Path: utzoo!utgpu!jarvis.csri.toronto.edu!mailrus!tut.cis.ohio-state.edu!ucbvax!amdcad!military From: mimsy!oddjob.uchicago.edu!uokmax!jeffm%uokmax@uunet.UU.NET (Jeff Medcalf) Newsgroups: sci.military Subject: Re: Learning in War Message-ID: <27493@amdcad.AMD.COM> Date: 26 Sep 89 08:20:18 GMT References: <27388@amdcad.AMD.COM> <27442@amdcad.AMD.COM> Sender: cdr@amdcad.AMD.COM Organization: No, it isn't really. Lines: 80 Approved: military@amdcad.amd.com From: Jeff Medcalf>From: Adrian Hurt >> [The French defeat in WWII being caused by their preparation for a 1918 war.] >That's an example of what I mean. The Germans formulated a whole new theory >of war (blitzkrieg). The French (and everyone else, for that matter) couldn't >make up defence plans against blitzkrieg until someone had shown them what it >was. Well, that is not really true. For one thing, the theory of blitzkrieg is based on the ideas of Colonel J F C Fuller and others. Fuller's Plan 1919 was the first hint of blitzkrieg's true development. The French and British both chose to ignore these ideas (Fuller and other British officers had developed the theories quite well by 1925 or 1926). The Germans, however, found willing converts in Guderian and his students (including Rommel). Hitler was an early proponent of blitzkrieg. After seeing a demonstration of tanks in 1934 (?), Hitler said something to the effect of "I must have those." He supported Guderian against the established General Staff, first in the formation of a Panzerkorps, and later in the establishment of the theory of rapid, combined arms warfare (which was called blitzkrieg). Had the French been equally astute, they could have defended against the blitz fairly well. The French, however, had many problems: 1) Tactics: The French, who had more and better tanks than the Germans, put them in the field in penny packets, supporting the infantry. The idea of deploying tanks in concentration was not taken up by them. 2) Timidity: The French launched an offensive against the Germans while the Germans were busy in Poland. The offensive swept on against almost no opposition, advancing less than 10 (or was that 25) kilometers in over two weeks. 3) Morale: The French had no morale to speak of. 4) Strategy: The French ignored both blitzkrieg and the Benelux nations. Had they deployed north of the Maginot Line, or redeployed after the initial German invasion of the Low Countries, the war would have been much different. >A counter-example is the various wars between Israel and Arab states. Israel >had learnt one lesson from blitzkrieg - clobber the other guy's air force on >the ground, and you can walk (or fly) all over him. Which is why the Six Day >War only took six days. The Arabs learnt too, and next time they had lots of >SAM's waiting for the Israelis to try it again. How is this a counter-example? By your own previous words, the defender has to be beaten to develop a counter-strategy. The Arabs had been beaten, and then had later developed a counter-strategy. >There's a bit of a difference here, in that each side has its practise >exercises in which it can try out its latest ideas, and the other side watches >and can make up new ideas of its own. All nations had practice exercises then, as well as now. There is no difference except in the amount of observability (due to sattellites and SR-71s). > Adrian Hurt | JANET: adrian@uk.ac.hw.cs It is well to remember that wars often go to the side who innovates the most in the inter-war period. This is not always the attacker. If the defender is, for example, active in developing new methods of stopping his opponents' attacks, and his opponent attacks in the same old way, the attacker will often lose. This was true in the First World War. The attacker (Germany) could not overcome the new defense (machine guns). Neither could the British and French. When an effective new offense WAS developed (tanks by the British), the battle that followed (at Cambrai), went the way of the attacker for the first time (by the way, I think that this was also the first major battle that used walking artil- lery barrages instead of three days of preparatory shelling). [EVERYONE - Please don't use lines of ---'s in your signatures when mailing to sci.military - I have to strip them before building the digest. --CDR] -- jeffm@uokmax.UUCP | Arkansas state motto: At Least We're Not Oklahoma. | Jeff Medcalf