Roman Army at Cannae was a hastily organized force, with 2 generals that alternated, who was in charge every day. Its easy to be a victorious genius, when your enemy is commanded by an idiot.
- 4
- 2
Blitzkrieg : the best tactic ?
- Thread starter Jeremy971
- Start date
-
We have updated our Community Code of Conduct. Please read through the new rules for the forum that are an integral part of Paradox Interactive’s User Agreement.
- Status
The best tactic is to achieve as many of your goals as possible without starting a war while at the same time building a mechanism to further your goals by other means when that tactic can no longer achieve your goals.
- 1
The high level of mechanisation is what makes logistics even more important and a drain; every single truck, APC, tank, requires a strong supply of POL and spare parts on top of ordinary goods. I just don't see that working where infrastructure, particularly rail, breaks down or is scarce, such as most of the Soviet Union.
Also, without air superiority or supremacy, pushing logistics around becomes much more dangerous and harder.
Well, while individual divisions might exploit combined arms, it was only the Soviets in this time period who stressed it on the tactical, operational and strategic levels.
Yeah that's really not what the definition of combined arms is. Combined arms have been used ever since ancient times. What you're thinking of as sort of a modern combined arms has been used since WWI by the British, and both the US and UK used it on all levels throughout the war.
More difficult =/= impossible or prohibitive.
Mechanization means logistics move more smoothly. Instead of horses, carts, and bicycles supplies are moved by truck and tracked vehicles exclusively. The soldiers themselves fight from tracked vehicles and/or on foot.
Which is why, in the case of the US, the equipment is very reliable and the logistic aspects are less of a hassle to distribute than lets say, the USSR or the Germans
Hannibal won Trebia and Lake Trasiemime due to the Romans being arrogant and discounting ambushes and envelopment tactics using Cavalry, i.e. the romans had decided in their mind that the forces of Hannibal would fight a "ROMAN STYLE WAR". Gross Mistake.
At Cannae, again the weight of the previous two defeats hung heavy, morale was on Hannibal's side and confused command on the Roman Side.
So there goes your argument on Hannibal.
Waterloo- for all the French Cavalry charges, Napoleon was bound to lose, an army bound to lose does a bad job, it was similar to the "Battle of the Bulge" fought by the Germans not the "Battle of France fought by the Germans" which is similar to Austerlitz.
Austerlitz and Napoleon's early i.e. pre 1807 victories all came in the classic manner of Nazi Germany's victories pre-1941 and Japanese victories in 1941 and early 1942, the Attacker had the initiative, gambled and threw his forces, the defender was confused, panicked and retreated (MIND OVER MATTER, the attacker had the quiet confidence of a man who is sure of himself and the defender had the jittery nervousness of a man who has lost and is thinking of fighting a battle "not to lose" rather than - "to win").
With Hindsight, Napoleon's victories would never have happened nor have the early Nazi German victories.
Tannenberg, Austerlitz and Cannae all would have been huge defeats ending in the death of Hannibal, exile of Napoleon and destruction of the German Reich if 20:20 hindsight is present.
Each and every case, there is a "DIVIDED COMMAND with infighting vs UNITED COMMAND with confidence", internal lines and flanks are used vs a straight unimaginative charge upwards and so on.
Your entire hypothesis actually vindicated my stand rather than yours. Try better.
Hannibal and Rommel were pretty similar when you think about it. Tactical genius facing a moronic enemy. Ultimately failing due to lack of logistical understanding. Overextending supply lines which contribute to strategic failure certainly should lower their review score as all-time great leaders.
Rommel for instance was able to shine with the same tactic over and over again: tank skirmishes, seemingly hasty retreats to provoke a full-force British armoured counter-attack into well-prepared 88mm positions. Time and again the Brits fell for it until a moderately competent leader took over. Monty wasn't a genius by any stretch of the term, but he was solid and solid is all you need when you have overwhelming odds (kinda like General Mead in the Civil War).
Ultimately all the tactical genius and favourable opponents are in vain when you have zero comprehension of logistics. I bet Hannibal didn't even realize that 1/3 of his army would die via attrition when crossing the Alps. He was the true moron in the Second Punic War. How the hell can you even consider this plan: 1. cross the Alps with elefants and if that somehow works out: 2. march on towards Rome with the remaining battered troops while 3. winning all battles on the way towards ever shorter supply lines for the Romans and ever increasing supply lines for you. 4. All the time counting on the Romans NOT invading Carthago.
That entire campaign was moronic and relied on way too many fortunate outcomes of dice rolls. It's a shame really that people like Hannibal, Alexander and Rommel are held in such high regard while reasonable leaders like Kesselring are sidenodes.
- 3
- 1
Not the case as your arguments are poorly explained and contradict the original point i was opposing.
Firstly at Cannae the Romans were superior in arms and equipment, try to remember my point was that superior technology doesn't always beat tactics. Furthermore the Romans, although they lost two battles, were not demoralized as the new army was eager to recover their homeland. Just because there were two commanders there was one tactic on the day of Cannae and it clearly was not a very good one.
You criticize my historical analysis and then say "Napoleon was bound to lose, an army bound to lose does a bad job" why was he bound to lose, this is a poor explanation. If his strategy was better he would have been better off during the battle and the coalition forces were tactical because they got Napoleon to split his force.
On Austerlitz I remind you that although Napoleon was the aggressor into the Austrian lands it was the Russians who advanced on Napoleon.
Also Austerlitz is nothing like the bltiz as Napoleon feigned retreat as opposed to continued pressure. The statement that Austerlitz saw Napoleon as the attacker with the initiative is true but it was part of Napoleon's tactics in order to lure the enemy, most of your arguments support my overall point that tactics can be much greater then more soldiers or more equipment. Furthermore i never talked about having hindsight as deception is a key part of tactics so if you calculate battles with hindsight you are almost forcibly ignoring tactics, which is very strange.
Your rebuttal shows that you firstly did not understand my first points and your reactions almost purposefully ignore tactics and all its incarnations as to why these battles were successful. My overall arguement was that technology and numbers can be bested by Tactics but you failed to understand that. Try better.
- 1
- 1
Tactics are all subjective and this was my main point. There is no "UBER TACTIC".
Learn to read better, learn to read through a post and then learn to understand. You really need to try better than posting the same thing in a roundabout manner.
- 2
Take it down a notch and behave, or I will tactically nuke the thread and any post I deem a pain in the logistics train.
There was far, far more to Napoleon's victories than that. Grand battery tactics were one of them (used to great effect at Austerlitz, Friedland, Wagram, Borodino, and Lutzen). Give him a little more credit
While Vegetius does teach that most battles are won or lost before they are fought, there is always an element of chance in every battle. That's where tactics come in. The role of strategy is to minimize the impact that tactics have, ie. even if you fight a Napoleon, you win.
You also seem to have Waterloo wrong as well, it was Marshal Ney's mistaking of British casualty evacuation for a retreat that led to the disastrous cavalry charge.
- 2
- 1
Oh yeah, of course. They used the Maginot line !
I think the french army doctrine was the worst doctrine against the blitzkrieg. It's like a sheep against a wolf.
Probably why Germany won so easily against France but why they lost against the combined arms doctrine of Soviet Union.
I think the french army doctrine was the worst doctrine against the blitzkrieg. It's like a sheep against a wolf.
Probably why Germany won so easily against France but why they lost against the combined arms doctrine of Soviet Union.
Last edited:
The French plan of 1940 was to advance into Belgium(The Dyle plan) link up with Dutch army and meet the Germans.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Battle_of_France#Allied_strategy
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Battle_of_France#Allied_strategy
There was far, far more to Napoleon's victories than that. Grand battery tactics were one of them (used to great effect at Austerlitz, Friedland, Wagram, Borodino, and Lutzen). Give him a little more credit
While Vegetius does teach that most battles are won or lost before they are fought, there is always an element of chance in every battle. That's where tactics come in. The role of strategy is to minimize the impact that tactics have, ie. even if you fight a Napoleon, you win.
.
I am not taking away credit, i am simply stating this-
Warfare works in this way, Person 1 comes up with some new tactics (maybe Grand Battery, maybe Blitzkrieg, maybe Shock and Awe), if Person 2 (the defender) really believes in his own troops, his advantage of defense, the advantage of terrain and sticks to the plan made, rehearsed etc and doesn't lose his nerve, the "New Tactic" dissolves and the attacker loses.
Many of these lop-sided wins in History are due to the fact that the enemy commander has lost his nerve, either- "before the battle" or "immediately after the battle starts".
BTW, the Russians actually had more cannon/guns per capita than even the Grand Armee throughout the Invasion of Russia and even in the earlier battles from 1805 onwards, there were two major problems- lack of shells/ammo for the guns and horrible co-ordination with infantry. Also pre-1809, the Russian ammo was of inferior quality which made the Russian army an army of "Cavalry + Bayonets"- no wonder, even Suvorov in his speeches emphasized bayonets not due to any superiority of bayonets but due to poor quality of "ammunition for infantry weapons".
Had the "ALLIES" thought a proper strategy and not had "confusion within their ranks", they would have won over Napoleon long long before Austerlitz. This is agreed by you yourself in your last line, this is the same point i have been trying to repeatedly make that even if you have - Napoleon/Hannibal/Alexander/Frederick the Great leading your attackers, if the enemy has the cunning and courage of Quintus Fabius Maximus Verrucosus Cunctator, (with the greater share of resources of-course); no amount of tactics is going to win the war for the attacker.
Time and again military leaders like - Fabius, Kutuzov, Zhukov, Vo Nyugen Giap, etc won in the end because they fought war to their strengths and not to the enemy's strength.
There is an old saying in my place, which can literally translate into- "Just because the peacock dances, the Elephant shouldn't attempt to dance" , the meaning of it is clear that- if you have certain inherent strengths- strategic depth, greater IC, more men, etc. All the world's tactics will melt against a mountain of artillery shells. (actual Soviet Doctrine in late war).
As for Ney and all his cavalry charges, they were useless in the long run, the Russians had mobilised an army of nearly 0.5 million and it was rapidly moving through German states and into France, even if Waterloo was a loss, the Prussians alone had numerical equality with the French and by now the quality of Prussian tactics had improved and the French had declined, then the Austrians had nearly 225000 on the Southern Borders of France. In all, Waterloo is important only due to it becoming portrayed as an English victory uber alles.
Neys failed cavalry charge, the Prussians reaching the battlefield and the French guard not being able to break the British infantry are in my view the three main reasons why Napoleon lost at Waterloo.
Edit - If memory serves, the British army had a substantial German percentage, so Waterloo could be called a German victory....
Edit - If memory serves, the British army had a substantial German percentage, so Waterloo could be called a German victory....
- 1
The British army had substantial troops from the KGL- King's German legion, also from Hanover and Hesse, further they had divisions from Flemish and Dutch people, lots of Irish and an entire Prussian Corps fought for Wellington, in addition an entire army under Blucher force marched and reached the battlefield by 4 pm or so and this is the army that chased Napoleon's army away. The "English component" in Waterloo was probably 20% or so, yet it became a famous English victory and Wellington became the man who "swatted napoleon with his baton".Neys failed cavalry charge, the Prussians reaching the battlefield and the French guard not being able to break the British infantry are in my view the three main reasons why Napoleon lost at Waterloo.
Edit - If memory serves, the British army had a substantial German percentage, so Waterloo could be called a German victory....
The forces i was referring to, was - in case Ney had succeeded and Wellington had to retreat, there were innumerable forces available for the allies to win the next battle or the one after that.
- 1
German tactics were just effective in the opening weeks/months of the campaign as they were in France, the difference was the scale of the undertaking and the nature of the Russian resistance. Once the Germans were halted outside Moscow, it became a simple war of attrition, where the Germans were demographically and industrially outmatched.
Russia had far greater geographic space with which to conduct the war. In Operation Barbarossa Germany advanced 1000km across a 2800km front. In purely terms of land area to attack and hold, Barbarossa was larger than every earlier campaign of WW2 simultaneously. Furthermore, Russian industry and demographics gave them significantly superior ability to sustaining casualties and equipment losses than previous foes. Similarly the timescale of the campaign resulted in a much longer high intensity period of fighting with little rearm/refit time than the Wehrmacht had previously encountered.
Trying to sustain an attacking, motorised army the size of the Ostheer in an offensive of that scale without sufficient rail and road networks is a losing battle. The German commanders knew that there was an invisible 500km line, past which logistics became exponentially more difficult. They continued attacking to double the distance they could reliably supply their units, hoping to precipitate a Soviet collapse.
The Russian resistance, for a variety of reasons, was much more determined in its resistance than earlier foes, who would "play the game" and surrender when outmaneuvered and outclassed. Holding the perimeter pockets of immense size forced German mobile units to sit in static, defensive positions to which they were not suited while the infantry, who were often hundreds of kilometres behind had to catch up and subdue the resistance within. While this tactic resulted in great victories like Smolensk and Kiev, where over half a million Soviets were captured, it inflicted heavy losses on the Germans, which they could not replace, particularly in NCOs and junior officers who were so essential to the German Auftragstaktic. By the time AGC was threatening Moscow, the Germans had lost around 37 divisions worth of men, having started with something like 129 divisions. Although most, if not all of these divisions existed on paper, they were all significantly under strength.
Despite the increasingly degraded combat, manning and supply situations of the German forces, they continued to be assigned increasingly ambitious objectives, partly because of a belief in the "invincibility of the Wehrmacht" and partly because there was a belief that although the German situation was bad, the Russians must be worse off and one last push would be all it would take to to finish them off and reach Moscow.
TLDR The German tactics were very effective, but were reliant upon a swift collapse, because the fighting capability of the Ostheer was constantly degraded by the difficult logistic challenge and constant attrition to its irreplaceable experienced/trained veterans. In the words of Robert Kershaw in "War Without Garlands", the Germans victored themselves to death
- Status