Greatest Commander of all time?

[Andreas]

Your case for Hannibal was quite convincing.

All the best

Andreas

[Cuirassier]

The German army did have plans somewhat to win by attritional warfare against the Soviet Union by maneuverist means, I think. I could be wrong, as my knowledge is no where near that of some people who contribute to this forum, but, I believe that the Germans tried to destroy the Russian army with minimum loses by utilizing Kesselschlaten, or Cauldron battles.

[Grisha]

Originally posted by Cuirassier:

The German army did have plans somewhat to win by attritional warfare against the Soviet Union by maneuverist means, I think. I could be wrong, as my knowledge is no where near that of some people who contribute to this forum, but, I believe that the Germans tried to destroy the Russian army with minimum loses by utilizing Kesselschlaten, or Cauldron battles.

The Germans saw combined arms and mechanization as the means of overcoming a modern tactical defense. They also recognized the possibility for armor to effect the 'cannae' like maneuver of encirclement to rob the enemy force of support and security. The problem was these developments were seen from a mainly tactical perspective, limited to battle and its immediate post-stage.

Thus, the Germans of WWII were quite adept at slicing through enemy defensive lines, then encircling them. However, there was no rhyme or reason to these encirclements, which resulted in severe overextension of the German infantry, excessive delays in overall operations, and the subsequent escape of many encircled troops. Also, German operations were rudimentary in their encirclements, generally being no more than two pronged, and deep to 'bag' as many enemy as possible.

Contrast this to latter war Soviet operations which employed numerous smaller encirclements along multiple axes. The many smaller encirclements were more efficient, more secure, and less time-consuming than one huge one as was German practice.

[JasonC]

Right, sure. That is why it took 3 years to retake what the Germans took in six months, and Russian losses ran 4-5 times German even when they were winning. People just flat make these things up.

The Germans did believe in annihilation battle, but they did not adapt their whole strategy to attrition thinking. They aimed at a rapid single shot victory over a standing force, not at destroying all Russian military capacity. They sought to achieve it using a standing force of their own, not a continual stream created by ongoing full mobilization. Had they done so, the Russians (on their own) would have been toast.

[Grisha]

Originally posted by JasonC:

Right, sure. That is why it took 3 years to retake what the Germans took in six months, and Russian losses ran 4-5 times German even when they were winning. People just flat make these things up.

In summer 1941, the Red Army was at an extremely vulnerable point. Their force structure was in transition, their tactical and operational theories were a confused mess due to the purges, and their leadership was gutted from those same purges. It is absolutely no surprise (now) that as well trained and tactically modern a military force as the Wehrmacht would slice through that confused mass of a Red Army. An invading army could not wish for a more favorable situation. The Soviets spent the entire war fighting a force that was better tactically trained with better overall equipment. What the Germans did not have was as many men or as much equipment as the Soviets were willing to mobilize or produce.

What I don't get is why brilliant tactics is so important to so many. Sure, it can be a great method to winning a battle, but it won't win you a war necessarily. Brilliant tactics is less important than a sound understanding of maneuver warfare, long known in Russia under the study of operational art. The Soviets trained their troops as best they could given the conditions. They also made the best use of their resources and technology to meeting their understanding of war. Besides, who needs Aufragstaktik when you can manipulate German intelligence enough to create overwhelming numerical superiority and extract extensive knowledge of the German's defensive forward edge. By 1944, this was routinely done in Soviet operations.

The Germans did believe in annihilation battle, but they did not adapt their whole strategy to attrition thinking. They aimed at a rapid single shot victory over a standing force, not at destroying all Russian military capacity. They sought to achieve it using a standing force of their own, not a continual stream created by ongoing full mobilization. Had they done so, the Russians (on their own) would have been toast.

I agree. When I speak of attrition warfare, I'm not talking about total war or limited war. Of course, attrition at the strategic level is a very real concern in war, and has been for thousands of years. From the perspective of military operations, though, attrition and maneuver have come to define the necessary transcendence of tactics to winning post-nineteenth century wars.

[Count D'Ten]

Originally posted by Philippe:

What I find more surprising is that no one seems willing to discuss which ones you would want to have over for dinner, and why.

Belisarius for one. I see him being very interesting and attentive, without any need to dominant the conversation (most of the Great Commanders probably couldn't stop talking about themselves). Heck, it's hard enough guessing which wargamers would make decent dinner guests.

[Andreas]

I know at least 10-15 forum members who would certainly make good diner guests.

Less certain on the great generals.

All the best

Andreas

[chiavarm]

I think the question would be; Who would YOU like to serve under?

Who would give you the best chance at Victory and survival!

[chiavarm]

Originally posted by JasonC:

Germany had plenty of depth of resources and knew how to use them. In WW I, they beat Russia, France, and would have finished England too (in 1918) had not the Americans arrived to bolster them.

I disagree the ability to supply armies over long distances was responsible for the resulting trench warfare. The best Germany could hope for was to hold their present gains. Bleed them white I think became the strategy of the Germans. Fortunately they bleed white.

[Count D'Ten]

Originally posted by Andreas:

I know at least 10-15 forum members who would certainly make good diner guests.

Less certain on the great generals.

All the best

Andreas

Ah, but would there be anyone there besides other wargamers? Such as with engineers (or artists for that matter), many are fine within their science, but for a dinner party, with a mix of fields and social skills, dogmatists and dominators have to be considered carefully. The quality of the whole for all of the guests (and yourself) is key. A scrimmage "yes," a war "no" -- you want social art!

[C'Rogers]

Interesting topic.

I know very little about European generals pre-WWI (Alexander, Hannibal, Napolean) so my pick comes off the base that I can't really consider them (well aside from the very informative information in this thread).

Oda Nobunaga.

[Grisha]

Originally posted by chiavarm:

I disagree the ability to supply armies over long distances was responsible for the resulting trench warfare. The best Germany could hope for was to hold their present gains. Bleed them white I think became the strategy of the Germans. Fortunately they bleed white.

Actually, this was more a response to the destructiveness of modern weaponry. Prior to WWI there had never been such a preponderance of rifled artillery and machineguns. The funny thing is western military theorists had studied all these developments, making sound conclusions and developing valid military theories (for the most part). The problem was disseminating this knowledge to the military field officers and noncoms. Apparently this failed for a number of reasons. One big stumbling block was the traditional 'romanticism' of war.

[chiavarm]

So you (grisha) are trying to say: the halt of Germany's initial advance was not due to supplying a large army (who was extending its supply lines) while the French were falling back on their supply lines. The rail was the primary mover of supplies. To move supplies Germany would have to build new rail or use the existing French system. The German and French rails were different gauges. Not to mention the Belgium rail system. Quality roads were not in existence so transport by truck, which was used in WWII, was not reliable.

[Grisha]

Rail was a big factor in stopping Germany's advance, or anyone's advance in WWI. It was simply too easy to quickly shift fresh reserves to a stricken sector, limiting any enemy exploitation to tactical depths. Supply and insufficient mechanization did, indeed, limit rates of advance.

Concentrated artillery fire and machinegun fire halted the advance of, essentially, soft targets. There were methods for getting around this, but advances were still limited to a tactical nature without mechanization.

To clarify, supply and lack of mechanization limited operational gains to the tactical. Rifled artillery and machineguns made any sort of advance a very difficult and costly problem. It didn't have to be as costly as it was in WWI--that was due to lack of dissemination of effective theories and regulations then in existence. But even these aids would have been for tactical gains for the most part. I should qualify all this by saying it applies to the Western front alone where densities were very high. The Eastern front is another story with different lessons.

[Cuirassier]

From what I have read, the German WW1 offensive stopped dead in its tracks because Moltke seriously undermined the Schlieffen plan and allowed von Kluck's army group to turn directly on Paris instead of wheeling around it. Do this, the army group exposed its flank and was counter attacked at the battle of Marne, ending any chance of movement on the western front. Not positive, just what I have read.

[Cuirassier]

Oops typo. Do=Doing

[Grisha]

Actually, Cuirassier, my point was not with respect to any one operation or phase of the Great War, but the limitations inherent in the prosecution of that war by the various sides. Neither the Allies or the Germans were ever able to effect an operational breakthrough in WWI. Without that ability the war mired into an economic struggle for the most part.

[chiavarm]

Originally posted by Cuirassier:

From what I have read, the German WW1 offensive stopped dead in its tracks because Moltke seriously undermined the Schlieffen plan and allowed von Kluck's army group to turn directly on Paris instead of wheeling around it. Do this, the army group exposed its flank and was counter attacked at the battle of Marne, ending any chance of movement on the western front. Not positive, just what I have read.

Yes this is true, but the point I was making is that the inability to transport supplies to these large armies over the distances they traveled led to trench warfare thus Germany could not have finished off the French and English in 1918.(as stated by Jason C)

For all I know this lack of supply might have been one of the reasons Moltke did not wheel around Paris.

Russia was soundly beaten and eventually their soldiers just up and left the trenches. At this point Germany could have moved troops west but due to the nature of trench warfare, would have made little impact.

[JasonC]

Wrong, they did move them and they had a heck of an impact.

Russia was not the only country to see their army come apart in the field due to losses. That happened at various times to Italy, Rumania, most of the Turkish army, the Austrians several times, and the French nearly so (the mutinies - refused all offensive action, sit down "strikes", etc). The Brits barely held after the 1918 offensives shattered their lines just as thoroughly, with US reinforcements and the assurance their help was coming vital to their holding out. And eventually, the Germans came apart in the field as well ("black day" etc).

It is not true that there were no breakthroughs. The Brits and French sought miraculous war ending big pushes breakthroughs continually and never found one, but there were breakthroughs on an operational scale, where whole armies disintegrated and gaps hundreds of miles wide appeared in the lines. That happened in 1914 on both fronts, in 1915 in the east to the Russians, in 1916 to the Austrians in the Brusilov offensive, to Italy at Caporetto, and to the Brits in 1918. In the east, Serbia and Romania were knocked out of the war by such breakthroughs, and much the same happened to the Turks in Palestine in 1918.

Those occasions did not end the war. Neither did the fall of France, or Barbarossa, or Bagration, etc. All of them killed armies. So did Tannenberg, Verdun, the Somme, etc. The sides were relatively evenly matched, and the war was decided not be taking of ground but by destruction of enemy forces.

Writers and officers wedded to the idea of winning by taking ground, without having to defeat the enemy field armies in detail, call that "indecisive", when all they mean is the lines didn't move very far on a map as whole armies were destroyed. For all the world as though they are only able to conceive of warfare in spatial terms, as the gaining of territory until the enemy doesn't have any room left.

The reality is serious militaries of leading great powers don't run out of room until they run out of forces, and killing their forces is the way they are defeated. That was just as true in WW I.

[chiavarm]

"German forces released from the Eastern Front launched a major offensive on the Western Front in the spring of 1918. Despite some minor initial successes, by July the Germans had failed to break the Allied lines and, in effect, this meant that the war was reaching its endgame."

BBC Summary of World War One

[chiavarm]

To eliminate the opposition is the primary objective of any conflict. If you do not take or destroy the opposition's resources then there will always be opposition Therefore you must occupy the source of the opposition – land. This is where the troops, arms and supplies originate.

In theory, if one were contain the armed force and occupy all of the land of the enemy except that footprint of its armed force, the armed force would eventually capitulate. Thus you have attained victory.

Should you eliminate the army and not the resources it would be just a matter of time before it produces another armed force i.e. Vietnam.

[Claw]

Phillip Of Macedon.

Remember him? He built the empire that Alexander inherited. After uniting the tribes of Macedonia, he took on City States like Catharge, Athens, Sparta - and, after a number of years, conquered them all. He was wise enough to know that there were other ways to defeat an enemy than through military force.

[Wisbech_lad]

For an attritionist JasonC you are ignoring the economics & home front of WW1. By Winter 1917 there was starvation in Germany (the UK blockade would have ended the war much sooner if it wasn't for the discovery of artificial nitrates, but that only made economic sense for munitions, not fertilizers)

The Austrians, to all intents and purposes, had given up. Strikes were breaking out in Germany.

March 1918 was a desperate gamble by the German High Command - that they would (IMHO) have had to have done whether or not US was in the war or not by that stage - basically to knock out France before the "home front" collapsed. By Black Friday, German morale was shot, they couldn't even hold the Hindenburg line. The Fleet was mutinous - and had suffered no significant losses

It wasn't the destruction of the German forces that mattered, it was the destruction of the German economy that led to throwing away the forces in a last gamble (that also led to the German Army losing very large numbers of officers, given as a "decisive" reason to the Reichstag by the army, as why they should sue for peace)

Obviously this is an extreme, strawman view (of course war is not simply a calculus of economics)

But it is impressive how quickly the German revolution of 1918 happened, even before the war ended, and how little resistance there was to it. The Germans in 1918 hadn't run out of forces, or room, they had run out of food and reasons to fight

The Americans were decisive in the summer counteroffensive, but the final German spring offensive was stopped by British & French reserves in April, not US.

Note that in 1918 the Fremch army had bounced back - yes, they held less of the line, but they were instrumental in defeating the German offensive

[Philippe]

Originally posted by Claw:

Phillip Of Macedon.

Remember him? He built the empire that Alexander inherited. After uniting the tribes of Macedonia, he took on City States like Catharge, Athens, Sparta - and, after a number of years, conquered them all. He was wise enough to know that there were other ways to defeat an enemy than through military force.

Carthage? Sparta?

[Cuirassier]

Occupation of an enemies land does not bring automatic victory. Sure, a conventional army with no resources and supplies may capitulate, but guerilla warfare is still possible, even if a territory has been overrun. Examples are the Fabian strategy, Spain during Napoleon's reign, Vietnam and Mao in China. I do think that for a strategy to have success, a commander must destroy the opposition, not simply grab as much territory as possible. That is why Napoleon was so successful during his various campaigns, as his number one objective was to destroy the opposing army. Just my thoughts.