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Zorak of Michigan posted:The biggest problem for the Germans in the East was the difference in railway gauge, which meant that no German equipment could be used in conquered territory. Obviously that problem would not exist for the enemy. That's a bit of a misrepresentation; the railways could be converted, the problem was that this didn't happen at the rate expected or needed. But it's not true that the same didn't exist for Soviets: they suffered from the same problem when attacking westward. Besides, you are not giving enough consideration to something crucial: logistic plans work only as far as they are based on a realistic general plan. German plan for Operation Barbarossa was to defeat Red Army in a couple of months, which they effectively did. Only to realize that Kremlin hadn't capitulated but had formed new armies to defend the heartlands. Germans weren't ignorant of logistics, they were ignorant of their enemy. In other campaigns where they estimated the length of the campaign better, logistics worked. It would have been quite impossible to wage war all over Europe otherwise. Western Allies had none of the problems that Germans had in the east, yet they still totally ran out of steam in the Autumn of 1944. Is that also a case of being casual toward logistics? I highly doubt so.
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Dec 6, 2010 10:20
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I love how general Nenonen is giving advice here. After all, he is an artillery legend with many anecdotes around him. The idea of Unto Petäjä, a device that would allow artillery spotters to advance and direct fires without knowing where the artillery positions are, was brought into action by the order of Wilho Petter Nenonen. Anyone who had a compass and relay to artillery was able to direct support fires after that. Nenonen also dabbled with aerial photography. German Zeiss company started to manufacture designs based on his ideas, culminating on the 1932 design Nenon RMK HS 1824/20. Nenonen died in 1960, 15 years after his wife. He is buried at Hietaniemi graveyard. He is also a recipient of the prestigious Mannerheim Cross (cross number 184, second class).
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Dec 6, 2010 11:01
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Were horseback archers ever the dominant military weapon? If so, what caused them to fall out of use? I know them from the Total War games and from a little bit of reading tangentially. As far as I understand, in the real world horseback archers would pelt the enemy with arrows and simply withdraw (while still firing) if the enemy charged, until the enemy got tired and stopped, at which point they'd just stop and keep firing. I know the Parthians did this, hence our term "parting shot" as a corruption of "parthian shot". I know that in Rome: Total War and Medieval II: Total War pretty much any ranged cavalry utterly dominates the AI. Infantry can't catch them, heavy cavalry move too slowly, they can dodge archer fire, they can keep pace with light cavalry and so withdraw indefinitely. So how accurate is that depiction in real life? How were they countered, in reality?
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Dec 6, 2010 14:58
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Hydrolith posted:Were horseback archers ever the dominant military weapon? If so, what caused them to fall out of use? Yes and no. Lack of open space, and thus horses, was the deciding deal. John Keegan has a very good explanation in History of Warfare.
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Dec 6, 2010 15:38
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Hydrolith posted:Were horseback archers ever the dominant military weapon? If so, what caused them to fall out of use? The depiction of an infantry army being caught out on the field by a horse archer army and completely creamed is quite correct: the most famous example would be the battle of Carrhae, where ten thousand Parthian cavalrymen completely butchered a helpless Roman army of some 40 thousand. The extreme mobility of a horse archer army also lead to a huge number of incredible victories for them when completely outnumbered, especially with the use of feigned retreats that could go on for days or even weeks, pulling back and simultaneously looking for overextended and vulnerable pockets of attackers to surround and massacre. There were however ways to deal with them. On a strategical level, the best defense was the walled city. Nomadic raiders have been the enemy of settled societies since biblical times. Nomads have always been crappy siegers though, so a solid wall were a perfect way to completely neuter their advantage in mobility, and just sit it out as they would eventually move on to somewhere else. Until the Mongols started to use captured Chinese and Korean engineers, that is. The other is infantry bowmen and crossbowmen. Since they were on foot and didn't have to tend a horse, they could use heavier bows with greater range, and were thereby able to keep the horse archers at a safe distance. The Chinese fought off the Xiongnu two thousand years ago with crossbows, and it remained a main weapon against nomads, together with the famous system of defensive walls. The Mamluks also showed that it is quite possible to beat a horse archer heavy army such as the Mongols in close combat with your own, heavier, cavalry, such as at the battle of Ain Jalut. Basically, to fight nomadic archers you wanted to neutralize their huge advantage in mobility, either through walls, weapons with longer range, or superior cavalry of your own. Otherwise you were likely to be screwed. As for what made them obsolete, it was pretty much massed archery which became viable with crossbows. When firearms became reliable and widespread it just got even harder for the nomads. But their spiritual descendent, fast cavalry with rifles, were still doing a smashing job as late as the 20th century: just ask T.E. Lawrence about the advantage of having a small but incredibly mobile force. lilljonas fucked around with this message at 16:06 on Dec 6, 2010 |
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Dec 6, 2010 15:58
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Hydrolith posted:I know the Parthians did this, hence our term "parting shot" as a corruption of "parthian shot". Really? Because I read (on Wikipedia just now) that, "It is quite obvious that the two phrases have rather similar phonetic soundings but are actually separately derived at different times."
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Dec 6, 2010 16:03
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Nenonen posted:That's a bit of a misrepresentation; the railways could be converted, the problem was that this didn't happen at the rate expected or needed. But it's not true that the same didn't exist for Soviets: they suffered from the same problem when attacking westward. If we're still talking about the shortcomings of the General Staff in planning Barbarossa, the idea that the Soviets would have trouble invading Europe doesn't count. The General Staff could hardly have been thinking that their logistical problems were moot because they would also apply to the Soviets *after* the Soviets had already erased the German gains. You don't plan to go to war on the assumption that the enemy counterattack will put them right back on your doorstep. The German campaigns "where they estimated the length of the campaign better" worked because they were all short and could be completed before shortages became a real operation problem. As I said before, their logistic model was to build up for several months, attack for one, and refit at leisure. They had very little capability to deliver a sustained stream of supply adequate to meet the demands of heavy combat. In Supplying War, Van Creveld notes that for Barbarossa, the Germans had augmented their panzer and motorized divisions to have organic supplies to penetrate up to 300 miles into the USSR with no supply line at all. In his conclusion to Chapter 5, Van Creveld lays the blame for the German logistical problems squarely on OKH. I must admit that in the end the German and Japanese logistical problems were not entirely solvable. Both nations attempted to fight far above their own weight and could not possibly have created and transported enough war material to suit their needs. In Japan, men such as Yamamoto tried to warn their colleagues that war with the US would be madness. In Germany, I'm not aware of senior members of the General Staff ever trying to warn their superiors or Hitler that the USSR was simply too big to take on, though they could have done the math and determined that such was the case. Their training and the tradition of their service convinced them that superior operational skill could overcome all obstacles. By contrast the Allies had their screwups, but their supply shortages tended to last for months at most before being made good, and their plans were never as hopelessly unrealistic.
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Dec 6, 2010 17:07
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Zorak of Michigan posted:They were great guns for marching soldiers, exactly as if they were most interested in the operational aspect of maneuver warfare than the tedious questions of supplying it. They knew perfectly well that they couldn't properly supply the troops during the invasion of Russia due to the difference in rail gauge, but they invaded anyway and figured that if they killed or captured enough Russians, everything would work out. If that's not a casual attitude toward logistics, what is? The fact that they identified Panje carts as a source transport belies that statement. There were hordes of staff that spent hundreds of thousands of hours on logistical concerns. Their operational planning was entirely focused on cutting off the enemy's logistics (have you seen maps of Typhoon? Rail junctions were the focus of the deep attacks). There is a huge difference between "a casual attitude toward logistics" and making retarded strategic decisions. I agree that an invasion of the Soviet Union was unwinable due to logistics, but arguing that all the staff work and planning that actually happened was "casual interest" is silly. As for the rail gauge issue, nearly all the lines captured in '41 were regauged by the start of Blau. It was a lack of rolling stock and engines that caused the most difficulty (that and the fact that the German engines were literally unable to operate in the record setting low temperatures of the winter of '41-'42. You act like a wider gauge rail line is somehow impossible to ever use. A rail battalion could regauge about 15 miles a week. Nearly all of the supplies delivered for the Typhoon buildup were delivered by rail (ie they'd regauged from the Polish frontier to Smolensk between June and the start of October).
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Dec 6, 2010 17:14
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Zorak of Michigan posted:The German campaigns "where they estimated the length of the campaign better" worked because they were all short and could be completed before shortages became a real operation problem. As I said before, their logistic model was to build up for several months, attack for one, and refit at leisure. quote:I must admit that in the end the German and Japanese logistical problems were not entirely solvable. Both nations attempted to fight far above their own weight and could not possibly have created and transported enough war material to suit their needs. In Japan, men such as Yamamoto tried to warn their colleagues that war with the US would be madness. In Germany, I'm not aware of senior members of the General Staff ever trying to warn their superiors or Hitler that the USSR was simply too big to take on, though they could have done the math and determined that such was the case. Their training and the tradition of their service convinced them that superior operational skill could overcome all obstacles. quote:By contrast the Allies had their screwups, but their supply shortages tended to last for months at most before being made good, and their plans were never as hopelessly unrealistic.
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Dec 6, 2010 18:12
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Hydrolith posted:
For shame, sir. For shame. Also, to try and get away from the WWII chat : Tell me about Landsknecht!
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Dec 6, 2010 19:01
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wins32767 posted:That's pretty much the operational model for all nations in WWII. Assuming N supply consumption in "normal" conditions, C consumption in combat and T throughput so long as C > T > N you need pauses after an operation to build your supplies back up. The cases where T > C are so rare I can't think of any off the top of my head. The Soviets did the exact same thing as did the Brits and the Americans in the ETO. (Note the pause after Market Garden, the initial Torch/Anzio landings, the piercing of the Mareth line, and the pause after completion of the Compass offensive for the Western Allies, the pause after the Winter Offensive, Bagration, ). The crucial distinction being that for the Wehrmacht's critical victories early in WWII, the refit period corresponded to the end of the campaign, not the end of the operation. They did their resupply and refit completely outside of combat conditions. For them it was more like C > N > T.
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Dec 6, 2010 19:13
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Xiahou Dun posted:Tell me about Landsknecht! They were state-sponsored mercenaries who dressed like goofballs. What specifically do you want to know, because Wikipedia has a decent article about them?
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Dec 6, 2010 20:19
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I already have a couple books on them and just like them. I was doing it more to get more Landsknecht press and to try to get away from all the WWII-chat. However, I will take any random trivia you got. Uh... Comparisons to the Swiss and general influences/uses on/of pike and shot warfare? Also, where you see goofballs, I see the original pimps. Slashed doublet? gently caress. Yes. If I thought I could get away with it, I would wear that poo poo.
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Dec 6, 2010 20:46
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HeroOfTheRevolution posted:They were state-sponsored mercenaries who dressed like goofballs. What specifically do you want to know, because Wikipedia has a decent article about them? Seperate question: Were there many times throughout history where a nation's army and manpower were so depleted they were forced to use women in combat roles?
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Dec 6, 2010 21:45
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The Soviets did, but I don't know that they viewed it as being "forced to"
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Dec 6, 2010 21:54
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Hob_Gadling posted:Yes and no. Lack of open space, and thus horses, was the deciding deal. Steppe hordes constantly attacked their neighbors in Asia and Europe for centuries, and steppe dynasties often ruled countries for generations. Hungary was given to the Huns so they would stop rampaging through their cities.
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Dec 6, 2010 22:18
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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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Xiahou Dun posted:For shame, sir. For shame. Really? Doh.
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Dec 7, 2010 03:17
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This isn't really about military history, but people have fought wars over salt, so it totally counts. (Also there weren't any other history A/Ts at a glance) Why was salt considered so valuable back in the olden days that it was worth as much as gold? Did people not realize you could get unlimited amounts of it by boiling sea water?
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Dec 7, 2010 03:48
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Mirconium posted:This isn't really about military history, but people have fought wars over salt, so it totally counts. (Also there weren't any other history A/Ts at a glance) ...and if you didn't live near the sea?
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Dec 7, 2010 04:08
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Xiahou Dun posted:...and if you didn't live near the sea? Pour salt into lakewater and then boil it, duh  As far as I'm aware, human cultures tend (with enough exceptions to make it a weak tendency) to accumulate near places with both fresh and salt water, like, say, the Nile delta or the Greek city-states or Tenochtitlan (if I remember right, at least part of the lake there was salty.
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Dec 7, 2010 04:45
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Mirconium posted:This isn't really about military history, but people have fought wars over salt, so it totally counts. (Also there weren't any other history A/Ts at a glance) There are only about 35 grams of salt per litre of sea water. That is not a very good exchange rate, especially since once upon a time salt was necessary for food preservation, and was extremely heavily used by everyone, from kimchee to bacalao. It is not hard to see why some dudes might just want to take some by force when they ran out, rather than risk all their food spoiling and death by starvation.
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Dec 7, 2010 06:07
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Mirconium posted:This isn't really about military history, but people have fought wars over salt, so it totally counts. (Also there weren't any other history A/Ts at a glance) I would contest that salt ever was as valuable as gold, but remember that in the days before refrigeration, you had fewer options for preserving food. Instead of mostly being a taste enhancer as today, salt was one of the best way to keep food edable for long durations, especially meat and fish. To put it on topic, imagine the amounts of salt you need to preserve rations for a 35 000 strong army that campaigns for years. That kind of quantities is difficult to achieve if you just rely on a few dudes by the beach, scraping salt residue from rocks. Even in 2010 you still have operating salt mines, despite there being unlimited amounts of it in the sea.
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Dec 7, 2010 06:15
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Mirconium posted:This isn't really about military history, but people have fought wars over salt, so it totally counts. (Also there weren't any other history A/Ts at a glance) Boiling water for salt would require very large amounts of fuel, impractical for joe peasant. Generally salt is/was mined, or with solar evaporation, both of which require a fair amount of organization and a fixed location and thus was an easy target for government monopoly. As for why it is so valuable. You die if you don't have enough salt, and unlike a modern american diet, a premodern agrarian diet was light on meats and needed supplementary salt. Plus food preservation, as mentioned. [edit] While salt was certainly never worth anything like gold, there have been periods when black pepper was traded pound for pound with silver. But luxuries from the other side of the planet are funny that way. Slo-Tek fucked around with this message at 07:01 on Dec 7, 2010 |
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Dec 7, 2010 06:53
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If anyone has any questions on Appeasement in the lead up to the Second World War i'd be happy to answer them to the best of my ability. I'm not an expert by any means, but I did just get a 1st on my essay on the rationality of the policy of appeasement so I should be able to answer most questions you throw at me! I know its not actually military history, but its close enough I thought it would fit in here relatively well.
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Dec 7, 2010 11:11
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d3c0y2 posted:If anyone has any questions on Appeasement in the lead up to the Second World War i'd be happy to answer them to the best of my ability. I'm not an expert by any means, but I did just get a 1st on my essay on the rationality of the policy of appeasement so I should be able to answer most questions you throw at me! I recently finished A.J.P Taylor's The Origins of the Second World War Would you agree with his ideas about Versailles? He maintains that in some ways this treaty gave Germany power, rather than weakening it. The balance of power in Europe post-WW1 was based on the international relations established by Versailles, and with Germany as the central party it had the greatest ability to opportunisitically exploit events to derail the status quo to its own advantage.
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Dec 7, 2010 15:19
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d3c0y2 posted:If anyone has any questions on Appeasement in the lead up to the Second World War i'd be happy to answer them to the best of my ability. I'm not an expert by any means, but I did just get a 1st on my essay on the rationality of the policy of appeasement so I should be able to answer most questions you throw at me! Would Britain and France have been better off not declaring war on Germany when Poland fell and instead continued to rearm? Would Hitler ever have attacked the SU if France and Britain were still around and at peace with Germany?
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Dec 7, 2010 18:55
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OctaviusBeaver posted:Would Britain and France have been better off not declaring war on Germany when Poland fell and instead continued to rearm? Would Hitler ever have attacked the SU if France and Britain were still around and at peace with Germany? Well that is a tricky first question. Really the best time for Britain and France to have attacked Germany would have been in 1938 when they could have had the backing of the superb Czech army. By 1939 though the Germans had digested the lessons learned from the occupations of Czechoslovakia and Austria. Really though Germany was not fully planning for war with the west till 1944 at the earliest by that time the Germans estimated they would be ready. Meanwhile though the WAllies were also rearming as fast as they can, After the occupation of the rump Czech state in March 1939 this rearmament went into to full steam ahead. As a result when the Germans attacked in May 1940 the caught the allies at an awkward moment where they were still in the process of upgrading their armies. So would the allies have been better off waiting? well its debatable the French estimated they would not be ready for a full scale attack on Germany till 1942 and the British were believers in the power of the royal navy to starve the Germans into surrender so arguably the later they got into the war the better for the allied powers. On the other hand though being seen to throw not just Czechoslovakia but also Poland to the wolves would do incalculable damage to the allies diplomatic reputation and would likely cause troubles elsewhere. As for you second question again its hard to say. Hitler definitely identified the destruction of the Soviet Union and the acquisition of lebensraum in the east as his priority goal, That said though would he be willing to launch an all out attack on Poland and the Soviet Union without first securing his "flanks" against the possibility of the kind of two front war that brought down the Kaiser?
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Dec 7, 2010 20:38
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Admiral Snackbar posted: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. quote:Landing directly on to the open beaches, in the coming weeks the Americans were to achieve daily delivery totals which exceeded those made through the elaborate machinery of the artificial port. ... By June 29th their [the Brits' at the Mulberry B] deliveries reached the record total of 11,000 tons; but in the same week the Americans were receiving 7,000 tons a day at Utah and 13,500 tons at Omaha, respectively 124 and 115 per cent of planned capacity. Mulberries were an impressive sight, but they did little by themselves to solve the challenges of supplying over a million men. One might even say that they were a typical example of the kind of British over-engineering that Churchill loved ever so much and Americans were skeptical of, but that would be a cheap shot. Incidentally, Germans too had similar plans for an artificial harbor for the invasion of England, but that never came to be...
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Dec 8, 2010 00:09
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OctaviusBeaver posted:Would Britain and France have been better off not declaring war on Germany when Poland fell and instead continued to rearm? Would Hitler ever have attacked the SU if France and Britain were still around and at peace with Germany? Better of is a vague term, but in some ways yes, they would. There were many arguments from the new right historians during the 1970's that Britain and france should of stayed out of the Second World War and let Germany and Russia destroy each other, as it was clearly apparant that their differing ideologies* had set them on a collision course with each other. However a major criticism of this argument is that Russia would have likely won and we would have had a communist bloc that had access to the industrialised Rhineland, and that in the long term this would have put Britain and France in a very difficult situation. As the poster above me pointed out, Poland was possibly one of the worst times to enter the war as neither France nor Britain had the ability to really save Poland and yet they would be dragged into a war regardless. However the reason they were dragged into the war at this point is following the rape of prague public support for Appeasement had failed and Britain could no longer justify staying neutral to its public. As Ferrosol pointed out Britain and France would of been slightly better of going to war when the sudetenland crisis occurred. Whether Britain could of successfully got a mandate for war from its public at this point is questionable, but a poll taken in 1938 on the british public stated that 86percent of the British public were of the opinion that the Sudetenland would not be Hitler's last claim.(Neville Chamberlain, Appeasement and the British road to war, page 159-160. Available on google books, I think) However it should be noted that Chamberlain was of the opinion that "nothing that France or we could do could possible save Czechoslovakia from being overrun by the Germans if they wanted to do it" and that Czechoslovakia crisis was the lesser of two evils. This could quite well be true as France had adopted an almost entirely defencive doctrine and had little ability to project power and Britain as another poster mentioned put its stock in the Royal Navy and its ability to starve Germany, which would off been little help to the Czechs. Bob Nudd posted:I recently finished A.J.P Taylor's The Origins of the Second World War Would you agree with his ideas about Versailles? He maintains that in some ways this treaty gave Germany power, rather than weakening it. The balance of power in Europe post-WW1 was based on the international relations established by Versailles, and with Germany as the central party it had the greatest ability to opportunisitically exploit events to derail the status quo to its own advantage. I'm probably slightly biased in this regard as AJP Taylor is my favourite historian, and Origins is probably one of my more cited texts, but for the most part I would agree with that. Alot of the British public were sympathetic to Germany during the thirties, as they saw it as being unduly punished during Versailles, which to an extent gave Germany to persue its goals without fear of political backlash. It wasn't until the Rape of Prague that Germany lost any sympathy it may of had, until that point any action such as the Anschluss was seen as Germany either repairing the indignities it had suffered, or exercising the right to self-determination that had been refused to it during Versailles. However there were other factors regarding International Relations following Versailles. Woodrow Wilson blamed the old diplomacy "realpolitik" for the outbreak of the First World War and therefore him and the Liberal Internationalists pushed for a rejection of the Balance of Power system and instead an adoption of a "Community of Power" philosophy, however the League of Nations was flawed from the get go and generally failed to achieve its aims whilst at the same time impeding the British in any attempts against Germany.(The british public had great faith in the League and were of the opinion that Britain's time as "Policemen of the World" was over, and that any problems should be left up to the ineffectual League) This obviously led to Germany, but more so Japan and Italy being able to push their agenda on an international scale without fear of reprisal, as Manchuria and Abysinnia showed. To conclude Versailles legitimised alot of Hitler's aspirations, such as the Anschluss and the Sudetenland whilst simultaniously weakening Britain and France's ability to resist. Without America in the league any embargo's made against the aggressor states were ineffectual and as it had no force of its own, unlike the later UN, it was unable to impose military restrictions. *There were other less ideological issues however. Hitler, and German ideologym was clear on the policy of Lebensraum or "living space" for the German people, and had its eyes set on the Ukraine for this new land for German's to populate. d3c0y2 fucked around with this message at 00:50 on Dec 8, 2010 |
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Dec 8, 2010 00:37
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OctaviusBeaver posted:Would Britain and France have been better off not declaring war on Germany when Poland fell and instead continued to rearm? Would Hitler ever have attacked the SU if France and Britain were still around and at peace with Germany? Would of never happened, neither would/will allow a German dominated Europe.
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Dec 8, 2010 01:03
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Nenonen posted:
Do you have any other examples of British over-engineering?
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Dec 8, 2010 01:33
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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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I would (unsurprisingly) take it up a notch and suggest that the Allied high command was much more likely to consider logistical factors when drawing up a campaign, while Axis powers were more likely to focus on maximum damage inflicted. Obviously both sides had professional staff officers and the Axis did not ignore logistics anymore than the Allies ignored hostile armies, but there was a difference in priorities.
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Dec 8, 2010 01:49
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Boiled Water posted:Do you have any other examples of British over-engineering? Germany had a lot of logistical problems of being a mediocre industrial power compared to the two giants it was trying to fight. This meant that its supply chain was burdened by various burglarized Czech, French and Russian weapons and vehicles. Eg. there weren't enough trucks in the army, so a lot were appropriated from civilians, resulting in dozens of different incompatible truck designs that needed their own spare parts. Compare this to the far more motorized Allied armies that had very standardized trucks. The same went on throughout the German arsenal. For small countries like Finland this was par course, eg. Finnish artillery used Imperial Russian, Soviet, Finnish, Swedish, British, French, US, Austrian, German, Belgian, Japanese, Polish and Czech guns. Beggars can't be choosers.
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Dec 8, 2010 09:23
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This is probably a silly question - and not really relevant to highly detailed discussions about important stuff, but It's been bugging me for a while, and I thought maybe this thread with actual military insight would shed some light on this... How reliable is Stratfor as a private forecasting firm? To be specific, does George Friedman's forecasts for the next 100 years hold any water whatsoever? It's come up recently because I read his book a while ago: (This one - http://www.amazon.co.uk/Next-100-Years-Forecast-Century/dp/038551705X ) and dismissed it at the time as interesting, but ultimately fanciful. I just sort of assumed that his predictions about Japan rising as a new power to challenge the U.S, as well as China and Russia fragmenting - were just rather silly predictions to make. But recently, I've noticed that his predictions about Russia re-asserting itself, and the U.S. reacting by extending NATO to the other Baltic countries - are actually starting to become true. (leaked wikileaks thing included info about he baltics: http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-europe-11933089 ). So I've now been wondering whether he's actually more prescient than I gave him credit for. Basically I'm just asking whether I'm being horribly naive in thinking he may actually be accurately predicting the geopolitical future - and I'm hoping that someone's gonna tell me that he got lucky with the Russia thing and we probably aren't going to see the rise of the new Ottoman Empire etc.
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Dec 8, 2010 13:15
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Nenonen posted:When Germany surrendered, there were 400k German troops in Norway. Why? What was so damned important about Norway? It seems to me that it would have made more sense to redeploy them almost anywhere else.
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Dec 8, 2010 13:27
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Craptacular posted:Why? What was so damned important about Norway? It seems to me that it would have made more sense to redeploy them almost anywhere else. Rent-A-Cop fucked around with this message at 13:35 on Dec 8, 2010 |
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Dec 8, 2010 13:31
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Averrences posted:But recently, I've noticed that his predictions about Russia re-asserting itself, and the U.S. reacting by extending NATO to the other Baltic countries - are actually starting to become true. (leaked wikileaks thing included info about he baltics: http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-europe-11933089 ). The book's only like 2 years old; Russia had already begun re-asserting itself when it was published. Georgia was fresh in everyone's mind at the time. I haven't read the book (but it's cheap on Kindle, so I'll pick it up) but it seems a little ridiculous based on the summaries. There's sci-fi stuff about wars over space-based missile systems and stuff. It sounds more like a fanciful 'what if' scenario than actual prognostication based on serious analysis.
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Dec 8, 2010 13:47
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HeroOfTheRevolution posted:The book's only like 2 years old; Russia had already begun re-asserting itself when it was published. Georgia was fresh in everyone's mind at the time. I haven't read the book (but it's cheap on Kindle, so I'll pick it up) but it seems a little ridiculous based on the summaries. There's sci-fi stuff about wars over space-based missile systems and stuff. It sounds more like a fanciful 'what if' scenario than actual prognostication based on serious analysis. Yeah, it is fairly ridiculous - I just got confused because apparently he's one of the best forecasters in Stratfor or something, and my instictive 'trust authority' thing made me do a double take when I started reading more news about Russia. I wasn't really aware if they had been re-asserting themselves when it was published, so I guess that's cleared that up.  Oh, If you're aiming to read the book, I would probably advise to brace yourself for the sci-fi chapter you mentioned. If I remember right, he actually wrote down that before that particular chapter started that he was going to do some guesswork with regards to future technology. (Battle stars ) But apparently the rest of the book with regards to forecasting is supposed to be accurate? I don't know, I'm falling back into the mindset of thinking he's a jaded Cold-war relic who really wants to see Russia implode.
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Dec 8, 2010 13:56
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