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From: mimsy!oddjob.uchicago.edu!uokmax!jeffm%uokmax@uunet.UU.NET (Jeff Medcalf)
Newsgroups: sci.military
Subject: Re: Learning in War
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Date: 26 Sep 89 08:20:18 GMT
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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