Sneak Attacks - are they worth it?

[David Chapuis]

Originally posted by Adam_L:

Re: White Flag -- you aren't thinking of the time he told them the war was all over are you? Sounds similar.

i dont know. I am pretty sure there were a couple 'rommel offering the white flag' incidents. Not entirely sure if this was one of them, but I am pretty srue they surrendered without much resistance. I also am pretty sure it happened before, but close in time to, the event that JasonC described. I am 99% sure they were Italians and they were marching. After that, the details get a little fuzzy. If nobody else knows for certain, I guess I will have to go find the book at the library.

[JasonC]

You said captured thousands of Italians, and there is only one period that fits. It is during the Caporetto offensive. The Bavarian Alpine Corps was one of the spearheads of that offensive. A different regiment was in the van, but Rommel took his company up alongside them, and on his own sector he distanced them.

Understand this fight was taking place in true mountains, up around 8,000 feet elevation. The overall battle involved around 40 division on either side, while the immediate attack sector was I believe 14 divisions. About half of them were German, sent to spearhead the mostly Austrian force that had been fighting the Italians for 2 years.

The German units included several mountain infantry divisions, picked men and veterans of Romania and France, far superior in training etc to anyone else in the entire theater. Rommel's group, the Bavarian Alpine Corps, was the cream of this already superior force. So we are effectively talking about something akin to crack, vs. mostly green.

The plan of attack involved parallel advances down two river valleys that acted as passes through the high ground. That is where most of the fighting had been. The German mountain infantry was to add an additional element of high ground maneuver, to get above and behind each succession Italian blocking position holding the river valley floor.

There were of course some Italians on the high ground too, at least right at the front. But it is not easy for a typical unpicked unit to go up and down 4000 foot elevation changes several times a day. The men just can't do it, they become physically exhausted. Mountain infantry walks the legs off lesser types in high country - that is its primary point of superiority.

Rommel had only a company of men, and he won the Pour L'Merit for his exploits during this offensive. His small unit took 6,000 men prisoner over the course of the campaign. As he explained in the passage I already quoted, the basic thing that made this possible is that, once he got through their front lines (not easy in itself, mainly using organic MG fire support to pin while his infantry moved), he made for a particular important peak behind the Italian lines.

Once on it, he took prisoner everyone trying to get out of the bottle he had stopped them in. They could not get over the ridges. They were down on a valley floor, and the road out led past Rommel's peak. Where he had MG gunners positioned, dug in, waiting. Did he "surprise" some detachments on the road and make them prisoners without a struggle? Undoubtedly. But why are they surrendering when his men appear? Because they are locally and tactically shocked? No.

The overall offensive penetrated 15 miles into the Italian rear. 4 full divisions were left at the front line positions, with the bulk of the German mountain infantry already successfully infiltrated through them, onto higher ground beyond them. Some units were simply pinned at their front line positions by direct observation, and had no choice but to surrender or be executed by artillery - as I have already explained.

They rest knew they had to get out - miles out - and fast, because the Germans continued to push farther. It was something of a race, a parallel pursuit in effect - operationally I mean. Will the rest of these Italians make it up the road and out of the valley, before the Germans get to the "stopper" at the end of it? When they encounter Rommel's MG gunners in front of them, astride the road out, waiting, they see they have lost that race.

To get out, they can no longer march along a road. Now they'd have to assault dug in German MG gunners on an 8000 foot peak. While an Austrian army presses them from behind. And as the rest of the German mountain infantry continues deeper, to set up new blocking positions still farther on. Etc.

Does panic sometimes set in, in this sort of *operational* situation? Certainly. It did to the Italians at Caporetto. It did to some US units who had the same thing done to them in Korea in the winter of 1950, when the Chinese intervened. (Though not, notably, to the Marines at Chosun Resevoir, who fought their way out of exactly such a trap).

Can similar "operational panic" set in during major offensives? Yes, certainly. After the 106th and 28th divisions had been chopped up in the early stages of the Bulge, plenty of other Americans just took off west. When the 101 marched into Bastogne, it was past a crowd streaming in the other direction, and they weren't civilians.

But such operational despair is one thing, and the allegation of significant units just dropping everything in panic simply because there are enemy in an unexpected place is something else. It seems to me the fundamental mistake being made is "post hoc, ergo propter hoc". Yes, finding the cork in the bottle can lead to surrender. But it does not alone cause that surrender. It is the awareness one is already in the bottle, that the forces arrayed against are operationally overwhelming, that immediate successful evasion is necessary to survival - that can turn disappointment of that expectation into resignation and morale collapse.

At least, it is pretty clear to me that is what was operating at Caporetto, that allowed Rommel to take 6,000 men prisoner with a single company of mountain infantry.

I realize Dodge you are not an ideologue about maneuver and its effects. But understand there are such critters. And they engage in rather tendentious salesmanship of their military theories sometimes. They take anecdotes that seem to fit their conceptions or to promise outsized rewards of "victory without fighting", and spin them.

They are heavily invested in the idea of "combat shock", as you put it. They think combat shock can be induced routinely, by just doing things the enemy does not expect or just by baffling them with static on the command net. I'm rather more impressed with threatening every member of a chunk of the enemy force with (other than surrender) unavoidable, messy and highly personal death.

I don't think mass surrender occurs (often enough to matter) in a condition of irrational daze. I do think it occurs in a condition of highly rational fear, when men can see what will happen to them if they don't. Frankly, I think the men involved are often thinking tactically in clearer ways than the theorists describing their reactions are, and that the latter are "projecting", without understanding the tactical situation or what in it the men found desperate.

Imagine a 1200 rated (I mean "poor") chess player columnist writing about a chess match. He is a "fish" but doesn't know it. He doesn't know that real chess expertise exists or what it consists in, but thinks he does understand. He is watching a game between a master and decent player who is well below the master's level.

The master initiates some elaborate combination that includes a mate threat in one possible line of play. The mate is readily preventable but only at a cost in material, say a piece. Everyone else knows a master up a piece, with no other weaknesses, cannot be beaten this late in the game (stipulate). The decent player sees this and resigns.

The 1200 fish writes in his column, "an attack directed at the king, however uncertain the result seems, induces a state of shock and bewilderment in most garden variety chess players. Masters know this and frequently win by inducing this state of demoralizing shock."

[Kammak]

Wow. A more blatant display of hubris I have not witnessed in some time.

I'm sure Leonhard, Lindh, the USMC, and countless others really appreciate you putting them in their place as "fish" in the military history and theory realm.

As a mere "fish" as well, I won't bother to argue with the grand master about theory...he already knows I'm wrong. I guess that saves you a lot of time, huh?

Sheesh.

[JasonC]

Why thank you. But you say that as though it is a bad thing lol.

The journalist I actually had in mind was BHL Hart. The masters would be Guderian, Rommel, Manstein aka GRM or "Germans" (to which I'd add Erhard Raus, but that is a detail). If you want to learn maneuverism go to its masters not to its publicists.

But yes I also consider the modern American maneuver theory boosters (the "win without fighting" by "baffling 'em with static on the command net" crew) to be dangerous fools. Frankly on the order of the Grandmaison school in pre WW I France.

Sun Tsu was not an idiot but 9 out of 10 moderns quoting him are. I frankly think they are slowly unlearning the western genius for decision in war and sliding back into the indecisive skirmishing of the pre-industrial east.

We are spared catastrophe from their folly because our technical and training edge is so enourmous, and because the Air Force (despite doctrinal issues of its own - do it all-ism and target set creep) still believes in firepower. (Also at the lower echelon levels enough of the officers are westernized warriors, that they in practice throw out the pussyfooting and murder their enemies).

Maneuver to create force multipliers to annihilate enemy forces in the field as efficiently as possible is quite sound, and an important field of military technique. Maneuver as a substitute for annihilating enemy forces in the field is a bit of journalist level stupidity.

[ September 19, 2003, 04:18 PM: Message edited by: JasonC ]

[Kammak]

The only thing you are displaying with these posts is a massive failure to understand "manuever warfare" as it applies to the Marine Corps and other entities. Both supporters and detractors make the same mistake of losing sight of the scope of the theory...and then having a hey day with straw man arguments.

Perhaps a little more learning and less pompous diatribes are in order? Just a suggestion.

[Michael Emrys]

I am agreeing with Adam. Most of what Jason has posted in this thread seems right on to me as regards maneuver warfare. But then maybe there are important things I don't know. So come on, Kammak, let's here it. I'm willing to be informed. What have we missed?

Michael

[John D Salt]

Originally posted by Kammak:

The only thing you are displaying with these posts is a massive failure to understand "manuever warfare" as it applies to the Marine Corps and other entities. Both supporters and detractors make the same mistake of losing sight of the scope of the theory...and then having a hey day with straw man arguments.

Perhaps a little more learning and less pompous diatribes are in order? Just a suggestion.

Errh, I didn't see a strawman anywhere in JasonC's arguments. AFAICS he was merely contending that there are, in the defence community, a number of people who over-sell the "maneouvrist" idea quite badly. This is certainly true on this side of the pond, I know from personal experience; Are you suggesting that there is less marketing hype in the American than the British defence community?

All the best,

John.

[Specs]

The game seems to model encirclement perfectly adequately for my money. If you get a chunk of your force into the enemy's rear, the question is whether or not the CO -- that is to say, the other player -- panics. If so, the enemy formation on the game board will disintegrate; if not, you inflict panic one unit at a time by taking full advantage of local tactical superiority, as Redwolf and others observed, and proceed to take apart the enemy formation the old fashioned way. At any rate, it certainly wouldn't be much fun if the game automatically forced a surrender or inflicted a massive morale penalty (presumably panicking or breaking most of one's troops in a single turn) simply because the Black Hats slipped a company of infantry or a platoon of tanks behind you.

The question of whether "Sneak Attacks" are worth the time and trouble depends, I think, on whether such an attack is considered to be an end or a means to an end. I have managed this sort of thing, myself, on a few occasions back in the CMBO era, but I never expected the enemy forces to fold simply because I managed to pull off something dastardly. I expected that the opposition would demand a demonstration of the full dimensions of my dastardliness -- and then fold.

But, of course, sometimes the magic works, and sometimes it doesn't. When this sort of tactic goes south, it does seem to lead invariably to complete and abject failure -- usually the total loss of my Sneak Attack force and, because the other guy now knows that I'm not holding the "missing mass" in reserve, loss of the battle, as well. C'est la guerre.

[JasonC]

"massive failure to understand "manuever warfare" as it applies to the Marine Corps and other entities."

I deny it. I think I understand it quite well. I have certainly studied it extensively, before its current US doctrine form (e.g. the GRMs) and after. But I am willing to be instructed if you see error in my interpretation of it.

"the same mistake of losing sight of the scope of the theory"

It is exactly the scope claimed for the theory in its current doctrinal form that I object to as unsound. As a technique for creating force multipliers within a basically fielded forces, odds based, decisive battle oriented or (loosely) "attritionist" strategic wrapper, I think maneuver theory is quite sound and quite important. But as a substitute for that strategic wrapper, I think it is dangerous nonsense.

I can give this distinction empirical content to prove it is not merely semantic, not a matter of using terms differently. It is a substantive disagreement about the relative importance of maneuver effects and overall strength effects.

One says when you break through at Sedan in 1940, turn right and kill the BEF and French armies in Belgium. The other says turn left and seize Paris.

One says after Smolensk the south turn to Kiev was correct, because killing an army of a million men in a month is definitely what you want to be doing. The other says straight to Moscow to panic the government and rock the USSR's "center of gravity".

One sees the critical failure in German strategy vs. Russia as the failure to completely mobilize the economy for a long war based on odds and material the instant the decision was made to invade. The other sees that failure in the Kiev rather than Moscow decision.

One says keep the initiative at the time of Kursk and only quibbles over where the Germans should have attacked. The other says the odds were too long to attack and a mobile defense based on strong armor reserves playing "linebacker" was in order. In other words, much closer to what the Russians did.

One thinks the present revolution in military affairs is all about the massively increased firepower offered by smart weapons, which puts firepower more in the driver's seat than ever before and turns fielded forces from the hardest into the most rewarding target. The other thinks it is all about speed, flexibility, and communications, and getting past those forces without engaging them, going after soft-system and C3I infrastructure instead.

One is worried about range and firepower and the other is worried about speed and deployability.

One would council keeping ATGMs on IFVs (e.g. Brad) and the other would insist on wheels (e.g. Stryker). These are real and present differences.

One has its main advocates in maneuver element commanders, and particular US Army light infantry and USMC officers, the other has its main advocates in the USAF and portions of the heavy components of the Army, including the artillery. One expects great things from deployable light armor and highly trained infantry getting where the enemy isn't. The other expects rather more from JDAMs and smart MLRS bomblets getting right where he is.

[ September 20, 2003, 05:52 PM: Message edited by: JasonC ]

[JasonC]

But anyone might wonder whether I am providing a cartoon version of modern maneuver theory. By all means let us hear from others correcting my simplicities.

Here I'll just explain a little where I got the notion. I read US military manuals. They include lots of explanation of how it is supposed to work. And the ideological distortions of "hit em where they ain't" ground element maneuver dominant thinking stand out like red threads.

The US army says artillery deployable minefields should be used to facilitate counterattacks. There is something so utterly defensive, so initiative eschewing, about a remotely placed minefield, that they were pulling their hair out to write a manueverist paragraph on the subject.

Since the idea is to send maneuver forces where the enemy isn't and avoid the places where he is, commanders are trained to think about avoiding major direct collision with enemy maneuver elements. Then they have to explain the role of reserves in a defense in depth.

Now, anybody with half a brain can see that the idea of reserves is a sort of linebacker, self-sealing tanks kind of thing, which directs the mass of the reserves at the main body of the enemy as he attempts break-in to the defensive system. The idea is transparently to even out the odds ratio discrepancies the enemy has achieved along the line by his own maneuvering.

But this means the reserves must go where the enemy *is*. An attritionist, collision idea. Can't have that. So they actually tell the commanders to send the reserve somewhere the attackers aren't - though if from that spot they can see or hit the attackers, well and good. Now this is nonsense. If the defenders and attackers can see and fire on each other, obviously you have collision and force on force placement. But they can't bring themselves to actually say "send the reserves where the enemy is thickest".

Then there is the discussion of the use of fire support. Everybody is supposed to get some. The target set is deep and highly varied. Firepower arms are valued primarily for their reach, for their ability to get at portions of the enemy force the maneuver elements can't, at the moment. As a result, there is practically no massing of fires advocated.

Instead, every C3I, follow on force, communications directed possible target is laboriously gone through. You can just hear the FAC "congratulations. You just bagged yourself a hooch, 2 bicycles, and a water buffalo". Not what the firepower arms want to hear. That would be "enemy in the open!" aka massed enemy all bunched up to provide integrated firepower opposite a friendly maneuver element.

When you read the manuals on *achieving* a breakthrough, they speak of it with great trepidation because it involves going through the front line of the enemy, and the FEBA is clearly thought of as potentially something like the fields of the Somme. But go to the defense doctrine and everything is depth and reserves and thin screens only up front.

If you asked a dozen breakthrough planners what they feared most, they'd say "massed indirect fire on the breaching force while they are bunched up opposite the hole, before during or just after making it." But if you go to the defensive fire plan, arty and air is supposed to be going after deep 3CI and counterbattery, choppers after the second echelon etc. In other words, spread the firepower all over creation to pinprick everything, where the target density is south of Florida.

Why? Because massing firepower on the breach involves regarding the enemy maneuver forces as *vunerable*, and the *chief target*, and the doctrine throughout is that said maneuver forces are the *hardest* thing to hurt, compared to the supposedly "soft" (but in fact, dispersed and redundant) C3I arty etc.

They are not seeking decision by fire against the enemy maneuver force. They are trying to paralyze that maneuver force without having to actually fight it by hitting everything but.

Now to me this violates at least three major principles of war. One, Petain's maxim that "firepower kills". Two, the principle of mass, in this case the full exploitation of the range of the firepower arms to -mass- widely dispersed points of origin for fire onto small areas of the highest possible target density.

Three, the dictum of Napoleon about decisive battle - "there are many good generals in Europe, but they see too many things at once. Whereas I see only one thing, the main body of the enemy. This I crush, confident that secondary matters will sort themselves out."

Our maneuverist anti-C3I oriented doctrine sees way, way too many things at once.

[Kammak]

Fallacy - Maneuver Warfare seeks only to win without fighting, denies the importance of firepower, and focuses solely on physical movement.

That is the typical beginning that most "critics" start from, them start a long winded diatribe about how stupid it is,etc...

Maneuver Warfare as it is commonly used by the USMC and is written about by Leonhard, Lindh and others is much more than physical movement. It is a distallation of basically "good ideas" that have emerged from 500-600 years of military history.

Maneuver Warfare doesn't suggest that you drive up behind the bad guy, yell boo, and win the war.

It is a mostly operational and somewhat strategic thought process with very little application at the tactical level. The USMC, one of the foremost supporters of Maneuver Warfare, still spends the bulk of FMFM 3 Tactics talking about combined arms, use of terrain, and the effective use of fires to destroy the enemy. Move up the ladder to FMFM 6 Ground Combat Operations and of course FMFM 1 Warfighting, and you enter the real realm of Maneuver Warfare. Even there, you still have full appreciation of firepower and violence:

"At all levels of the GCE, regardless of location on the battlefield, violence of action in the face of the enemy is required. Violence of action is an integral component of maneuver warfare. Violence against the enemy during the conduct of maneuver warfare is no different than that experienced in past wars and is not to be solely associated with an "attrition" style of warfare.""

(1-17 FMFM 6)

"Maneuver that does not include violent action

against the enemy will not be decisive."

(1-10 FMFM 6)

"Firepower and attrition are essential elements of warfare by maneuver. In fact, at the critical point, where strength has been focused against enemy vulnerability, attrition may be extreme

and may involve the outright annihilation of enemy elements."

(38 FMFM 1)

What Maneuver Warfare does dictate is that the use of firepower be directly tied to the overall purpose of the campaign, and not used just because it can:

"Rather than wearing down an enemy’s defenses, maneuver warfare attempts to bypass these defenses in order to penetrate the enemy system and tear it apart. The aim is to render the enemy

incapable of resisting effectively by shattering his moral, mental, and physical cohesion—his ability to fight as an effective, coordinated whole"

(73 FMFM 1)

"This is not to imply that firepower is unimportant. On the contrary, firepower is central to maneuver warfare. Nor do we mean to imply that we will pass up the opportunity to physically destroy the enemy. We will concentrate fires and forces at decisive points to destroy enemy elements when the opportunity presents itself and when it fits our larger purposes. Engaged in combat, we can rarely go wrong if we aggressively pursue the destruction of enemy forces. In fact, maneuver warfare often involves extremely high attrition of selected enemy forces where we have focused combat power against critical enemy weakness."

(74 FMFM 1)

"The greatest effect of firepower is generally not physical destruction —the cumulative effects of which are felt only slowly—but the disruption it causes."

(74 FMFM 1)

"Inherent in maneuver warfare is the need for speed to seize the initiative, dictate the terms of action, and keep the enemy off balance, thereby increasing his friction. Also inherent is the need to focus our efforts in order to maximize effect. In combat this includes violence and shock effect..."

(74 FMFM 1)

But even in FMFM 3 Tactics - pretty far down the chain, we have the following lines:

"Therefore, the Marine Corps has embraced a more flexible, imaginative, and effective way to wage war: maneuver warfare. This does not mean, however, that combat should be viewed as a bloodless ballet of movement. Combat, especially at the tactical level of war, will be characterized by tough, brutal, and desperate engagements."

(16 MCDP 1-3)

"The application of Marine Corps tactics does not mean that we expect to win effortlessly or bloodlessly or that we expect the enemy to collapse just because we outmaneuver him. It

means we look for and make the most of every advantage and apply the decisive stroke when the opportunity presents itself."

(101 MCDP 1-3)

"It is not enough merely to gain advantage. The enemy will not surrender simply because he is placed at a disadvantage."

(101 MCDP 1-3)

Maneuver Warfare is generally defined by several characteristics including strong emphasis on Mission Orders, Recon Pull vice Command Push, designation of a Main Effort, identifying and attacking the enemy Center of Gravity/Critical Vulnerability, and Tempo. Tempo of course applying to the entire range of warfare, from vehicle speed to CinC decision-making.

IF the enemy's center of gravity is his armed forces, Maneuver Warfare dictates you destroy his armed forces. How they are destroyed is another question, and depends solely on the situation. What Maneuver Warfare supporters want to get away from is a de-facto assumption that the only course to victory is through destruction, by firepower, of the entire enemy force.

It doesn't take a genius to see the origins of support for this theory of warfare growing out of junior officers' experience in Vietnam, where the only strategy coming down from on high was attrition as measured by body counts. While given enough time and resources that strategy may actual win, there are far better, quicker, and economical paths to victory in that same scenario that were never supported or in some cases never even implemented.

Maneuver Warfare has no absolutes other than total orientation on the ENEMY - what will bring about the collapse of my current enemy at this time. If its means destroying his armed forces, go for it. If it means decapitating his senior leadership, go for it. Just don't charge in with guns blazing, fixated on killing and blowing up stuff, and call that a "strategy".

RE: Your last post with bits about France and Russia, I honestly didn't follow it to closely. It seemed to have nothing do to with Maneuver Warfare theory as it is applied by military professionals. If you are instead interested in arguing about the hypothetical extremes of manuever warfare vs. attrition warfare, I have no interest in that. At the extremes, any theory is stupid. Thats why no one actually uses any theory at the extreme end of its range.

If your initial chess parody was ridiculing some Maneuver Warfare supporter pushing the extreme edge of the theory, then I retract my remarks as you were dead on. I however read it as an attack on Maneuver Warfare in its generally accepted form, and included the USMC and authers by name in my response. As you did not deny you were attacking those views, I can only assume you have a distorted and inaccurate understanding of the theory as it is used today by the USMC, and layed out above.

Regards,

Kevin

[Kammak]

Having gone through your last 2 posts now, let me say you are all over the place - what exactly are you arguing about?

You make a bunch of statements, counterstatements, and then say one is right and the other wrong, with no justification for why one is "the official" maneuver answer and the other "the official" xxx answer, where xxx is the name of the theory you believe is always right.

Manuever Warfare is not the same as the Revolution in Military Affairs (RMA), Fourth Gen warfare, and information warfare. They are certainly related and are at the forefront of discussion co-incidentally, but they are not all the same thing.

You consistently make the assumption that maneuver warfare = center of gravity = soft target = avoid fighting. That is incorrect. A fundamental step in maneuver application is correctly determing the enemy center of gravity/critical vulnerability. They vary at each level of warfare. And they can change with time.

RE: Your example about breakouts...I'm guessing you are trying to address the concept of surfaces and gaps, but being far too literal. A good description of surfaces and gaps:

"Gaps may in fact be physical gaps in the enemy’s dispositions, but they may also be any weakness in time, space, or capability: a moment in time when the enemy is overexposed and vulnerable, a seam in an air defense umbrella, an infantry unit

caught unprepared in open terrain, or a boundary between two units.

Similarly, a surface may be an actual strongpoint, or it may be any enemy strength: a moment when the enemy has just replenished and consolidated a position or a technological superiority of a particular weapons system or capability."

(92 FMFM 1 Warfighting)

Don't read gap as "where the bad guy ain't" - it isn't that simple.

RE: JDAMs and the Air Forces..etc...The US Air Force has, since its inception, been trying to come up with an institutional "strategy" that would actually work in a war. They have always been firepower advocates because they have nothing else to offer - so no surprise they continue to push attrition and firepower as that is the only way they can win funding. They have no real air-to-air threat anymore so they must focus on their contribution to the ground battle, and that contribution is in the form of firepower. There is no real historical or strategical backing behind it, its an institutional survival plan with no bearing on the merits of Maneuver Warfare theory.

[JasonC]

If I don't bow and scrap when you name your favorite authorities, I must not understand what they say. Of course I know what they say, and I disagree with it. Not with a trivilized distortion of it, with the whole perfectly digested doctrine.

There is something remarkably ridiculous about doctrinal manuals going out of their way to specify, just to be clear, that yes US Marines are allowed to shoot at and kill their enemies.

There are similar howler passages in the Army manuals, where for instance it is allowed that ground sometimes be given up, and that while the offensive is the only decisive form of warfare, occasionally for some periods at least some elements of the army may have to engage in defensive operations.

Note the qualifications about how some elements of the enemy force might be so treated. Note the inaccurate claim that firepower mostly stuns and takes a long time to actually cause outright destruction. In the small pinprick doses spread over giant target sets the fire plans involve, that may even be true. Ask an Afghan who has been through an arclight - if you can find one - how accurate it is in general.

Yes I want to target the enemy army. It is the center of mass. Pretending other things are is dangerous nonsense 9 times out of 10. Yes I want to destroy it by firepower. I'd like the application of that firepower to be efficent, and maneuver-created multipliers may be useful for that (are, in the right circumstances).

Yes I want to disarticulate the enemy force. High explosive is remarkably disarticulating. Unit cohesion is remarkably hard to maintain among dismembered body parts. Real, immediate threat of personal physical destruction is also remarkably good at generating shock, fear, morale collapse, panic, etc.

Therefore, if I do not occasionally make use of such processes to get an offending unit out of my path, or to take an isolated or locally outmatched force left "en prise" by the enemy, opportunistically - but instead, arrange my entire plan from start to finish with the idea of deliberately creating those "opportunities", in wholesale lots, over large portions of the enemy force - then I will scare the beejeesus out of large portions of the enemy force, and kill great gobs of them. Over and over until they either run away in terror or until silence is all that is left over the blood stained field.

Not as antiseptic as the maneuver manuals, is it?

And I don't much care whether the process involved is slow or fast. I do care how lopsided it is. If faster can make it more lopsided, faster pussycats kill kill. If slower lets me sit in impunity and kill them from a distance, I've got plenty of time and plenty of ammo. If I can send bombs or bullets instead of boots and bodies, I will. Ammo is cheap, time is plentiful, and I care not a whit how many of the enemy I must kill. Only the lives of my own men are precious to me.

Now, do maneuver popularizers actually speak of victory without fighting? Yes they do, they quote Sun Tsu. You can look it up. But did I argue against them on that basis only? No, you can look back and you will see I spoke of failing to mass fires, failing to seek decision by fire, avoiding the mass of the enemy maneuver forces, incoherent thinking about defensive operations and use of reserves, failure to seek decisive battle while seeing too many inessential objectives.

But what do you pretend I am saying, or must be, if I question them? Body counts as the only form of strategic direction. Well, we won that war until congress threw it away by pulling air support from the ARVN in 1975, but that is another story. I am talking about the German army's principle of annihilation battle, the kind of thing that led to right turns at Sedan and Smolensk, and you pretend I am talking about body counts. Then you just say you didn't follow my examples, and maybe they are extreme cases.

Um no, they are not extreme cases. They are narrowly chosen to illustrate the actual point in dispute instead of straw men like "we are allowed to shoot" or "you just count bodies". If it is sensible to make the object of operations the destruction of the fielded forces of the enemy, then the Germans made the right decision to cut off the BEF and French forces in Belgium with the right turn to the channel. Likewise, made the right decision to pocket Kiev and destroy an army of a million men there in a month.

If, on the other hand, it is a typical attrition minded mistake, a failure of maneuverist nerve, insufficient confidence in the possibility of winning by decisive maneuver without needing to destroy the fielded forces of the enemy, a failure to ID the true political and command center of gravity of France and the Soviet Union respectively - then Guderian should have gone from Sedan to Paris, not the channel. And from Smolensk to Moscow, not Kiev.

One or the other is dictated by the two doctrines. One doctrine sees maneuver as providing a force multiplier operationally, yes, but directs the use of that at annihilation battle. It "cashes in" breakthrough in dead enemy army groups. By tearing enourmous chunks out of the enemy fielded force at favorable exchange ratios, it seeks to move the ratio of fielded forces in ones own direction.

It expects the global odds that creates to create further opportunities for operational maneuver, to secure an initiative, to blunt or swamp counterblows. The odds ratio is supposed to move inexorably in favor of the guy pulling off the successful operational moves, as being up 3 pieces makes it impossible for the opponent to protect everything on a chess board.

This is not the use for maneuver the other doctrine envisions. The other doctrine, modern maneuverism I call it, sees that annihilation battle "wrapper" as a relic, a holdover from the bad old days of attritionist stupidity, as hamstringing the true war-winning possibilities of maneuver. Maneuver unleashed from any subservience to such annihilition battle goals is supposed to be able to win wars faster and cheaper on its own.

By inducing such shock and command paralysis and disarticulation, that the remaining fielded forces of the enemy are rendered irrelevant even though intact, even perhaps outnumbering one's own. In chess terms, damn the material and sack what is necessary, but get to the king and end it by forced mate right here and now. It promises to wins wars on the cheap by brilliant razzle dazzle.

There is no carcicature involved, no straw men. I know what they are advocating, and I consider it *unsound*. I consider it a recipe for *gambling* in military operations. The US right now is rich enough, far enough ahead, fighting such inferior opponents, that we can get away with such nonsense. For a while anyway. I shouldn't like to try the experiment against e.g. the Chinese.

[Kammak]

Is this how you normally discuss things? Because it comes across as a rant, going everywhich way, with no real points, reference to sources, or clear focus.

If I read you correctly on one point, you seem to think Hitler was right to go south instead of going to Moscow...which is exactly the opposite of what Guderian wanted. And Guderian wanted Moscow not because it would magically win the war, but because Moscow was a vital comm/transport hub for all of Russia. Seizing Moscow first would have made the drive into the Caucasus much easier the following season. Even Guderian himself notes that Paris was not the same at all as Moscow -

"I therefore explained basically and in detail the points that favoured a continuation of the advance on Moscow and that spoke against the Kiev operation....I described to him [Hitler] the geographical significance of Moscow, which was quite different from that of, say, Paris. Moscow was the great Russian road, rail and communication centre: it was the political solar plexus; it was an important industrial area; and its capture would not only have an enormous psychological effect on the Russian people but on the whole of the rest of the world as well." (199 Panzer Leader)

Moscow was one of a few critical vulnerabilities of the Soviets that should have been designated a main effort...not attacking the mass of Soviet forces, which was a definite "surface" for the Soviets - massive manpower and resources. Annihilating Soviet armies without regard for the broader strategic picture was a large mistake. The strategic "gap" for both the Soviets and the greater alliance against Germany was Moscow. For the alliance, the fall of a capital would be extremely demoralizing and would change the political landscape of the world. For the Soviets, losing Moscow would have imposed a severe hit on their lines of communication, thus aiding the Germans in subsequent offensives.

Attacking something the enemy has in large quantities isn't a good way to win wars.

RE: "Note the inaccurate claim that firepower mostly stuns and takes a long time to actually cause outright destruction"

You completely miss the scope of the original statement. Nor did it say firepower stuns. I will requote:

"The greatest effect of firepower is generally not physical destruction —the cumulative effects of which are felt only slowly—but the disruption it causes."

(74 FMFM 1)

Please keep in mind the scope here - and note the word stun does not appear anywhere. Yes the immediate effect of firepower is dramatic...no need to state the obvious too much in a doctrinal publication. The statement is that the *cumulative physical effect* on the enemy of unit-by-unit destruction is felt slowly. Example: I wipe out ten soldiers, physically the enemy gets ten more guys on the line, not much overall operational or strategic effect. That kind of attrition *will* eventually have an impact, but it will be graduated with the force of the firepower involved and the scarcity or surplus of manpower available to the enemy. To me, this seems a very reasonable, logical, and historically accurate statement.

Now, it seems you are putting words in my mouth regarding body counts. I never claimed you were arguing for body counts, so please re-read my post to clear up that misconception. The portion of my post dealing with body counts was in reference to the popularity of a theory that wasn't obsessed with killing for no reason other than killing.

RE: "that the remaining fielded forces of the enemy are rendered irrelevant even though intact"

With this statement you seem to imply that the remaining forces are left intact by Maneuver Theory. This is again incorrect. The purpose of disruption and dislocation is to facilitate victory...i.e. its easier to render the forces combat ineffective once they no longer fight as a team but instead as a bunch of drunken brawlers.

Here is the enlightening line:

"Yes I want to target the enemy army. It is the center of mass."

How to put this...umm...WRONG. Was the American military defeated in Vietnam? Did the Vietnamese kill more Americans and allies than they lost? No. Warfare is not science - there is no 2+2=4 in warfare. Its a social construct, not a physical one. The US and allied military forces were no more the center of gravity for the US in Vietnam than the NVA and VC were the center of gravity for Ho. What better example would anyone need to prove the fallacy that the armed opposing force is *always* the enemy's center of gravity than Vietnam? Hell, even Sun Tzu knew that - or is he always wrong too?

Finally, you refer a couple of times to "the other doctrine" - who exactly are you talking about? Please give us a quote from a military manual that says "unleash maneuver from any subservience to battle"? I honestly don't know what you are talking about, and therefore assume you are either arguing about the extremes of a theory, or just making up stuff to blast at. I have presented numerous quotes from several doctrinal publications that flatly refute many of your claims about Maneuver Warfare, so now you claim you are arguing against "modern maneuverism"...my question is - Who Cares? You seem to be arguing about a theory that no one uses, or you simply don't understand or refuse to understand what Maneuver Warfare theory really is.

[David Chapuis]

Originally posted by Specs:

At any rate, it certainly wouldn't be much fun if the game automatically forced a surrender or inflicted a massive morale penalty (presumably panicking or breaking most of one's troops in a single turn) simply because the Black Hats slipped a company of infantry or a platoon of tanks behind you.

I never thought it should do this, and certainly did not mean to advocate that it should. However, I still think (although not as strongly as before - btw, I am enjoying this discussion - although now I feel like a little fish in the shark tank) that in real life an enemy force appearing in your rear (unexpectedly) would cause some degree of shock, and wonder if that could be/should be modeled in CM.

but I never expected the enemy forces to fold simply because I managed to pull off something dastardly. I expected that the opposition would demand a demonstration of the full dimensions of my dastardliness -- and then fold.

Again, I never expected that either. Actually, I knew they would just turn around and start shooting at me - just like they would if I had attacked from the front. But I wonder if that is realistic - I'll let JasonC and Kammak hash if out for a while longer while I go find some of the "battle shock" examples I have read about.

[ September 21, 2003, 01:12 AM: Message edited by: Cpl Dodge ]

[JasonC]

Yes Guderian wanted to go to Moscow. He was wrong.

Russia withstood losses of millions of men in the greatest string of military catastrophes in recorded history, in battles that make Cannae look like a walk in the park. They were still fighting like tigers. (Please note that doesn't mean "skillfully". Men with guns defeat tigers regularly).

They didn't *have* a "psychological breaking point". The Germans didn't give them a whole lot of choice in the matter. They fought like it was to the death because it was.

The Germans got close to Moscow in Typhoon, and we know tolerably well what would have happened as a result. The government evacuated essentials to Gorki. That is 300 miles further on. If you take that, it is 200 more miles to Kazan. If you take that it is 300 more miles to Perm (and Ufa, which is 200 miles south of Perm). Each of these is also a rail hub with north-south switch lines. Then you are only to the western foothills of the Ural industrial area. They weren't going to run out of room in one campaign season.

Was there command shock in the campaign? Yes, in the first 3 days or so. After that, no not really. Operationally, inside pocketed armies, sure. Not in the overall high command. All the reserves that fought in the battle of Moscow would still have to be faced. Plus the million men not KOed in the Kiev pocket. The Germans would almost certainly have taken Moscow, but they wouldn't have kept it through the winter, any more than Napoleon did when he took it.

The problem was not geography. The problem was not even the loss rate being inflicted on the Russians, which was huge. The problem was the German replacement and reinforcement rate, which not only didn't match the Russian but was practically speaking in the "off" position.

This was not because Russian had 10 times the industrial capacity of Germany. It did not. Pre-war, they were industrial equals, and Russia lost territory containing 40% of her pre-war GNP. Nor did Russia have 10 times the manpower reserves of Germany. She had at most twice the manpower, and with Axis minors included (Rumania, Finland, etc) no better than 3:2.

It is because the Russians immediately went to full economic mobilization because they correctly saw that the war would be a long material struggle decided by essentially attrition processes. Regardless of the multiplers afforded by operational maneuver, the strategic wrapper that mattered would be set by odds. Which in turn would be set by production rates on the one hand, and loss rates on the other. Making it mandatory to drive the former as high as possible as soon as possible.

And the Germans did not. They gambled on maneuver supplying multipliers that were unbounded above. They gambled on maneuver making odds irrelevant. They did not fully mobilize their economy until after Stalingrad, 2 years after the decision to attack. Failing to see maneuver as a useful but limited thing within a fundamentally attritionist context, blowing its importance out of proportion, is the mistake that lost the war.

Not Kiev. Killing entire army groups inside of a month is not a mistake. The only way to defeat a state as powerful as Russia is to destroy its army. Yes Russia had tons of resources in men and material. She had even more resources in land and strategic depth. But Germany also had tons of resources in men and material. And instead of using them, as Russia did, Germany gambled that they would not be needed because maneuver warfare successes would shock the Russians into collapse and submission.

And it didn't happen. All the operational successes you could ask for were achieved, and failed to deliver the strategic prize. Because maneuver is fine as an operational multiplier, but is no substitute for a consistent attritionist or annihilation battle strategy at the top level.

Otherwise put, if you plan to attack a state as powerful as Russia, you must be prepared to handle her long suits. You cannot afford to assume you will be allowed or able to conduct the entire fight in what you hope are her short suits. You can try to exploit weaknesses in training, readiness, operational skill, and tempo, to drive loss ratios your way.

But you cannot afford to ignore the need to match the enemy in resource mobilization. You cannot afford to be prepared only for a short successful offensive war, while being unprepared for a long, see-saw one including periods of defense. The strategic context of attrition or odds or annihilation battle, focused on armies as the real center of gravity of modern states in war, cannot be ignored without inviting disaster.

Germany did not fail in Russia because of insufficient commitment to maneuver warfare. Yes there were inconsistent elements in her strategy, aspects held over from older strategic ideas. Those holdovers were in many cases more sound than the ideas trying to replace them. Germany failed in Russia, at least in major part, because she ODed on maneuverism. As "victory disease", overconfidence, military gambling, trying to win on the cheap.

(It is, incidentally, not clear Germany would have won even with the right strategy - nowhere is it written that a priori the war was her's to lose).

[JasonC]

Cpl Dodge - I could see a modest morale effect from enemies on multiple sides, tied to unit quality. Perhaps a tie in to global morale, which is the mechanism CM uses to track potential "collapse" of whole forces rather than individual squads.

It is already the case that fire taken through a flank has a more pronounced morale effect, but only fire and only if the same unit is really under simultaneous crossfire, which is a somewhat different thing (reducing the usefulness of the same types of cover, etc).

How much, and triggered by what? Well, I don't think vets should see any impact to speak of. Maybe a widespread "alerted", nothing more than that. The critical angle would probably be anything over 120 degrees. There would have to be some tie in to proximity - extremely distant forces aren't immediately threatening on a tactical level. And there would have to be some tie in to discovered enemy unit size - few would be panicked by a lone sniper behind them.

OK, trying to operationalize those limits or qualifications, what do I get?

A morale subroutine is triggered whenever there are spotted enemy within 250m of a given unit s.t. the angle between those enemies is greater than 120 degrees.

The number of friendly units that can be affected is equal to the minimum number of spotted, live enemy units outside the 120 degree arc, for any positioning off that arc. To make this work, need some sort of one-to-one pairing or flags.

Once a unit is affected by this routine once, it can never be affected again by it in the same battle. One off shock - if recovered from, no biggie. Not a progressive sapping.

The depth of the morale hit should be no worse that yellow for a conscript without morale bonus leader. It should be no more than alerted for a veteran without morale bonus leader. Crack, vet with +1 morale leader, or regular with +2 morale leader, would be enough to make it "no effect" automatically. (This allows "shock troops" to be sent into the middle of an enemy formation without morale effects on them for doing so).

Once a unit has been counted as "outside an arc" for these purposes and thus "inflicted" "its" one time altered-to-cautious "hit" on one other enemy unit, it isn't counted as a spotted unit for these purposes. A flag is set when a unit inflicts such a morale hit, another when it receives one, each is a once per battle thing. It is the new ones that count.

It seems to me the main difficulty coding such a routine would be getting the 'puter to try lots of 120 degree arcs to minimize unflagged "threats". The difficulty is you are drawing these from multiple friendly points. "Is this guy '120'ed? What about that guy?" Etc.

[moik]

Your forces are better spent simply attacking the enemy from three sides than removing one to two thirds of your force from contact and taking the time to travel around your opponent.

Divide and conquer doens't mean you divide your own forces

[Kammak]

You gotta love a guy with an opinion about everything he's read! Let's begin:

"Yes Guderian wanted to go to Moscow. He was wrong."

I love bald statements of right and wrong conferred with no supporting argument. Guderian was wrong because some guy called JasonC on a wargame board says so! OK. Next.

"Russia withstood losses of millions of men in the greatest string of military catastrophes in recorded history, in battles that make Cannae look like a walk in the park. They were still fighting like tigers. (Please note that doesn't mean "skillfully". Men with guns defeat tigers regularly)....They didn't *have* a "psychological breaking point". "

Which argues very well towards the point that a strategy of attrition wasn't going to win quickly against them. As you point out, killing army upon army of Soviet forces didn't achieve anything at all. I completely agree.

From here you went onto a spiel about production and manufacturing or "industrial warfare", and posit that the reason Germany lost was because she failed to mobilize her economy. In essence, by that logic, it doesn't matter what strategy Germany followed - they would have lost because they didn't ramp up production.

"They gambled on maneuver supplying multipliers that were unbounded above. They gambled on maneuver making odds irrelevant."

Not really. Hitler consistently intervened at critical moments to stall the forces and lose the momentum already achieved. Manuever was consistently denied the opportunity to show its colors by either Hitler or older generals that were unnerved by it. Any plan can be made to fail with poor execution - and no one can argue that Germany's strategic and operational development was consistent or even rational with the frequent intervention and about-face orders from Hitler or the general staff.

So it is very troublesome to try to draw *vast* conclusions about maneuver warfare from the experiences of World War II. Falling back on an industrial warfare theory is one step short of admitting you abandon any pretense of strategy, and just plan on swamping the enemy with numbers.

"Not Kiev. Killing entire army groups inside of a month is not a mistake. The only way to defeat a state as powerful as Russia is to destroy its army."

Its a matter of time - wiping out army groups without first securing the broader strategic objectives IS a mistake, because even a victorious battle COSTS the victor time, men, material, and momentum. It plays into the hand of the opponent with more forces because it robs the other guy of his initiative. Guderian was forced to halt his advance, swing 90 degrees around and drive away from his original objective to wipe out something of little strategic value to the enemy. By your own words killing and capturing hundreds of thousands of Soviet troops didn't phase the Soviets - so why was it the smart thing to do for the Germans? All it did was rob the Germans of time and resources, neither of which they had in abundance, but which the enemy DID. That is a very poor strategic decision.

The panzer forces were Germany's "extraordinary forces" per Sun Tzu's analogy, and were strategically wasted any time they forfeited their powers as such and were forced to fight in the "ordinary" role. That was the fight of the infantry corps/army - to surround and reduce enemy forces rendered operationally irrelevent by the advance of the panzer corps. At the strategic level (i.e. winning or losing the WAR) the only real value of the panzer forces was in maneuver.

"But you cannot afford to ignore the need to match the enemy in resource mobilization. You cannot afford to be prepared only for a short successful offensive war, while being unprepared for a long, see-saw one including periods of defense. The strategic context of attrition or odds or annihilation battle, focused on armies as the real center of gravity of modern states in war, cannot be ignored without inviting disaster."

You can ignore industrial warfare if you can win quickly. Fact. That is why industrial warfare was dropped so quickly following WWII because nations realized a nuclear war would not allow industrialization to matter. Even conventional defense of Europe post WWII did not rely on any industrial output calculations, but on time-space relationships - making every existing unit operationally significant as quickly as possible.

The true renaissance of industrial warfare was in the Kennedy cabinet (and later LBJ) and epitomized by the Rand folks of the time - actually computing the exact number of arty shells required for the next war and suggesting the surplus be destroyed ahead of time to save money. Those folks honestly thought they could mathematically compute warfare and turn it into a science of input and outputs...and produced the Vietnam war.

Khe Sanh probably epitomizes your example of a great attrition fight in which US firepower is brought to bear and the enemy is utterly destroyed - right? A great tactical success and even operational success - but what strategic value did it have? How did losing several NVA divisions make Ho lose the war? How did arc light raids contribute to the strategic success of US interests in Vietnam?

Finally, just a thought on sequencing. I detect an outright enthusiasm in your posts for the destruction of the enemy, preferably as soon as possible. In this way, it is your opinion, that wars are won. You object to maneuver warfare because you see it as hindering the "ultimate" goal of killing the bad guys. Instead of viewing it that way - consider that it just postpones the killing until the conditions are even better. Instead of walking up to my foe and punching him, I wait until he eats, has a few beers, and falls asleep, then I walk over and crush his windpipe with ease. Ultimate goal is the same, victory. Intermediate goal is to win with less expense of resources. In the above example, I took no return blows, suffered no injuries, only spent some time waiting. In that case I am both the ordinary and the extraordinary force. Maneuver Warfare, as pointed out in many quotes in my previous posts, still destroys the enemy, but it seeks to do it in a far more efficient manner.

[Kammak]

"Germany failed in Russia, at least in major part, because she ODed on maneuverism."

This is one assertion that requires a hell of a lot of supporting facts. If you have seriously studied World War II and looked at the influence of Hitler directly on the campaigns you can't make that claim. Maneuverism was not embraced en-masse by the German army, and certainly not by the general staff. Hitler supported it on the production/technology side to a point, but consistently fought it in operation.

The rare occasions where orders were vague enough (or simply not in existence yet) is when the maneuver proponents, the Division and Corps commanders, really "showed their stuff". That is when most of the phenomenal accomplishments of the German army occurred.

Germany was not Maneuver Warfare run amok by any stretch of the imagination. The fact that most of the great setbacks occurred when operating under direct orders from Hitler, against any aspect of Maneuver Warfare theory, would seem to be proof enough for most. But if you have actual examples of where a maneuver-oriented plan, executed per the original plan, resulted in a disadvanteous situation, please share.

Starting with Dunkirk, through north Africa, and throughout the eastern front, history shows the division and corps commanders pressing for more freedom for pursuit and exploitation, or defense in depth, but being denied the opportunity by Hitler or the general staff. They consistently curbed advances in favor of a *quicker* reduction of surrounded (and irrevelent) forces, or imposed rigid defense lines (hold to the last man) which robbed the commander of any maneuver option for the defense. The examples are so abundant I don't think I need to list them...but if you actually challenge this claim I can present scores of them.

The net effect is a rapid loss of the operational and strategic initiative, as time was wasted attrited forces already rendered irrevelent, while still-relevent forces were allowed to withdraw, strengthen, and reorient.

The attrition of surrounded forces is a forgone conclusion, but maneuver theory postpones that task so that the greater objectives can first be realized. Why attrite a division today, when I can come back in two weeks, after I've wiped out his army and group headquarters, destroyed his supply columns, cut him off from any support, and squash him with ease?

Examples:

Did the US get better strategic value from Third Army's drive through France (maneuver), or should it have spent that same time attriting german forces holed up in the atlantic port cities (attrition)?

Did the US get better strategic value from the Tenth Corps in Korea by landing at Inchon (maneuver), or should they have been sent straight into the Pusan perimeter for a good-old-slugfest with the NKPA (attrition)?

Was South Vietnam more stable because of battles like Khe Sanh (attrition) or because of CAP Marines and the ink-blot methods of the Marine commanders (maneuver)?

Getting back to WWII, the Germans were not practicing Maneuver Warfare in the extreme, not by any stretch of the imagination. To claim otherwise is ignorance of the historical facts. And it certainly no basis upon which to make blanket declarations about the validity of Maneuver Warfare in general.

On final note - an aspect of this argument that has slid in but not been addressed directly is the relative animosity between opposing forces. A surrounded unit is far more likely to surrender to a force with "pleasant" POW policies than to maurauders that kill every last man. That psychological aspect can't be ingnored when discussing the merits of encirclement and morale collapse.

The Iraqi army that stood up to human wave attacks by the Iranians, and did the same in turn, folded with amazing ease in two wars against the Americans now...in part because of the expectation of treatment of POWs. Had the US summarily executed POWs in the first gulf war, things would have definitely played out differently this time in the desert.

What this underscores is the real existence of the psychology element of warfare, which is beyond simple calculations of tank production, exchange ratios, or body counts. Had the nazi regime not totally fouled up the occupation of eastern europe, the war in Russia could have been very different. The will to fight is a real, powerful force to reckon with. A civil occupation policy and civil POW treatment is worth more than several infantry corps when it comes down to a fight-or-flight decision on the part of the front line soldier.

Its another one of the "grey" aspects of war that Maneuver Warfare forces us to recognize, and if possible, capitalize on.

[xerxes]

I think that's a great point about POW treatment and how it influences combat. If the Germans had invaded Russia as liberators I think their chance of beating Stalin would have been improved immeasureably. A different orientation would have improved the Germans odds of success far more than military strategy, tactics, and weaponry. Then again, treatment of POWs/Civilians/etc really is part of the greater military strategy.

[ September 27, 2003, 08:24 PM: Message edited by: xerxes ]

[JasonC]

"love a guy with an opinion"

There is something amusing about a doctrine that calls for initiative, but then in practice screams bloody murder if anyone shows the slightest independence of thought. Here Kammak comes close to saying we aren't supposed to have opinions about military history or doctrines.

"I love bald statements of right and wrong conferred with no supporting argument"

Actually, they seem to drive you batty, so no you don't love them. And the supporting argument was so long it covered several pages, and apparently went right over your head.

Then I pointed out of the Russians that "they didn't *have* a "psychological breaking point". And you then want to spin that into attrition bad, maneuverism good. Um, the idea of attrition is not to force the other guy to his psychological breaking point. It is to kill all of them. If they break psychologically before that happens, fine, gravy. Attrition does not assume the enemy's *will* is his weakest point. It aims for his *body*.

If the Russians run out of forces in the field, then they can be as psychologically sound as they please, and they will still lose. "But they didn't run out" - they did run down, and the Germans did not run up. Despite killing 10 to 1, the odds ratio did not move their way. I explained why already - because the Germans did not turn on their own replacement and reinforcement "tap".

Meanwhile, maneuverism *does* hope to stun the enemy into submission, to panic his command, to bring about a *psychological* collapse following disarticulation of C3I etc. If the enemy doesn't have one localized "brain" but a redundant and mobile command, does not succumb to shock, and keeps fighting even after a half dozen grand Cannaes, then this is a *wild goose chase*. In my explicit example, going to Moscow just moves the Russian goverment towards the Urals, and does not "achieve the strategic objective" of anything or win the war.

"you went onto a spiel about production and manufacturing"

Duh. That is only the *single most important military subject in an attrition strategy*. You actually think the production side is not part of strategy, but that strategy begins after it or something. I can tell because you wrote " by that logic, it doesn't matter what strategy Germany followed - they would have lost because they didn't ramp up production." Not ramping production was part of German strategy - until the started losing at midwar and were forced to change that strategy. Ramping production was the key component of Russian and US strategy in WW II. The belief that numbers will prove decisive in the long run is the key thesis of attrition strategy thinking.

Russia beat Germany because Russian strategy was *superior*. I realize that will be such a shock to your idols that you won't easily accept it, but that is your problem. Russian strategy was superior because they confined their faith in maneuver to the *operational* level, while keeping the clear focus at the strategic level on *numbers*, and decisive battle. By the greatest possible resource mobilization, and by focusing their operations on the destruction of German forces in the field. They stood on the defensive or took the offensive not according to any blind faith in the initiative, but as either option seemed to hold out greater possibilities of killing massive numbers of Germans.

Instead, for you the diagnosis is -

"Any plan can be made to fail with poor execution"

The Germans were apparently pikers. Minsk, Smolensk, Kiev, Bryansk - flubs. Hundreds of miles in a few weeks, whole enemy armies surrounded and destroyed, 10 to 1 loss ratios, whole provinces taken - that is "poor execution".

If your strategy *requires* execution not only superior to your enemy's (and there is no question whatever that German "play" was superior in 1941), but that is *perfect*, then your strategy sucks. You won't get it. And you so far haven't more than alleged that even perfect implimentation of your strategy would have worked any better. You haven't explained how, no pysch breaking points existing, taking Moscow is going to win.

I say an advance on Moscow takes you nowhere and the Russians back up 200-300 miles in the center, while staying strong in the south and bending that back to their right. When winter comes the counterattack can come from 2 directions instead of straight west. You won't hold Moscow any more than the Germans held their high water mark positions just west of it against the winter counterattack. The Russians are going to have everything they actually did, plus a million men more you didn't wipe out at Kiev.

"industrial warfare theory is one step short of admitting you abandon any pretense of strategy, and just plan on swamping the enemy with numbers"

Swamping the enemy with numbers is the actual strategy that won WW II. And WW I. And the US civil war. And the Napoleonic wars. The record of what you call not even a pretense of strategy is vastly superior to the record of maneuverism. And the pretense involved is on your side, pretending attrition strategy isn't a strategy. Of course it is a strategy, and a sound one. It isn't a maneuverist strategy, that is all. That your masters didn't teach it to you, or fairly and objectively present it as a strategy - and instead just slurred it as "mindless" and "expensive" etc, I can well believe.

You say time matters more than dead army groups. If you get something for the time, perhaps, but if what you get is far less than the army group then no. It is not like the Russians mobilized over a million men during the Kiev operation, which took only a month.

You say almost is passing that it is a mistake to wipe out whole army groups *before* "securing the broader strategic objectives". Um, the reason to destroy the army groups is they tend to prevent achievement of the strategic objective of winning the war (by fighting). Objectives are not locations on maps. And you haven't established that going to Moscow achieves anything, let alone that it "secures" the "broader strategic objectives". Also, if you have already done so isn't kind of pointless to wipe out the army group after the war is over and all?

"even a victorious battle COSTS the victor time" - one month. The Germans picked their moment for the entire attack. A strategy that can't afford to shift 1/4th of its armor for 1 month to seize an operational opportunity isn't very robust or flexible, is it?

"men, material" - very little on either score, and if the "tap" had been on far more could have reached the front in a month than were lost. The only significant losses were vehicle breakdowns, and that came from the mud and would have been faced at some date regardless.

"and momentum" There was still plenty of it when the drive on Moscow was relaunched. It is not like the front "hardened" and the advance could not be got going again. The Bryansk and Vyazma pockets took out something like half a million men.

"It plays into the hand of the opponent with more forces"

There might be something to that, but why did the Russians have more forces, when the Germans were killing them at 10 to 1 rates? Incidentally by the time of Typhoon the Germans were not outnumbered in the center. They had a modest positive odds ratio, because they had wiped out so many Russians to that point. It would have been a large positive ratio, on the order of 2-3:1, if they had ramped their own output from the time they decided to invade.

"to wipe out something of little strategic value to the enemy"

A million men and the whole Ukraine was not considered "of little strategic value" by the Russians. They did not see Kiev as a mistake. Russia lost territory containing 40% of her GNP in 1941 and a lesser but still large percentage of her population - and a solid half of that came from the Kiev operation alone. Since their strategy was based on production and numbers this mattered to them. The loss of the million men and all their equipment mattered to them even more.

The Russian generals - as opposed to Stalin - assumed the Germans would follow up Kiev with minor operations eastward and in the south while re-supplying and digging in for winter, following Kiev. They had nothing to speak of to stop the Germans in the south and certainly could not have counterattacked there (other than Rostov). Zhukov wanted to send the eastern reserves to the Voronezh area because he thought the Germans were smarter than they proved to be. Stalin was worried about Moscow and overruled him.

"The panzer forces were Germany's "extraordinary forces" per Sun Tzu's analogy"

Proof again to the world, if it were needed, that 9 out of 10 moderns quoting Sun Tsu are idiots.

"strategically wasted any time they forfeited their powers"

Their powers were to break through and surround enemy forces faster than those could react - until defense in depth with mobile reserves technique was mastered around 1943.

"forced to fight in the "ordinary" role. That was the fight of the infantry corps/army - to surround and reduce enemy forces"

To fight them once surrounded, yes, and that is what they did at Kiev. To surround them no, and that is exactly what Guderian's panzer group did at Kiev. Naturally on the far side of pockets as soon as they form, the mobile troops are the only ones there and must hold the ring until infantry comes up. But it is not like Guderian was launched in frontal assaults on an intact Russian army, to take Kiev. He just drove around it, and fought in the containment ring thereby created. This is exactly what the mobile groups were designed for. It is exactly what they did in France when they contained the BEF and French forces in Belgium.

"the only real value of the panzer forces was in maneuver"

It was of course an operational use of maneuver to encircle Kiev. A highly successful one. There was no diversion from use of maneuver, there was only a disbelief in the last promise of maneuverism - to defeat the enemy without destroying him. Sending Guderian to Moscow would also be maneuver, but sending him to Kiev certainly was. One would have been based on the hope - supported by nothing - that reaching that physical location would magically (or psychologically) win the war. The other was based on the idea that maneuver creates force multipliers in an overall context of decisive battle, enabling you to do things like kill an entire army group inside of a month for trivial loss.

I wonder if the bystanders can understand the sheer silliness of it all. They've got an operation that should be a poster child for the usefulness of offensive maneuver by armor, and they disown it and pretend it was a giant mistake. And why? Because it didn't promise to win the war practically without fighting, but actually passed through the intermediate step "destroy the enemy army". They must paint the Germans of WW II - the actual masters at implimenting offensive maneuver, with greater success and to a greater extent than anyone else before or since - as pikers who do not understand their own, gloriously purified doctrine. It is just plain silly, and should be laughed off the stage.

"You can ignore industrial warfare if you can win quickly. Fact."

See, people? That *error* is indeed part and parcel of the doctrine of maneuverism as a strategy, instead of an operational technique. They want to win quickly for a reason. To avoid full mobilization of the economy. This is exactly what I am calling *unsound*, a recipe for military *gambling*. When you *try* to win quickly *hoping* you can ignore the production side, "on the cheap", you *risk* operational failure, after which you will be left with an unsound strategy. While an opponent, *not* making this mistake, gets all of the benefits of first mobilization, even if you are the one who had surprise.

The only time this is a reasonable course of action is when you are so much stronger than the opponent that you know you could win even an attrition conflict, decisively, without mobilization, because the enemy's depth or possible reinforcements and replacements are meager, in absolute terms. Against a major industrial power it is folly of the first order.

And avoiding this mistake does not mean giving up any of the *operational* benefits of maneuver, as a force multiplier technique in an overall logic of decisive battle or numbers or attrition. Maneuverists do not "get credit" for what is equally available to their adversaries in the debate. But their doctrine *is* responsible for things like failure to mobilize the economy for war. It is exactly their *rash* promise to "win quickly" that leads to that *error*.

"honestly thought they could mathematically compute warfare and turn it into a science of input and outputs...and produced the Vietnam war."

Which until thrown away by Congress pulling air support in 1975, the US and ARVN had won.

"How did losing several NVA divisions make Ho lose the war?"

Speaking personally, he died before the victory. He died in 1969. You brought him up. In 1972, losing several NVA divisions to US air was enough to stop the attack on RSVN. In 1975 it could have again, but the air power was pulled by Congress so it wasn't allowed to. Every time the NVA faced US firepower, including air, they lost and backed down.

Vietnam was an "own goal". And no, not one caused by generalized "war weariness" etc. Nixon won in 68 and promised to put ARVN in charge of the ground war, and he did. That let him end the draft which promptly ended the protests. He was re-elected against the peacenik candidate in 1972 in a landslide. The 1972 case had already shown that US air plus ARVN on the ground could stop conventional NVA invasion. The internal guerillas had already long since been defeated, largely by US ground forces and via attrition methods, including Tet and its aftermath. The people did not abandon the President over Nam, nor the president the military, nor the military the ARVN, nor did the much despised ARVN fail for internal political reasons (they were the *last* to give up).

Nam was lost due to Watergate. If Watergate hadn't happened it would have been a win.

"outright enthusiasm in your posts for the destruction of the enemy"

Yes.

"You object to maneuver warfare because you see it as hindering the "ultimate" goal of killing the bad guys"

Nope. I object to it because I consider it risky and unsound as a replacement strategy for decisive battle aka attrition aka sheer force of numbers. As an operational multiplier to get the most out of mobile forces, I have no problem with it.

"Intermediate goal is to win with less expense"

Exactly, I reject that as unsound. First win, then worry about the cost. First exclude even the possibility of defeat, then worry about the cost. Gambling is when you stake everything on one, uncertain event. And to me it is to be avoided in military matters. Risk on the other hand is when you accept a possibility of a limited loss or increase in expense, for the sake of a contigent advantage or gain you think outweighs it. Taking risks is essential to warfare. Operational use of maneuver certainly fits. But gambling is avoidable and unnecessary. And as a replacement for decisive battle aka numbers as the overall *strategy*, against all but the weakest opponents, maneuverist orthodoxy teachs military gambling.

[JasonC]

You devote another post to my Russia thesis, so I will devote another to responding to it. That thesis again is -

"Germany failed in Russia, at least in major part, because she ODed on maneuverism."

You say it requires supporting facts. I've given plenty, and I have more to whatever extend you care to go into it. I have of course "seriously studied World War II". I am aware of Hitler's influence on campaigns. I repeat the claim. Telling me I can't is just silly. Hitler gambled on attacking Russia without fully mobilizing the economy for total war because he expected offensive maneuver multipliers to allow a quick win, so quick that "industrial warfare" could be ignored. Just as you said in your last, is possible. He was wrong.

"Maneuverism was not embraced en-masse by the German army"

Probably true but also irrelevant. The lower levels learning maneuver would help in implimenting tactical and operational maneuvers. At the tactical level, the German army maneuvered better than anybody else, clearly, and by a wide margin. Doctrines older that WW I were sufficient for much of that. They'd been drilled on flanking, envelopment, etc since the mid 19th century. WW II simply allowed greater opportunity for even the infantry to use the sort of techniques that e.g. caught the French at Metz in 1870, than WW I conditions had.

At the operational level the performance of the Germans is usually presented as "virtuoso". I happen to think it was indeed good but oversold through the summer of 1942. After which it was pretty bad, though relieved by occasional flashes of brilliance and a considerable number of small scale operations conducted exceptionally well. Manstein and Raus are the sorts of sources that lead me to say that.

But since the issue is not the usefulness of maneuver technique to secure force multipliers at the operational scale and below - where we don't disagree - all of that is irrelevant to the thesis. The place I claim manueverism is unsound and dangerous is up at the strategic level. It is precisely the aim of winning quickly, cheaply, by "stun" effects, by command paralysis, by seizing deep objectives, etc - applied to the scale of an entire war against a major power - that I claim is unsound.

And Germany had that vs. Russia, in spades, and it lost them the war. Hitler had it, partially as "victory disease" rather than maneuverism - he thought his army was invincible and all the others crumbled just as they were supposed to in his active fantasy life. But also as maneuverism. Hitler picked out Guderian and his tanks when the staff was skeptical, saying "that's what I need". Hitler choose Manstein's plan out of half a dozen as the way to hit France in 1940. Hitler set the goal of defeating Russia in one swift campaign before the turn of the season, approved practically all the operational strokes that destroyed whole Russian armies, and backed the Typhoon attempt to seize Moscow and win inside of 6 months despite considerable evidence of exhaustion. (The Russians are even worse off, was the universal watchword on the subject).

"The rare occasions where orders were vague enough (or simply not in existence yet) is when the maneuver proponents, the Division and Corps commanders, really "showed their stuff"

I know the argument but I find it to be apologist, for the officers, and empirically false. There were bad orders for Manstein post Stalingrad and he ignored them, producing operational brilliancies well above the level of corps commander (he had an army group). There were good orders that e.g. selected Manstein to plan France. Hold fast was idiocy at Stalingrad but sound in the battle of Moscow. The Kursk attack was unsound, but practically all the officers were for it because their doctrine put too much emphasis on the offensive and possession of the initiative, not enough on flexibility and possessing the last reserve.

Certainly there were times and places where division and corps commanders did smart things. There were also times and places where division and corps commanders did dumb things, but those don't get the same press. There were times when Hitler's orders were incredibly stupid. There were times when Zhukov's orders were incredibly stupid. There were times when even Manstein's orders were, if not incredibly stupid, still quite unsound and wrong (e.g. diverting reserves south to the Donets after the failure of Kursk offensive, leaving the Orel area practically naked).

Revisionist doctrines that all mistakes are caused by one actor are wildly implausible and when investigated do not hold up. Military doctrines that require that practitioners never make mistakes are unsound because some portion of military decisions will *always* be mistakes.

Despite all of the above, I do agree that the Germans were more successful at the tactical level with their maneuver attempts. To me that is all the more reason to relegate maneuver to the level of an operational and tactical force multiplier. That is where it worked in practice for both Germans and Russians (mostly operationally for the Russians).

"most of the great setbacks occurred when operating under direct orders from Hitler"

False. The failure of Typhoon was a great setback, and Hitler had not yet taken charge. In fact, the army commanders were mostly busy resigning to avoid responsibility. Kursk defensive was a great setback, and Manstein did what he liked. He threatened his resignation to get freedom of action but he did get it. German strategic objectives in 1942 were dumb, but the officer proposals were mostly just as bad as Hitler's.

Hitler deserves full credit for the idiocy of not breaking out of Stalingrad, for sacking Manstein to hold untenable positions in the Dnepr bend, and for generalized "no retreating" orders from the fall of 1943 on. He also effectively prevented full use of reserves by scarfing up anything off the line for 2 days to use elsewhere, but much of that was simply the pressure of inadequate forces for so huge a front. And he made the lives of his most able commanders hell from the minute defeat seemed possible - making hell was what he was good at.

But the strategic failure of maneuverism occurred by November 1942. The abundant errors after that have little to do with our dispute. While the Germans might still have done better, when the initiative passed to the Russians it was clearly going to be a long war of attrition and not a quick maneuver strategic victory by command shock and disarticulation. Small scale maneuver successes on the defensive are irrelevant to this, because the overall strategy had already been changed *by force* to one of attrition logic. The rest of the war was fought in the strategic context Russian strategy had planned for an envisioned, because their strategy was sound, and when the Germans didn't win quickly it went beyond sound and became simply right.

"examples of where a maneuver-oriented plan, executed per the original plan, resulted in a disadvanteous situation, please share."

Caucasus. They drove for deep objectives. They ran into endless space and hit air. They accomplished nothing. They made themselves extremely vulnerable to an operational riposte aimed at Rostov to sever the German southern wing. That threat forced the abandonment of the Stalingrad relief operation, as well as the complete abandonment of the whole Caucasus area. By hitting where the enemy wasn't, they just took themselves out of the battle entirely. The armor sent to the Caucasus, if retained in reserve behind Stalingrad, might have blunted at least one of the two pincers that closed the pocket.

Dunkirk was a win and did not make any difference to the outcome of the war. UK was protected by its navy and air not its army. With Churhill there they were not going to surrender no matter what happened to their men in France. In North Africa, Rommel was frequently stopped by supply considerations but not by Hitler.

You spoke of a "rapid loss of the operational and strategic initiative". Um, the Germans had the operational initiative from June 1941 to December, and again from about May 1942 to November. They had the strategic initiative for that entire period.

Is 18 months of strategic initiative supposed to be a *short* period of time? Is losing it in 18 months "rapid" loss of it? Wasn't the promise supposed to be *quick* victory, even victory in one campaign season? If the war was destined to last more than 3 years, as I'd assume any belief that 18 months constitutes "rapid" implies, then what was quick about it? How crazy do you have to be to think production and numbers won't matter in a war with Russia that is 3 years long or longer?

OK, the operational initiative. They held it until Typhoon failed. One campaign season, just like the operations order promised would be enough. It wasn't. Now why did the Germans have the strategic initiative in 1942? Because of the losses they inflicted in 1941, that is why. The Russians had only 1/3rd as many tanks at the start of the year as when the war began.

Why didn't they still have it at Stalingrad? The Russian tank fleet had rebounded. German tank production had not remotely kept pace. That is why they lost the strategic initiative. If you shift German tank production 2 years to the left (as they easily could have), they'd have had 7000 to 10000 additional medium AFVs by November 1942. I don't think the counterattack would have worked with even a fraction of those waiting behind the flanks.

The Germans lost the strategic initiative through attrition processes, when they could have retained it had they adopted an attrition strategy themselves, from the moment they decided to attack.

"The attrition of surrounded forces is a forgone conclusion"

Hardly. Over half a million men got out of the Bryansk pocket. They held up Guderian for 2 weeks while the Tula position prepared, precisely because not enough forces had been detailed to reduce them. In Russia, the terrain in the north is heavily wooded and swampy. Any area low lying enough forms scattered lakes and widespread marches or bogs. People don't use the low lying, wet areas, even those that are only seasonally wet, and they therefore remain heavily forested. The road net was extremely limited, with 2 wheel carts on dirt tracks the countryside standard. If you pocket a huge force in such terrain, it is not at all a "foregone conclusion" that you will actually get them. Some will attack you from out of the forests. Most will evade through the heavy terrain. Some stay and go partisan. Driving around enemies does not make them evaporate - the original subject of this whole thread.

"Why attrite a division today, when I can come back in two weeks"

He won't be there in 2 weeks.

"Did the US get better strategic value from Third Army's drive through France"

Straw man. The breakout was only possible *after* attrition destroyed the German force in Normandy. They were down to 500 AFVs in France before Cobra. And if you read the German side account of the fighting from the begining of the July offensive toward St. Lo down to the breakout, it is clear what made it possible was not maneuver anything, it was bleeding the Germans of 3 infantry battalion per day. They were getting only 1 replacement for 10 losses taken. New forces marching in to the theater kept them alive through mid July, but once those ran out they could no longer hold a line. There were 13 different infantry battalions attached to Panzer Lehr to shore up its manpower at the time of Cobra, many of them the size of platoons.

"A surrounded unit is far more likely to surrender to a force with "pleasant" POW policies"

Probably true, a priori. Now name any that did. Gee, those Germans in the ports held out for months on end, didn't they? Didn't they know lucky strike means fine tobacco? But Cherbourg, when actually attacked, fell in a matter of days.

"The Iraqi army that stood up to human wave attacks by the Iranians"

Ah yes, the "delicate balance of incompetence". There is nothing amazing about the ease with which Iraqis fold when fighting Americans. Machinegunning barefoot teenagers trying to cross a mile of open sand on foot has no relation to being pounded by 2000 lbs with 5 foot circular probable errors at the enemy's will. We have them every which way from sunday, and they know it. It proves nothing, about anything.

Here is the psych dimension - if you threaten every member of the enemy force with rapid personal physical death, many of them may surrender instead if they think they might live that way. Which is gravy, because if you have the threat you have the ability to carry it out if they don't. Without depending on your enemy's will in the matter.

[JasonC]

Extending one remark because I realize on re-reading it that modern maneuverists will find it hard to get. It does not place them where they think of or place themselves.

I said "They must paint the Germans of WW II - the actual masters at implimenting offensive maneuver, with greater success and to a greater extent than anyone else before or since - as pikers who do not understand their own, gloriously purified doctrine."

To be clear, I would take Manstein's actual decisions, fallible and constrained as they are, over every modern maneuverist's perfectionist fantasies.

They claim to be smarter than the most able practioners of their own art that ever lived. Then they ridicule others for so much as questioning the mere hypothetical guesses, never actually tested in practical implimentation, of their icons.

When I question participants, I do so by putting on the other side's hat and seeing what a rival strategy was actually able to accomplish. When they do so, they leave one side in blackness undiscussed and nitpick the other's sides decisions to an imaginary standard of perfection, not constrain by any outcomes, since they just plain *make up* the supposedly beneficial results that would follow their revised decisions.

In the case of Kiev, I don't think it was a mistake because I see what it actually did to the enemy army and on the map. I read what the Russians thought of it - they thought it was a huge defeat. I look at what they prepared to do when Moscow was approached, and can see it did not lead to command shock, and that the government and army would have continued to function in Gorki or the Urals.

When I say the German strategy of rapid victory through offensive maneuver was unsound, I mean that it predictably lost to the actual strategy employed by the Russians, which was based on attrition logic at the strategic level and total economic mobilization as rapidly as possible. I do not make up what that can accomplish, I look at the campaign and see a huge replacement rate repairing the effects of even catastrophic operations.

I take vastly more seriously the actual German conduct of the war than any pronouncements of modern maneuverists. Despite seeing the former as deeply flawed, I think they have gobs more to teach me than the academic revisionism of the latter. If only those poor Germans had Leonard Wood in charge instead of those pikers, Guderian Rommel and Manstein - just makes me laugh.

The Russians beat the pants off of the real guys, not the academic wannabes. They knew what they were doing. They beat them because their overall strategy was superior. The Germans lost largely because their strategy had a flaw - it was a gamble rather than a risk. They were not prepared for a long war when a long war was incredibly likely against a state as powerful as Russia.

Maneuver as an operational multiplier the Russians accepted and used to considerable effect from late in 1942 on. But they never confused that operational benefit with grand strategy. They never lost sight of the objective of destroying the enemy army in the field. They never lost sight of the paramount importance of numbers, and of production and logistics to achieve those numbers.

And they were right in all of these things. The Germans are much sounder teachers of what maneuverism can actually accomplish than the modern wannabes, but they themselves needed to go to school. To the Russians.

On the essential point of the role of numbers, Marshall and the US army of WW II also understood this point. US grand strategy in WW II was to mobilize and equip an enourmous land army and place it on the continent opposite the Germans, on a direct route through France, defeat them in battle and conquer Germany. Superior resources were the primary means expected to accomplish this.

This all used to be a relatively well understood bedrock of the military art, and when focused on logistics and the military "capital" side of attrition logic, was even characteristic of the "American way of war" (in some respects since Washington, certainly since Grant).

Which was highly successful not against 4th rates like Iraq and 5th rates like Panama, but against the strongest states in the world. There is nothing wrong with trying to win cheaply against the incredibly weak, because if it doesn't work it is easy to shift strategies and there is no serious consequence. That is a risk but not a gamble. The same goes for operational or tactical use as a force multiplier.

But employed as grand strategy against great powers, maneuverism is *unsound*. It was unsound for the Germans against Russia and it'd be unsound for us today, e.g. against Russia or China.

[Kammak]

"I look at what they prepared to do when Moscow was approached, and can see it did not lead to command shock"

If you don't call Beria sueing for peace and offering large chunks of land to stop the war "Command Shock" then you are in worse denial than already evidenced. That was during Typhoon when the Germans were spent but still threatening Moscow. Had Guderian continued onto Moscow BEFORE the muddy season and before the Asian forces were pulled out and sent west, the situation would have been even worse for the Soviets.

Deny it all you want, but Moscow was a critical vulnerability for the Soviets and should have superseded the destruction of forces that could be stalled and reduced later. "Bystanders" (per your term) can either take your opinion, or that of contemporary senior Soviet leaders, contemporary German field commanders (Guderian, Bock, et al), and a good many modern historians and strategists. Hmmm, which one holds more value...?

""most of the great setbacks occurred when operating under direct orders from Hitler"

False. The failure of Typhoon was a great setback, and Hitler had not yet taken charge. In fact, the army commanders were mostly busy resigning to avoid responsibility"

You are again, wrong. Hitler had direct influence on every campaign regardless of later titles or laws increasing his despotic powers. He rejected Moscow was a primary objective, then compounded his mistake by not at least designating his choice as THE MAIN EFFORT, but instead frittering away time and resources with three thrusts. It was his intervention that drove Guderian south instead of continuing to Moscow. It was his intervention that halted the forces in front of Dunkirk. His influence was omnipresent throughout the war. And invariably his opinions were counter to the manuever-minded commanders. He thus set up a situation where he was armed and equipped for a quick war of manuever, had manuever-minded commanders in many of his higher commands, but continually intervened and countermanded manuever-oriented plans. That there were still many older generals skeptical of manuever loitering around Berlin at the time only helped him to justify his opinions to himself.

Thus my line "any plan can fail with poor execution". Germany had great plans for the war, and prepared and advertised for one type of war, but the illogical, and later irrational, input of Hitler hounded its execution throughout.

"Is 18 months of strategic initiative supposed to be a *short* period of time? Is losing it in 18 months "rapid" loss of it? "

Do you practice being obtuse, or does it come naturally? (I assume since you called me an idiot that personal degradation is hunky-dory with you.)

The German initiative was lost once they stopped directing the action and started responding to it - halting the advance on Moscow, investing Leningrad instead of taking it, and re-directing forces to counter a "failed" Soviet thrust is "losing the initiative". By the time the battle of Kiev ended, the Germans were exhausted. The culminating point of the 41 campaign had been reached...the fall brought the muddy season, fresh forces from siberia, and few replacements for the Germans. The initiative was lost. Again, an obvious fact for anyone that has actually studied the war.

"Objectives are not locations on maps."

They sure can be. If a point on the map has some inherent value to the enemy, you can bet it will be an objective. If that position can unhinge forces, cut off his lines of communication, represents a geographic choke point, has political value, etc...you can bet it can be an objective. Despite your opinions, objectives are unique to the enemy of the day...and not always just the bad guys with guns.

"Meanwhile, maneuverism *does* hope to stun the enemy into submission, to panic his command, to bring about a *psychological* collapse following disarticulation of C3I etc"

Nope. Maneuverism seeks to achieve victory in the most economical way. IF you are dealing with an enemy that is command-driven, mechanized, and fairly hi-tech, then his C3I may be a vulnerability (a gap). If you can disrupt his C3I you can then destroy his forces with greater ease, or he may collapse all together. What you keep falling back on as a weakness of manuever warfare is actually "information warfare" / fourth gen warfare. That is not synonymous with Maneuver Warfare. Manuever Warfare can be applied without regard for the technical sophistication of the enemy - information warfare presupposes a "wired" foe with the inherent vulnerabilities of electronic C3I. You will have a hard time trying to force your own distorted opinion of what manuever war is, when you have to argue against printed doctrinal manuals from one of the world's foremost manuever warfare proponents and a respected fighting force, that continually contradict you.

Regarding your "Watergate lost Vietnam" spiel, I think the weakness of that argument is so obvious it doesn't merit a response. And by the way, Ho was still around when Khe Sanh occurred - thus my line "How did losing several divisions make Ho lose the war?" line. Also, he didn't lose, that was sarcasm. I noted a few places where your remarks displayed an inability to recognize that form of humor.

""Did the US get better strategic value from Third Army's drive through France"

Straw man. The breakout was only possible *after* attrition destroyed the German force in Normandy."

You again miss the entire point. The question in the original post was whether greater strategic value was gained by the 3rd Army's drive through france, or should they have instead spent that time reducing the surrounded Germans in the atlantic port towns. Had nothing to do with breaking out of the peninsula.

"I wonder if the bystanders can understand the sheer silliness of it all. They've got an operation that should be a poster child for the usefulness of offensive maneuver by armor, and they disown it and pretend it was a giant mistake. And why? Because it didn't promise to win the war practically without fighting, but actually passed through the intermediate step "destroy the enemy army". They must paint the Germans of WW II - the actual masters at implimenting offensive maneuver, with greater success and to a greater extent than anyone else before or since - as pikers who do not understand their own, gloriously purified doctrine. It is just plain silly, and should be laughed off the stage"

I think the one that should be laughed off the stage is the "piker" (whatever that is) that can't understand my posts and puts words in my mouth (or keyboard)!

RE: "they disown it and pretend it was a giant mistake. And why?"

Well, I'm not disowning it because I'm not German, didn't fight there, and never owned it in the first place. I believe it was a giant mistake for the same reason Guderian believed it was a giant mistake, as did Halder, Bock, and a few other manuever-oriented commanders - because it stalled the drive on Moscow. And no one here is painting the Germans as "pikers" - I have continually stated that the greatest accomplishments were carried out under the personal direction of the division and corps commanders. The only true, constant, "piker" was Hitler. Just look at his orders through the war, compared to the original op orders or the intent of the field commanders, and you'll see the light.

"Swamping the enemy with numbers is the actual strategy that won WW II."

And immmediately dropped by every major power after the war ended, because its a piss-poor strategy. Its a strategy by exclusion...meaning you can't come up with anything else, so you fall back on attrition. (There are lots of diseases that fall in the same category - there is no empirical test for them, rather you declare it to be active when no other known disease can be found.)

When talking about any conflict involving a nuclear power, industrial warfare is completely irrelevant. Any nuclear power that suffers total destruction (or the threat of total destruction) of its conventional forces will go nuclear to stem off defeat.

Its a dead theory because its a bad theory, and because its no longer applicable to any conflict involving a major power. Ironically, industrial warfare demagogues have firepower to blame for their demise, in the form of nuclear devices!

Post WWII warfare was, and will continue to be, fought with existing forces without regard for any industrial capacity of the belligerents. Nations must enter a conflict with a strategy that can win with the forces in uniform. Within that subset, Maneuver Warfare is a viable and attractive strategy. That is to say, manuever warfare for real, as presented in previous posts from USMC doctrinal publications, and not maneuver warfare straw man garbage.

Attrition as the sole strategy for victory can win, but at loss rates, even for the victor, that can no longer be tolerated by any population. To espouse attrition as the primary strategy for a western nation is about the same as declaring total neutrality - you will never get an administration (or a population) to support a war waged under attritionists themes.

Maneuver Warfare, like any theory, has bonehead supporters as well as the occasional genius. Supporters have differing views on the application of manuever theory. You can support maneuver theory but vehemently disagree about what a foes' center of gravity is, or what its critical vulnerability is. But at least those questions are being asked, and lives are being saved, by intelligently analysing the situation and determining its unique values to find the most efficient path to victory. Any bozo claiming the "official" manueverist answer is "x" has no clue what he is talking about. There is no official answer because maneuver theory treats war as a social construct, not a physical one governed by mathematical laws. As I stated before, the only constant in maneuver theory is total orientation on the current enemy.

It is a theory that matches the political, economic, and ideological realities of the times. Short of alien invaders showing up one day threatening humanity with extermination or slavery, I don't think attrition will be anyone's preferred strategy. (Other than a few very unhappy war game enthusiasts.)

Regards,

Kevin