short, offensive action was becoming far more difficult as weapons technology progressed. In response to this trend, some theorists began to push the idea that morale could overcome technical difficulties. This was the view of one Ferdinand Foch, Marshal of the French army. His name will be important later. On the strategic end of things, men like Alfred von Schlieffen believed that advancing technology could be used to break the increasing advantage of the defense. By using large strategic movements, enabled by burgeoning railroad networks, entire armies could outmaneuver entrenched foes, forcing them to relocate and thereby make themselves vulnerable. In accordance with this idea, von Schlieffen crafted what has become a byword for overplanned and poorly executed military operations, namely, the Schlieffen plan. In short, the idea was that a German army invading France could pull a really neat trick on the Frogs. In the South, a credibly large force would distract the French army, pinning it in place. Meanwhile, a larger and more powerful force would advance via rail through Belgium and the Netherlands, eventually cutting across northern France. Then, the Northern army would swing South like a gate, advancing on Paris and the rear of the distracted main French force. The key to this plan was meticulous attention to detail. Train schedules, logistics charts, and quartermaster's tables all had to be incredibly accurate, with no room for error. If it worked, it would work big. In the actual event, when the Schlieffen plan was executed in a modified form at the beginning of World War I, several problems developed. First, because they depended on rail for transport, German units became far less mobile when they moved away from actual rail lines. This drastically slowed their progress. Second, because of the principals of Aufstragtaktik, several decisions were made at division level that ultimately forced the German army to slow down and eventually stop. At that point, the German and French armies began a race toward the English channel, each hoping to make it there first so they could outflank the other. The result was the infamous trench warfare that is so well known. At this point, mobility was out the window, and the true power of the defense was in play. Assaulting across the dead wastes between the trenches was usually suicidal in the face of fortified machine guns, land mines, and artillery. Still, good old Marshall Foch, that paragon of French military thought, believed that if his soldiers really wanted it bad enough, they could storm the German lines successfully. Nope, not really. I know this post is long and drawn out, so I'll leave it here for now and continue with the development of Kommando units and tanks at another time. Sorry if this one was a bit tedious.
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Apr 29, 2010 23:42
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Kingsbury posted:How did nuclear weapons fit into the military doctrines of the US/Soviet Union during the cold war? This is one of my favorite topics, so I'm going to temporarily skip over some other questions to answer it. The first thing to be aware of is that Russian military doctrine encompassed an entire level of warfare that was little understood by Western nations. This was called Operational Warfare, or Deep Operations. To understand Deep Operations, you have to really think about geography. In most of Europe, the terrain is cut up by rivers, mountain ranges, and urban areas. This means that strategic movements tend to be rather short and to the point. Not so in Mother Russia. There, there are literally hundreds of kilometers of open land, just waiting to be crossed by a motivated armed force. So, in Western Europe during World War II, there was a lot of starting and stopping. One objective would be achieved, the gains would be consolidated, and preparations would be made for the next advance. The only real exception to this was Patton. In the East, however, once the Russian steamroller started, you were in big trouble. Here's how it worked. Russian forces would be built up in several areas in order to keep the enemy guessing as to where the attack would come, and what the objective was. Next, a tremendous artillery barrage would rip a gigantic hole through the German line. This would obviously give away the intended attack zone, but it didn't really matter since there was such disruption. There's a reason the Russians call artillery "The God of War." Next, a strong armored force of tanks and motorized infantry would race through the hole toward their objective. This all seems simple enough, but it didn't end there. This advance was in fact only a preparation for another one that would begin immediately after the first objective had been secured. Thus, another strong armored force would rush past the first one, forcing the enemy to remain engaged and not allowing him any rest. This would continue until the attackers became exhausted. The best example of this technique was Operation Bagration in 1944. Within the course of two months, the Red Army cleared Belorussia and Poland of German forces, advancing 400 miles with 1.7 million men. It was by far the largest single Allied undertaking of the war. Why don't more people know about it? Because there were no Americans involved. So why could the Russians do this when no one else could? Partially because of geography, but also because of the way they reinforced their units. Basically, in Western armies there is a desire to keep established units intact. For example, the 1st Infantry Division, the Big Red One, has a long and proud history. When such a unit has lost a certain number of its men, it is withdrawn from combat and refilled with replacements, thus keeping it continually in service, if not always in combat. Russian replacements work differently. Suppose your unit is in the first wave of the Russian attack. All your buddies are killed except for you and 17 other guys. What was once the elite 263rd Guards Rifle Division is now not even the size of a platoon. Do you get a chance to rest and remember your fallen comrades? Nope. When the 117th Motor Rifle Battalion passes through your little combat zone, they're going to incorporate you and your 17 friends into their ranks, thereby increasing their own strength. Do they care that you're tired? No. Do they care that you're out of ammo? Well, you've been standing here surrounded by the corpses of your former divison mates, why haven't you found some? All that matters is that you're alive and still have enough fingers to hold a rifle and squeeze the trigger. Really, that doesn't even matter as much as the fact that you can soak up some of the enemy's inbound ordnance and give the follow up units a better chance. And so it goes. Damaged units are absorbed into fresh ones and the attack goes on. And on. Now how does this tie into nuclear (please God, don't say nookyaler) weapons? Well, whereas US theorists saw nuclear weapons as an extension of strategic bombing, in other words, as a way to attack the enemy populace and force capitulation, the Soviets saw it as a really awesome new form of artillery. "Just imagine, Sergei: if we deliver just one single atomic device into their lines, our entire 43rd Shock Army could pass right through the hole, for the Motherland!" "But what about the radiation, Pyotr? Won't it harm our troops, too?" "It won't matter, we won't be there long enough for it to have any effect on their fighting ability." In accordance with this, while the US was building strategic nuclear devices and aiming them at Soviet cities, the Russkies were building tactical devices and deploying them with their ground forces. Over time, the Red Army began developing radiation-proof vehicles such as the BMP in order to safely transport their troops through irradiated areas. Since the US saw nuclear action as the last possible option, they did not develop such vehicles. This disparity in doctrine was one of the main reasons it took so long for the two sides to finally agree to arms limitation talks. The Soviets really thought that they could use tactical nuclear weapons in an otherwise conventional war and come out on top. How did this affect war plans in Europe? Well, the Soviets continued to grow the enormous armored force that they had developed before and during World War II. The armored capability of the Red Army was several times that of their NATO counterparts. In addition, as mentioned above, they incorporated tactical nuclear weapons into their armies. The idea was that if things ever came to blows, the Soviet armored divisions would race across the North German Plain and through the Fulda Gap as quickly as possible, using nukes if necessary, brushing aside NATO resistance and reaching the Rhine at the earliest opportunity. It didn't matter what their losses were as long as they were able to occupy the rest of Germany. They figured that once the Western Powers saw that all was lost, they would agree to terms without resorting to the nuclear option (the real one, not the half-assed political game referred to in modern Congressional proceedings). NATO, on the other hand, recognized the fact that it stood little chance in a direct confrontation with the tanks of the Red Army. Instead, they intentionally kept their European forces somewhat weak. By doing this, they made it obvious that their best response to a Soviet invasion could only be the use of nuclear weapons against Soviet cities. So, they hoped to deter the Reds from attacking. What drove NATO leaders nuts was the fact that Soviet theorists didn't really see what the big deal was. "Okay, so if we invade, you'll shoot nukes at us. So what? We're ready for that." The first hint that the Soviets were beginning to come to terms with the broader implications of strategic nuclear war was during the Cuban missile crisis, when Khrushchev actually backed down rather than risk nuclear exchange. Still, this was almost 20 years after nuclear weapons had made their debut, and really fundamental changes didn't come to Soviet doctrine until after the Strategic Arms Limitations Treaties and the Anti Ballistic Missile Treaty of the 70's. One reason for this was the fact that even into the early 80's, the Soviet military was still dominated by World War II commanders. The same ones who had achieved such huge successes through the use of massive artillery bombardments and overwhelming armored formations.
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Apr 30, 2010 00:52
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College Rockout posted:What are some of the more interesting battles that you've studied? The Battle of Caanae and Hannibal are incredibly interesting to me. Can you comment on him? Was he the only reason that Carthage managed to survive as long as it did? I understand this is broad, I'm really just looking for some interesting stuff on Hannibal. Also, Scipio Africanus is a badass name. Interestingly enough, it's not really surprising that Carthage lasted so long, but rather that Rome did. To understand this, it's necessary to be somewhat familiar with common practices in ancient warfare, and how the way the Roman military did things differed from these practices. First, there's the simple matter of what constituted a military victory in the ancient Mediterranean. An interesting example for this question is a curious little episode that occurred in Greece sometime during the 5th Century BC at a place called Thyrea. At the time, there was a political dispute between the poleis of Sparta and Argos. Each city sent an army to duke it out at Thyrea. Upon arriving at the field, the two commanders decided to spare the majority of their men's lives by allowing 300 champions from each side to decide the matter. The rest of the armies would leave so as not to be tempted to enter the fray if their side was losing. After a long and exhausting fight, there were two Argives and one Spartan left on the field. The Argives, figuring they had obviously won the encounter, rushed home to let everyone know. The solitary Spartan, however, remained to strip the dead of their armor and erect a monument. He then returned to his appointed post on the field and awaited the return of his army. When the two armies did return, they disputed who the actual victors were. The Argives argued that they could easily have killed the single remaining Spartan if they wanted to, so they were clearly the winners. The Spartans argued that the Argives had not done so, but rather had fled the field, leaving the lone Spartan victorious. In the end, the two armies clashed, thus negating the whole point of the original exercise, and the Spartans emerged as the unambiguous victors. From this example, it is clear that ancient battles were not really fought with the purpose of annihilating the enemy. Rather, a single limited engagement was fought as an almost symbolic action in order to decide a political matter. Whoever won the single encounter won the argument. The end. At Thyrea, only the vague nature of the original fight's finale caused the larger armies to clash. Had the Argives killed the last remaining Spartan, there would have been no doubt, and likely no larger battle. That's how things worked for hundreds of years in the Northern Mediterranean, including both Greece and Italy. Except for Rome. Rome wouldn't accept defeat, opting instead to keep raising new armies until the enemy gave up. That's what happened to Pyrrhus of Epirus when he tried to conquer Italy in the early 3rd Century BC. This unusual capacity to keep taking punishment is what allowed the Romans to ultimately defeat one of the greatest tacticians in history, namely Hannibal Barca. That, and the fact that Hannibal was a really crappy strategist. As one of his lieutenants remarked, Hannibal knew how to win a victory, but not what to do with it. So, Hannibal enters Italy after crossing the Alps (a notable thing to do , but not necessarily wise since he lost a significant portion of his army) and proceeds to whip the Roman army in two successive encounters at the Trebia River and Lake Trasimene, the latter being the worst ambush suffered by a Roman army for the next 150 years. The Romans lost nearly 45,000 men between these two battles, which happened only a few months apart. The road to Rome was now open, and the Roman people were in a panic. They elected a new dictator named Quintus Fabius Maximus, who proceeded to shadow Hannibal's movements around Italy, eventually earning himself the nickname Cunctator, or Delayer. What did this do? Well, since Fabius was always very close to Hannibal's army, it meant that Hannibal could not undertake a siege of any Roman cities without inviting an attack, and also had severe supply problems since Fabius pursued a scorched earth policy. As a result, the two armies wandered around Italy for quite some time, since Hannibal could not find a way to force Fabius into battle. When Fabius' term as dictator came to an end after a year, his strategy was abandoned in favor of a new offensive against Hannibal. Fabius was succeeded by two new consuls, Gaius Terentius Varro and Lucius Aemilius Paullus. Varro absolutely had his heart set on confronting Hannibal directly, and convinced the senate to raise a new army of 80,000 men in 8 legions, an unprecedented size. Normally, a Roman army consisted of 2 legions under one consul's command. This left the other consul in Rome itself to continue with civilian administration. Thus, this army was roughly four times the size of a typical one of the time, and was led by each consul on alternating days in order to preserve the balance of power between them. When Varro finally got his chance to fight Hannibal, it was at a place call Cannae in 216 BC. At this battle, Hannibal achieved the impossible - he managed to surround a numerically superior force (he only had about 56,000 men) and subsequently annihilated it. The carnage was so awful that many of the Roman soldiers tried to dig holes to hide in, tearing their fingernails off in the process. Others suffocated after being trapped under mounting piles of corpses. Close to 50,000 Romans and their allies died that day. (I always think of numbers like these when fits are thrown over the loss of 2-3 soldiers a day in the Middle East. While I certainly don't think the loss of human life is ever a trifling matter, just compare the two.) Now, any normal city would have been absolutely cowed by the loss of its greatest army ever, one of its ruling executives, and about 1/5 of the male population of military age, and given up immediately. Rome stunned everyone by doing the opposite. It actually assigned the survivors of Cannae to service in Sicily as punishment for leaving the field! Indeed, the word "peace" was not allowed to be spoken in Rome, and women were forbidden from crying in public over the loss of husbands or sons. Thus, even after one of the most lopsided losses of all time, Rome refused to admit defeat, and simply went back to the delaying tactics of Fabius. Eventually, they were able to send an army in an end run around Hannibal, directly to the shores of Carthage itself, where Scipio Africanus finally defeated Hannibal at Zama.
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Apr 30, 2010 16:38
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PlasticPaddy posted:With the amount of war you've pored over, do you feel a slight disconnect with current conflicts? That is to say,do you look at them more as a object to study as opposed to something horrific? I don't think I do. I mean, I've never been anywhere near a war, and I hope never to be, so I guess I've never really been "connected" to war in any real way. Still, when I'm reading accounts of different battles and such, one thing that is always foremost in my mind is that these are stories about people killing each other. The political motives, technologies and weapons used, tactics, strategies, etc., never change that fact. Knowing what I do about the effort that goes into war and the typical results, it does amaze me that some people, mostly politicians, approach it so lightly. For example, when the US Congress swore that they had been hoodwinked into war in Iraq by George W, all I could think was, "Really? You really thought it was going to be nice and easy?" Spartan421 posted:Did anyone consider an amphibious landing in the West like Gallipoli in order to outflank the trenches during WWI? Was it the naval stalemate that prevented such an idea? Yeah, the naval situation in World War I is almost laughable. In the years before the war, Germany and Britain were trying to really outdo each other by building big shiny new Dreadnaughts. They dumped so much money into these ships that they didn't want to risk losing them, so each navy only sortied once during the war. The result was the Battle of Jutland, which both sides claimed as a victory. After that, though, ships stayed safely in port. Super Pope posted:What are your opinions on the Invasion of Poland in 1939? What major factors lead to Poland's defeat? Was there any chance for Poland to NOT lose? Was Poland really militarily inferior? Poland in 1939 was pretty much screwed from the start, and not through any fault of their own. Despite popular myth, the Polish army was not still dependent on horse-mounted cavalry and such, but rather a pretty capable force. Unfortunately, Poland simply had the bad judgement to place itself between two expansionist dictatorships: Germany and the USSR. Given the strategic impossibility of preparing adequate defenses to both East and West, Poland really didn't have much of a chance. BIAS ALERT What really sucked was that Britain and France had guaranteed Polish sovereignty and then reneged on their promise. If I was Polish I'd still be a little upset over that one. Admiral Snackbar fucked around with this message at 12:34 on May 2, 2010 |
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Apr 30, 2010 17:19
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Baloogan posted:...IJA's generals were in China from 31 to 41, and with no victory in sight they decided to go after even bigger countries. How dumb is that?... To understand this, we need to talk a bit about the Greater East Asia Co-Prosperity Sphere and the origins of Japan's position as a world power. In 1905, Japan handed Russia its rear end during the Russo-Japanese War. The Battle of Tsushima mentioned in a previous post was part of this war. This represented the first time an Oriental nation had indisputably beaten a European power. Even so, the Western world was loathe to recognize Japan as a regional power, much less a global one, as evidenced by the Washington Naval Conference. As a result, Japan felt at least a little bit insulted. Even so, the Japanese decided to keep the Imperialism ball rolling by siding against Germany in World War I. "What does that matter," you ask, "Germany's in Europe and Japan is in a mystical grotto outside the bounds of the real world. What could Japan possibly do to Germany?" It was important because Germany had significant land holdings in China. At the end of the war, Japan claimed these lands along with those formerly held by the now defunct Russian Empire. The puppet state of Manchukuo was created out of these new holdings. Japan now had a foothold in China, one that it intended to expand. Using the Mukden Incident as an excuse, Japan invaded Manchuria in 1931. Why did they do this? Well, in a way racism was the reason. Japan saw itself as the liberator of Asia, chasing out the Europeans who had colonized the region over the past few centuries. This was all well and good except for the fact that Japan itself lacked enough natural resources to pursue its crusade. Where could they get the necessary ore, rubber, oil, etc.? That's right, China. So, in order to free Asia from European interlopers, Japan needed to become a conqueror itself (not that it really minded such a responsibility). Unfortunately, the going was not quite as easy as the Japanese generals had hoped. One interpretation of the Rape of Nanking is that the Japanese army was essentially venting its frustrations of the Chinese populace. So how did the Japanese get all wrapped up in World War II while it was still working on subduing China? Well, one of the most important European powers in East Asia was Britain, which made them Japan's natural enemy. Britain and the US were allies, however, which made tensions between Japan and the US increase. Knowing that the US was basically the only real threat to Japanese power (since Britain had its hands full elsewhere), Japan figured it had to remove the possiblity of US intervention in its "liberation" scheme. First they tried to do this economically by creating the Greater East Asia Co-Prosperity Sphere. All this was was a thinly veiled attempt to present Japanese-occupied territories as independent nations all working together to strengthen Asia. Nobody was fooled. The US continued to threaten severe economic sanctions that could potentially cripple the Japanese war effort. That being the case, the Japanese high command decided to forcibly remove the United States from the Pacific Rim Power Grabbing Game. To do this, they intended to wipe out the United States' Pacific fleet in one decisive blow - at Pearl Harbor. To be sure, the Japanese had no intention of carrying out an extended war with the US. They meant to carry out a single strike that would prevent the US from ever interfering in Asia. The Japanese did not want to invade the US or anything like that. In their minds, the attack on Pearl Harbor would begin and end the conflict all at once.
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Apr 30, 2010 18:44
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Iron Squid posted:In hindsight, was it a mistake for the Empire to put all its eggs in one basket by constructing the Death Star? Surely such an undertaking cost the Empire a lot of resources which probably could have been better used had they been spread out? This is clearly the case, but the situation is not as simple as it seems on the surface. While it is easy to blame the Empire itself for what looks to be a gross misallocation of resources, the truth is that there were two independent problems with the Death Star Project, only one of which was the amount of resources devoted to construction. The other problem was the approach taken in deploying the two Fully Armed and Operational Battle Stations. In addressing the first problem, some brief historiography is necessary. In the immediate aftermath of the disastrous events at Yavin IV and Endor it was widely accepted that the Empire itself was responsible for the decision to build these weapons and, in doing so, subject the economies of numerous star systems to unbearable economic stress. While this blame at first seems reasonable, it must be remembered that such accusations could very likely have been propagated by the group of freedom fighters led by Luke Skywalker. Such a situation would not be unexpected, as any propoganda tactics that would serve to discredit the Imperial government would no doubt have been used by these Rebel Scum. Indeed, over the last 5 to 10 years new documents have come to light suggesting that the initial work on the super weapons was already well underway during the Republic's waning years. It should be remembered that the former was the very same governmental body that Skywalker and his cohorts were striving to reincorporate; therefore, he and his Rebel Friends would have every reason to divert attention away from the Republic's responsibility and place the blame squarely on the Empire's shoulders. Nor should it be overlooked that noted insurgent leader Obi Wan Kenobi, as well as Skywalker's own father, were high ranking officers in the employ of the Republic, and may themselves have had some involvement with the Death Star project. Some have argued that although the Death Star's planning and initial construction probably began during the late years of the Republic, the government itself should not be held responsible since there were numerous quasi-independent political factions operating separately from the legitimate government at the time. However, given the size and scope of the project, the Senate, if not directly responsible for the project, must have either ignored evidence of its existence, in which case they were grossly negligent, or known of its existence and given tacit consent, in which case they were complicit. Either way, it is clear that the Republican government, not the Empire itself, was responsible for either permitting or ordering the initial devotion of large quantities of capital and material to a project of questionable utility. Further adding to the evidence of Republican responsiblity is the rather curious lack of attention paid to certain common-sense safety measures on the stations, such as adequate catwalk railings or sufficiently well protected exhaust ports. Such oversights are clear indications of design-by-committee, and all too representative of a stale democratic government's way of doing things. Indeed, it was precisely the propensity of the Senate to allow such goings-on that prompted Chancellor Palpatine to assume dictatorial powers to try and straighten out the whole mess. While the Empire was obviously not immediately responsible for the initiation of the project, it did allow construction to continue through to completion. Why was this? There are likely two reasons. First, the transition from Republican to Imperial government structures was not immediate. It was, in fact, not until after the first Death Star had been completed that the last remnants of the Old Republic had been swept away. The length of time necessary for this change was attributed to the fact that mid-level members of government continually insisted that the local bureaucracy was necessary to maintain control. Indeed, transcripts from high-level military planning sessions suggest that even some military leaders felt this way, although the sentiment was probably not too widespread. Thus, during this period of flux, large bureaucratic programs such as the Death Star would have been very difficult to simply terminate since Emperor Palpatine had his hands full with innumerable similar problems. The second reason would be that, given the advanced state of the project at the time that Palpatine assumed the principate, it may have been more expensive to deconstruct the stations than to complete them. Although records from the period are incomplete, it is clear from the close proximity in time between the battles of Yavin and Endor that the second Death Star must have been under construction before the first was even deployed. Therefore, its construction was also likely beyond the point of no return, so to speak. The second problem, that of the Death Stars' deployment, is more directly attributable to the Imperial Navy and even the Emperor himself. That the Death Star design was out of place in the Imperial Navy is something of an understatement. Although the Navy certainly had a penchant for gigantism, it never strayed too far from the idea that their weapons of war should be simple and easily mass produced. The TIE series of fighters, interceptors, and bombers, for example, while they did not necessarily excel at local space superiority, were sufficiently ubiquitous to allow the Empire to at least disrupt, if not necessarily defeat, many Rebel undertakings. Considering the limited resources available to the Pitiful Little Band, had the Empire remained true to this strategy of gradual attrition it would significantly have increased its chances of ultimate victory. Likewise, the Imperial II class of Star Destroyer was quite capable of causing problems for even a moderately sized Rebel task force. The sudden shift, then, from widespread attritional strategy to focused annihilation is rather confusing. This is particularly the case when one considers the fact that by tightening their grip upon one star system at a time, the Imperial Navy would most likely have let many others slip through their fingers. While the fundamental reasons for the Empire's shift in strategy remain a mystery, it is still clear that the Emperor and his officers made some rather naive mistakes in their use of the Death Stars. In the first case, the Death Star's attack on the Rebel Base at Yavin IV suffered from an unforgivable dirth of battlefield reconnaissance. Had even the most basic survey of the Yavin system been made prior to the Death Star's arrival, its approach could have been calculated to come from the same side of Yavin IV as the Rebel-held moon. Instead, the lack of reconnaissance caused the Death Star to approach from the opposite side, thus lengthening the time required to position itself properly, and ultimately providing the Rebels with a perfect opportunity to drive an attack home. In the second case, the Emperor himself made a critical error by personally overseeing the final stages of construction. Apparently unfamiliar with the dangers inherent in exposing himself to attack, Palpatine insisted on being present on the occasion of his ultimate triumph, despite objections from his closest advisors. One witness even describes the the occasion of the Emperor's announcement, whereupon Lord Vader was said to have responded, "I have a baaad feeling about this." In any case, the Emperor's overconfidence was his undoing.
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Apr 30, 2010 23:42
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I hope that Death Star post didn't scare people away - I didn't really mean it as one of these, but rather as a satirical example of how much of history is simply interpretation based on incomplete facts. We should all keep this in mind if ever we hear someone talking about "historical fact." History isn't fact, it's interpreting facts. Anyway, on with the show:Dantu posted:Have you read "The Blitzkrieg Myth", if so what did you think of it? Adams' book, The Best War Ever, discusses Americans' group memory of World War II and compares it to fact. For example, Americans think the war was fought for freedom and racial equality, but the US military was still a segregated organization. We tend to think of GI's as young, honest, pure boys fighting for good old fashioned American values, yet in the Italian campaign cases of venereal disease outnumbered combat injuries. In addition, many of today's social and economic problems have their roots in the war years, as a huge proportion of the young adult male population was shipped off to fight overseas. In short, as Adams writes, "When nostalgia drives us to depict war as a golden age in our cultural development...we trivialize the event by slighting the suffering that took place. And we lose sight of the fact that war is inherently destructive..." Those of us in the US should think about this the next time we hear politicians waxing poetic about the "Greatest Generation." meatbag posted:Do you think if the Allies had pressed their advantage in the Battles of Narvik and destroyed the German troops in Northern Norway, instead of pulling back in order to lose in France, would it have made any difference in the larger picture of WW2? A. Continue straight on into Germany or B. Stabilize the situation on the French-German border and then return to Norway. Obviously, both these possibilities assume the requisite victory in Fance, which didn't materialize for numerous reasons. Namarrgon posted:have you read The Art of War? If so, any thoughts on that? I assume it is a dandy book if you're a medieval warlord but that's pretty much it. Admiral Snackbar fucked around with this message at 20:58 on May 1, 2010 |
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May 1, 2010 20:55
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MeinPanzer posted:good stuff Please! I would love to read your contributions. That particular subject is one I'm very interested in but it is certainly not my forte. How did you introduce yourself to this field?
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May 1, 2010 22:48
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JackBoCracken posted:What if you've got no intention of winning an offensive war? I think this is as good a time as any to take a quick dip into the pool of thought generated by one Carl Philipp Gottlieb von Clausewitz. Clausewitz was a Prussian army officer who lived during the time of the Napoleonic wars, eventually rising through the ranks to become a Major-General. Clausewitz witnessed first-hand the defeat of the lauded Prussian army by Napoleon at the battle of Jena-Auerstadt, and resolved thereafter to understand the true nature of war. Whereas other theorists, such as Sun Tsu and Machiavelli, had written treatises on warfare, their tomes were basically intended to be instructional. A good leader does this as opposed to that. If you always make sure your shoelaces are tied, you'll be less likely to trip. That sort of stuff. Clausewitz didn't want to rehash these same old aphorisms, which, not insignificantly, tend to age badly. Instead, Clausewitz endeavored to study war itself, not its practice. He wanted to figure out what made war tick. Tellingly, while Sun Tsu and Machiavelli's works are both titled The Art of War, Clausewitz's book is simply On War. It is a study, not an instruction booklet. It describes what Clausewitz refers to as "universally valid" knowledge of war. A word of warning here - Clausewitz approached his subject by using the method of the Hegelian Dialectic, which is not always the best thing when it comes to readability. For those who are not familiar with this, an idea is proposed - the Thesis. The Thesis is assumed to be incomplete, and allows a valid, yet opposite proposition - the Antithesis. The tension between these two opposite, yet coexisting propositions is resolved by the discovery of a Synthesis, or a method by which the Thesis turns into the Antithesis. For example, if I propose the idea of absolute vacuum, or for our purposes, NonBeing as a Thesis, the Antithesis would be Being. How can NonBeing be transmuted into Being? by Becoming, which constitues the Synthesis of these ideas. The subtleties of this method have led to many erroneous interpretations of Clausewitz, whereby someone will simply take a Clausewitzian Thesis as being valid in and of itself. This is a gross error, for the Thesis, its Antithesis, and their Synthesis form a complete system, no one or two parts of which can exist independently of the others. Perhaps the most salient example of this in Clausewitz is his Thesis that "War is nothing but a duel on a larger scale." While Clausewitz does in fact assert this, he also asserts its Antithesis, "War is the extension of politics by other means." How can he make both these statements without contradicting himself? Because both ideas are true, but incomplete. To complete his conception of war, he arrived at a Synthesis: In both cases, war consists of what Clausewitz called "the wonderful trinity," Violence, Purpose, and Effort. He therefore defined War as, "an act of violence to force an opponent to fulfill our will." In arranging his work, Clausewitz relied on the relationship between Purpose (Zweck) and Means (Mittel). The entire book is organized this way - after defining and explaining War in the first two sections, he proceeds to Strategy, which is the means by which War's purposes are fulfilled. Next, Engagements, by which Strategy is fulfilled; the Armed Forces, which are the means by which Engagements are won. Next, Defense and Attack, the two fundamental means by which Armed Forces carry out Engagements. Finally, Clausewitz presents The Plan of War, a practical framework describing two fundamentally different forms that war may assume, depending on whether the aim is the complete overthrow of the enemy, or more limited objectives. This introduction is barely even scratching the surface of Clausewitz' analysis, but I won't belabor it any further, especially since I can't really do it justice. Indeed, I must give full credit to the writings of Antulio J. Echevarria II which are liberally paraphrased in this brief synopsis, as his work is very illuminating on the subject of Clausewitz. If you Google his name, you can find several very interesting papers that he has written for the Strategic Studies Institute. I do urge you to do so if you find the philosophies and theories of war at all interesting. So, on to Attack and Defense. Clausewitz proposed that Defense was actually the stronger mode of warfare, which was contrary to prevailing wisdom of the time (in fact, the prevailing wisdom of most times). He arrived at this conclusion by logical means. First, he wondered why, if attack was stronger, would defense exist at all? Since it obviously does exist, it must provide some advantage. The advantage of Defense, he reasoned, must lie with the side that does not possess the strength for attack. If Defense allows an opponent with weaker resources to confront a more powerful attacker, it must be the more powerful mode. There is an additional disparity. While Attack is the weaker mode of warfare, it has positive aims (positive in the sense of definitely extant, not "good"). An attacker desires to fulfill a specific purpose, whether it be complete annihilation of the enemy, a negotiated settlement, the occupation of territory, etc. This purpose must be achieved for the attacker to be successful. The Defense, however, has a negative aim: to prevent the attacker from achieving his goal. This is the principle by which the Defense acquires its strength. No matter what an attacker's purpose is, the Defense merely needs to avoid it in order to be successful. If the Attacker desires the annihilation of the Defender, the Defender must simply survive in order to win. If the Attacker desires a certain area of land, the Defender simply has to deny access to it. Therefore, while an Attacker is confined to limited avenues by which to approach his goal, the Defender has nearly infinite options by which to steer the Attacker off course. BIAS ALERT How does this apply to modern politics? Well, in the case of the Iraq/Afghanistan situation, the US is clearly the Attacker. We therefore assume the weaker position, and saddle ourselves with the need to achieve a positive goal. The Defender, Al-Qaeda, the Taliban, or whichever group hates us most this week, simply has to deny us from achieving this goal. Well, we got off to a really bad start because we chose a nearly unachievable goal. "Bring Democracy to the Middle East." Wow. Literally, all our enemies need to do is subvert Democracy in any way they wish, and they keep us from winning. Which is exactly what they've done for nearly a decade now. Clausewitz would be proud...? Admiral Snackbar fucked around with this message at 12:33 on May 2, 2010 |
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May 2, 2010 02:03
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Mr Havafap posted:Huh? In hindsight, I should have owned up to that being a somewhat biased statement. I went back and added a disclaimer... Kaal posted:To be fair, the war is virtually already won, so the difficulty of winning it now is very different from where it was several years ago. But generally speaking, the solution would have been to increase the troop strength. At its height, Multi-National Force Iraq composed only about 200,000 troops in the field, of which 150,000 were Americans (this figure doesn't include the Iraqi Police or Iraqi Army units for a variety of reasons). With Iraq having an area of 430,000 sq mi, and a population of more than 30 million, this effectively means that each soldier was reasonable for more than two square miles of territory and 150 people. Even with all the technology available, that is a big task. Admiral Snackbar fucked around with this message at 12:52 on May 2, 2010 |
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May 2, 2010 12:37
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I'm a bit behind on answering specific questions, but there are some other posters here doing quite a good job at providing information on Ancient Rome/WWII Japan/etc., so I'm going to attempt a couple of broad answers to related questions. First, regarding culture and its relationship to how war is practiced by different countries, ethnicities, government types, etc. As I indicated in my initial post, this is a topic that I am quite interested in, but mainly for the reason that I think it tends to be overplayed. That being said, I'll try to give the arguments for and against the presumed connection between culture and warfare. The idea that the cultural, as opposed to the material, heritage of different nationalities and ethnicities affects the way in which they prosecute war is not a new one. Indeed, in Xenophon's Anabasis, written a little after 400 BC, there are several episodes in which the Persian enemy's methods of fighting are presented as being somewhat timid and inferior to those of the Greek author and his compatriots. There are many instances of Roman commanders' speeches extolling the virtue and discipline of their own troops in contrast to the Germanic/Persian/whatever "mob" confronting them. There are countless similar examples in every culture. Nevertheless, something that is new about this idea are modern attempts to codify it and prove that it is a definable and significant aspect of military activity. Often, the starting point for anyone attempting to define obvious differences in the way different cultures fight is the clear superiority of modern Western militaries in the field of global conflicts. Since the beginning of the Early Modern Era, circa AD 1500, European military efforts against opponents from other areas of the world, including the Americas, Asia, and Africa, have seen far more successes than failures. Why is this? According to proponents of "Western Way of War" theories, it is because there are qualities inherent to Western European culture that provide a better foundation for military endeavors than cultures from other regions. According to Victor Davis Hanson, one of the most vocal of these proponents, these qualities include a proclivity towards scientific and rational thought, freedom and individualism, civic militarism, discipline, and various other similar ideas. This partial listing is taken directly from his book, Carnage and Culture: Landmark Battles in the Rise of Western Power, published in paperback by Anchor Books in 2000, page 21. Hanson goes on to give specific examples of what he sees as these qualities manifesting themselves in battle. One example is the battle of Rourke's drift in 1879 (which, incidentally, is the subject of the movie Zulu, one of my absolute favorites). In this battle, fewer than 150 British soldiers fought off an attack by some 5,000 Zulu warriors. Hanson sees this as being the direct result of British ingenuity and discipline, and, at the same time, of Zulu military infirmity. Likewise, Hanson and others offer the quick adoption by Westerners of innovations such as gunpowder and mass production as further evidence of Western superiority. Furthermore, they cite the fact that all large modern armies, whether they are Russian, Iranian, or Chinese, are patterned on Western ones. Given such arguments, it seems almost obvious that there is something about European culture that simply promotes military success. However, and this is where my own opinions begin (although I certainly not the only one with this view), cultural Way of War advocates cannot explain a lot of contradictory evidence. For example, in the Pacific theater of WWII, the ferocity and suicidal fervor of Japanese soldiers is often highlighted, focusing on their refusal to surrender and willingness to fight to the last man. It is often said that their zealotry was the result of a sort of cultural brainwashing that had imbued them with a sense of absolute loyalty to their emperor. Certainly, nothing like this would ever happen in a Western nation? But this ignores concurrent examples of German SS units similarly fighting to the last man, against all odds. Indeed, in American history, the battle of the Alamo had occurred little more than 100 years previous. Going back to the beginning of Western culture, who can forget the stand of the 300 Spartans at Thermopylae? How can the supposed importance of cultural differences account for such similarities? In my opinon, it can't. In response to some of Hanson's own examples, the British contingent at Rourke's drift was not the primary objective of the Zulu army that attacked it. While the British contingent certainly did hold out against a far larger force, I don't think that would have been the case had the Zulus seen them as anything more than a target of opportunity. As regards technological innovation and mass production, it was the Soviet Union, not any of the Western European nations (or the US) that produced the most versatile and dependable tank of WWII, the T34. And they did so in overwhelming numbers. (The question of whether or not Russia/USSR should be considerd a Western nation is one I would be happy to debate. I say it's not.) In addition, geographical factors can account for many of the disparities in Western versus Eastern military development, as in the adoption of gunpowder, which I'll address in my next post. BIAS ALERT While I recognize the fact that this post probably doesn't answer any specific questions, I thought it was necessary to at least bring this debate into the picture. The controversial nature of "Ways of War" colors a lot of academic work, but it also has real effects on current military undertakings. For example, and this is a rather glaring one, several members of the Bush Administration, including Donald Rumsfeld, were big fans of folks like Victor Davis Hanson. The military approach taken in Iraq in 2003 was a direct reflection of the way they thought a "Western" military should fight a "Non-Western" one: a relatively small but highly trained and well equipped army defeated a numerically superior but technologically and morally inferior foe. Piece of cake, right? Mission Accomplished! Except the decision to send in a small, elite force had dire consequences when establishing order became the new mission. Had a larger force been used initially, this may not have been the case.
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May 4, 2010 23:57
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a few people posted:Why were firearms adopted by Europeans more quickly than by the Chinese, even though gunpowder was invented in China? Well, if we go the Victor Davis Hanson route, it's obviously because Europeans have a superior culture! Sarcasm aside, this answer has been assumed by many historians, both professional and amateur, for a very long time. Interestingly enough, the first analysis to really blow this cultural explanation out of the water was done by a lawyer, not an historian. In Firearms: A Global History to 1700, Kenneth Chase provides a clear explanation of how geography was in fact the primary agent in the rejection of firearms by the Chinese, as opposed to their acceptance by Europeans. Quite frankly, I find that this single book does such an excellent job of explaining this course of events, I'll only give a brief synopsis plus the recommendation that everyone read this book. It provides a really great framework for understanding how geography plays a major role in all history, which is why I happen to think that geography should be given way more attention in public schools. Anyway, here's the short version. China has existed in one form or another for about 3,000 years, and for much of that time it faced an implacable foe: the nomadic tribes of Central Asia. These tribes, such as the Mongols, were a constant threat to China's Northern and Western frontiers. This was a primary reason for China's lack of overseas expansion, as they were constantly looking over their shoulder at these troublesome territories. It was no coincidence that China's only period of naval expansion occured during the Yuan Dynasty, which was itself Mongolian. (Since they were Mongolians themselves, they did not need to worry about the Mongolians.) The rest of the time, the Chinese had to concentrate their defense efforts on confronting these nomadic tribes. Now, if you were Chinese, how would you defend against wandering bands of barbarian cavalry? That's right, you would build a Great Wall! This is especially wise since labor is and always has been very cheap in China, given its very large population. Unfortunately, the nomads eventually figured out that they could just ride around the wall. So, the Chinese still had to deal with nomad cavalry, though admittedly fewer of them. The Chinese quickly learned that infantry based forces were of little use in this application, since they had difficulty fighting cavalry to begin with, and virtually no hope of either retreating from a stronger enemy or pursuing a weaker one. So, the Chinese fought fire with fire and adopted cavalry forces as their primary means to confront the nomads. At some point in or around the 1st Century AD, the Chinese came up with a curious concoction that came to be known as gunpowder. This is the point at which the cultural interpretation of military history claims the Chinese missed an incredible opportunity because of their fear of change/mistrust of science/lack of rational thought/etc., seeing as how they did not immediately sieze upon the opportunity and proceed to dominate the world. However, just try to picture this: a Chinese cavalryman in hot pursuit of a Mongolian tribesman, riding his steed across the open plains of northern China, training the large, cumbersome barrel of an even larger, more cumbersome (not to mention unreliable) early firearm, trying to steady its bulk against the gyrations of the horse, hoping that the trigger creates a spark, and that this spark causes the bullet to fire rather than the gun to explode in his face. Wonder of wonders, the shot went off properly! But it missed due to the inaccuracy of early firearms. So, the cavalryman must stop his horse, perhaps dismount, and take a few minutes to reload. Meanwhile, the Mongolian tribesman has turned around and shot the Chinese cavalryman several times with his highly accurate and easily reloaded bow. It is easy to see why this course of action did not catch on too quickly in China. In Europe, on the other hand, roaming hoards of cavalry were less of a problem. There, due to the close and compact nature of much of the terrain, fixed fortifications were more common. These targets were much more easily attacked by large, inaccurate, and slowly reloading gunpowder weapons. So, European armies had much more of an inducement to develop such weapons. Even so, they did not do so all at once. Gunpowder weapons took literally hundreds of years to gain a position of dominance on the European battlefield. Rather than get into all the specifics here, I again recommend Chase's excellent book. Admiral Snackbar fucked around with this message at 16:55 on May 6, 2010 |
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May 6, 2010 16:48
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Anthrovore posted:On to my question, a few years ago I wrote a paper about the Polish-Soviet War in 1920, and came to the conclusion that despite it being a pretty small and unknown war it played an important role in curbing bolshevik aims (at least for the next two decades) of fomenting communist revolutions in the countries of Europe. Would you agree, or am I making mountains out of molehills? Also, did you find the use of cavalry by both sides in 1920 as awesome as I did? I absolutely agree. I mentioned the importance of this war in determining the course of Soviet politics in my post about the Finnish Kinship Wars, but that is not the extent of th Polish War's significance. In fact, the Russian cavalry experience in this war helped determine the course of armored development in the Soviet Union right through World War II. The commander of the Russian forces, Mikhail Tukhachevsky, learned a great deal from the cavalry actions of both sides and applied this understanding to the burgeioning field of armored vehicles. At the same time, a rift began to form between Tukhachevsky and Josef Stalin over the political appointment of field officers. This rift ultimately resulted in Tikhachevsky being executed for treason. In the meantime, however, Tukhachevsky and several other forward-looking Russian officers developed the concept of Deep Operations which I described in a previous post. Indeed, Tukhachevsky's concepts were arguably far more advanced than any contemporary armored theories, including those of Heinz Guderian and his German colleagues. The loss of Tukhachevsky's leadership in the purges of the 1930's, therefore, was a critical factor in the disastrous performance of the Soviets in the opening days of Operation Barbarossa, when the Red Army held all the tools of armored warfare, but could not manage to employ them properly. I think this is as good a place as any to answer a couple of questions about nuclear vs. conventional war. In a previous post, I mentioned the disparity between US and Soviet nuclear doctrines. Essentially, the difference was that the US conceived of nuclear war as something separate from conventional war. War was either conventional or nuclear. The Soviets, on the other hand, saw war as existing on a spectrum, from fully conventional to fully nuclear. Therefore, any combination of the two was valid. So, depending on which perspective you subscribe to, the answer is different. According to the US version, there will be a critical point in any conflict between nuclear opponents at which one participant will determine that it cannot win a conventional fight. That opponent will then commit to an all-out nuclear attack with the hope that it can destroy the enemy's nuclear capability, as well as its will and ability to continue the fight. The other opponent would presumably pursue a similar action once it was aware of the incoming attack. Thus, the result would be Mutually Assured Destruction (MAD). If one follows Soviet theory, there would be no such critical point. Instead, nuclear weapons would be used only as necessary, if at all. This disparity was central to Cold War politics, because it allowed Western nations to devote relatively fewer resources to military expenditure. This was because they could always brandish the nuclear stick and say, "If you try anything, we'll hit you with this." By spending less on the military, Western nations were able to develop the rest of their economies more than the Soviet Union ever could. Admiral Snackbar fucked around with this message at 18:24 on May 6, 2010 |
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May 6, 2010 18:18
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Right, I don't think I really stressed the difference between firearms, ie typical gun-like weapons, and gunpowder weapons in general, such as cannons, rockets, etc. The Chinese definitely developed gunpowder weapons, but they never really made them central in a tactical sense for the reasons described above.
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May 6, 2010 18:45
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MeinPanzer posted:Han Chinese writers describe the success of Chinese cavalry in shooting nomads with crossbows and then dismounting to fight with halberds, and it was a common (and apparently successful) tactic to employ crossbows in much the same way as handguns were later used, holding fire until the enemy came close enough and then letting loose a volley. The key here is the idea that these tactics resembled those later used by handguns. At the time of gunpowder's appearance, crossbows already functioned well and reliably. Handguns didn't. Also, given the advanced craftsmanship required to make reliable handguns, a cost-benefit analysis would show that a crossbow offered more "bang for the buck." This situation was revisited in Europe in the Early Modern Era, when crossbows retained their importance for decades despite the appearance of firearms. Given the fact that the Chinese already possessed weapons that were capable of combating nomad cavalry effectively, I think it makes sense that they did not pursue the development of hand-held gunpowder weapons. As several others have noted, however, they did develop other types of gunpowder weapons and used them successfully.
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May 6, 2010 19:56
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BeigeJacket posted:OP, would you agree with Gary Brechers 'rules of assymetrical warfare' or does he simplify too much to make an entertaining column? As H.L. Mencken once said, "For every complex problem, there is a solution which is simple, neat, and wrong." Since the idea of Asymmetric Warfare kind of goes hand-in-hand with so-called 4th Generation Warfare (4GW) and the Revolution in Military Affairs (RMA), I'll give some background on each. In general, Asymmetric Warfare is that in which the "military resources, strategy, or tactics of the two belligerents differs significantly." What constitutes significant? It depends on who you ask. In any case, given the rather vague definition of the term, it's hard to really say whether a lot of conflicts are Asymmetric or not. For example, the US invasion of Iraq in 2003 could potentially be labeled Asymmetric since the Iraqi military was completely outclassed in pretty much every conceivable way. Yet, most proponents of the term Asymmetric would argue with this view since both armies were basically "conventional." Most of the time, the term is reserved for use in situations where one opponent is "conventional," ie the US Army, and one is not, ie Al-Qaeda. This is where 4GW comes in. The basic theory is that modern warfare has evolved through 3 distinct generations and now exists in a "Fourth Generation." These generations are as follows: 1. The domination of Massed Manpower (Napoleonic Warfare) 2. The domination of Firepower (World War I) 3. The domination of Maneuver (World War II) 4. The domination of Insurgency (The Current Situation) According to this theory, Insurgency is a brand new type of warfare, and one that must be handled with completely new means. The lessons of previous wars don't apply here since they're from previous generations. Instead of relying on out-of-date ideas such as massed firepower and maneuver, 4GW proponents suggest that a Revolution in Military Affairs is necessary to succeed in the current military climate. Better technology, allowing fewer soldiers to do more, is necessary to combat terrorists. The idea that a new form of warfare can be generated from scratch actually ties into the Blitzkrieg Myth mentioned in an earlier post. 4GW theorists believe that German armored doctrine effectively constituted a new mode of warfare, and signaled the birth of the Third Generation. That this is a misrepresentation of the facts is something of an understatement, and one that should be clear to anyone familiar with the actual development of armored doctrine in Germany between the wars. In short, Germans never refered to their doctrine as "blitzkrieg", and their tactics were very logically developed from experience in World War I. In any case, the idea of RMA is that the military can be consciously and purposely refashioned into a new shape that is completely different from the old Maneuver force that existed from WWII through the 1990's. That this is unrealistic is also fairly obvious to anyone familiar with past events. As I discussed in the post about longbows, military "Revolutions" never occur spontaneously, and take decades, sometimes even centuries, to develop. Besides the rather misleading concept of RMA, 4GW also relies on other questionable ideas. First, by defining the development of modern warfare in terms of generations, the implication is that newer generations will eventually supplant previous ones, and these previous ones will eventually die out. However, this idea is not borne out in reality. For example, if one describes the September 11 attacks as "Fourth Generation Warfare's First Blow," as 4GW theorist William S. Lind did shortly after the event, one must account for the fact that the subsequent invasion of Iraq in 2003 was predominantly a Third Generation type of event. How could a strictly 3GW war come after the ascension of 4GW? Frankly, it doesn't really make sense. Second, if one surveys the four supposed generations, one might notice that the first three, Massed Manpower, Firepower, and Maneuver, are military techniques. Insurgency, on the other hand, is a political situation. Therefore, 4GW theorists are essentially comparing apples to oranges. There is no real comparison to be made here, so the whole idea pretty much falls apart. (This is akin to declaring a War on Terror as I described in a previous post.) In reference to the article in BeigeJacket's post, the problem is that the author approaches Asymmetric Warfare as though it's something new, and something that has replaced "conventional" warfare. In truth, neither of these is true. "Asymmetric" warfare has been around since the dawn of recorded history, and has been recognized under different names such as "People's War", "Small War", etc., for centuries. If one accepts that Insurgents adopt their typical tactics as a means of countering a stronger foe, then it would make sense that this type of warfare is defensive in nature (refer to my post on Clausewitz for the differeneces between Offense and Defense). From this, it would also follow that Insurgent tactics would be unable to achieve positive aims. Indeed, this is the current situation, as the Iraq and Afghanistan insurgencies, to say nothing of Hamas in Israel, have failed to actually effect the political changes they desire. That being the case, I don't see how Insurgency could ever replace "conventional" warfare as long as positive political aims exist. Take a look at this article by Antulio Echevarria for a more complete analysis of 4GW's shortcomings. Admiral Snackbar fucked around with this message at 17:34 on May 7, 2010 |
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May 7, 2010 17:30
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torsoboy posted:what are the circumstances in which manpower is of less use than technology? Pizarro was insanely successful with a small band against an entire nation (one that was deadly ill though); it seems to me that the best way to subdue another nation is to strike at their leaders rather than at their armies. This question was essential to the study of nuclear war throughout the 50's, 60's, and 70's. If you think about it, nuclear missiles represented the first weapon with which it was really possible to completely bypass your enemy's military and strike his leadership and populace directly. Many saw this situation as the death-knell for Clausewitz's concept of war, since military strength no longer represented an accurate measure of the public safety. I tend to disagree with this perspective, but I'll refrain from addressing that now. Instead, we can look at the general case of manpower versus technology. As discussed in previous posts, new technological developments are not always embraced quickly by military forces. The reason for this is that these innovations do not always present an immediate improvement over existing devices. For example, firearms were around for centuries before they finally represented enough of an improvement to supplant the crossbow. During this time, manpower was therefore a greater determining factor in success, since the new technology was not reliable or effective enough to make a difference. As gunpowder became more viable on the battlefield, however, the pendulum swung the other way. Eventually, however, as the new technology becomes available to more and more opponents, its unbalancing effect becomes smaller and smaller, thus giving the advantage back to manpower. In specific cases, there are certainly occasions in which new technology has been unable to trump manpower. For example, on the Eastern Front of World War II, the Wehrmacht certainly possessed tanks and weapons that were far more sophisticated and arguably more advanced than their Soviet counterparts, but they still lost. Why? Because it doesn't matter that your Tiger Battalion can sustain a 7 to 1 kill ratio versus the enemy if the enemy brings 8 tanks to the fight. In the case of Pizarro and Cortes, their technological advantage is generally overplayed. Indeed, most people are ignorant of the large number of native allies that were essential to the victories of these men, having learned instead about their shiny armor and loud guns, and how much these impressed the natives.
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May 7, 2010 18:19
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Adding on to what HeroOfTheRevolution wrote, the levee en masse was the beginning of the really large conscription efforts of the 19th Century. The reason it was so important, and sometimes referred to as the "beginning" of conscription, was the fact that it enabled such large armies to be created. The primary reason why Republican France was able to survive the invasions of neighboring monarchies was because the French just kept raising new armies via the levee, and their soldiers felt a vested interest in winning each battle. In comparison, the armies of England and Germany consisted of smaller numbers of men who didn't really relish the idea of dying for any particular cause. So, the French basically won by attrition. When Napoleon came to power, he turned the levee into an offensive tool, taking the Grand Army of the Republic abroad on a sight-seeing tour across Europe. The nations he defeated took notice of his successful use of the levee and began to develop their own versions. The Prussians especially took to heart the power of conscription, and developed the first modern reserve system. In this system, all males over a certain age are conscripted for a short time, say 2 years. After this term is up, anyone who does not wish to remain in the army may leave, but remains on Reserve status until a certain cutoff age, say 40. What this does is to allow a state to train its entire adult male population to be effective soldiers without having to support a large standing army. If war does break out, the reserves can be called back to duty, immediately providing a large, capable force. Switzerland and a few other countries still follow this type of plan. This system actually provided an impetus for Germany to go on the offensive in World War I. The German reserve system was so efficient, it could be called into action far more quickly than that of France. So, it was in Germany's best interest to put the system to use and attack France before it could call in its own reserves. This was the heart of the Schlieffen Plan. You might notice that the US reserve system does not function this way. Instead of being "reserved" for large efforts, they are often committed immediately along with active duty personnel even in limited affairs. This is a source of some contention, since using reserves this way almost always causes unnecessary economic backwash, and is not particularly efficient. Admiral Snackbar fucked around with this message at 18:39 on May 8, 2010 |
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May 8, 2010 18:24
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Eat This Glob posted:OP, how was your experience at Norwich? I'm slated to start there this fall in the MMH course. If you'd rather take the specifics off site, my email is jamie (dot) dub (at) gmail (dot) c0m. I've got a laundry list of questions regarding the program if you've got time to answer them. I loved everything about Norwich. Their administration is really on their game, and the faculty contains actual experts in the field. For example, my Military Thought and Theory professor was a Canadian Colonel who had served as a NATO staff officer in Germany during the 80's. Needless to say, he was a huge help in getting to understand Soviet Cold War tactics and strategy. The online environment was also really nice. I worked a full-time job the entire 18 months, but never felt short on time because the discussions were so flexible. Also, online discussions give you plenty of time to formulate good responses, and it's great practice for learning how to express yourself well in writing. As to Operation Unthinkable, I think the Soviets would have demolished Western forces had they gone through with it.
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May 8, 2010 18:39
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Sorry I've been away, but it's been a busy week, what with weddings, work, etc...Judakel posted:Could any of you please recommend another book along the lines of The Future of War? I haven't read this book, but judging by its blurbs on Amazon I'd say it's as much an example of provocatism as anything. Like I said, I haven't read it, but if the brief mention in one review of the importance of "Precision Guided Munitions" is any indication of general thoughts thorughout the book, I'd say it's rather narrow-minded. What I mean is, there are plenty of ways to neutralize the power of aircraft carriers and tanks without using so-called PGMs. For example, tanks got you down? Those pesky carrier-based jets cramping your style? Can't afford fancy new Precision Guided Munitions? Well, I have a solution for you! All you have to do is relocate your rag-tag force of rudimentarily-armed men to a little area I like to call Tora Bora! In this beautiful mountain hideaway, your followers will enjoy all the comforts of an extensive underground cave network, while simultaneously hiding themselves from the view of both airborne reconnaissance and tread-driven gun platforms, all for the price of only a few easily-bribed local tour guides! As a bonus, you will receive access to numerous strategic choke-points, as well as certified escape routes. What are you waiting for? Call Now! Doran Blackdawn posted:have you read the book Guns, Germs and Steel? If so, I'm very interested to hear your thoughts on it. While I think this book is worth reading, I do have a few problems with it. For example, Diamond talks about the ascension of Eurasia. Not Europe, not Asia, but Eurasia. Since this continent accounts for more than a third of Earth's land mass, and almost 3/4 of the world's population, I think it would be more remarkable if it hadn't come to a position of prominence. Furthermore, the dominance of Western Europe specifically has existed for only 500 years, give or take a few. Given that recorded history extends back about 6,000 years, that means that European dominance has existed for only about 12% of that time, not to mention the even smaller fraction it represents when considering the entire history, written or not, of homo sapiens. That said, determinism is also a bit of a problem. It's one thing to say "this is what happened and why," but it's quite a bit different to suggest that things were bound to happen that way. Biological evolution is a good example of this. Yes, plants and animals around the world seem to be very well suited to their respective environments, but do existing lifeforms represent the only possible solutions to local environmental difficulties? I tend to think not. Regarding this book in particular, it could be argued that China's failure to become the world's dominant naval power was a result of religious and philosophical trends, not geographical or agricultural ones. To wit: The Song Dynasty had created a large and capable naval force as early as the 12th century, with which it repelled Jurchen and Mongol invaders on multiple occasions. Indeed, the nascent navy quickly grew from about 3,000 men in 1132 to more than 50,000 a hundred years later. Also, it was treated as an entity separate from the army. There was speculation among Song military leaders that this navy could be used not only for expansion to the North, into Jurchen and Mongol territory, but also to the South. Unfortunately, the Song Dynasty was conquered before such plans came to fruition. Still, my point is that such expansion was possible, and it was perceived to be so by contemporary military leaders. Furthermore, the benefits of maritime trade were evident to Song emperors, such as Gaozong, who said, "The profits of maritime commerce are great... Is it not better than taxing the people?" Indeed, the final military engagement between the Song and the Mongols was a massive naval battle at Yaishan in 1279, where 1,000 Song ships were defeated by around 500 Mongol vessels. Compare these numbers to contemporary European naval forces. Even after the Mongol conquest, naval power remained important to China. When Khublai Khan completed his new capital of Dadu (now Beijing), the city's populace was far too large for the local food supply. To compensate for this, Khublai Khan turned to two pirates, Zhu Zhing and Zhang Xuan, who possessed a private fleet of 500 ships. They were to transport grain from Southeast Asia to the new capital by sea. Again, compare this to contemporary European maritime efforts, and you will see that China was far more advanced in terms of creating a large, organized maritime powerbase. Indeed, by the early 15th century, Chinese treasure ships were plying the seas all around China and South Asia, some of them 450 feet long with 9 masts. Compare these to the Nina, Pinta, and Santa Maria. Obviously, there was no natural or geographical reason why China did not come to dominate international maritime trade, and therefore world politics. Instead, China's naval decline was largely the result of Confucian philosophy. According to traditional Chinese thought, foreign commerce was a useless extravagance. Instead of wasting time trading with outsiders, so the logic went, the Chinese would be better served by making themselves self-sufficient. These attitudes had not prevailed during the tenure of the Mongol-led Yuan Dynasty, nor during the early Ming under the avaricious Yongle Emperor, but once more traditionally minded men came back to power, China's overseas expansion came to a screeching halt. My point here is that China's lack of overseas expansion was not the result of inability or lack of geographical predilection, but of choice. The human element, in my opinion, should never be absent from historical interpretation, as it is in deterministic tracts.
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May 19, 2010 05:22
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Sorry for the extended absence! Tax assessments in my town went up an average of %50 this year, and I've spent the last two weeks getting information together to show that, even in the current market, my house is not actually worth %50 more than it was in 2006. Stressful, aggravating, and even a little funny...Wastrel_ posted:So, certainly, the ascendancy of the Confucian clique at the imperial court played a large role in ending China's naval supremacy, but there were practical concerns as well. Lord Tomungus posted:1)How effective was strategic bombing (ie bombing population centers) in WWII? Which brings me to your second question. I agree that the Soviet contribution in World War II is generally neglected in Western histories to an embarassing degree. As to whether or not they were "on our side," I would say yes, at least for the duration of the war in Europe itself. It should be remembered that by the time of WWII, the Soviet government, under the direction of Josef Stalin, had more or less given up on expanding communism throughout Europe, at least for the time-being. Indeed, expansionist tendencies didn't really resurface in the USSR until the Brezhnev regime, some twenty years later. Admitting as much to the public, on either side of the iron curtain, would not have been good politics, however; so the specter of a greedy Red Menace was kept carefully alive. To explain our alliance with the USSR during the war, it was usually held that we sided with the "bad guys" against the "worse guys." Still, I think Roosevelt's habit of calling Stalin "Uncle Joe" may have hinted at a less cynical relationship (whether or not that would have been a good idea).
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Jun 1, 2010 20:22
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Godholio posted:Your vision of strategic bombing is a bit narrow. Targeting civilian populations is not a good idea...yes it was one of the earliest theories, but it's been proven wrong time and again as you mentioned. Bringing up the Schweinfurt fiasco is an example of a failed strategic bombing campaign, yes, but it's probably the most glaring one possible. The tactics and technology weren't really ready to deliver the results expected by the theory. More recent examples that did work as planned would be the Linebacker campaigns of Vietnam, the air campaign of Desert Storm, and the kickoff of OIF (to a lesser degree). Actually, strategic bombing is considered to be any bombing campaign that targets economic and industrial assets instead of actual military assets, such as ground or naval forces. If you are specifically not targeting military assets, then, by process of elimination, you are targeting civilan assets. Since most civilian economic and industrial assets are centered around cities, you will therefore need to bomb those cities, thereby immediately involving the nearby civilian population. Therefore, I can see no way to pursue a strategic bombing campaign without attacking civilian population centers. While you may see this as narrow vision, I see it as connecting the dots. As for the idea that, during World War II at least, "The tactics and technology weren't really ready to deliver the results expected by the theory," then I'd say it was a bad theory. Imagine, for a moment, that General Eisenhower came up with the theory that the Normandy invasion should have started off by having the troops carried across in rubber rafts instead of in ships. After all, they'd be way harder to spot, right? After a significant portion of the invasion force drowned en route, and the rest were butchered on the beaches because they were exhausted and unprotected, would you simply claim that the tactics and technology for getting men across the Channel and securing a beach head without naval support simply wasn't advanced enough yet? Or would you accept the fact that it was just a really bad idea? In addition, your claim that Operation Linebacker was successful pretty much ignores the fact the North Vietnam won the war. Finally, to say that, "Most attempts have been controlled by career ground-combat experts or civilians," ignores the efforts of lifelong airmen such as Billy Mitchell, Hugh Trenchard, and Jack Slessor. In my experience, and I don't think I'm alone here, the most vocal proponents of Airpower in general are airmen themselves, and their enthusiasm is rarely borne out in actual events.
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Jun 2, 2010 01:05
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Another major problem with chemical/biological weapons is control. Once you release them, there's not much you can do to make sure they don't blow back in your own face. As far as ethics go, it depends on how high the stakes are. Usually, the more deperate the situation is perceived to be, the more extreme the actions taken. For example, the Eastern Front of World War II was generally more vicious than the Western Front. This was largely due to the fact that the Eastern Front was framed as a contest between races in which the loser would be utterly exterminated/enslaved. Also, the tendency toward reciprocity figures in. If one side uses a certain level of force, whether it be small-scale raids, full-scale conventional warfare, or nuclear/chemical/biological, the other side will be compelled to respond in kind (as far as possible). Therefore, the side initiating combat must carefully consider the likely consequences of its actions. Usually, the cost of using extreme measures is too high for the likely gains to be made, except in the aforementioned desperate situations.
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Jun 2, 2010 21:41
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I'm happy to see this thread is still active! If I may step into the tank debate, I'd like to offer some observations on the German/Soviet conflict and the pursuant development of armor in the East. I believe this is relevant to the current discussion since the Sherman and the T-34 are often seen as something like kindred spirits. First, to address disparities in production methods and output. Just to make this absolutely clear, German officials decided before the war to deliberately eschew mass production methods in the assembly of their tanks. Their reason for this was because they considered assembly-line production too inflexible to accomodate the future development of as yet immature designs. As some of you may recall, the war started before German military preparations had reached a mature stage, and this unreadyness included their tank designs. German military leaders believed that they would be better served by basically hand-crafting their tanks because they could immediately institute design improvements without having to significantly alter the production process, i.e. retool mass production type factories. The Soviets, in contrast, actively sought the help and tutelage of none other than the Ford motor company to show them how to mass produce all kinds of vehicles, including tanks. When the time came to institute design improvements, there was no stall in production in order to retool. Instead, each individual factory would simply incorporate new improvements as it was able. As a result, a T-34 from one factory would likely possess noticibly different features from one produced elsewhere at the same time. This is particularly evident in T-34 turrets, which underwent numerous changes throughout the war. Some were hexagonal, some were round, some were cast, some were welded, etc. Because there was no attempt at strict standardization and deprecation, Soviet tank production went virtually uninterrupted throughout the course of the war. This often confuses anyone studying Soviet tank development because they did not designate subtypes as the Germans did. A T-34 was just a T-34, not a T-34 Ausf G or anything like that. The results of this disparity in approach were numerous and significant. First, because German tank production relied on skilled labor, Panzer production was increasingly handicapped as more and more skilled workmen were conscripted into the army. Soviet tank production, on the other hand, suffered no such ill effects. Indeed, Soviet tank crews who were awaiting the completion of their vehicles were often pressed into work on the actual assembly line. Their lack of specific manufacturing knowledge meant nothing within the vast automated factories of the Urals, but the addition of another pair of hands to the assembly line could only increase productivity. Second, the reliance of Soviet engineers on similar parts and mechanisms across different tank models allowed the production of enormous numbers of spare parts. For example, the T-34, KV-1, KV-2, and IS series of tanks all used the same 500 HP V-2 diesel engine, with only minor alterations. This was a primary reason for the disparity in speed between the T-34 andthe KV-1. It was also the reason why Soviet tanks remained active for much longer periods than their German opponents. For example, if you are a mechanic in a Panzer battallion equipped with Mark IV Version C tanks, and you receive a replacement transmission for a Version G, you will have to sit and wait until that transmission goes back and is replaced with the correct version. In the mean time, your Version C tank will sit totally useless and immobile. If, however, you are a Soviet mechanic in a T-34 battallion and recieve a KV-1 transmission, there's a really good chance that you will be able to at least jerry-rig a solution until the correct parts arrive. While this is certainly not the optimal situation, it's better than having a completely useless tank. Third, the reliance of German production on traditional privately-owned manufacturers often led to further gross inefficiencies. For example, just to pick on an easy target, the Panther tank went through several design changes before its ultimate production that severely maimed the model. For instance, MAN, the company that ultimately won the production contract, did so by offering features that were not only unnecessary, but downright foolish. They used a torsion bar suspension because they knew that Heinrich Ernst Kniepkamp, the man in charge of all German tank development, favored such a design. This was in spite of the fact that such a suspension was totally unsuitable to the weight requirements placed upon it. Furthermore, MAN designed the tank to be amphibious even though Wehrmacht field commanders had never requested such an ability. The resultant water-tight seals in the engine compartment preciptated numerous engine fires that knocked so many Panthers out of action before they even saw combat. As another example, the development of the Tiger was startingly haphazard. The engines were in fact designed before the chassis had even been started, and, as a result of subsequent increases in armor thickness, were ultimately woefully underpowered. Again, a torsion bar suspension was used which proved to be strikingly vulnerable to land mines. It is no coincidence that the original VW Beetle used a torsion bar suspension, since the mind of Ferdinand Porsche was intimately involved in the design of both vehicles. Herein lies the crux of the problem: German tanks were manufactured by automobile and train companies. Their designers had often been trained in these fields, and simply applied their pre-existing automotive knowledge to these new vehicles. The result was that German tanks were marvelous pieces of engineering, much like German automobiles, but were also very fragile and fussy (again like German automobiles). Soviet tanks, however, were designed and built by actual tank engineers with an eye towards simplicity and efficiency. Now, as for the question of quality versus quantity, this was actually the subject of my Master's thesis. My ultimate conclusion is somewhat self-evident: It doesn't matter if a Tiger tank can achieve a 10 to 1 kill ratio if the Soviets bring at least eleven T-34's to the fight. And that's exactly what happened. The specifics of why this happened, however, are pretty interesting, as are the implications. For example, the development of German tank designs during the course of the war betray a glaring self-contradiction within German armor doctrine. Simply put, tanks are an inherently offensive weapon. Why is this? Mobility. Mobility is the single largest determining factor in the offensive capability of any weapon. An immobile weapon cannot be an offensive one since it cannot move to occupy territory belonging to the enemy. It is fixed and therefore purely defensive. If you take away a tank's mobility, you are left with a simple fortified gun emplacement. As the war progressed, what did German engineers do? They added more and more weight to their tanks in the form of both armor and armament, thus decreasing the mobility of the vehicles and making them less and less offensively oriented. While you might look at this and say, "well that makes sense since they were on the defensive," the fact is that they were trying to carry out a strategic defense by pursuing tactical offensives, such as Operation Citadelle and the Ardennes Offensive. Under these circumstances, the enormous bulk of Panther and Tiger tanks was nothing less than a liability. In contrast, when Soviet designers were faced with the impending obsolescence of their T-34/76 and KV series tanks, they opted to increase firepower only in the case of the T-34, and mobility in the case of the KV. The results were the T-34/85 (simply an upgunned version) and the IS series. In this way, Soviet designers maintained the offensive character of their tanks whereas the Germans sacrificed theirs. As a result, Soviet armies were able to undertake sweeping offensives without having to pause and wait for their tanks to catch up. See Operation Bagration. There was another inconsistency between German armor doctrine and their tank designs, one which was alluded to in an earlier post. In German doctrine, tanks were supposed to break through the enemy line and create an opening that could be exploited by follow-up infantry. To accomplish this purpose, early German tanks were primarily oriented towards anti-infantry and anti-fortification operations. Mark I and II Panzers were never meant to face enemy tanks. Not until the Mark III arrived did the Germans possess an adequate anti-tank tank. The Mark IV, however, was designed to fill an anti-infantry role, at least in its initial configuration. When the Tiger and Panther were introduced, their role was intended to be as an answer to Soviet armor. This meant that, as the war progressed, German tank designs focused more and more on anti-tank capabilites. As a corollary, their anti-infantry capabilities diminished. Thus, while German tanks became more and more capable in combat against Soviet tanks, they also became more and more constrained by the maneuverability of their accompanying infantry forces since they had little protection of their own against Soviet infantry. Again, German design decisions had reduced the mobility, and therefore offensive suitability, of their vehicles. None other than Heinz Guderian himself had to issue a warning to Panther units not to overreach themselves: "Close attention must be paid to guarding the flanks of the Panther attack! All the other available weapons must be employed in this effort. Panthers need to attack utilizing an especially wide formation to prevent the enemy from flanking the core of the attacking unit." In other words, just because a Panther unit could proceed ahead of accompanying units, it was never advisable to actually do so. As an example of what typically happened when this advice was not followed, the following is a Panzer brigade commander's report concerning an overly ambitious Panther commander: "The commander of Panzer-Regiment “Grossdeutschland” was Graf Strachwitz, the “Panzer-Leowe” (Tank Lion). Working with him was very unpleasant. During the attack, he simply did not come on the radio and operated independently. This went on so far that I was ordered to appear before General von Knobelsdorff (commanding general of the XLVIII.Panzer-Korps) to answer for the brigade headquarters not functioning. In the interim, Strachwitz directed the Panzer-Brigade and employed the Panthers outright crazily. This resulted in continuous mine damage and flank protection was never built up. Therefore, the Panthers, whose sides are vulnerable, were shot up." As for how all this relates to the Western Front and Shermans, I believe that the inconsistencies between German tank production and their armor doctrine resulted in a sort of tactical paradox. In contrast, the synergistic effect of Allied armor production actually complimenting their armor doctrine meant that, basically, the Sherman was the best type of tank they could have asked for at the time.
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Dec 2, 2010 04:07
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Regarding the attention given to logistics by German commanders, there is an element of aristocratic contempt for the issue evident in many German commanders' actions. For example, during the early days of Rommel's activity in North Africa (ie up to El Alamein), he showed a rather startling tendancy to simply will away logistical problems. North Africa represented a peculiar supply environment because it, unlike most theaters, could offer virtually no material support to the forces present. Practically all supplies, including fuel, food, water, and ammunition, had to be imported from outside the theater. In order to accomodate the large quantities of incoming supplies that would be necessary to adequately feed Rommel's army, large port facilities would be necessary. Yet he never really made any attempt to provide such facilites for himself. Instead, he simply relied on the facilities already present in Tripoli and Benghazi. Now, granted, OKW did not really consider North Africa to be very important at the time, and would not necessarily have been inclined to give Rommel the equipment and manpower necessary to expand these facilities, but the fact remains that he never even asked for such aid, even though it probably would have been possible for the Reich to provide it at the time. Instead, he simply demanded that his quartermaster staff just work harder. In his own words, Rommel felt that, "One is forced again and again to re-learn the fact that standards set by precedent are based on something less than average performance, and, for that reason, one should not submit to them." In other words, logistical personnel typically gave very conservative estimates of what was possible, and they simply had to be whipped into shape by an officer that knew better. The reality, however, was that while such an attitude could, and often did, result in short-term, local logistical improvement, the long-term, large scale situation remained precarious at best. One major problem was that by relying solely on the two ports of Triploi and Benghazi, Rommel forced inbound supply convoys into very specific routes of travel. As a result, the British submarine force in the Mediterranean had a field day sinking Italian convoys. Eventually, this forced the Italians to devote heavier military escort to these convoys. This actually exacerbated the problem, since the military ships required more fuel for themselves, while simultaneously providing less capacity for actual supply. As a result, Rommel's supply convoys became even less adequate than they had been. In a similar vein, as Rommel advanced across Africa, he extended his own supply lines while shortening those of his enemies. As this occurred, more fuel was burned by the convoy trucks themselves as they trekked across the desert to supply the actual combat forces. Again, had Rommel acquired port facilities nearer his front lines, this problem might have been alleviated, not only by shortening his land-bound supply lines, but also by providing additional routes for sea-bound convoys to utilize. Instead, Rommel simply bypassed the port of Tobruk and only laid siege to it once his advance had already stalled. In Rommel's mind, Tobruk was simply a thorn in his side that needed to be removed. Any logistical advantage given by its capture would simply have been a bonus. This sort of attitude was the result of centuries of military habit, in which the concerns of a military commander were synonymous with those of an aristocrat, since they were usually one and the same person. In other words, strategy, operational art, and tactical leadership. Likewise, logistical and supply concerns fell to merchants and sutlers, who ranked rather low in the social hierarchy. In the case of the Wehrmacht, these class distinctions lingered on largely due to the high social status of military officers, whereas such social distinction was less prominent in most of the Allied countries. In contrast to Rommel, the first step the Allies took after landing in Normandy was to secure a deep-water port (Cherbourg) and artificially increase its capacity through the use of the Mulberry Harbor.
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Dec 7, 2010 02:51
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Nenonen posted:Couple of problems with that - Germans had totally wrecked all the Cherbourg port facilities by the time the city was liberated, making it unusable until mid-August when the Allies had already broken out of Normandy. Mulberries were not intended for Cherbourg, they were for Omaha and Gold beaches. The Omaha beach Mulberry A was destroyed in a storm just two weeks later, but according to Keegan in Six Armies in Normandy: You make valid points about the Mulberries. I was really aiming more at the fact that the Allies were very conscious of their logistical situation, and actively tried to improve the harbor situation at Cherbourg rather than simply working around it, which is what Rommel did in Africa.
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Dec 8, 2010 01:36
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Oftentimes this sort of book can be a good study in Confirmation Bias.
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Dec 9, 2010 01:48
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INTJ Mastermind posted:Yeah how the hell did that work anyway? I'm speaking of cavalry in the era of "modern" firearms. Were they used as highly mobile riflemen? Did they shoot on horseback? Or did they actually grab their swords and charge some motherfuckers? "Modern" cavalry were indeed usually used as highly mobile infantrymen, albeit unusually well trained. In some ways, they were akin to paratroopers in that they received better training and often the best pick of recruits. Indeed, the Polish cavalry that faced the Wehrmacht in 1939 were just such units, and the fables of their foolhardy mounted charges against tanks were only later created by German propaganda as a way to illustrate the absolute superiority of German arms over their opponent. Even so, the last actual cavalry charge in history didn't occur until the middle of World War II, and it was by an Italian unit, if you can believe it. More info here.
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Dec 9, 2010 03:59
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HeroOfTheRevolution posted:Hardly the last in history. There were cavalry charges by US Special Forces in Afghanistan, and I'm sure horses have been used in small wars post-WWII as well. I wasn't aware of that. Can you point me toward some sources? I have to admit I'm not really up to snuff on particulars in Iraq/Afghanistan.
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Dec 9, 2010 14:17
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In response to the question about Joffre, as well as some earlier discussion about 18th versus 19th century warfare, Joffre's decisions were representative of prevailing strategic and tactical thought at the time. The supremacy of the offense was assumed to follow logically from the advent of industrialized weaponry and transportation, such as machine guns and trains. If an army possessed the ability to move quickly via motorized or rail traffic, this allowed them the advantage of choosing the location of an attack with little or no warning for the enemy. Furthermore, the burgeoning power of machine guns and artillery was expected to thoroughly dishearten defenders. As a result, it was believed, an immediate all-out assault, conducted in such a way as to disallow the enemy to respond effectively, was the best course of action at the beginning of a war. Indeed, this was the essence of the German Schlieffen plan. In addition, Plan XVII had been drawn up by none other than Marshall Foch, who believed that moral fortitude counted for more than such temporal things as bullets and shells. In any case, had the Schlieffen plan been followed more closely to its original intent, there would have been far weaker German defenses facing the French. Instead, the offensive portion of the German plan, namely the right wing, had been intentionally weakened by Moltke the Younger in order to strengthen precisely those defenses. As a result, the French ran into unexpected resistance in Alsace-Lorraine, while the Germans found themselves lacking sufficient strength to drive all the way to Paris. At this point, neither the French nor the Germans possessed the ability to continue an offensive war of maneuver, and the now well-known conditions of trench warfare began to manifest themselves. The reason for such widespread reliance on offensive principles originated in the Napoleonic Wars. Napoleon did indeed bring significant changes to the way war was conducted in Continental Europe. For example, he introduced the organizing structure of the Army Corps, or Corps d'Armee, which provided the French army with stable combined-arms groupings of divisions. In other words, a Corps was more or less a self sufficient body, able to prosecute offensive or defensive actions on its own. Therefore, when a French army engaged an enemy army, one of its Corps could act as a hammer while the other acted as an anvil. In contrast, the enemy army would be obliged to engage as basically a single large unit, thus limiting its ability to maneuver. Napoleon's Corps also allowed his armies to move more efficiently, since each corps could travel via a separate route, thus improving both speed and logistics. Furthermore, this allowed him to pursue his mantra of "Divide and conquer." Napoleon's remarkable offensive successes were etched in the memory of European armies for generations, and everyone assumed such methods would always work in the future. To illustrate just how innovative Napoleon's methods were, consider that, during the Ancien Regime, it was standard practice for armies to face each other in neat parallel lines, approach, and intentionally wait for the enemy to fire first. The reason for this was that the first side to fire put itself into a disadvantageous position as follows: Army A and Army B form ranks and approach to firing distance. Army A fires first, inflicting light casualties on Army B due largely to the inaccuracy of contemporary weapons. As Army A commences reloading, Army B continues to approach, fires at a closer range, thus inflicting heavier casualties, and immediately begins a bayonet charge as Army A is still in shock after receiving the volley. While this is certainly an idealized representation, it is indicative of the considerations facing contemporary commanders. This situation was the reason for the famous command at the Battle of Bunker Hill, "Don't fire until you see the whites of their eyes." The ability to sustain an initial enemy volley while continuing to close distance, followed by the ability to present an answering volley in good order, required an army to possess well-trained men who could continuously operate under such conditions. As a result, there was some reluctance to send such men into battle unless the result was pretty much certain, since each man represented a significant investment in training. Napoleon, however, had to rely primarily on conscript soldiers who did not benefit from such training. As such, he could not depend on their ability to accept the first volley and remain in good order. Instead, he made use of "Attack Columns" which were basically very large groups of men packed tightly together in order to provide some sense of security. These groups were then sent to march directly at the enemy line, thus providing a local superiority in numbers. The lessons garnered from Napoleon's techniques were not always well considered. One theoretician in particular, Antoine-Henri Jomini, devised a geometrical theory of warfare based on Napoleon's exploits in which interior lines, bases of attack, and other such jargony concepts were meant to break tactical and strategic decisions down into a series of simple mathematical calculations. Adherence to this theory was widespread throughout the 19th century and repeatedly manifested itself during the American Civil War, as well as World War I.
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Dec 15, 2010 01:03
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