Matt & Gefan's Virtual Staff Ride

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Matt & Gefan's Virtual Staff Ride

#1

Post by Matt Cavanaugh »

For the in-depth exploration of diverse topics in military history. What would bore normal people.

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Re: Matt & Gefan's Virtual Staff Ride

#2

Post by Matt Cavanaugh »

Gefan wrote:There's some interesting research on the events of May (and more importantly June) 1940 in John Mosier's "The Blitzkrieg Myth". Although I find his overall thesis in the book not all that convincing, his research of events during Fall Gelb (particulalry those subsequent to the crossing at Sedan) is hard to fault.
I'd be curious to know more of Mosier's take on the campaign, but so far, my skim of reviews of Mosier's book indicates that he hasn't the slightest clue what he's talking about.

The pop concept of Blitzkrieg may well be false, but the principles behind the strategy, and its success when properly employed, are very real.

Blitzkrieg is in any case a term coined & popularized by American journalists. The German General Staff's goal was to precipitate "Kesselschlachte" (encirclement battles.) Guderian's concepts, first espoused in Achtung, Panzer!, (& echoed by Fuller, who Mosier apparently dislikes) of using armor to achieve tactical breakthroughs, was merely an extension of the Stoßtruppen tactics employed with success in 1918.

Fall Gelb was (to borrow an American football* term) a play-action fake -- lure the defenders to respond to a decoy offense, then strike quickly in another direction. The final objective, however, was still a grand encirclement. The goal of Schlieffen's plan, based on the encirclement at Cannae, was also a Kesselschlacht, but failed because: 1) it was bastardized by his successors; 2) advances in technology made it unworkable.

But by 1940, the technology of mobile armor & tactical air made it again viable.

(*It's noteworthy that Patton himself gained insight from watching college football plays.)


In the East, massive Kesselschlachte occurred, facilitated by the terrain and by Russian bullheadedness. The Russians learned well from their mistakes, and the bags of each encirclement grew progressively smaller. The Russians attempted their own breakthroughs and encirclements. They usually pushed too recklessly, resulting in themselves being encircled, but did slowly learn the hard way.

Mosier apparently sees Montgomery's battle direction as an antidote to blitzkrieg. I agree that Montgomery was quite good, and has gotten a bad rap in recent times. But I also believe his strategy was ever dictated by the circumstances and by the attributes/imitations of his armies & those of his enemies, rather than drawn from some non-blitz blueprint. Monty's caution was prudent, not innate.


In short, the concept of encirclement is not new; only the use of armor and air power to achieve it was novel. Longstreet comes to mind as a 19th century advocate of the "end-around play".

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Re: Matt & Gefan's Virtual Staff Ride

#3

Post by Matt Cavanaugh »

Mosier's The Myth of The Great War sounds much more compelling, but seems to go over much of the same ground as Fergusson's The Pity of War. The pop assessment of the Western Front was that both sides suffered massive casualties because their generals foolishly threw wave after wave of men against prepared positions. In truth, the Germans early on relied primarily on the defense, building far more stout (& sanitary & comfortable) trench systems, with relatively infrequent, judicious attacks. Consequently, they took significantly fewer casualties than the British & French.

Some of the reviews took issue with Mosier's claim that Verdun was a German victory. Without knowing his reasoning, I can say that the battle, as Falkenhayn intended it, was a brilliant strategy intended to realize a grand strategic outcome -- force the French to incur excessive casualties retaking a position of prestige value only, thus leading to war-weariness among the French. And at first it worked wonderfully. But Falkenhayn was relieved, replaced by the blockheaded Ludendorff, and the Germans forgot the original reason behind Verdun, and so took too many casualties trying to hold it.

That 2/3rds of the French Army mutinied in 1917 (another fact largely unknown today) lends credence to the wisdom of Falkenhayn's plan.

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Re: Matt & Gefan's Virtual Staff Ride

#4

Post by Matt Cavanaugh »

The first time those poor bastards had ever heard that they were even human was when the French arrived and told them so. So once you got below the landlord class in Italy or Germany, the arrival of the revolutionary French armies was the best thing that had ever happened. Hard to get your head around this if you’re an Anglo, but the sad truth is that the bad guys won at Trafalgar and Waterloo
I don't know who wrote this, but it's pathetically naive. One might as well say the Poles, living in 1939 under a military dictatorship, were lucky to be liberated by the 'people's army' of the USSR.

Liberals like Beethoven may have thought the French Revolution was the harbinger of an egalitarian era, but when the French armies arrived, it was 'meet the new boss, same as the old boss.' France and its occupied territories under the Committee was a totalitarian nightmare. And then Napoleon declared himself an emperor, and set up his family as kings, queens and princes.

Further, the arrival of an army back then was about the worst thing that could happen to a peasant or a burgher.

Not surprisingly, popular resistance took place, in Southern Italy, Germany, Russia, and of course, Spain. I'm sure Goya felt the good guys won at Waterloo.

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Re: Matt & Gefan's Virtual Staff Ride

#5

Post by Matt Cavanaugh »

LurkerPerson wrote: Anglo's accusing other countries of rapaciousness, plundering, meddling in the internal affairs of others and jingoism, lol. The Brits take gold in all those events. I'm not even going to start comparing levels of irredentism in major european powers or the fact that you just tried to paint fucking autocractic Prussian dominated Germany as some sort of victim finally taking revenge against a bully.
1) France had been beating up Germany since the 17th century, back when it was Austrian-dominated;

2) In 1870, Prussia had an autocratic king and with a liberal majority in a parliament with limited powers. In 1870, France had an autocratic emperor with a liberal majority in a parliament with limited powers. What was your point again?

3) Noting that Britain was also a bully does not negate that France was an even bigger bully;

4) Noting that Britain was also a bully is a non-sequitur to the fact that the bullying between France and Germany was entirely one-sided for three centuries;

5) Under Napoleon III, France again clamored for new annexations of German lands. In 1840, PM Adolphe Thiers called for the Rhine as the new eastern border of France. In 1864, Nap III, having extorted Savoy & Nice from Cavour in exchange tor 'allowing' Italian unification, now told Bismarck his price for 'allowing' German unification would be the Rhineland. The rapid expansion of the Prussian war budget in the 1860s, and the development of elaborate war plans, was in direct response to French threats.

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Re: Matt & Gefan's Virtual Staff Ride

#6

Post by another lurker »


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Re: Matt & Gefan's Virtual Staff Ride

#7

Post by Gefan »

Matt Cavanaugh wrote:
Gefan wrote:There's some interesting research on the events of May (and more importantly June) 1940 in John Mosier's "The Blitzkrieg Myth". Although I find his overall thesis in the book not all that convincing, his research of events during Fall Gelb (particulalry those subsequent to the crossing at Sedan) is hard to fault.
I'd be curious to know more of Mosier's take on the campaign, but so far, my skim of reviews of Mosier's book indicates that he hasn't the slightest clue what he's talking about.

The pop concept of Blitzkrieg may well be false, but the principles behind the strategy, and its success when properly employed, are very real.

Blitzkrieg is in any case a term coined & popularized by American journalists. The German General Staff's goal was to precipitate "Kesselschlachte" (encirclement battles.) Guderian's concepts, first espoused in Achtung, Panzer!, (& echoed by Fuller, who Mosier apparently dislikes) of using armor to achieve tactical breakthroughs, was merely an extension of the Stoßtruppen tactics employed with success in 1918.

Fall Gelb was (to borrow an American football* term) a play-action fake -- lure the defenders to respond to a decoy offense, then strike quickly in another direction. The final objective, however, was still a grand encirclement. The goal of Schlieffen's plan, based on the encirclement at Cannae, was also a Kesselschlacht, but failed because: 1) it was bastardized by his successors; 2) advances in technology made it unworkable.

But by 1940, the technology of mobile armor & tactical air made it again viable.

(*It's noteworthy that Patton himself gained insight from watching college football plays.)


In the East, massive Kesselschlachte occurred, facilitated by the terrain and by Russian bullheadedness. The Russians learned well from their mistakes, and the bags of each encirclement grew progressively smaller. The Russians attempted their own breakthroughs and encirclements. They usually pushed too recklessly, resulting in themselves being encircled, but did slowly learn the hard way.

Mosier apparently sees Montgomery's battle direction as an antidote to blitzkrieg. I agree that Montgomery was quite good, and has gotten a bad rap in recent times. But I also believe his strategy was ever dictated by the circumstances and by the attributes/imitations of his armies & those of his enemies, rather than drawn from some non-blitz blueprint. Monty's caution was prudent, not innate.


In short, the concept of encirclement is not new; only the use of armor and air power to achieve it was novel. Longstreet comes to mind as a 19th century advocate of the "end-around play".
Overall, Mosier's view is that blitzkrieg was much more evolution than revolution and could fairly easily be frustrated by terrain or logisitcal problems. I think he (at best) over-simplifies in an attempt to be contrary.
The part that was relevant to the original discussion re - France 1940 and the country's subsequent undeserved military reputation in the Anglo-sphere, concerns the events after the crossing at Sedan.
Mosier has an extremely detailed analysis of how far the Germans got around Stonne, how much it cost them in terms of lives and time, and how they themselves wrote about the resistance of the French.
The view in the UK is that the French collapsed on the Meuse, the Gemans raced to the channel with a brief interregnum at Arras, and then cue the "miracle at Dunkirk" (which was itself only possible due to the heroic resistance of the French 1st Army).
The truth is that the bloodiest, stubborn fighting occurred later and further south, particularly as the Germans tried to cross the Seine.
The French put up far, far more of a fight than most of the Anglo-sphere is willing to admit.

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Re: Matt & Gefan's Virtual Staff Ride

#8

Post by Gefan »

Matt Cavanaugh wrote:Mosier's The Myth of The Great War sounds much more compelling, but seems to go over much of the same ground as Fergusson's The Pity of War. The pop assessment of the Western Front was that both sides suffered massive casualties because their generals foolishly threw wave after wave of men against prepared positions. In truth, the Germans early on relied primarily on the defense, building far more stout (& sanitary & comfortable) trench systems, with relatively infrequent, judicious attacks. Consequently, they took significantly fewer casualties than the British & French.

Some of the reviews took issue with Mosier's claim that Verdun was a German victory. Without knowing his reasoning, I can say that the battle, as Falkenhayn intended it, was a brilliant strategy intended to realize a grand strategic outcome -- force the French to incur excessive casualties retaking a position of prestige value only, thus leading to war-weariness among the French. And at first it worked wonderfully. But Falkenhayn was relieved, replaced by the blockheaded Ludendorff, and the Germans forgot the original reason behind Verdun, and so took too many casualties trying to hold it.

That 2/3rds of the French Army mutinied in 1917 (another fact largely unknown today) lends credence to the wisdom of Falkenhayn's plan.
Ferguson's book asks the question; "Why were the Central Powers so much more efficient at killing their enemies than were the Allied Powers?" and it answers in terms that are mostly economic and strategic.
Mosier asks a similar question but answers on technical and tactical grounds.
In short, the Germans knew they were massively outnumbered (they had a larger population than France but only enough money - partly due to the ill-advised naval build-up - to train a much smaller proportion of it) and so employed a remarkable range of technological innovations to use firepower as a "force-multiplier".
Second, the dissemination of tactical lessons through the German army was light years ahead of the French and especially the British. The latter were particulalry handicapped in that what should have formed the NCO core of their later mass conscript army was more-or-les wiped out by christmas 1914 and anything they may have learned went with them.
Third, the allied General Staff's covered all this up by wildly over-estimating German casualties and those figures have been faithfully repeated for reasons of national self-justification ever since.
For example: the original claim of 600,000+ German casualties on the Somme is fantasy. Mosier goes to the actual strength returns and war diaries of the German units involved and proves the total was no more than 170,000.
Lloyd George was the first to suspect something might be up when he asked, if the Germans were taking these kinds of losses then how were they able to find the men to rescue the Austrians in Galicia, and knock Rumania out of the war in a matter of weeks when they were grinding the French down at Verdun and (supposedly) being bled white on the Somme.
Regarding your point about Verdun, the one positive effect it had for the allies is that the Germans were forced to turn off Falkenhayn's "mincing macghine" there to deal with the Somme offensive when another month or so would likely have broken the French Army.
Overall, the French had demi=onstrated in 1915 that they were willing to incur horrendous losses over emotionally significant but strategically useless terrain. Verdun was an extension of this emanating from Falkenhayn asking what they would do to hold an actually important locale.
The fact that the Germans never took the city is used as a fig-leaf to claim an Allied victory. Falkenhayn (following Napoleon via Clausewitz) knew that once you destroy the enemy's military power, you can go occupy whatever physical objective you want in your own time. He couldn't have cared less about who held Verdun during the battle.
Mosier also addresses the 1917 Mutiny and points out that, although units refused to follow orders to attack they held their positions and did not desert at a rate significantly greater than was normal for allied armies (the German rate was consistently lower).
The mutiny was primarily caused by godawful living conditions, rations and so forth. It was Petain (whose subsequent behavior sadly, if understandably, obscured his ability as a commander) who resolved those issues.

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Re: Matt & Gefan's Virtual Staff Ride

#9

Post by Gefan »

Matt Cavanaugh wrote:
The first time those poor bastards had ever heard that they were even human was when the French arrived and told them so. So once you got below the landlord class in Italy or Germany, the arrival of the revolutionary French armies was the best thing that had ever happened. Hard to get your head around this if you’re an Anglo, but the sad truth is that the bad guys won at Trafalgar and Waterloo
I don't know who wrote this, but it's pathetically naive. One might as well say the Poles, living in 1939 under a military dictatorship, were lucky to be liberated by the 'people's army' of the USSR.

Liberals like Beethoven may have thought the French Revolution was the harbinger of an egalitarian era, but when the French armies arrived, it was 'meet the new boss, same as the old boss.' France and its occupied territories under the Committee was a totalitarian nightmare. And then Napoleon declared himself an emperor, and set up his family as kings, queens and princes.

Further, the arrival of an army back then was about the worst thing that could happen to a peasant or a burgher.

Not surprisingly, popular resistance took place, in Southern Italy, Germany, Russia, and of course, Spain. I'm sure Goya felt the good guys won at Waterloo.
If you separate Napoleon from Revolutionary France, I'd submit that he was better than (say) the Habsburgs because he was a (somewhat) meritocratic dictator rather than a feudal one and his administration was much more efficent (not to mention infinitely less anti-semitic).
The German territories annexed by Prussia in 1814 concluded in rather short order that maybe the French weren't so bad after all. The recently-annexed Saxon contingent of Blucher's army mutineed before the Waterloo campaign even started and had to be sent to the rear. The Prussian losses after Ligny doubled when the Westphalian troops took advantage of the Prussian defeat to abscond during the overnight retreat that followed.
Napoleon's biggest problem was that his rule meant endless wars and attendant civilian suffering. This was partly his own fault but it was also the fault of the other powers who considered the mere existence of his regime was an existential threat.

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Re: Matt & Gefan's Virtual Staff Ride

#10

Post by Gefan »

Matt Cavanaugh wrote:
LurkerPerson wrote: Anglo's accusing other countries of rapaciousness, plundering, meddling in the internal affairs of others and jingoism, lol. The Brits take gold in all those events. I'm not even going to start comparing levels of irredentism in major european powers or the fact that you just tried to paint fucking autocractic Prussian dominated Germany as some sort of victim finally taking revenge against a bully.
1) France had been beating up Germany since the 17th century, back when it was Austrian-dominated;

2) In 1870, Prussia had an autocratic king and with a liberal majority in a parliament with limited powers. In 1870, France had an autocratic emperor with a liberal majority in a parliament with limited powers. What was your point again?

3) Noting that Britain was also a bully does not negate that France was an even bigger bully;

4) Noting that Britain was also a bully is a non-sequitur to the fact that the bullying between France and Germany was entirely one-sided for three centuries;

5) Under Napoleon III, France again clamored for new annexations of German lands. In 1840, PM Adolphe Thiers called for the Rhine as the new eastern border of France. In 1864, Nap III, having extorted Savoy & Nice from Cavour in exchange tor 'allowing' Italian unification, now told Bismarck his price for 'allowing' German unification would be the Rhineland. The rapid expansion of the Prussian war budget in the 1860s, and the development of elaborate war plans, was in direct response to French threats.
Only a couple of points (and apologies for the earlier double post).
The term "Germany" is misleading. For centuries, Germany was a bewildering patchwork of minor states that had their own sectarian issues with each other and were one of the fields over which rival great powers jousted.
France and Austria were the most consistent offenders with Prussia and Britain getting well into the act by the middle of the eighteenth century. To reduce this to "France bullying Germany" is a bit of a reach.
Napoleon III (of whom I'm not a fan) didn't "allow" Italian unification. He made it possible. Cavour, having learned his lesson from Novarra, wouldn't even have tried to provoke Austria in 1859 without the guarantee of French military support. Piedmont knew it wasn't strong enough to take on Austria alone.
France took the bulk of the casualties driving Austria out of Lombardy, and Nice was by way of compensation.
Having seen the monuments as Solferino - San Martino (and being familar with the performance of the bulk of the Piedmontese army when left to its own devices) I was never that sympathetic with Italian resentment over the Nice question.

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Re: Matt & Gefan's Virtual Staff Ride

#11

Post by Phil_Giordana_FCD »

I once played Call of Duty. And lost. I also sometimes pass in front of a statue of Garibaldi (that I showed gefan).

Now, were did I put those crayons...oh! Here they are! *nomnomnom*

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Re: Matt & Gefan's Virtual Staff Ride

#12

Post by windy »

Hi, mind if I ride on your staff?
Matt Cavanaugh wrote:
The first time those poor bastards had ever heard that they were even human was when the French arrived and told them so. So once you got below the landlord class in Italy or Germany, the arrival of the revolutionary French armies was the best thing that had ever happened. Hard to get your head around this if you’re an Anglo, but the sad truth is that the bad guys won at Trafalgar and Waterloo
I don't know who wrote this, but it's pathetically naive. One might as well say the Poles, living in 1939 under a military dictatorship, were lucky to be liberated by the 'people's army' of the USSR.
It's from an article by "The War Nerd", but the original seems to be behind a paywall. I like some of his stuff, but this was just silly. Maybe he tries too hard to be a contrarian sometimes.

Matt from main thread:
It's pretty amazing that -- after four hundred years of continual invasions of neighbors, avaricious annexations, rapacious plundering, meddling in the internal affairs of other nations, Napoleon for crissakes, accompanied by institutional glorification of their martial spirit -- one rout sparked by paper whistles on the spats of dive-bombers* garnered for the French the reputation as weak pacifists.
See also: Sweden (although their image makeover was more gradual and intentional).

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