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Incompetent and arrogant military leadership is the *real* killing machine.

The problem began with Napoleon, who while not particularly brilliant as a military planner himself, had at least two senior generals who were military geniuses. How their strategy worked is best, and fairly simply illustrated by the Ulm-Austerlitz campaign.

To start with, Napoleon had two unusually large armies. He sent one of them to Italy, to protect his southern flank. So with just his single, grand army, he went into battle expecting to fight SEVEN Austrian and Russian armies.

He was helped immeasurably by a fluke. The European armies used the Gregorian calendar, but the Russians still used the Julian calendar, which was about two weeks behind the Gregorian in its dates. So they left Russia two weeks late.

To make matters worse, they had to pass through Prussia, and the Prussians were not happy at all to see four Russian armies pass through their country. So more severe delays.

In any event, on to strategy. Napoleon decided to confuse his enemy as to where he was going, and what he was going to attack. So he put his army in a north-south line almost the width of Europe. As the line marched East, units formed and reformed so the enemy could not tell who was where, while gradually reducing the length of the line while thickening it. Eventually it split sideways, so that there was a front line, and a rapidly moving rear echelon.

The concept (called the “Axe” technique) was that the front would engage the enemy on a wide front, and the rapidly moving second echelon would go up and down the line, looking for a weakness in the enemies defenses, then pour through, splitting the enemies forces.

It worked exceedingly well for the times.

In any event, the Austrians figured that the French would have to do a major river crossing, and that the best place to do that was at the German city of Ulm, which was inside an L shaped bend in the river. So they put the best of their three armies in the city.

With considerable razzle-dazzle, Napoleon’s army carried out a major river crossing with their engineers *North* of the city. Then very quickly surrounded the city with their fast moving second echelon.

Pinned in on two sides by the river, and encircled on the land, that entire army had to surrender or be slaughtered. And surrender they did.

This was the preface to the battle of Austerlitz, which is regarded as one of the most important battles of maneuver in history, and was extensively studied by all modern armies. The French won an incredible victory, defeating two Austrian armies and a Russian Army, with the other three Russian armies returning home in a hurry.

Now all of this explains World War I, and easily.

Every modern army of the time adopted these Napoleonic tactics as the only way to fight a war. And the zinger is, that *they do not work*, if both sides are using them.

If both sides are doing so, you end up with a horrific bloodbath and stalemate. And victory goes to whoever abandons the Napoleonic tactics first.

The utter carnage of World War I forced all the western European nations to make a huge review and revision of their tactics, but because of the Russian revolution, the Russians *never did*.

So up until the collapse of the Soviet Union, they were still embracing Napoleonic tactics. Modern technology was adapted to those tactics. Even having nuclear weapons didn’t change those tactics.

And NATO knew it. So planned its defenses using tactics formulated to *defeat* Napoleonic tactics.

But in the final analysis, it does not boil down to technology, but pragmatic leadership.