On this day in history:
22/6/12 07:53![[identity profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/openid.png){kind=small}
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talkpoliticsTwo invasions and one great offensive were launched. In 1812, the bicentennial of which is this day, Napoleon Bonaparte, the hitherto undefeated conqueror of the great bulk of Europe launched his invasion of the Russia of Alexander I
. He had spent the previous months studying all the failures of Charles XII in the Great Northern War, and making his most in-depth and complete logistical and otherwise preparations for a campaiign. Indeed, Napoleon never repeated the mistakes of Charles XII. He made completely different ones that culminated in the complete annihilation of his Grande Armee, culminating in the great debacle of the Berezina. Technically Napoleon was never defeated on the battlefield, but as the North Vietnamese said to the American, that was true but it was irrelevant. Curiously Napoleon's invasion began to degenerate after a stiff fight at Smolensk, the first truly big and gruesome battle of the invasion.
In 1941, 3 million Nazis, prepared after a decision made in October of 1940, were to launch what was intended to be the crowning triumph of Nazi arms, the invasion of the Soviet Union of Josef Stalin. Against them were arrayed 2 million Soviet forces with horrendously obsolete equipment, operating on a bad plan, executing the bad plan worse than even it had to be. In the course of this preparation, the Nazis had studied deeply the lessons of 1812, and indeed they did not repeat the mistakes of Napoleon. They made entirely different ones that were just as fatal. This in fact cast a deep dark cloud over the course of Operation Typhoon and the Soviet counteroffensive there. And furthermore, ironically, and bitterly the Soviets caused the Nazi offensive to begin to derail in a prolonged and bloody battle at Smolensk, the first place the Red Army put up a furious, planned defense that lasted for eight weeks (and utterly failed, but in lasting eight weeks this meant it took the Nazis longer to capture Smolensk than it had taken them to knock down the French).
And then in 1944, the Red Army launched Operation Bagration against the hollowed-out form of Army Group Center, still retaining the so-called Belarusian Balcony, where the Red Army had massed a huge, modern mechanized force against a Wehrmacht degrading into a WWI Army and SS fanatics who were a political militia but had all the remaining goodies. The huge offensive began deep in Belarus, around Minsk, at the time that the democracies were breaking out at Falaise. In a short timespan Army Group Center no longer existed, the Red Army was on the Vistula, the Polish Home Army destroyed any pretense of an independent postwar Poland with the Nazis and Soviets both in different ways making this end possible, and the Nazis lost WWII to a point where only the fanatics could disagree with it.
June 22nd is as such generally not the day nor the era to invade Russia. Russia, in fact, has a record of killing empires on this day. Especially if you've slapped everyone else silly. At the point you're stuck with invading Russia, you should call it a day and celebrate what you already have. And by no means study wars of centuries prior in relation to your own, shit ends badly that way. Just ask Napoleon. And as far as that goes, it's also been 200 years since the *other* War of 1812, the most inglorious debacle of US arms before Vietnam and that's the reason we do not remember it.
Personally, if you ask me (to be sure of fitting into Rule 8) I think that Russia's military history in a lot of ways is shamefully neglected. Screw Afghanistan as the graveyard of Empires, Russia takes European Empires and disintegrates them. I think that the neglect of Russian military history is a curious artifact of the Cold War where the USA tended to take the view that studying the views of the people Russia defeated so soundly was somehow relevant to it winning a future war with the Soviets by emulating the methods that had failed in WWII, at least as far as tactics are concerned. Thus, it's also worth noting that both Hitler and Napoleon studied the mistakes of their precursors, and it did them no good.
. He had spent the previous months studying all the failures of Charles XII in the Great Northern War, and making his most in-depth and complete logistical and otherwise preparations for a campaiign. Indeed, Napoleon never repeated the mistakes of Charles XII. He made completely different ones that culminated in the complete annihilation of his Grande Armee, culminating in the great debacle of the Berezina. Technically Napoleon was never defeated on the battlefield, but as the North Vietnamese said to the American, that was true but it was irrelevant. Curiously Napoleon's invasion began to degenerate after a stiff fight at Smolensk, the first truly big and gruesome battle of the invasion.
In 1941, 3 million Nazis, prepared after a decision made in October of 1940, were to launch what was intended to be the crowning triumph of Nazi arms, the invasion of the Soviet Union of Josef Stalin. Against them were arrayed 2 million Soviet forces with horrendously obsolete equipment, operating on a bad plan, executing the bad plan worse than even it had to be. In the course of this preparation, the Nazis had studied deeply the lessons of 1812, and indeed they did not repeat the mistakes of Napoleon. They made entirely different ones that were just as fatal. This in fact cast a deep dark cloud over the course of Operation Typhoon and the Soviet counteroffensive there. And furthermore, ironically, and bitterly the Soviets caused the Nazi offensive to begin to derail in a prolonged and bloody battle at Smolensk, the first place the Red Army put up a furious, planned defense that lasted for eight weeks (and utterly failed, but in lasting eight weeks this meant it took the Nazis longer to capture Smolensk than it had taken them to knock down the French).
And then in 1944, the Red Army launched Operation Bagration against the hollowed-out form of Army Group Center, still retaining the so-called Belarusian Balcony, where the Red Army had massed a huge, modern mechanized force against a Wehrmacht degrading into a WWI Army and SS fanatics who were a political militia but had all the remaining goodies. The huge offensive began deep in Belarus, around Minsk, at the time that the democracies were breaking out at Falaise. In a short timespan Army Group Center no longer existed, the Red Army was on the Vistula, the Polish Home Army destroyed any pretense of an independent postwar Poland with the Nazis and Soviets both in different ways making this end possible, and the Nazis lost WWII to a point where only the fanatics could disagree with it.
June 22nd is as such generally not the day nor the era to invade Russia. Russia, in fact, has a record of killing empires on this day. Especially if you've slapped everyone else silly. At the point you're stuck with invading Russia, you should call it a day and celebrate what you already have. And by no means study wars of centuries prior in relation to your own, shit ends badly that way. Just ask Napoleon. And as far as that goes, it's also been 200 years since the *other* War of 1812, the most inglorious debacle of US arms before Vietnam and that's the reason we do not remember it.
Personally, if you ask me (to be sure of fitting into Rule 8) I think that Russia's military history in a lot of ways is shamefully neglected. Screw Afghanistan as the graveyard of Empires, Russia takes European Empires and disintegrates them. I think that the neglect of Russian military history is a curious artifact of the Cold War where the USA tended to take the view that studying the views of the people Russia defeated so soundly was somehow relevant to it winning a future war with the Soviets by emulating the methods that had failed in WWII, at least as far as tactics are concerned. Thus, it's also worth noting that both Hitler and Napoleon studied the mistakes of their precursors, and it did them no good.
(no subject)
Date: 22/6/12 13:24 (UTC)(no subject)
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Date: 23/6/12 15:17 (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 23/6/12 03:21 (UTC)At the beginning Napoleon also thought that he "won" - he did take Moscow... I suppose it is the end that matters. You do understand that fighting Russia sucked up enough strength from Germany to make it unable to stand against British, French and Americans? And as the result Russia also has gotten all its territory back and threw the peace conditions down the toilet. Again, it is the end that matters.
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Date: 23/6/12 11:24 (UTC)(no subject)
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Date: 23/6/12 20:07 (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 23/6/12 20:22 (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 23/6/12 20:25 (UTC)I said that Germany defeated Russia, which is true. Germany didn't defeat Italy, France, or the UK, let alone the USA and this was their biggest problem.
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Date: 23/6/12 20:44 (UTC)(no subject)
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Date: 23/6/12 00:13 (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 23/6/12 00:24 (UTC)The Polish-Muscovite War ended with Russia retaining independence, the Livonian ware was more about said territories gaining independence from Russia, and WWI was, well... you know the answer to that.
Russia has not been successfully conquered since the Mongols (although an argument could be made for the Polish troops in Moscow in 1610). But it does well at overthrowing its own governments.
(no subject)
Date: 23/6/12 00:40 (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 23/6/12 03:02 (UTC)It's not complicated.
Defining your objectives... that's the complicated part.
(no subject)
Date: 23/6/12 07:00 (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 23/6/12 15:10 (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 23/6/12 06:58 (UTC)Technically, it still wasn't officially Russia, but yeah.
(no subject)
Date: 23/6/12 14:28 (UTC)I can't really blame NATO for studying German tactics, as I'm not convinced that German tactics failed. Russian and western armies adopted a lot of German tactics, both during and after the war, probably because of the way that the German army continued to perform even under massive material deficiency. Germany had learned quite well how to organize its infantry and its armor, and both sides adopted off of that standard, adapting to their own national needs. They also added twists that the Germans were hard-pressed or unable to adapt to at that point in the war. I also suspect that the fact that NATO was planning to defend against a 1944-45 style offensive influenced their decision. It's better to try and learn from someone who tried and failed then to guess based on no information at all. At least they could use the German experience to see what worked and what didn't, and since the Red Army basically stopped fighting conventional wars after that point, it's really the only data point they had.
(no subject)
Date: 23/6/12 15:09 (UTC)The Soviets had their own ideas of mechanized warfare where the Germans improvised the mechanized battle by asspullls. The Soviets were able to put their ideas into effect with a learning curve beginning with Second Kharkov (the low ebb) and culminating in the big offensives like Bagration, Jhassy-Kishinev, and Vistula-Oder which wiped out repeatedly entire Army Groups while the democracies failed to master tactics and operations on a depressingly regular basis.
And you're right that it's worth *learning* from failure (albeit learning does not mean covering it up and whitewashing the genocidal atrocities of your enemies), but learning is not what the Allies did. Rather they helped the Wehrmacht cover up that it was as murderous as the SS and promoted the people that lost WWII against the USSR to be the first stopgap with WWIII. I cringe to think what a mess those people would have made of the second go-round.
(no subject)
Date: 23/6/12 15:17 (UTC)Nazi tactics also were far more dependent on improvisation and opportunism. That's a necessity in a battle but it's the way to lose a war. If the Allies were intending to emulate the Nazis on the Vistula, or in Romania, or in East Prussia I frankly put think WWIII would have led to an Allied nuking of the USSR the moment they realize the Soviets are in northern France and the Bundeswehr was just a speed bump.
(no subject)
Date: 24/6/12 15:21 (UTC)The other problem with Deep Operations was that it was not universally embraced. There are debates as to why, whether this was because they learned the wrong lessons from the Italians or because this was a concept that had been embraced by several of the purged officers, or whether there was fighting between Zhukov and Stavka. But the Red Army divisions of 1943 were much better organized to carry out a Deep Operations thrust than the ones in 1941. As part of this they looked increasingly like German units - with heavier concentrations of tanks in their breakthrough divisions.
In the same vein you could say that the US also had their own version of armored warfare, as did the French and the British. All of the nations developed their own theory of operational deep-penetration warfare. But none of the Allied nations were properly trained or organized to do it at the start of the war, the Soviet Union included. They all had to learn while reacting to the German offensives. I don't think developing the operational theory is enough if a country isn't ready to carry it out, and that didn't happen for most armies until 1942-43.
The Germans were not without their own doctrine for armored deployment - but they were often overridden by a madman with no idea of what he was doing. This may explain their fairly decent performance against the Soviets late in the war - despite massive Soviet advantages in manpower and material they had problems adapting to German defenses, probably best described by the failure of Zhukov for so many days before a practically undefended Berlin (it's also possible that Zhukov simply did not know how to handle a Soviet army in battle - Chuikov takes this view but his opinions are suspect, and the Red Army moved along Zhukov's path). Even with the fact that the Red Army was surrounding and capturing German forces wholesale did not yield the kind of dividends it should have.
But in terms of tactics I was thinking of the way that both the US and the Soviet Union developed infantry tactics that looked like German ones. By 1980, with the addition of the second PKM gunner, the Soviet infantry section looked almost German with its emphasis on direct LMG/HMG support, and the forward dispersion of RPGs (in place of Panzerfausts). Similarly the US began to focus on fire teams after WWII, following the German pattern of smaller, easier to transport units with high levels of automatic firepower and dispersed anti-tank activity (which had cost the Soviets dearly in tank casualties in the 1944-45 advances). Tighter coordination between infantry and tanks, between infantry and infantry, and between the forward advance and the air wing were all embraced (to an extent, given the Soviet tendency to use the set fire plan).
All countries had proponents of these methods, but the Germans were the ones who managed to do it first. In all countries (Germany included), there were people who argued against adopting a mechanized combined-arms approach. But I think the fact that the Germans managed to pull it off swung the debate sharply in the other nations. Most other countries, the US and the USSR included, learned quickly from the German example about what worked, and how to counter it. It doesn't mean that they didn't do it, it just means that the Germans deserve a certain amount of credit for doing it first.
(no subject)
Date: 24/6/12 21:24 (UTC)The idea that Hitler handicapped Germany is actually false, if we judge by modern histories with access to modern records. Much of the time the generals wanted ideas much worse than Hitler's own, like the decision to ignore the huge Soviet forces in Kiev and barrel on for Moscow when they were already in deep shit logistically after Smolensk.
The problem the Nazis had was that their asspulls had worked every other time, against enemies there was some reason to think were much more formidable than the Soviets (it's worth reflecting that Hitler, who thought Slavs were subhumans run by Jewish parasites, not by any means an ideological view inclined to favorable views of Soviet military potential, gave the USSR three months. FDR's Administration gave it one). In the case of the USSR they were facing an enemy who didn't asspull a modern warfare doctrine but had spent real effort developing it and the means to create it.
It was one thing to go through the Ardennes against an enemy who had neither reserves nor the will nor the ability to fight back against that. To put army groups against army groups was something very different. The Axis-Soviet War was waged on a scale that is simply put incomprehensible to a modern reader. The skill of the Germans against the Soviets can be measured by the similar issues faced by the democracies: against the crappiest and smallest numbers of German soldiers in the West, the democracies were bogged down for months in the Bocage and then for months more in the Rhineland area, for a lot of dead soldiers and very little territorial gains. The so-called decent performance of the Germans resulted in no less than three sets of German Army Groups being smashed in massive clashes that saw the Soviets overrun entire countries in single campaigns.
Which was more decent? Model grinding the Allies to a halt in the West without any hope of a reserve for months against an even more overwhelming firepower advantage or the Soviets overrunning entire countries and wiping out entire army groups repeatedly, not just in Bagration? The honest answer is that the latter must be so.
(no subject)
Date: 25/6/12 00:16 (UTC)I think the Soviets did well in the war, but I do think that armies on both sides adopted a lot of practices that the Germans pioneered (even if thinkers on all sides thought of them before the war). I think a lot of this was luck, the Germans just happened to do it first before anyone else did. After that people followed along, mostly because they had seen at least some of the techniques work (all the Allies had to make some adjustments on the fly). By the end of the war I think that both the Soviet Union and the Western allies were out-Germaning the Germans (if that even makes sense) although both in different ways.
I do think that the Germans did put up a decent performance against the Red Army. I'm not convinced that if the 1943 or 44 offensives had taken place against a German Army that outnumbered the Red Army by two to one, or even numbered evenly, that they would have been quite as successful. As you've pointed out before, by the end of 1943 the German Army was pretty much spent in the east, especially in terms of equipment. I just don't see a vast superiority in Soviet tactics and operational art - I see the result of a massive superiority in strategic factors along a broad front where new flanks could be "created" at short notice. That doesn't mean that they had inferior tactics, it was just that neither appeared to have the magic bullet to kill the other.
Probably comparing the two on even keel is impossible. After Soviet industry geared up, the Soviet Union was never stupid enough to try launching major offensives after stripping their units down to parity in material. They continued to attack in overwhelming force, which I think is a strategic ability that the Soviet Union spent a great deal of time cultivating and probably assured their victory even if they had happened to experience a tactical shortcoming.
(no subject)
Date: 25/6/12 01:38 (UTC)Yes, I know you think it, but you're completely wrong to do so. Look at the chronology and timing of the Soviet buildup. The USSR had a huge modern mechanized army just when the Nazis knocked down Versailles, and their armor and concepts were invariably superior to the Nazis. Their way of using that armor and implementing the concepts, not so much.
You're relying on a lot of outdated generalizations about the Soviet war effort that are vintage Cold War versions, the modern histories all recognize that the Nazis were beaten in battles, not by superior numbers (the biggest flaw in that rationale is why huge masses of materiel and manpower succeeded in 1943-5 but failed in 1941-2). The Soviets didn't out-German the Germans, they outthought and outfought them. In neither World War did Germany ever even get into the near zone with strategy, the USSR had a bad one in 1941-2, a recurrence of bad in 1943's first six months, and was golden thereafter.
The Germans didn't invent the concept of mechanized warfare, they didn't even have a clear concept of combined-arms *battles* until after 1940. The Soviets, by comparison, had the concept and the means to achieve it. This is why the Germans were bogged down in the massive battles like Brody, Uman, Kiev, Smolensk, Raisenai, Siauli, Siniavo (the six total of them there were), and so on.
You rely on thinking and not seeing things. I'm relying on the actual facts and events that occurred. My reliance on the war as it actually happened trumps your reliance on generalities and emotion. Read about Operations Bagration, Jhassy-Kishinev, and Vistula-Oder. Read for that matter about the Battles of Ponryi, Prokhorovkha, Belgorod, Orel, Fourth Kharkov, Second Kiev, and the Battle of the Dnieper and get back to me on this mythical German superiority.
As far as Soviet materiel and manpower superiority and its relevance, explain to me its total failure to accomplish anything in the Battles of Brody, Raisenai, Siauli, Uman, Smolensk, First Kharkov, Second Kharkov, Kerch, and suchlike. Why didn't it do that then when it did result in the annihilation of entire German Army Groups, this at a time when Western democratic tactics consisted often of massive firepower and taking the infantry and impaling him on prepared defensive lines unscathed by said massive firepower being poorly used and this doing much to explain why the Soviets could secure and use bridgeheads through swamps unhindered in 1943 but the democracies were being bled horribly in the Huertgen Forest IN 1944.
Don't rely on generalities, provide specifics. What did the Germans do with modern warfare? Which German generals invented it? Which battles in 1939-41 did the Germans do anything different from say, Lake Khazan or Khalkhin Ghol? Where in the long and fertile German-Soviet collaboration in the 1920s and 1930s is there the least hint of Soviets copying the Germans? Where is the mythical German superiority in tactics as opposed to the incompetence of their enemies in 1939-41? You keep making these claims, where is your evidence?
(no subject)
Date: 25/6/12 01:42 (UTC)Soviet battles were always bloody, but they crushed Army Groups. Where in this mythical democracies out-Germaning Germans do they ever do anything equivalent until the Ruhr Pocket? When the outcome of the war had already been decided by the Soviet 1944 offensives?