7 ms·

"Manoeuvre warfare is fantastically effective when the circumstances allow for it, but the available conditions, technology and personnel can sometimes make it

by crikli 15y ago

"Manoeuvre warfare is fantastically effective when the circumstances allow for it, but the available conditions, technology and personnel can sometimes make it ineffective. For instance, the German Blitzkrieg was extraordinarily effective against the static French defences in 1940, but the same forces and tactics came unstuck in 1941 when faced with a vicious winter and the Russian scorched earth style of defence." Nah, the reason it came unstuck is because the Germans ran out of fuel and because overrunning Stalingrad became a point of pride with Hitler and the Wermacht...there were not tactical/strategic reasons to occupy the city when they could have encircled and passed. Encirclement and passage was one of the lessons the American military learned (sort of) from Stalingard that they later executed in the island hopping campaigns of the Pacific. Rather than invading every island, they just bypassed those without strategic value, cut the shipping lanes, and let the occupying forces starve.

_djo_ 15y ago
That's a fair point, the pointless focus on Stalingrad was folly and a big contributor to the defeat. But the lack of preparedness for the Russian winter (and the impact it would have on the speed of movement) and the inability to capture supplies as they captured terrain both played big roles as well.
zeteo 15y ago
Encirclement was by no means discovered at Stalingrad! The Germans themselves created plenty of kessels in '39-'43. And the classical example is, of course, Hannibal's strategy at Cannae.
eftpotrm 15y ago
Not just running out of fuel but general supply line issues. Blitzkrieg (around which the German forces had been designed) was predicated on the assumption that you could quickly overrun a territory before the defenders could react to it. Which works fine in Poland and, to a degree, France (though that was partly due to some interesting internal politics in France at the time) but where's the first defensible border you could run to and hold in Russia? The Urals. Waaaaaaay too far to go. Even if you're starting from Konigsberg (as was then) and aiming at Moscow, that's still further than the whole width of France. Germany was faced with supply lines that grew too long and a front that rapidly fanned out and thinned their forces. They ended up moving supplies by rail but had to lay their own rails as they went because the pre-existing Russian lines didn't match what they had and could feed from Germany. They needed supplies at such a rate that they couldn't afford the track time of sending cars back, so cars were abandoned at the front instead. The supply lines just became too long to service. Then partisan campaigns started breaking out in captured territory requiring manpower to keep that land placid enough to support the front. Yet more supply issues. Then.... winter came. German troops were faced with weather so cold that when they were fed soup it froze on their spoons before they could get it into their mouths. Yet Russian troops would hide in the snow all day and come out to attack by night. No doubt helped by convict armies which had regular army guns trained on them from behind and were under no illusions that returning in any condition to still fight would have them shot by their own side. I don't believe there's been a single successful western land invasion of Russia since the Vikings. The country has demonstrated itself well able to simply absorb and tire out attackers by going back into the ample available space, safe in the knowledge that if they could somehow overcome the horrendous logistical challenges, they'd be so weak by the time winter came that it woudln't matter anyway. A brutal strategy, but apparently effective.
- DrCatbox 15y ago
  I have heard this kind of storytelling before, where the outcome of the WW2 is attributed to the failure of the German army on the eastern front and the discussion is focused on finding factors for that failure. However such a storytelling tends to discard or fade the importance of Russian endevaours, ingeniuity and sacrifice. Another kind of storytelling would focus in finding factors which made Russia the ultimate victor. Such a discussion would prove far more interesting in my opinion. Then one could touch on questions such as how to withstand a strong inital attack, regroup, learn from your enemy and prevail.
  - eftpotrm 15y ago
    I'm not at all saying the Russian army didn't do a very good job in the end; rather, being willing and able both to retreat nearly 1,000 miles from your starting position while more than doubling the width of your front line - and still retaining essentially undiminished capacity to fight and supply the campaign - gives you an enormous advantage.
    - Tuna-Fish 15y ago
      > being willing and able both to retreat nearly 1,000 miles from your starting position The Russian army did not do this in WWII -- the Russian army that faced the Germans at the border was entirely annihilated. Those who didn't die at the front mostly died in German POV camps. The Russians won the war because they had the manpower and industrial capacity to raise entire new armies to fight the Germans at a rate faster than the Germans could destroy them.
  - crikli 15y ago
    I don't see that anyone is discarding or fading the role of the Russian military, but without General Winter (a coin termed by the Russians) the outcome would have been different. There's an excellent book I bought at a library sale a couple years back, Stalingrad: The Fateful Siege (http://www.amazon.com/Stalingrad-Fateful-1942-1943-Antony-Beevor/dp/0140284583 http://www.amazon.com/Stalingrad-Fateful-1942-1943-Antony-Be...) that really tells the story well.
jxcole 15y ago
Ok come on, there was no need for them to go to war with Russia AT ALL, if Hitler had focused on Britain and waited until the West was completely defeated (a few years at the most), he would not have lost. Russia divided the Germans in a way that was unnecessary.
- philwelch 15y ago
  Britain had the naval and air power to hold off Germany. Russia had sprawling territory and the winter; Britain had the English Channel. Germany would have been better served to win the North Africa campaign; that might have actually left Germany with a defensible position. On the other hand, the entire purpose of the Nazi regime was to conquer eastern Europe, enslave or exterminate its population, and resettle Germans there. Victory required a successful invasion of Russia.
  - Hardwired 15y ago
    Yes, if they had taken North Africa, then swept up through the Middle East they would have endless oil, and then it could have been a short hop into Russia from the South.
    - JanezStupar 15y ago
      Well... The opera singing surrender monkeys were supposed to take care of that.
  - jsmcgd 15y ago
    Point of order: In retrospect we can clearly see that the RAF was losing the Battle of Britain. It was within weeks of being completely eliminated by the Luftwaffe, when Hitler, quite unexpectedly for the British, switched to a strategic bombing campaign of major population and industrial centres. If the Luftwaffe had air supremacy, then naval supremacy and invasion would have followed. Invasion would have left very few credible options for any D-Day like operations.
    - 15y ago
paganel 15y ago
> Encirclement and passage was one of the lessons the American military learned (sort of) from Stalingard that they later executed in the island hopping campaigns of the Pacific. I was just reading Machiavelli's "Discourses on Livy" (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Discourses_on_Livy http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Discourses_on_Livy) last night, more exactly a chapter called "Fortresses are generally more injurious than useful": > But when the prince has not a good army, then fortresses whether within his territory or upon the frontiers are either injurious or useless to him; injurious, because they are easily lost, and when lost are turned against him; and even if they are so strong that the enemy cannot take them, he will march by with his army and leave them in the rear; and thus they are of no benefit, for good armies, unless opposed by equally powerful ones, march into the enemy’s country regardless of cities or fortresses, which they leave in their rear. We have many instances of this in ancient history; and Francesco Maria did the same thing quite recently, when, marching to attack Urbino, he left ten hostile cities behind him without paying the least attention to them. You can very well replace "fortress" with "battleship" and the idea is the same. Anyway, I highly recommend the book, and you're mentioning somth about the US Army learning from the Germans' mistakes. Well, I can tell you that they certainly did not learn anything from reading Machiavelli, otherwise they wouldn't have trusted Karzai in Afghanistan (there's a chapter called "How dangerous it is to trust to the representations of exiles"), not to mention trying to conquer peace by bribing everyone involved in ruling present Afghanistan (there's also a chapter for it: "Republics and princes that are really powerful do not purchase alliances by money, but by their valor and the reputation of their armies") or not doing anything about Abu Ghraib ("How dangerous it is for a republic or a prince not to avenge a public or a private injury"). Here's the English translation of this great book: http://oll.libertyfund.org/simple.php?id=775 http://oll.libertyfund.org/simple.php?id=775
- crikli 15y ago
  Thanks for the link...I'll be checking that out.
- Tuna-Fish 15y ago
  > You can very well replace "fortress" with "battleship" and the idea is the same. No, you can't, because the battleship can move and attack your supply lines. Battleships won the first world war. Not because of any engagement they participated in, but because the Royal Navy stopped German merchant shipping entirely, while the Kriegsmarine only managed to harass British shipping. You cannot go around a battleship when one of the primary points in it's design is to be fast enough to interdict anyone.

by crikli 15y ago

_djo_ 15y ago

That's a fair point, the pointless focus on Stalingrad was folly and a big contributor to the defeat. But the lack of preparedness for the Russian winter (and the impact it would have on the speed of movement) and the inability to capture supplies as they captured terrain both played big roles as well.

zeteo 15y ago

Encirclement was by no means discovered at Stalingrad! The Germans themselves created plenty of kessels in '39-'43. And the classical example is, of course, Hannibal's strategy at Cannae.

eftpotrm 15y ago

Not just running out of fuel but general supply line issues. Blitzkrieg (around which the German forces had been designed) was predicated on the assumption that you could quickly overrun a territory before the defenders could react to it. Which works fine in Poland and, to a degree, France (though that was partly due to some interesting internal politics in France at the time) but where's the first defensible border you could run to and hold in Russia? The Urals. Waaaaaaay too far to go. Even if you're starting from Konigsberg (as was then) and aiming at Moscow, that's still further than the whole width of France. Germany was faced with supply lines that grew too long and a front that rapidly fanned out and thinned their forces. They ended up moving supplies by rail but had to lay their own rails as they went because the pre-existing Russian lines didn't match what they had and could feed from Germany. They needed supplies at such a rate that they couldn't afford the track time of sending cars back, so cars were abandoned at the front instead. The supply lines just became too long to service. Then partisan campaigns started breaking out in captured territory requiring manpower to keep that land placid enough to support the front. Yet more supply issues. Then.... winter came. German troops were faced with weather so cold that when they were fed soup it froze on their spoons before they could get it into their mouths. Yet Russian troops would hide in the snow all day and come out to attack by night. No doubt helped by convict armies which had regular army guns trained on them from behind and were under no illusions that returning in any condition to still fight would have them shot by their own side. I don't believe there's been a single successful western land invasion of Russia since the Vikings. The country has demonstrated itself well able to simply absorb and tire out attackers by going back into the ample available space, safe in the knowledge that if they could somehow overcome the horrendous logistical challenges, they'd be so weak by the time winter came that it woudln't matter anyway. A brutal strategy, but apparently effective.

DrCatbox 15y ago
I have heard this kind of storytelling before, where the outcome of the WW2 is attributed to the failure of the German army on the eastern front and the discussion is focused on finding factors for that failure. However such a storytelling tends to discard or fade the importance of Russian endevaours, ingeniuity and sacrifice. Another kind of storytelling would focus in finding factors which made Russia the ultimate victor. Such a discussion would prove far more interesting in my opinion. Then one could touch on questions such as how to withstand a strong inital attack, regroup, learn from your enemy and prevail.
- eftpotrm 15y ago
  I'm not at all saying the Russian army didn't do a very good job in the end; rather, being willing and able both to retreat nearly 1,000 miles from your starting position while more than doubling the width of your front line - and still retaining essentially undiminished capacity to fight and supply the campaign - gives you an enormous advantage.
  - Tuna-Fish 15y ago
    > being willing and able both to retreat nearly 1,000 miles from your starting position The Russian army did not do this in WWII -- the Russian army that faced the Germans at the border was entirely annihilated. Those who didn't die at the front mostly died in German POV camps. The Russians won the war because they had the manpower and industrial capacity to raise entire new armies to fight the Germans at a rate faster than the Germans could destroy them.
- crikli 15y ago
  I don't see that anyone is discarding or fading the role of the Russian military, but without General Winter (a coin termed by the Russians) the outcome would have been different. There's an excellent book I bought at a library sale a couple years back, Stalingrad: The Fateful Siege (http://www.amazon.com/Stalingrad-Fateful-1942-1943-Antony-Beevor/dp/0140284583 http://www.amazon.com/Stalingrad-Fateful-1942-1943-Antony-Be...) that really tells the story well.

jxcole 15y ago

Ok come on, there was no need for them to go to war with Russia AT ALL, if Hitler had focused on Britain and waited until the West was completely defeated (a few years at the most), he would not have lost. Russia divided the Germans in a way that was unnecessary.

philwelch 15y ago
Britain had the naval and air power to hold off Germany. Russia had sprawling territory and the winter; Britain had the English Channel. Germany would have been better served to win the North Africa campaign; that might have actually left Germany with a defensible position. On the other hand, the entire purpose of the Nazi regime was to conquer eastern Europe, enslave or exterminate its population, and resettle Germans there. Victory required a successful invasion of Russia.
- Hardwired 15y ago
  Yes, if they had taken North Africa, then swept up through the Middle East they would have endless oil, and then it could have been a short hop into Russia from the South.
  - JanezStupar 15y ago
    Well... The opera singing surrender monkeys were supposed to take care of that.
- jsmcgd 15y ago
  Point of order: In retrospect we can clearly see that the RAF was losing the Battle of Britain. It was within weeks of being completely eliminated by the Luftwaffe, when Hitler, quite unexpectedly for the British, switched to a strategic bombing campaign of major population and industrial centres. If the Luftwaffe had air supremacy, then naval supremacy and invasion would have followed. Invasion would have left very few credible options for any D-Day like operations.
  - 15y ago

paganel 15y ago

> Encirclement and passage was one of the lessons the American military learned (sort of) from Stalingard that they later executed in the island hopping campaigns of the Pacific. I was just reading Machiavelli's "Discourses on Livy" (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Discourses_on_Livy http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Discourses_on_Livy) last night, more exactly a chapter called "Fortresses are generally more injurious than useful": > But when the prince has not a good army, then fortresses whether within his territory or upon the frontiers are either injurious or useless to him; injurious, because they are easily lost, and when lost are turned against him; and even if they are so strong that the enemy cannot take them, he will march by with his army and leave them in the rear; and thus they are of no benefit, for good armies, unless opposed by equally powerful ones, march into the enemy’s country regardless of cities or fortresses, which they leave in their rear. We have many instances of this in ancient history; and Francesco Maria did the same thing quite recently, when, marching to attack Urbino, he left ten hostile cities behind him without paying the least attention to them. You can very well replace "fortress" with "battleship" and the idea is the same. Anyway, I highly recommend the book, and you're mentioning somth about the US Army learning from the Germans' mistakes. Well, I can tell you that they certainly did not learn anything from reading Machiavelli, otherwise they wouldn't have trusted Karzai in Afghanistan (there's a chapter called "How dangerous it is to trust to the representations of exiles"), not to mention trying to conquer peace by bribing everyone involved in ruling present Afghanistan (there's also a chapter for it: "Republics and princes that are really powerful do not purchase alliances by money, but by their valor and the reputation of their armies") or not doing anything about Abu Ghraib ("How dangerous it is for a republic or a prince not to avenge a public or a private injury"). Here's the English translation of this great book: http://oll.libertyfund.org/simple.php?id=775 http://oll.libertyfund.org/simple.php?id=775

crikli 15y ago
Thanks for the link...I'll be checking that out.
Tuna-Fish 15y ago
> You can very well replace "fortress" with "battleship" and the idea is the same. No, you can't, because the battleship can move and attack your supply lines. Battleships won the first world war. Not because of any engagement they participated in, but because the Royal Navy stopped German merchant shipping entirely, while the Kriegsmarine only managed to harass British shipping. You cannot go around a battleship when one of the primary points in it's design is to be fast enough to interdict anyone.