6 ms·

Total Resistance: Swiss Army Guide to Guerrilla Warfare (1965)

133 points by webmaven 5y ago

webmaven 5y ago
Also: https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Total_Resistance_(book) https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Total_Resistance_(book)
- insickness 5y ago
  > Because the book is based on the conduct of World War II occupying forces (Nazi Germany and the Soviet Union), most of its contents are politically and technically no longer applicable to the early 21st century. Some of von Dach's instructions remain relevant, however, to current conflicts, such as about how to sabotage infrastructure, construct roadblocks, make and use incendiary devices or hide weapons and ammunition. It would be interesting to see the tactics updated to deal with current technologies.
  - wffurr 5y ago
    It's less about technology than about the treatment a civilian population can expect from an occupying force, largely due to ideology. Although humans haven't changed that much since then. It's terrifying to contemplate what humans are capable of doing to each other.
  - hef19898 5y ago
    Once, when I was younger, I got my fingers on copy of the Nazis guide to stay behind forces, their Werewolf forces to fight the advancing alies. Obviously they never did that. Even to my untrained, and young, eyes it was nothing revoltionary. Stuff like melt away into the population, hide weapons, strike the enemies rear. Funny enough, the copy I read was, as far as I remember, almost a political. The Pentagon has published field manuals on the same topic. I would also assume that a lot of Soviet documents would be available since the disolution of the USSR, their military maps are even available as an app. Pretty usefull, and quite funny how accurate those maps are for Germany...
  - Terry_Roll 5y ago
    You dont think the British Empire gained a lot of knowledge from criminals during its day which would be classed as Guerrilla warfare today? And with regard to current technologies, all we have done is gone from analogue to digital and added some encryption, new frequencies and directional capabilities, so the methods relevant for analogue will still be relevant today, but the directional capabilities will add some stealth ability making things somewhat harder, but this has a parallel like word of mouth communication, so maybe those techniques could be redeployed or adapted? When is life not a Live Action Role Play? Social media is dominated with the Ukraine crisis, and it just seems like one big LARP, where those who signed up to do a job are now being asked to do it, just like we saw with medical personnel and Covid. And those mothers who packed their kids off to be slaughtered in the nationalism, makes me wonder why do we punish some right wing nationalists and not others like mothers?
kkfx 5y ago
Unfortunately almost no countries do want a "ready" population, since such population can react effectively against it's own government if it does not respect anymore People's will... Then most important lesson is never learned: si vis pacem para bellum, if we want peace we need to be prepared to war, war between countries, between People and Government, between single humans each others etc. These days there are more people to think about physical warfare than people who know their own simple personal attack surface: what happen in case of electricity loss for a not limited period of time for instance? Most people do not even try to imaging such simple scenario. Do not even know how much food/water they have at home or how to heat/cool their own home to live in not that big disaster like a few days power cut. Most people do talk via proprietary services and always have Android/iOS device with them even when they plan or a act a peaceful and perfectly legit protest. For them, witch include many so called "preppers" study how to fight is useless: to fight we first need to know how to live and most people do not know that if there are only not-such-big malfunction in their own society systems/tools. Oh, BTW did you imaging what can happen with new connected cars in case of a big unrest?
- wffurr 5y ago
  Practical Doomsday, the book form of this post from a few days ago: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=30466733 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=30466733, goes into exactly some of those kinds of considerations. https://lcamtuf.coredump.cx/prep/ https://lcamtuf.coredump.cx/prep/ Probably significantly more relevant for most people than the OP book.
- ganzuul 5y ago
  In an age when education instead of war is being used to control population, arming everyone is no longer seems too implausible. A sense of justice needs time to flourish.
  - kkfx 5y ago
    IMVHO such sense is already flourished only without awareness. Most young people do not want to really fight nor oppress anyone else. Most people these days do want universal peace and prosperity, do prefer sharing than real competition. Unfortunately now like in the past such people are unable to stand in the real world for long, they are easy to betray and push toward destructive paths, that's why trained people (in the more broad sense, not just in military sense, trained as Citizens instead of subjects) are feared by any government. When things became tough people's react, badly at first in general, but when there is a calm period all defenses get dropped quickly. And a new slow destruction of conquered calm and prosperity start. Just imaging the power of a strike: if vast majority of workers are "wealthy" enough to have a house, food and water and can stop to work for a not super-short period of time, like an entire month, a strike is always winning especially when you strike to protest against poor working/social conditions, because both companies and governments in such situations are not resilient. Now imaging how little is possible and how little is effective a strike in an almost automated society where people live in small flat full depending from all services of a smart city: they going to starve quickly. No water, no food, no way to move (only public transportation or car sharing alike services) meanwhile no disruption of business activities since they are automated. That's the point: being armed and trained is just one aspect of being citizen, owning a house, having a certain independence is another essential part. Without all the above there are no Citizens, just more or less, more or less formally oppressed subjects. In IT terms, since we are on HN a network of desktops, a peer to peer or at least a common decentralized service like usenet, emails etc is democracy, always depend on third party services that by nature tend to be more and more oligarch is being slave. Just see classic stocks (a paper sheet delivered to the buyer) vs digital one, classic bank accounts than actual one: theoretically, technically we can make bank transactions as a common standard (for instance the EU mandatory, only between banks, OpenBank API) and operate via owner + black signed text (XML/JSON) exchanges. No one actually do that witch means that banks do have the total control on money and their customers have exactly nothing in hand. Crypto? Since the blockchain is an ever-grown append-only "file" sooner or later there will be not enough iron to operate directly on them at home and so an exchange, typically a Big of IT one, will became mandatory by nature. Again no power to the people. And I can go forward with Google&c ban and so on. Benefiting from cooperation and commerce is good, being forced it not. Trusting others is good, until you can verify that trust is well placed, the need of trust on contrary is a weakness. On arms imaging a peaceful and legit protest: with an armed and trained people ALL SIDES know well that in case of abuse anyone will suffer much => all party likely choose to act peacefully under democratic rules. In case of only one side armed?
Kenji 5y ago
marcodiego 5y ago
There is a very interesting one by Brazilian revolutionary Carlos Marighella: Minimanual of the Urban Guerrilla https://www.marxists.org/archive/marighella-carlos/1969/06/minimanual-urban-guerrilla/index.htm https://www.marxists.org/archive/marighella-carlos/1969/06/m...
londons_explore 5y ago
When at war, there are 3 possible outcomes. Either you win. Or you lose... And the enemy takes your territory and governs your people. This is bad. Or the war drags on for years, killing generations of people. This is worse than losing. The human costs are far bigger. Children grow up learning how to fire an AK47 before they learn to write. Guerrilla warfare usually ends up in that last case. That's why I wouldn't suggest anyone advocate for guerrilla warfare. It's simply a way to kill millions and end up with a permanent stalemate.
- karaterobot 5y ago
  I mean, it worked for Vietnam. It doesn't always work, but if the alternative is that the bigger side in an asymmetric conflict just gets to have your country for free, along with any smaller non-aligned countries they want, growing and growing in size until they form some kind of ... union of republics... then maybe it's worth putting up a fight?
- o_m 5y ago
  It doesn't always end with a stalemate. Guerrilla warfare worked great for Vietnam and Afghanistan.
- jrs235 5y ago
  FYI, you mean lose. Loose is the opposite of tight. Lose is the opposite of win. Edit: both loose and lose sound similar (loose sounds like moose, lose sounds like news). There's also loss which is similar to losing (not winning). Used like: that's your loss (like you lost or are missing something, opposite of found).
- ed_balls 5y ago
  But in todays world where your enemy has enormous intel, letting him know that there is a risk of guerrilla warfare may stop him from invading in the first place. The stronger you stand on the escalation ladder the better.
motohagiography 5y ago
The tactics are interesting and the manuals are useful for potential team and unit leads, but there are some underlying principles you can spread and scale faster than a a tactical instruction manual. A sense of immutable shared identity will isolate an occupier from support and create infinite long term costs. The economy of the occupation has to be worth it for the occupier, which means there is some strategic asset a resistance can deprive them of. I don't know if the Ukranian people have this, but group identity is probably the most powerful tool of all. What does Russia get out of Ukraine? The Dnieper River, secured ports on the Black Sea and its resources, international / continental shipping routes for Russian exports that don't have to go through multiple countries. The capability of maintining long term hidden artillery batterys down the Dnieper that can sink boats, and air strikes on ships in the Black Sea would make an occupation diseconomic as compared to a trade agreement. I suspect the calculus for the invasion was based on how Ukraine had become too much of a political risk as a choke point for securing Russian economic expansion and a need to secure long term export routes, and then the political weakness of the US/NATO in the form of its low likelihood of imposing serious consequences set the incentives up so the decision to invade practically made itself. There could be a compromise where Russia gets a continuous border on the Black Sea, and Ukraine cedes that territory, but survives as a nation, with the condition that it will be flattened if the new smaller nation joins NATO. Ukraine needs to survive, and a resistance that accepted the lost strategic territory but fought a long war of attrition over the less strategic areas could secure their independent existence because once Russia takes the land and sea routes it needs, the costs of holding the rest of the territory make a new peace more economical in the face of an ethnic Ukranian resistance killing Russians for decades over land that doesn't have as significant return on the costs to hold it. These economics are likely why Afghanistan and Vietnam were so successful, as they fought for identity and over land and territory the occupiers didn't get a return on their investment and huge costs on.
wara23arish 5y ago
If anyone is interested in accounts of smaller guerrilla like forces ending up victorious over much stronger/larger armies. The best modern and most recent example is the Hezbollah Israeli war in 2006 in Lebanon. This is a US review of why hezbollah succeeded in its goals against israel and how they were able to do so. https://www.armyupress.army.mil/Portals/7/combat-studies-institute/csi-books/we-were-caught-unprepared.pdf https://www.armyupress.army.mil/Portals/7/combat-studies-ins... I haven’t finished reading it yet but its very interesting. For example, they had hundreds of autonomous cells working with no single point of failure. “Nearly 600 separate ammunition and weapons bunkers were strategically placed in the region south of the Litani. For security reasons, no single commander knew the location of each bunker and each distinct Hezbollah militia unit was assigned access to three bunkers only—a primary munitions bunker and two reserve bunkers, in case the primary bunker was destroyed.” It also mentions they were taught and learned from North Korean war and Iran obviously. This is not to glorify them, but if you read the review you can obviously see that what they achieved demands respect. As in respect for your adversaries strength.
- ed_balls 5y ago
  UA forces have a very similar strategy. They are heavily decentralised. Which has a surprising side effect, apart from mentioned. Because enemy's command is decentralised it takes them up to 4 days to cease fire. It's better to start the negotiation sooner. What is interesting about Hezbollah is that they use civilian drones. I haven't seen any reports of using civilians drones in this conflict. Army should buy thousands of civilian drones and just attached hand grenades. You can wreak a lot of chaos in the night. Antonov airport is a good target. Another idea is to use cars in self-driving capabilities as bombs.
  - wara23arish 5y ago
    Yes back in 2006 i don’t believe they had drone capabilities. Im surprised there hasn’t been more news of drone usage similar to the Armenian Azerbajian war.
    - 5y ago
teslaberri 5y ago
advanced drone swarms that can navigate, recharge and not only do reconnaisance,audio spying , and also light land mining and light firefights are going to put an end to guerilla warfare in the next few centuries. all guerilla warfare. there will be no place to hide whatsoever. maybe not this century, but so long as tech improves this is coming. and it will be a quick skip to global government.

133 points by webmaven 5y ago

webmaven 5y ago

Also: https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Total_Resistance_(book) https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Total_Resistance_(book)

insickness 5y ago
> Because the book is based on the conduct of World War II occupying forces (Nazi Germany and the Soviet Union), most of its contents are politically and technically no longer applicable to the early 21st century. Some of von Dach's instructions remain relevant, however, to current conflicts, such as about how to sabotage infrastructure, construct roadblocks, make and use incendiary devices or hide weapons and ammunition. It would be interesting to see the tactics updated to deal with current technologies.
- wffurr 5y ago
  It's less about technology than about the treatment a civilian population can expect from an occupying force, largely due to ideology. Although humans haven't changed that much since then. It's terrifying to contemplate what humans are capable of doing to each other.
- hef19898 5y ago
  Once, when I was younger, I got my fingers on copy of the Nazis guide to stay behind forces, their Werewolf forces to fight the advancing alies. Obviously they never did that. Even to my untrained, and young, eyes it was nothing revoltionary. Stuff like melt away into the population, hide weapons, strike the enemies rear. Funny enough, the copy I read was, as far as I remember, almost a political. The Pentagon has published field manuals on the same topic. I would also assume that a lot of Soviet documents would be available since the disolution of the USSR, their military maps are even available as an app. Pretty usefull, and quite funny how accurate those maps are for Germany...
- Terry_Roll 5y ago
  You dont think the British Empire gained a lot of knowledge from criminals during its day which would be classed as Guerrilla warfare today? And with regard to current technologies, all we have done is gone from analogue to digital and added some encryption, new frequencies and directional capabilities, so the methods relevant for analogue will still be relevant today, but the directional capabilities will add some stealth ability making things somewhat harder, but this has a parallel like word of mouth communication, so maybe those techniques could be redeployed or adapted? When is life not a Live Action Role Play? Social media is dominated with the Ukraine crisis, and it just seems like one big LARP, where those who signed up to do a job are now being asked to do it, just like we saw with medical personnel and Covid. And those mothers who packed their kids off to be slaughtered in the nationalism, makes me wonder why do we punish some right wing nationalists and not others like mothers?

kkfx 5y ago

Unfortunately almost no countries do want a "ready" population, since such population can react effectively against it's own government if it does not respect anymore People's will... Then most important lesson is never learned: si vis pacem para bellum, if we want peace we need to be prepared to war, war between countries, between People and Government, between single humans each others etc. These days there are more people to think about physical warfare than people who know their own simple personal attack surface: what happen in case of electricity loss for a not limited period of time for instance? Most people do not even try to imaging such simple scenario. Do not even know how much food/water they have at home or how to heat/cool their own home to live in not that big disaster like a few days power cut. Most people do talk via proprietary services and always have Android/iOS device with them even when they plan or a act a peaceful and perfectly legit protest. For them, witch include many so called "preppers" study how to fight is useless: to fight we first need to know how to live and most people do not know that if there are only not-such-big malfunction in their own society systems/tools. Oh, BTW did you imaging what can happen with new connected cars in case of a big unrest?

wffurr 5y ago
Practical Doomsday, the book form of this post from a few days ago: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=30466733 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=30466733, goes into exactly some of those kinds of considerations. https://lcamtuf.coredump.cx/prep/ https://lcamtuf.coredump.cx/prep/ Probably significantly more relevant for most people than the OP book.
ganzuul 5y ago
In an age when education instead of war is being used to control population, arming everyone is no longer seems too implausible. A sense of justice needs time to flourish.
- kkfx 5y ago
  IMVHO such sense is already flourished only without awareness. Most young people do not want to really fight nor oppress anyone else. Most people these days do want universal peace and prosperity, do prefer sharing than real competition. Unfortunately now like in the past such people are unable to stand in the real world for long, they are easy to betray and push toward destructive paths, that's why trained people (in the more broad sense, not just in military sense, trained as Citizens instead of subjects) are feared by any government. When things became tough people's react, badly at first in general, but when there is a calm period all defenses get dropped quickly. And a new slow destruction of conquered calm and prosperity start. Just imaging the power of a strike: if vast majority of workers are "wealthy" enough to have a house, food and water and can stop to work for a not super-short period of time, like an entire month, a strike is always winning especially when you strike to protest against poor working/social conditions, because both companies and governments in such situations are not resilient. Now imaging how little is possible and how little is effective a strike in an almost automated society where people live in small flat full depending from all services of a smart city: they going to starve quickly. No water, no food, no way to move (only public transportation or car sharing alike services) meanwhile no disruption of business activities since they are automated. That's the point: being armed and trained is just one aspect of being citizen, owning a house, having a certain independence is another essential part. Without all the above there are no Citizens, just more or less, more or less formally oppressed subjects. In IT terms, since we are on HN a network of desktops, a peer to peer or at least a common decentralized service like usenet, emails etc is democracy, always depend on third party services that by nature tend to be more and more oligarch is being slave. Just see classic stocks (a paper sheet delivered to the buyer) vs digital one, classic bank accounts than actual one: theoretically, technically we can make bank transactions as a common standard (for instance the EU mandatory, only between banks, OpenBank API) and operate via owner + black signed text (XML/JSON) exchanges. No one actually do that witch means that banks do have the total control on money and their customers have exactly nothing in hand. Crypto? Since the blockchain is an ever-grown append-only "file" sooner or later there will be not enough iron to operate directly on them at home and so an exchange, typically a Big of IT one, will became mandatory by nature. Again no power to the people. And I can go forward with Google&c ban and so on. Benefiting from cooperation and commerce is good, being forced it not. Trusting others is good, until you can verify that trust is well placed, the need of trust on contrary is a weakness. On arms imaging a peaceful and legit protest: with an armed and trained people ALL SIDES know well that in case of abuse anyone will suffer much => all party likely choose to act peacefully under democratic rules. In case of only one side armed?

Kenji 5y ago

marcodiego 5y ago

There is a very interesting one by Brazilian revolutionary Carlos Marighella: Minimanual of the Urban Guerrilla https://www.marxists.org/archive/marighella-carlos/1969/06/minimanual-urban-guerrilla/index.htm https://www.marxists.org/archive/marighella-carlos/1969/06/m...

londons_explore 5y ago

When at war, there are 3 possible outcomes. Either you win. Or you lose... And the enemy takes your territory and governs your people. This is bad. Or the war drags on for years, killing generations of people. This is worse than losing. The human costs are far bigger. Children grow up learning how to fire an AK47 before they learn to write. Guerrilla warfare usually ends up in that last case. That's why I wouldn't suggest anyone advocate for guerrilla warfare. It's simply a way to kill millions and end up with a permanent stalemate.

karaterobot 5y ago
I mean, it worked for Vietnam. It doesn't always work, but if the alternative is that the bigger side in an asymmetric conflict just gets to have your country for free, along with any smaller non-aligned countries they want, growing and growing in size until they form some kind of ... union of republics... then maybe it's worth putting up a fight?
o_m 5y ago
It doesn't always end with a stalemate. Guerrilla warfare worked great for Vietnam and Afghanistan.
jrs235 5y ago
FYI, you mean lose. Loose is the opposite of tight. Lose is the opposite of win. Edit: both loose and lose sound similar (loose sounds like moose, lose sounds like news). There's also loss which is similar to losing (not winning). Used like: that's your loss (like you lost or are missing something, opposite of found).
ed_balls 5y ago
But in todays world where your enemy has enormous intel, letting him know that there is a risk of guerrilla warfare may stop him from invading in the first place. The stronger you stand on the escalation ladder the better.

motohagiography 5y ago

The tactics are interesting and the manuals are useful for potential team and unit leads, but there are some underlying principles you can spread and scale faster than a a tactical instruction manual. A sense of immutable shared identity will isolate an occupier from support and create infinite long term costs. The economy of the occupation has to be worth it for the occupier, which means there is some strategic asset a resistance can deprive them of. I don't know if the Ukranian people have this, but group identity is probably the most powerful tool of all. What does Russia get out of Ukraine? The Dnieper River, secured ports on the Black Sea and its resources, international / continental shipping routes for Russian exports that don't have to go through multiple countries. The capability of maintining long term hidden artillery batterys down the Dnieper that can sink boats, and air strikes on ships in the Black Sea would make an occupation diseconomic as compared to a trade agreement. I suspect the calculus for the invasion was based on how Ukraine had become too much of a political risk as a choke point for securing Russian economic expansion and a need to secure long term export routes, and then the political weakness of the US/NATO in the form of its low likelihood of imposing serious consequences set the incentives up so the decision to invade practically made itself. There could be a compromise where Russia gets a continuous border on the Black Sea, and Ukraine cedes that territory, but survives as a nation, with the condition that it will be flattened if the new smaller nation joins NATO. Ukraine needs to survive, and a resistance that accepted the lost strategic territory but fought a long war of attrition over the less strategic areas could secure their independent existence because once Russia takes the land and sea routes it needs, the costs of holding the rest of the territory make a new peace more economical in the face of an ethnic Ukranian resistance killing Russians for decades over land that doesn't have as significant return on the costs to hold it. These economics are likely why Afghanistan and Vietnam were so successful, as they fought for identity and over land and territory the occupiers didn't get a return on their investment and huge costs on.

wara23arish 5y ago

If anyone is interested in accounts of smaller guerrilla like forces ending up victorious over much stronger/larger armies. The best modern and most recent example is the Hezbollah Israeli war in 2006 in Lebanon. This is a US review of why hezbollah succeeded in its goals against israel and how they were able to do so. https://www.armyupress.army.mil/Portals/7/combat-studies-institute/csi-books/we-were-caught-unprepared.pdf https://www.armyupress.army.mil/Portals/7/combat-studies-ins... I haven’t finished reading it yet but its very interesting. For example, they had hundreds of autonomous cells working with no single point of failure. “Nearly 600 separate ammunition and weapons bunkers were strategically placed in the region south of the Litani. For security reasons, no single commander knew the location of each bunker and each distinct Hezbollah militia unit was assigned access to three bunkers only—a primary munitions bunker and two reserve bunkers, in case the primary bunker was destroyed.” It also mentions they were taught and learned from North Korean war and Iran obviously. This is not to glorify them, but if you read the review you can obviously see that what they achieved demands respect. As in respect for your adversaries strength.

ed_balls 5y ago
UA forces have a very similar strategy. They are heavily decentralised. Which has a surprising side effect, apart from mentioned. Because enemy's command is decentralised it takes them up to 4 days to cease fire. It's better to start the negotiation sooner. What is interesting about Hezbollah is that they use civilian drones. I haven't seen any reports of using civilians drones in this conflict. Army should buy thousands of civilian drones and just attached hand grenades. You can wreak a lot of chaos in the night. Antonov airport is a good target. Another idea is to use cars in self-driving capabilities as bombs.
- wara23arish 5y ago
  Yes back in 2006 i don’t believe they had drone capabilities. Im surprised there hasn’t been more news of drone usage similar to the Armenian Azerbajian war.
  - 5y ago

teslaberri 5y ago

advanced drone swarms that can navigate, recharge and not only do reconnaisance,audio spying , and also light land mining and light firefights are going to put an end to guerilla warfare in the next few centuries. all guerilla warfare. there will be no place to hide whatsoever. maybe not this century, but so long as tech improves this is coming. and it will be a quick skip to global government.