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a travelling HEGEL posted:Is it possible he forgot them on the ride over to that photo op? They should already be on his uniform. These are the kinds of things you have on you literally all the time, especially if you're an officer of that rank and aren't going to be hanging around any real combat any time soon.
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Feb 3, 2014 05:32
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How rude of the marshalls, they should have borrowed a couple of their Order of Lenin ribbons so the rookie wouldn't be embarrassed. If I were a Red Army officer, I would be grabbing Iron Crosses from dead or surrendered enemies as trophies and wearing them with pride. Nenonen fucked around with this message at 08:43 on Feb 3, 2014 |
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Feb 3, 2014 08:40
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Nenonen posted:How rude of the marshalls, they should have borrowed a couple of their Order of Lenin ribbons so the rookie wouldn't be embarrassed. Speaking of Iron Crosses, two Finnish jews got awarded those in WWII.  Army doctor Major Leo Skurnik for carrying a wounded German to safety from no man's land.  Captain Salomon Klass for leading a battalion that saved an encircled German unit.  Dina Poljakoff, who served in Lotta Svärd (womens auxiliary Corps), was also awarded some German military decoration, probably War Merit Cross. All declined the decorations and Skurnik said that he wipes his rear end with those kinds of things.
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Feb 3, 2014 12:04
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The army purges were much less about modernizing the army or giving it a breath of fresh air and more about making sure everyone knew who was in charge. Some really incompetent people were allowed to stay like Budyonny, Voroshilov, Blokhin or that one whose name escapes me who refused to believe in the utility of assault weapons or machine guns, while talented war-proven generals like Tukhachevsky, Blyukher and even Rokossovsky were trialed because at some point in time they embarassed Stalin and his cronies. The purges also shifted the army from an army based on grinding the enemy down in well planned, deep defensive positions and hidden supply stashes for partisan activity to a "standard" army, which was a disastrous shift of plans. Even worse, veterans of the Spanish civil war and engineers trained in sabotage were cowardly purged too, with surviving members being brought back during the war because it turned out they needed them. After the war a butload of soldiers went from Germany to Siberia for god knows what reasons. Stalin was terrified of a Napoleon figure, exemplified best by his determined persecution of Trotsky and Tukhachevsky. Since during the civil war he proved not to be the brightest leader (Lenin praised Stalin for being a terrifying brute but warned the rest of the party that he was a really special kind of terrifying brute) and his actions in Poland pretty much defined who was going to live or die when he reached power. Stalin was a dick. Raskolnikov38 posted:The only pro I can think of for the great purge is that in Hearts of Iron it'll kill off most of your useless 'old guard' generals but even then its not worth it. It's random so sometimes Chuikov and your other near overpowered leaders can bite the bullet. Meanwhile the snotty Americans can just strut around all game with their Pattons, Einsenhowers or Nimitzes like it ain't no thing. Not fair.
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Feb 3, 2014 15:37
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Mans posted:The army purges were much less about modernizing the army or giving it a breath of fresh air and more about making sure everyone knew who was in charge. Some really incompetent people were allowed to stay like Budyonny, Voroshilov, Blokhin or that one whose name escapes me who refused to believe in the utility of assault weapons or machine guns, while talented war-proven generals like Tukhachevsky, Blyukher and even Rokossovsky were trialed because at some point in time they embarassed Stalin and his cronies. Grigory Kulik?
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Feb 3, 2014 16:39
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Did they purge the lower ranks as well? The impression I had of the Red Army in WWII was that the top ranks were generally good - and sometimes superb, but the low ranking officers and NCOs were usually awful.
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Feb 3, 2014 18:15
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Fangz posted:Did they purge the lower ranks as well? The impression I had of the Red Army in WWII was that the top ranks were generally good - and sometimes superb, but the low ranking officers and NCOs were usually awful. Yes but the purge for the lower ranks was more pink slipped based than bullet based and thus IIRC most rejoined the RKKA at or near their former ranks once Barbarossa began.
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Feb 3, 2014 20:27
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Fangz posted:Did they purge the lower ranks as well? The impression I had of the Red Army in WWII was that the top ranks were generally good - and sometimes superb, but the low ranking officers and NCOs were usually awful. The top ranks suffered from being filled out with rapidly promoted lower officers who didn't have experience of holding higher level commands.
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Feb 3, 2014 20:41
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Kemper Boyd posted:The top ranks suffered from being filled out with rapidly promoted lower officers who didn't have experience of holding higher level commands. Didn't Joffre do something similar in 1914? Fired a shitload of officers and promoted people who he could trust? I mean, it worked all right for that situation, but I guess it depends on the state of the army pre-purge. If the people getting shitcanned were already seasoned combat veterans then yeah that's silly.
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Feb 3, 2014 21:28
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At lower levels Red Army officers suffered from a rigid command system and a small number of COs/NCOs with proper training to delegate tasks to. Also the constant organizational and doctrinal changes and hasty mobilization in 1941 made life hard. Well, that and Red Army divisions were usually bled out before they were taken back to R&R so even if there were good well trained company commanders and squad leaders in June 1941, not many were going to be in ranks in 1942.
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Feb 3, 2014 21:57
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Kemper Boyd posted:The top ranks suffered from being filled out with rapidly promoted lower officers who didn't have experience of holding higher level commands. IIRC, at the end of the war, the average age of a German division commander was higher than that of a Soviet corps commander.
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Feb 3, 2014 22:26
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The Entire Universe posted:Didn't Joffre do something similar in 1914? Fired a shitload of officers and promoted people who he could trust? Joffre fired a ton of generals who had attained rank in peacetime and promoted people who had already proved themselves in war conditions.
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Feb 3, 2014 23:46
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Could you go a bit more into Joffre's poo poo canning/promotions? I'm finishing up Guns of August right now, and Joffre seems like a complete moron who couldn't find a competent leader if his life depended on it. He was apparently getting rid of the people who realized that defensive warfare was supreme at the time for à la baionette! idiots. Haven't really studied WWI much, so I'm wondering how Joffre actually turned out.
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Feb 4, 2014 00:21
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That's one of the things Dan Carlin goes into in his new HH episode, and he doesn't seem to agree with the notion. Haven't finished listening though.
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Feb 4, 2014 00:35
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Isn't Dan Carlin citing Neil Ferguson in his podcasts on WWI? That isn't good.
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Feb 4, 2014 01:00
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Shimrra Jamaane posted:Isn't Dan Carlin citing Neil Ferguson in his podcasts on WWI? That isn't good. Oh great, now my eyelid is twitching spasmodically.
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Feb 4, 2014 01:01
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ALL-PRO SEXMAN posted:Oh great, now my eyelid is twitching spasmodically. Is that like your Batsignal or something.
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Feb 4, 2014 01:05
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Ensign Expendable posted:The young officers that rose up to replace the purged ones were lacking experience, and lacking the initiative for improvisation, choosing to stick to manuals (which obviously couldn't cover everything). Was it Soviet doctrine that caused a lack of improvisation, or inexperience and fear of failure? Pop culture has this picture of Soviets as rigidly following doctrine while the Americans cherished innovation.
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Feb 4, 2014 01:17
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AATREK CURES KIDS posted:Was it Soviet doctrine that caused a lack of improvisation, or inexperience and fear of failure? Pop culture has this picture of Soviets as rigidly following doctrine while the Americans cherished innovation. It was less doctrine and more do exactly as you're told and you (probably) won't get punished for doing so.
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Feb 4, 2014 01:28
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Shimrra Jamaane posted:Isn't Dan Carlin citing Neil Ferguson in his podcasts on WWI? That isn't good. I don't remember, these episodes don't really filter through over multiple days of listening. Still, it's a source.
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Feb 4, 2014 01:56
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AATREK CURES KIDS posted:Was it Soviet doctrine that caused a lack of improvisation, or inexperience and fear of failure? Pop culture has this picture of Soviets as rigidly following doctrine while the Americans cherished innovation. I think inexperience mainly. There's a pretty good record of innovative commanders being promoted upwards, sometimes extremely rapidly. (See: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Konstantin_Rokossovsky for probably the extreme case.) Meanwhile, idiot butchers who pissed away their men to no effect frequently found themselves shot. (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dmitry_Pavlov_%28general%29 for instance.) The advance from the 1941 Red Army to the 1944 Red Army is kinda an amazing rise from one of the most incompetent armies ever, to the one of the most competent and effective. So faulting the Soviets from being inflexible is basically a load of bull. It took way longer for the Americans to learn important tactical lessons, while they fought an enemy with one hand tied behind its back and looking the other way. Fangz fucked around with this message at 02:07 on Feb 4, 2014 |
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Feb 4, 2014 02:03
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AATREK CURES KIDS posted:Was it Soviet doctrine that caused a lack of improvisation, or inexperience and fear of failure? Pop culture has this picture of Soviets as rigidly following doctrine while the Americans cherished innovation. I think that is Citizen Soldiers that makes that argument? Generally speaking (I know), if an analysis of a complicated issue, like mid-level military leadership in a very large state, boils it down to a few bullet points about romanticized cultural values, it's not going to be a totally accurate account of things.
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Feb 4, 2014 02:04
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AATREK CURES KIDS posted:Was it Soviet doctrine that caused a lack of improvisation, or inexperience and fear of failure? Pop culture has this picture of Soviets as rigidly following doctrine while the Americans cherished innovation. The Soviets raised a shitload of divisions in 1941, both before June 22nd and after. If you were an RKKA commander, you were either fresh blood, or promoted way beyond your experience, with very little training to bring you up to speed. At that point, you're afraid of loving up, so you stick to the manual. Those that survived their first few months got better, but a lot did not. Senior commanders got a lot better by 1942, since they had a higher average lifetime than junior commanders.
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Feb 4, 2014 02:41
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Raskolnikov38 posted:It was less doctrine and more do exactly as you're told and you (probably) won't get punished for doing so. I thought you were still talking about Joffre! Slaan posted:Could you go a bit more into Joffre's poo poo canning/promotions? I'm finishing up Guns of August right now, and Joffre seems like a complete moron who couldn't find a competent leader if his life depended on it. He was apparently getting rid of the people who realized that defensive warfare was supreme at the time for à la baionette! idiots. Haven't really studied WWI much, so I'm wondering how Joffre actually turned out. Offensive à outrance was doctrine, so it was less Joffre's personality/beliefs and more a directive of the French military establishment. Also, his appointment to Generalissimo was heavily influenced by political considerations - it needed to be someone who believed in Offensive à outrance and it needed to be someone who was sufficiently Republican. Anyway, even if he did end up sacking the likes of Lanrezac, he eventually stumbled onto good Army/Corps commanders: Desperate Frankie was clutch as an aggressive commander when it was actually time to try and counter-attack, and Petain was instrumental in winning the Battle of Verdun. He was eventually replaced by Robert Nivelle after the lack of progress from the Artois/Champagne campaign of 1915 and the Somme offensive of 1916, but as it would turn out, Nivelle was also an à la baionette! idiot
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Feb 4, 2014 05:51
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I thought Carlin described the pertinent quality in Joffre quite well, that Joffre kept his head on his shoulders when most others would be crawling up the wall. If that clarity and deliberation-in-the-moment allowed him to clearly see and exploit the German movement around Paris then so be it. He was a man who took a nap every day.
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Feb 4, 2014 06:04
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I think the implication of Joffre's detractors was that if he wasn't so married Plan 17, or if he'd listened to the Belgian King, or if he'd listened to Lanrezac, or if indeed it was Gallieni that was in charge, the laconic calm and the stoic defensive stand leading up to and during the Battle of the Marne would not have been necessary because the Germans would not have been able to outflank the French left-wing so badly in the first place.
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Feb 4, 2014 06:39
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uPen posted:Joffre fired a ton of generals who had attained rank in peacetime and promoted people who had already proved themselves in war conditions.
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Feb 4, 2014 06:45
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Mans posted:The purges also shifted the army from an army based on grinding the enemy down in well planned, deep defensive positions and hidden supply stashes for partisan activity to a "standard" army, which was a disastrous shift of plans. What do you mean standard in this context?
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Feb 4, 2014 07:05
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gradenko_2000 posted:I think the implication of Joffre's detractors was that if he wasn't so married Plan 17, or if he'd listened to the Belgian King, or if he'd listened to Lanrezac, or if indeed it was Gallieni that was in charge, the laconic calm and the stoic defensive stand leading up to and during the Battle of the Marne would not have been necessary because the Germans would not have been able to outflank the French left-wing so badly in the first place. Yeah, this is what I was reading into his actions. Sure, he was clam and collected, but he was wedded to la cult de l'offensive so his strategic actions were generally the wrong things to do. I'm guessing he muddled through mostly because the Germans were having the same problems of A)Keeping the Schedule and B)Seeing franc-tireurs needing to be shot everywhere. Meanwhile, Lanrezac and Gallieni were making (or trying to make at least) defenses in depth with machine gun and artillery strongpoints and actually listening to the Belgians.
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Feb 4, 2014 08:43
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Slaan posted:I'm guessing he muddled through mostly because the Germans were having the same problems of A)Keeping the Schedule and B)Seeing franc-tireurs needing to be shot everywhere. The Germans also had the issue of Moltke being kind of a fuckup who first threw a shitfit when the political leadership suggested that maybe Germany should avoid being the aggressor and this would have messed up Moltke's mobilization plan. Though there were alternative plans that could have been used, which the Railroads section of the General Staff had developed for that eventuality. Later Moltke lost his cool, stripped divisions from the western armies and didn't stick with the original plan of invasion.
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Feb 4, 2014 09:08
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Kemper Boyd posted:The Germans also had the issue of Moltke being kind of a fuckup who first threw a shitfit when the political leadership suggested that maybe Germany should avoid being the aggressor and this would have messed up Moltke's mobilization plan. Though there were alternative plans that could have been used, which the Railroads section of the General Staff had developed for that eventuality. No, there were no alternative plans. The head of the Railroad section claimed after the war that he and his staff could have improvised a mobilization against Russia only, but a) France is still obliged to come to Russia's aid, meaning that they can't be ignored and b) you don't loving improvise a complete turnaround of a million+ men army. With six months warning? Easy. Three months? Doable. The moment the Archduke breathes his last? Hard. Three days before M-Day? Yeah right. The last German mobilization plan against Russia was from 1912, I think. That is to say nothing about institutional inertia. Schlieffen had been the foundation of German planning for almost a decade. There wasn't a General in Germany who would've thrown it out at the moment when it was about to be used. It's the equivalent of the Cold War heating up and 36 hours before the shooting is expected to start the US President wants to retask the US Forces in Europe to defend against an amphibious landing along the North Sea coast.
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Feb 4, 2014 13:42
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Can someone please explain the history of Military Attack Helo doctrine?In the beginning I assume it was pretty much close air support that could loiter but It seems that with the preponderance of MANPADS.  that Helicopters would be kinda useless and dangerous? And what's stopping some dummy with a SAW or something from just shooting them down in even the best conditions? and if I'm not wrong about their survivability why arent there 1000 variants of the ac130 to provide loitered CAS?
Defenestrategy fucked around with this message at 14:35 on Feb 4, 2014 |
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Feb 4, 2014 14:32
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AC130's can't fly at tree top level to avoid enemy detection, hover above a ridgeline for just long enough to fire missiles at target, then scoot. Attack helicopters are also protected against small arms fire, AH-64 is said to survive even 23mm AAA shells hitting its rotor blades so a SAW has no chance even if it managed to hit the fast flying chopper. And of course they have counter measures against missiles and mostly fly under cover of darkness, so that MANPADS is going to have a hard time. That said, warfare is kinda dangerous by default. In interventions like the Libyan war attack helicopters benefit from the technological gap between the sides so it's rare for choppers to be shot down, but in a war between equals they would be taking heavy losses (eg. Syria, where the problem is exacurbated by reliance on barrel bombs in lack of stand off weapons). But so would all defense branches, c'est la guerre. Nenonen fucked around with this message at 14:49 on Feb 4, 2014 |
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Feb 4, 2014 14:46
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Actually effective MANPADs haven't been around for that long, and aren't that common in many theatres, at least not with troops trained in their use. In Afghanistan, the coalition's helicopter losses are predominantly due to accidents.
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Feb 4, 2014 14:56
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ArchangeI posted:No, there were no alternative plans. The head of the Railroad section claimed after the war that he and his staff could have improvised a mobilization against Russia only, but a) France is still obliged to come to Russia's aid, meaning that they can't be ignored and b) you don't loving improvise a complete turnaround of a million+ men army. With six months warning? Easy. Three months? Doable. The moment the Archduke breathes his last? Hard. Three days before M-Day? Yeah right. The last German mobilization plan against Russia was from 1912, I think. If I recall Tuchman's writing correctly, the suggestion was to not march into Belgium first and instead reworking the plans to fight a defensive war in the west, because that would have put a serious crimp into French hopes of getting the Brits involved. The mobilization plans were kind of rear end-backwards in that way. Nenonen posted:AC130's can't fly at tree top level to avoid enemy detection, hover above a ridgeline for just long enough to fire missiles at target, then scoot. Attack helicopters are also protected against small arms fire, AH-64 is said to survive even 23mm AAA shells hitting its rotor blades so a SAW has no chance even if it managed to hit the fast flying chopper. And of course they have counter measures against missiles and mostly fly under cover of darkness, so that MANPADS is going to have a hard time. The West doesn't take well to casualties because no one has really fought for any serious stakes for a long while. Taking casualties while defending your own soil is one thing, to take casualties for vaguely defined geopolitical goals is another.
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Feb 4, 2014 15:58
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I agree with ArchangeI that it just wasn't feasible to come up with a Russia-only mobilization plan on such short notice. Even if there was, negotiating a diplomatic situation where Germany is only at war with Russia and not France was simply a misinterpretation of Sir Edward Grey's words in the first place. A plan to attack Russia and fight France on the defensive might have been more possible in order to avoid British involvement, but I don't think it would have been politically viable given the public perception/status of Franco-German relations. I would say though that the "Moltke messed-up part" was failing to commit to the Schlieffen Plan to the very hilt. Even if we grant that pulling the extra corps from the German right flank to send to Russia was necessary (IIRC not really because the Battle of Tannenberg was executed before those extra corps ever arrived), that still doesn't excuse allowing the left flank along the direct Franco-German border to attack so vigorously and then pulling off right-flank units to reinforce the left. There was also the issue of not being involved enough in commanding the front lines such that von Kluck, von Bulow and von Hausen got into fruitless pissing matches.
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Feb 4, 2014 16:38
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gradenko_2000 posted:A plan to attack Russia and fight France on the defensive might have been more possible in order to avoid British involvement, but I don't think it would have been politically viable given the public perception/status of Franco-German relations. From a 1914 perspective it would have been much more dangerous to let the French army operate freely in the west, there was not yet any expectation that a front could remain fixed for years. Perhaps Germans would have seen an equivalent to Masurian Lakes in Schwartzwald or something, but you can't count on miracles. At the same time a war in the east would have dragged on regardless, I doubt anyone dreamed of knocking Russia out before Generals Mud and Snow arrive.
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Feb 4, 2014 17:06
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Nenonen posted:AC130's can't fly at tree top level to avoid enemy detection, hover above a ridgeline for just long enough to fire missiles at target, then scoot. Attack helicopters are also protected against small arms fire, AH-64 is said to survive even 23mm AAA shells hitting its rotor blades so a SAW has no chance even if it managed to hit the fast flying chopper. And of course they have counter measures against missiles and mostly fly under cover of darkness, so that MANPADS is going to have a hard time. I thought the main reason for the existence of attack helicopters was that dumb Key West agreement and the later one from the 60s that the US army and Air Force signed.
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Feb 4, 2014 18:01
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And now for something completely different... Private Hugo Turunen was one of the two Finnish soldiers that survived a direct hit from a Soviet 50mm light mortar. Here the doctor has illustrated the path of the unexploded shell. Notice cigarette! Hospitals used to be different.  The wound and what caused it. Notice safety pin keeping this man wrapped.  The lucky sod. This was his third combat wound in the war. Turunen was only rated as 30% invalidized by the wound and lived as a logger after war.  His brothers in arms prepare a retaliatory strike. (This handgrenade launcher was reputed to have a range of 150m.) 
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Feb 4, 2014 18:32
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Nenonen posted:From a 1914 perspective it would have been much more dangerous to let the French army operate freely in the west, there was not yet any expectation that a front could remain fixed for years. Perhaps Germans would have seen an equivalent to Masurian Lakes in Schwartzwald or something, but you can't count on miracles. At the same time a war in the east would have dragged on regardless, I doubt anyone dreamed of knocking Russia out before Generals Mud and Snow arrive. Actually yeah you raise a really good point: Nobody knew that the Western Front would turn into trench warfare before the outbreak of war, and nobody could have known that revolution would have brought down the Eastern Front without having to march all the way to Moscow.
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Feb 4, 2014 20:23
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