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Was it Field Marshall Westmoreland himself that mentioned how Asians dont value human life like us westerners?
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May 9, 2013 22:20
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Fangz posted:The closest thing to 'human wave tactics' in the popular imagination is probably WWI era infantry attacks, certain very ill advised charges during the early phases of WWII Eastern Front, and Japanese suicide charges during WWII. Even those were generally examples of mistaken planning, or command incompetence than a genuine strategy. The Mongols also did something similar in city attacks during their campaigns. The additional, critical element that made that work, however, was that these 'human waves' were composed not of Mongols, but rather captured civilians and other prisoners of war. So the whole "Soviets defeated the Germans with human waves" is bullshit too?
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May 9, 2013 22:56
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Farecoal posted:So the whole "Soviets defeated the Germans with human waves" is bullshit too? It's mostly bullshit, yes.
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May 9, 2013 23:06
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They beat the Germans because they had five times the amount of everything, they were just were caught short by the invasion and Stalin's purges. They won by getting their poo poo sorted.
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May 9, 2013 23:09
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Farecoal posted:So the whole "Soviets defeated the Germans with human waves" is bullshit too? The Germans lost the war the day the Soviets stopped going backwards. They could absorb initial losses that would have destroyed any European power and once they got their feet under them the Russian economy was simply too big for the Germans to fight.
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May 9, 2013 23:10
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Shimrra Jamaane posted:Was it Field Marshall Westmoreland himself that mentioned how Asians dont value human life like us westerners? Yeah, in one of the most heart-wrenching video clip I've ever seen https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=huFh760p-MA
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May 10, 2013 00:14
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Farecoal posted:So the whole "Soviets defeated the Germans with human waves" is bullshit too?
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May 10, 2013 00:21
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HEGEL SMOKE A J posted:It's not only bullshit, it's specifically Nazi racist bullshit (once again, the concept of the "Asian" makes an appearance) which we picked up from German officers after the Cold War and kept believing until at least the 80s, probably longer. Soviet tactics from the battle of Moscow onward are very nicely done. I was trying to think of a response to this but as I was reading through the reviews of the book this really summarized what I thought about that book. quote:There's lots of scope to write a great book how the west came to view the Eastern Front through German perspectives and overlook the German Army's war crimes, but this isn't it. A key flaw is that the authors never really set out how they think that the war should be seen and how the common Western accounts differ from this. Instead, they use a mish-mash of bits of information which don't seem to have been very rigorously selected or given a consistent weight to argue their case. This leads to the book's central argument being under-developed and, unfortunately given the importance of the topic, unconvincing. Moreover, the book feels dated - despite being published in 2007, the section on the internet talks about how many websites looked in 1999(!) and doesn't discuss whether they've since changed and there's not much on the recent serious scholarship and popular works which have been written on the Eastern Front.
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May 10, 2013 00:29
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ClemenSalad posted:Another flaw is that the book is fairly one-sided and focused on the more extreme fringe of authors. When discussing how German perspectives came to dominate how the Eastern Front is viewed in the west the authors don't discuss the quality and availability of Soviet histories and sources - both were highly problematic and acted as a barrier to western historians being able to tell the Soviet side of the story until the end of the Cold War. The focus on fringe publications about the war is also problematic - these appear to be aimed at a fairly selective audience and aren't easily available, so their influence is likely to be minor compared to the popular histories of the war, which go largely unexamined. HEY GUNS fucked around with this message at 00:49 on May 10, 2013 |
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May 10, 2013 00:43
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HEGEL SMOKE A J posted:The authors do mention popular responses to the war, such as American reprints of German memoirs, as well as the reception of this line of thought in wargaming and reenacting. The American success of books by Guderian, etc., is hardly a "fringe" phenomenon. Nor is the influence of German WW2 officers on American perception of Russian tactics during the Cold War. Do you really think the American people have a positive view of the Nazis?
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May 10, 2013 00:46
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Farecoal posted:So the whole "Soviets defeated the Germans with human waves" is bullshit too? Yes. You'll see lots of places, online and off, that will give you a ratio of 10:1 or 5:1 Soviet to German casualties, but if you look at their numbers, they usually count all Soviet casualties (including wounded, missing, and civilians), but only German military dead. The actual ratio of military deaths is something like 1.1:1.
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May 10, 2013 00:47
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ClemenSalad posted:Do you really think the American people have a positive view of the Nazis? No, but I bet you could find a lot more Americans who know who Gunderian or Rommel is than Zhukov.
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May 10, 2013 00:50
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Ensign Expendable posted:Yes. You'll see lots of places, online and off, that will give you a ratio of 10:1 or 5:1 Soviet to German casualties, but if you look at their numbers, they usually count all Soviet casualties (including wounded, missing, and civilians), but only German military dead. The actual ratio of military deaths is something like 1.1:1. No its actually about 2:1 for military deaths. Its probably higher because it accounts for all fronts for the Germans. I have no idea where you pulled that 1.1 number. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/World_War_II_casualties its well cited.
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May 10, 2013 00:51
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ClemenSalad posted:Do you really think the American people have a positive view of the Nazis? Movies are full of these images, especially older ones. Or the guy who wonders about the regime but is told to pipe down "or he'll be sent to the East." The barbarity of the Eastern Front is treated as a force of nature, as something that was simply there, leaving aside that the reason there was a war there is that the Nazis instigated it. uPen posted:No, but I bet you could find a lot more Americans who know who Gunderian or Rommel is than Zhukov.  , whom our generals told our men to salute. Zhukov and Chuikov are described as clodhoppers.
HEY GUNS fucked around with this message at 03:05 on May 10, 2013 |
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May 10, 2013 00:54
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HEGEL SMOKE A J posted:It's not only bullshit, it's specifically Nazi racist bullshit (once again, the concept of the "Asian" makes an appearance) which we picked up from German officers after the Cold War and kept believing until at least the 80s, probably longer. Soviet tactics from the battle of Moscow onward are very nicely done. I wouldn't go quite that far... the 2nd Battle of Khrakov was pretty badly organized and executed. Frankly that battle should have never launched in the first place. But after that the Soviet War machine generally functioned quite well with a few small hiccups here and there.
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May 10, 2013 01:03
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I guess the Cold War paranoia wouldn't have improved the Western perception of Russia's military achievements in the Eastern Front.  These kind of discussions are why I loving love the military history thread.HEGEL SMOKE A J posted:Movies are full of these images, especially older ones. I'd really like to know more about how many members of the German armed forces approved of Hitler's regime, and all that entails. Any book/source you'd be willing to recommend? This is a honest-to-heart question, by the way. As an Argentinian, the "They were only following orders. :germany:" thing leaves a sour taste in my mouth. As an actual question: I remember reading something about a high ranking Russian officer who had plans for a really good offensive, but other russian military minds withhold vital supplies (like food) from his forces, and his plans ended up being a failure. World War One, I think? Do you guys know who am I talking about? Azran fucked around with this message at 01:08 on May 10, 2013 |
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May 10, 2013 01:04
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Azran posted:I'd really like to know more about how many members of the German armed forces approved of Hitler's regime, and all that entails. Any book/source you'd be willing to recommend? This is a honest-to-heart question, by the way. Christopher Browning's Ordinary Men describes a group of people involved in genocidal operations who were interesting precisely because many of them may not have been doctrinaire Nazis and yet murdered people anyway. On the other hand, I think his argument is weakened by the fact that these men were a Reserve Police Battalion, made up of former police officers, who had to be members of the Nazi party, and thus may have been more politicized than Browning describes them. The Wehrmacht Photo Exhibition (just google it, I guess) was an exhibition of photos, taken as memorabilia by a wide range of Wehrmacht soldiers, which showed murders being carried out or showed Wehrmacht participation in murders. Regular army participation in acts of mass murder was widespread--and many volunteered to "help." The display of this collection is interesting because it marks the end of the uncontested dominance of the "They were only following orders. :germany:" line of thought, although not the end of that line of thought outright. Edit: On the other hand, Ian Kershaw's new book The End, which just came out last year or so, argues that during the tail end of the war, the Nazi party stepped up acts of terror (such as summary executions, flying courts-martial, etc) tremendously, and that this served to keep everyone in line. This is interesting because it tempers recent historiography which stated that the army and the German populace had opted into the Nazi regime, which itself had been a repudiation of an earlier line of thought which argued that everyone was either ignorant of what was going on or terrorized into sham compliance (cf. my example scene in which someone is threatened "to be sent to the East"). While this is a valuable work of scholarship, I still think that a lot of people opted into the regime. (Fortunately, I don't think Kershaw is saying they didn't, just that things are, as always, more complicated than they appear, and that they changed with time.) HEY GUNS fucked around with this message at 04:58 on May 10, 2013 |
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May 10, 2013 01:20
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HEGEL SMOKE A J posted:It's not only bullshit, it's specifically Nazi racist bullshit (once again, the concept of the "Asian" makes an appearance) which we picked up from German officers after the Cold War and kept believing until at least the 80s, probably longer. Soviet tactics from the battle of Moscow onward are very nicely done. The thought of the Russians as barbaric goes back waaaaaay longer, though, and the whole idea of masses of expendable men thrown against the thin red/blue/grey line is older than the Nazis, too. If you read some stuff from the Eastern Front in WWI, you see the exact same figures of speech, and a lot I read in Figes "The Crimean War" sounded pretty familiar, too.
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May 10, 2013 01:30
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A lot of the whole "overwhelming Russian horde" myth comes from the fact that by 1942 the Russians had wayyyy better military intelligence and operational security than the Germans did. So time and time again they had the Germans completely baffled as to where their forces actually were. Hell, even in 1941 Germany was completely unaware of an entire secondary line of Russian armies in reserve back near Moscow. Anyway, the Russians would sneak away entire armies and concentrate them elsewhere on the front. Then suddenly the Germans in that sector would unexpectedly have several armies worth of Russians smash through their lines and the German defensive line would have to fall back to avoid getting encircled. The huge encirclement at Stalingrad is just one of many examples where the Russian command were able to completely outwit the Germans and effectively group their men in a way that gave them vastly superior numerical advantages in critical areas.
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May 10, 2013 01:33
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ClemenSalad posted:No its actually about 2:1 for military deaths. Its probably higher because it accounts for all fronts for the Germans. I have no idea where you pulled that 1.1 number. From Glantz, "The Soviet-German War 1941-1945: Myths and Realities: A Survey Essay". The numbers he gives are 14,700,000 Soviets lost and 10,758,000 Germans lost, so I guess I remembered the figures wrong. 1.4:1 is still better than 2:1.
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May 10, 2013 01:50
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Yeah. You know how the US military handbook recommends a 3-1 superiority at a minimum for an offensive to be considered? The art of strategy is translating your force disposition into overwhelming local superiority, and the Soviets were adept at that. They had more men, sure, but there's still skill and cunning in making those men be in the right places, with the element of surprise, and with the logistics train and follow up forces to exploit any breakthrough. New Division posted:I wouldn't go quite that far... the 2nd Battle of Khrakov was pretty badly organized and executed. Frankly that battle should have never launched in the first place. You can find some counterexamples, but stuff like August Storm and Bagration showed Soviet strategic brilliance. Most current thinking is that at least late war, the Soviets were drat good at the strategy level, and probably well ahead of the western allies and even ahead of the Germans. EDIT: ^^^ Also remember that a large portion of soviet casualties were in the initial routs during Barbarossa.
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May 10, 2013 01:55
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ClemenSalad posted:No its actually about 2:1 for military deaths. Its probably higher because it accounts for all fronts for the Germans. I have no idea where you pulled that 1.1 number. I don't know either, but it's possible that whatever source he's using counted Soviet POWs who died in German captivity separately from KIA in the field, which is about 3.5 million. Subtracting that from the lower end estimates of about 9 million total KIA gives you 5.5 million. Your wiki page gives 5.5 million as the German figure for all fronts, and you're correct to note that this would be lower because of deaths on other fronts, but only by a few hundred thousand. Fighting on the Eastern Front took place over a longer period of time, involved far more troops, and generally with more intense combat and a faster operational tempo. 500,000 KIA would probably be an overestimate, but it'll do. So, 5.5 million Soviet KIA as against 5 million German, for a ratio of 1.1:1 once again. You could go either way on subtracting the 3.5 million Soviets dead in captivity, but to that issue I think German POW deaths in Soviet captivity (which might be in the range of 700,000 to 1 million) are usually counted separately from their KIA. The low end figure of 9 million Soviet military dead is also dubious, of course.
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May 10, 2013 02:19
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Ensign Expendable posted:From Glantz, "The Soviet-German War 1941-1945: Myths and Realities: A Survey Essay". The numbers he gives are 14,700,000 Soviets lost and 10,758,000 Germans lost, so I guess I remembered the figures wrong. 1.4:1 is still better than 2:1. The agreed upon numbers (from a wide variety of sources as you can see) put total German military losses at ~5.5 million throughout Europe and Africa. Soviet military losses range from 10-15 million. I guess I'm more concerned at why this is an issue. "Human wave" tactics were definitely something that was used (especially in the early stages) of the front. This is not a racial or political thing. Many countries at one point or another used them as delaying tactics to slow down an advance. Some countries (and the Soviets started doing this too when their equipment came up) use artillery to delay because they had the equipment. Its a tactic, not a definition of a nation's character I agree wholeheartedly but there's no reason to try and revision history to combat that view. ClemenSalad fucked around with this message at 03:11 on May 10, 2013 |
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May 10, 2013 03:07
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Who's making it an issue? I am saying "I have a source, it says this", not "the glorious armies of the Motherland killed fifteen fascists for every loyal Communist that has fallen, and everything else is a capitalist lie" Edit: also, let's not forget the Axis minors, they add a million or two into those numbers. Ensign Expendable fucked around with this message at 03:21 on May 10, 2013 |
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May 10, 2013 03:17
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Fangz posted:You can find some counterexamples, but stuff like August Storm and Bagration showed Soviet strategic brilliance. Most current thinking is that at least late war, the Soviets were drat good at the strategy level, and probably well ahead of the western allies and even ahead of the Germans. Oh, I wasn't denying that the Soviet armed forces were very well led and handled by 1944-45. I was just taking exception to the idea that they had worked out all the kinks after the Moscow counteroffensive. They still launched a few clumsy offensives in 1942. They were getting rapidly better though.
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May 10, 2013 03:29
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Kellsterik posted:It's kind of a meme that China's PLA uses or has used "human wave" tactics instead of some more advanced strategy, and hearing that mentioned earlier today made me wonder. Can someone give me an example of a conflict (probably Korea?) where their military fought based on sheer overwhelming numbers rather than any kind of finesse, how and how well it worked? Or is that an inaccurate representation based in "they have a lot of people"? I wrote this a while ago, I think it gets to what you're asking: bewbies posted:Prior to WWI, most attacks were "human wave" attacks. That is, armies attacked a thing by maneuvering themselves in order to put fire on a target, then rolled up on the target and tried to overwhelm the defenders with some combination of weight of fire and numbers. The development of true indirect fire artillery in WWI changed this: late in that war and ever since, instead of maneuvering to provide fire, today one fires in order to support maneuver. This has been the basic doctrine of pretty much everyone who had enough fires stuff (mainly artillery) since that time.
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May 10, 2013 03:30
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Rent-A-Cop posted:Pretty much. Not just that but the Soviet Army could operate under technical and logistical limitations that would've crippled any Western military. The tsarista poley in particular. Infantry who only had their rifles and their turnips who could keep going and keep marching and shrug off the worst conditions, as an organization there are times being simply used to not having the same toys as other armies is just plain useful in a pinch.
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May 10, 2013 04:40
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Raenir Salazar posted:Not just that but the Soviet Army could operate under technical and logistical limitations that would've crippled any Western military. The tsarista poley in particular. Infantry who only had their rifles and their turnips who could keep going and keep marching and shrug off the worst conditions, as an organization there are times being simply used to not having the same toys as other armies is just plain useful in a pinch. Well, not having "toys" such as radios, encyption, artillery support, functional anti-tank weapons, and suchlike does mean that you take a lot more casualties than you might otherwise.
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May 10, 2013 05:15
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Speaking of which, happy Victory Day, military history thread! 
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May 10, 2013 06:17
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ClemenSalad posted:No its actually about 2:1 for military deaths. Its probably higher because it accounts for all fronts for the Germans. I have no idea where you pulled that 1.1 number. The total numbers are a mess between killed in action, missing in combat and killed after being captured,with the notes openly claiming to count a lot of Soviet MIA and POWs as military dead while not doing the same with the German casualties, not because of a wikipedia conspiracy but simply due to the way the historians counted the bodies. The statistics also don't add the deaths of the rest of the axis powers (including the Spanish and Russian volunteers). The main point of divergence comes from counting POWs and military losses and if the MIA died or not. The ones from wikipedia tend to just add all the Soviet losses as deaths while not doing so with the Germans. And the human wave myth isn't caused by the deaths themselves. The Germans also lost considerable men in the western front of 44, probably a lot more ratio-wise than 2:1 to the Allied forces. Yet no one considers them as using human wave attacks, even if they bolstered their divisions with children and elderly and their most famous attack was a sloppy advance through a forest with an incredible lack of organization. The enemy of the gates style myths about the Eastern front come directly out of Cold War propaganda that also brought along the joyful ideas of "amazing tanks ahead of their time", "honorable Wehrmacht" and "Hitler was actually fixing the economy before the war". It was less Nazi sympathizing and more admiring the state who did what a lot of western leaders feared they had to do.
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May 10, 2013 08:05
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Grand Prize Winner posted:How does that production model even work? When I picture 'workshop' I see a building not much larger than an auto garage. Did one set of artisans build a section of the tank and then have it trucked over to the next shop or something? You may have heard about Pininfarina, Ghia, Zagato, they are design houses and small carozzeria (body works) shops, that did work for other auto companies, which pretty much matches your picture of 'workshop' Look at all the pre ww2 manufacturers in this wiki list: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_automobile_manufacturers_of_Italy About the only company able to do any sort of mass production was Fiat, and even then Fiat offloaded some production to the smaller designer body work shops for sports cars they wanted built in the 1950s sometimes. Small volume, hand built vehicles was the norm in Italy besides Fiat, and even continued post war with new small manufacturers, eg Lamborghini, Ferrari, when many of the old small workshops disappeared.
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May 10, 2013 08:12
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bewbies posted:I wrote this a while ago, I think it gets to what you're asking: Except the PLA in Korea mostly did not attack frontally, but did sneak attacks with small numbers of units at weak points in the enemy defences.
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May 10, 2013 09:39
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Fangz posted:Except the PLA in Korea mostly did not attack frontally, but did sneak attacks with small numbers of units at weak points in the enemy defences. 'Sneak attack' is a phrase like 'human wave'. In the West we'd just call it 'infiltration'.
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May 10, 2013 10:03
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Fangz posted:Except the PLA in Korea mostly did not attack frontally, but did sneak attacks with small numbers of units at weak points in the enemy defences. You're referring to the "short attack" strategy; yes, that was one strategy that they employed. Ideally, they wanted to get units into enemy rear areas through infiltration prior to committing the main effort. As I said above, since they lacked the firepower to fix enemy units with fire, they typically had to do it with maneuver units. It is kind of strange that many of you seem to have a negative connotation of "human wave". Speaking at least from my professional circles, the use of such strategies is seen as a simple and very effective solution to the problems that armies like the PLA and NVA faced. I'd go so far as to say there is a lot of admiration for the commanders who had brains to adopt the solution and then the willpower to carry it out. bewbies fucked around with this message at 13:35 on May 10, 2013 |
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May 10, 2013 13:33
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It is the same as that little league girls basketball team that won playing full court press. Its not real cricket you see. You win wars with superior firepower, and not buy using superior morale, and or willpower.
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May 10, 2013 14:14
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bewbies posted:It is kind of strange that many of you seem to have a negative connotation of "human wave". Speaking at least from my professional circles, the use of such strategies is seen as a simple and very effective solution to the problems that armies like the PLA and NVA faced. I'd go so far as to say there is a lot of admiration for the commanders who had brains to adopt the solution and then the willpower to carry it out. It results in higher casulties, though.
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May 10, 2013 14:52
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Farecoal posted:It results in higher casulties, though. Winning a war is about winning a war.
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May 10, 2013 14:56
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A win is a win. And if you want to win wars, you gotta break some omelets.
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May 10, 2013 14:57
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Alchenar posted:Winning a war is about winning a war. said WW1 generals for the first years to themselves.
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May 10, 2013 15:05
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There is a lot of disturbing quotes of those WW1 Generals about how they viewed Mechanized Warfare and other technological and changes to doctrine during that era. I sort of hope they were all before it got really bloody but the cynic inside me thinks not.
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May 10, 2013 15:13
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