Posted on 08/23/2014 4:19:59 AM PDT by Homer_J_Simpson
Saw a great quote here the other day. Something like, Amateurs plan around strategy, professionals plan around logistics.
That’s pretty much true. I found that in World War 2, there was a “logistic limit” to all operations. One army could gain a crushing victory, but the exploitation was never going to go on past the limits of the army’s logistical support. Whenever an army tries to prolong an offensive past that point, it will get punished. We are seeing that in France right now, and will see the punishment in the failure of Market-Garden. We saw that on the Eastern Front in the past month, and the punishment is the successful German counter-stroke around Riga to free Army Group North. The classic example was von Manstein’s “Miracle on the Donetz” in February, 1943, after Stalingrad.
There will be a few more times where we will see the Logistic Limit applied again.
The key to success for the early Blizkrieg was that the strategically decisive objective was within the Logistical Limit of the Wehrmacht. In Poland, it was the Vistula River. In France, it was the English Channel. The Wehrmacht was able to seize these objectives in one “logistic bound.” Once the strategically decisive point was reached, the campaign was decided. In Russia, on the other hand, the strategically decisive point (if there ever was one) was beyond the Germans’ Logistical Limit. That’s one reason why Blitzkrieg failed.
Hope we’re not hijacking this thread. I’m not an expert on this by any means. But when I look up “Lord” in Strong’s Exhaustive Concordance, I get “3068” which is a combination of “3050 & 3069” which are Hebrew words that appears to add up to “Yahweh.”
The best explanation of this I know of is here from Joseph Prince.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=b-KWP-UtGY0
“Amateurs study strategy, professionals study logistics.”
— Napoleon Bonaparte
bump
Completely agree on the importance of logistics. I’m not sure our friend Monty understood the issue, though. As he motored into Holland to try to show Ike he really could handle a war of maneuver, he took Antwerp but failed to take the Scheldt. Antwerp is one of the finest ports in Europe, but shipping has to traverse the Scheldt to get there. Characteristically, Monty gave the job of clearing it to someone else, the Canadians. It was a very dirty, very costly campaign. The port would not open until the end of November.
I remember reading an article as we approached the year 2000. It was filled with facts and opinions about things like, "Most interesting ruler of the millennium" or "Stupidest fashion of the millennium."
Under "Biggest Mistake of the Millenium" was "Invading Russia."
The whole Barbarossa scheme is based on the following underlying conditions.
1. The polity of Europe from the Atlantic to the Vistula/Bug rivers under German control will never be an economic autarky; resources such as food, oil and other industrial raw materials must be imported from somewhere.
2. So long as Britain remains at war with Germany, she will continue the economic blockade, and deprive Germany access to overseas markets and resources.
3. While the Non-Aggression Pact is in effect, the Germans can gain access to the raw materials they need through Stalin's USSR, however;
4. That strategic situation places Hitler's Germany in the long term at the sufferance of Josph Stalin's very limited supply of good will.
5. While Stalin has the clear advantage over Hitler in the long term, three to five years in the future, during the summer of 1941, he clearly does not. His army officer corps was decimated by the purges, and the force level grew rapidly during that time from about 1.5 million to 5 million under arms. The surviving officers are now so scared that they won't pee if their pants are on fire without a written order from the superior, who has the same fear. They have all been jumped two or three grades over their appropriate experience level. And the shortage of officers put most of them in command billets; there are not enough to do the important staff work. Also, the Red Army is trying to re-equip from obsolete equipment to new equipment, like the T-34, but this is far from complete. Further, it has abandoned it's existing fortified border region to occupy new regions, whose populations are not Russian, and don't like them.
So based on these premises, Hitler pretty much has to attack the USSR, and must do so in the summer of 1941. His Wehrmacht is at the peak of its power, and is a wasting asset. Stalin will never be weaker. To wait even a year, the Red Army would be prepared to meet the Germans and stop them. To wait two or three years, and Stalin would be secure enough to economically blackmail Hitler. And that's exactly what he intended to do.
So if Hitler had no choice but to attack the USSR in 1941, was he doomed to fail? As conceived, yes. What is not widely known is that the German General Staff, at its highest levels (Col. Gen. Franz Halder), was just as eager to fight the USSR as Hitler was. But Hitler had some domestic political issues. Despite the Blitzkrieg victories, the declarations of war had never brought out the spontaneous support of the last war. The Germans went to fight, but not with enthusiasm. Hitler knew this, and knew that in a long war, the prospects of Revolution would increase as it dragged on. That was the lesson of the last war. So he needed a quick victory.
The general staff knew this, and that's what they sold Hitler. They told him they could defeat the bulk of the Red Army west of the Dnieper River, and then march on unopposed. Hitler bought it, and that became the Plan. If that were true, then victory was possible within the Logistic Limit of the Wehrmacht.
The problem was that it was not possible, and for this the Soviet Union owes its gratitude to Marshal Boris Shaposhnikov, Chief of the Red Army General Staff. He created and implemented the machinery of wartime mobilization, which allowed the Soviet Union to continuously conjure up new armies faster than the Germans could destroy them. Yes, the Germans destroyed the existing Western Front forces in about two weeks west of the Dnieper. But waiting along that river was a line of reserve armies. So the Germans defeated them, too, at Smolensk. And behind them was another line of armies. They were destroyed by Operation Typhoon in October, but behind them....you get the picture. By then, the Germans were clearly beyond the Logistic Limit, and were punished by the Soviet Winter Offensive.
So how could the Germans avoid this? They had to plan for at least a two-year campaign, with built-in operational pauses during bad weather, and to not outrun their supplies chasing the Russians deeper into the hinterlands. Could this have won the war? Maybe. The way they actually fought it, they were doomed to lose. Being more careful of their limited assets, and not exposing them to disasters such as Moscow, 1941 and Stalingrad, they might have prevailed.
Does this violate henkster's law of the Germans not being the Germans? Yeah, it probably does.
So it's like a Greek tragedy. It played out the way it did because it was the only way it was going to play out.
Man, my fingers are tired and my brain hurts.
The only quibble I’d raise is that the Germans didn’t have to make the decision that led to the bloodbath at Stalingrad. There were other realistic strategies at that point, and Stalingrad could have been avoided without violating their Germanity.
Other than that, I agree with you. Once the Soviet state survives the initial onslaught, there’s a looming inevitability to everything that follows.
Disclaimer: Opinions posted on Free Republic are those of the individual posters and do not necessarily represent the opinion of Free Republic or its management. All materials posted herein are protected by copyright law and the exemption for fair use of copyrighted works.