Military Folks, What's your thinking?

[Pete123]

I was just watching a documentary on the Battle for Stalingrad.

 

One of the historians that was interviewed made a comment that caught my attention.  He said that General Zhukav developed the best street fighting tactics and skills ever - that no one has ever defended a city as well as he did.

 

That strikes me as odd.  We have an awesome military that studies historical battles all the time.  Could Zhukov really have been better than modern, well trained armies of today?

 

 

 

 

[CommsNBombs]

Zhukov made his bones as a Cavalryman (Dragoon) during WWI when they still fought very much like the Macedonians and Imperial British did using heavy horse and lancer tactics - much like Guderian and Rommel.

He also had gotten his ass handed to him (not through any fault of his own) during Op Barbarossa in Kiev and then during the Siege of Leningrad - know thy enemy and all that.

Between Leningrad and Stalingrad he had plenty of time skirmishing with these meatheads in the streets.

Guerilla warfare is aysemmetrical and fluid - he was very skilled but being the "best" is subjective. Practice makes perfect - everyone has done it differently.

Battle of Troy, Siege of Athens, Siege of Thebes, Siege of York, Fallujah, what have you. End of the day its outmanuevering the other guys crazy bastards and killing everyone.

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[espacef1fan]

The biggest contributor to the German defeat was Hitler refusal to allow a breakout to link up with forces outside the city to either resupply or retreat/roconsolidate/reattack. It is good Hitler was such a micromanager or we might be speaking German. He had many brilliant subordinates that were handicapped by Hitler undermining their plans/operations by ignoring their advice

[xsubsailor]

The biggest contributor to the German defeat was Hitler refusal to allow a breakout to link up with forces outside the city to either resupply or retreat/roconsolidate/reattack. It is good Hitler was such a micromanager or we might be speaking German. He had many brilliant subordinates that were handicapped by Hitler undermining their plans/operations by ignoring their advice

 

 This sounds familiar, history repeating itself?

[espacef1fan]

In regards to?

[bersaguy]

In regards to?

I would say in regards to not allowing our greatest military minds from doing their jobs by a White House calling the shots instead of the military. We have not been allowed to actually finish anything we are of got involved in since WWII. McArther had Korea won till they relieved him and replaced him with a must less adequate Officer. We could have won Vietnam if the White House would not have tied the military's hands at every turn. We could have eliminated the need for the Iraq war which was not necessary to begin with had they not told Stormin Norman to stand down at the city limits of Baghdad and allowed him to finish it there.  To many Monday morning Arm Chair Quarterbacks calling the shots is what I am guessing was what it was in regards to.........jmho   

Edited December 24, 2015 by bersaguy

[K191145]

I was just watching a documentary on the Battle for Stalingrad.

 

One of the historians that was interviewed made a comment that caught my attention.  He said that General Zhukav developed the best street fighting tactics and skills ever - that no one has ever defended a city as well as he did.

 

That strikes me as odd.  We have an awesome military that studies historical battles all the time.  Could Zhukov really have been better than modern, well trained armies of today?

 

From some of the documentaries I have watched, Soviets taking a big city came at a big cost of lives on both sides which leads me to think that one of Zhukav's strategies was to use enough soldiers, casualties don't matter and collateral damage/deaths doesn't matter either, to mostly overpower the enemy.

[btq96r]

The Russians in Stalingrad had two big advantages- manpower and weather- to leverage in the defensive battle they waged.

 

 

The biggest contributor to the German defeat was Hitler refusal to allow a breakout to link up with forces outside the city to either resupply or retreat/roconsolidate/reattack. It is good Hitler was such a micromanager or we might be speaking German. He had many brilliant subordinates that were handicapped by Hitler undermining their plans/operations by ignoring their advice

 

I'd argue that with the USA and USSR each waging a campaign, economy of scale would have caught up to Germany under any scenario that didn't involve Germany getting the bomb first.

 

 

I would say in regards to not allowing our greatest military minds from doing their jobs by a White House calling the shots instead of the military. We have not been allowed to actually finish anything we are of got involved in since WWII. McArther had Korea won till they relieved him and replaced him with a must less adequate Officer. We could have won Vietnam if the White House would not have tied the military's hands at every turn. We could have eliminated the need for the Iraq war which was not necessary to begin with had they not told Stormin Norman to stand down at the city limits of Baghdad and allowed him to finish it there.  To many Monday morning Arm Chair Quarterbacks calling the shots is what I am guessing was what it was in regards to.........jmho   

 

I can't buy what you're selling here. 

 

General Ridgeway was just as good a commander for the fight in Korea as General MacArthur in my estimation.  Once the Chinese entered the war, they had the bodies to throw into the grinder to force a stalemate, as we were unwilling to fight a harder war so soon after WWII, and while we were keeping lots of troops in Europe to safeguard countries from Soviet expansion. 

 

Vietnam was unwinnable regardless of what we could have done militarily when you take into account that the government was completely corrupt and never had the will of the people behind it, thus dooming it to collapse.  The military campaigns were holding actions the political situation that should have had us think twice before getting involved.  This repeated itself in Iraq in a similar fashion.

 

In the Gulf War, ejecting the Iraqi Army from Kuwait was all we set out to do (and had collation support for), and doing more wasn't in the marching orders.  We didn't "stand down at the city limits of Baghdad" we were standing fast in parts of Southern Iraq when the ceasefire took effect. 

[Pete123]

I would say in regards to not allowing our greatest military minds from doing their jobs by a White House calling the shots instead of the military. We have not been allowed to actually finish anything we are of got involved in since WWII. McArther had Korea won till they relieved him and replaced him with a must less adequate Officer. We could have won Vietnam if the White House would not have tied the military's hands at every turn. We could have eliminated the need for the Iraq war which was not necessary to begin with had they not told Stormin Norman to stand down at the city limits of Baghdad and allowed him to finish it there.  To many Monday morning Arm Chair Quarterbacks calling the shots is what I am guessing was what it was in regards to.........jmho   

 

I firmly believe that we could have achieved victory in Vietnam in short order if the Whitehouse had permitted our military to sever the Ho Chi Min trail.  North Vietnamese General Giap of North Vietnam, their top military guy, agreed with this.

 

Also, relative to Stalingrad, the Russians won that battle because they outperformed the Germans.  The Germans were really good with Blitzkrieg and mechanized fighting.  At great cost of lives, the Russians both destroyed and tied up Germany's mechanized troops in Kotluban.  

 

No one disputes that Stalin could care less how many Russians died, though throwing people at the problem isn't how they won.

 

Then the Germans shot themselves in the foot by bombing Stalingrad and turning it into rubble - perfect for the Russians to defend.  

 

The Russians took the lead with snipers.  They would go in the sewers, come out behind the Germans and then kill them.  They would lure German tanks down narrow streets where the tank couldn't turn around and then use Molotov cocktails to catch it on fire.

 

The Russians by an large, were tougher than the Germans in close quarters combat and there was a lot of that in Stalingrad.  I'm talking about using bayonets, rifle butts and spades.  The field spade was a personal favorite of many Russians to kill Germans with.

 

It was common for there to be alternating floors in a building held by one side or the other.  The Russians were very good at setting booby traps.   

 

Another brilliant move from Zhucov was recognizing that the Germans had a distinct advantage with artillery.  Therefore, he encouraged troops to have no more than several meters between them and the Germans, thus preventing the Germans from using artillery effectively.  

 

I'm not saying that the Russians are the best urban fighters ever, though they kicked ass in Stalingrad.  

 

The Germans could not have won WW2 without getting the atomic bomb first. Here's why.  Many think of the Nazi military as some kind of super warriors due to their early success in WWII.  

 

After WWI, all the other countries in Europe were tired of war and didn't put much effort into their militaries.  Hitler put a lot into the military, so they started with war with better equipment and better trained troops.  However, they were a country of 70 million.  So, yes, the Russians lost a lot more people, though the German's couldn't afford to lose so many.  As the best German soldiers were killed they couldn't be replaced.

 

A big question in my mind is why the allies had so much trouble on the western front.  A lot of the German soldiers by that time were 15 year old kids.  I mainly study the eastern front, so I don't know what caused that yet.

Edited December 24, 2015 by Pete123

[btq96r]

A big question in my mind is why the allies had so much trouble on the western front.  A lot of the German soldiers by that time were 15 year old kids.  I mainly study the eastern front, so I don't know what caused that yet.

 

Western front was delayed for a while by overall supply issue (as the front grew in size so the efforts slowed for lack of fuel, ammo, food, ect..), the failure of Market Garden, plus the toughness of the fight in the Hürtgen Forest threw off the time tables as well.  France having a lack of good roads didn't help things either.  The Germans didn't have to deal with that as much in 1940 since they only had the big battles in the northern part of France, and didn't even have to fight in the Southern part.

 

Also, there weren't widespread deployments of 15yr old kids at the front until after the Battle of the Bulge as best I remember, the troops the allies faced in France were toughened veterans of the Eastern Front mixed in with fresh conscripts.

[Pete123]

BTQ, that makes sense.  Lack of supplies while opposing eastern front vets who where more experienced would create quite a problem.

[btq96r]

BTQ, that makes sense.  Lack of supplies while opposing eastern front vets who where more experienced would create quite a problem.

 

The entire logistics effort is amazing when you look at it, even if it had its issues getting the front line stocked well enough.  We bombed the French rail network out of order to prevent the Germans from using it, but that hurt ourselves in the process.  Two things that might interest you would be Mulberry Harbor's- a man made workaround to the fact that the allies didn't have a real port to use for a long while since the Germans sabotaged Cherbourg so effectively, and the Red Ball Express- a trucking effort to speed the delivery of supplies to the front lines.

[espacef1fan]

In regards to our current wars...

You can't achieve an objective, without clearly defining one. Winning isn't an objective.

We are fighting an idea. Every taliban we kill creates two more. There are 15 yr old kids that know only this war in their homeland. It's best we leave in my opinion

[Pete123]

Thanks btq, especially for the resources.  Also, I think we were both right re: Vietnam.  Cutting the Ho Chi Min trail would have yielded military victory, though nothing could have lasted with the south Vietnamese government that was corrupt.

 

Also, the very experienced German soldiers from the Eastern front were good.  Our guys got some experience in Africa, though I'll bet that was first conflict for a lot of our guys and the Nazi's had been training for years before WW2 and then had lots of experience from the Eastern Front.

Edited December 26, 2015 by Pete123

[Sam1]

Btq96r pretty much covered it.

Must be something in the air, I just did a 6 hour binge watch of WWII documentaries.

[Hershmeister]

General Vasily Chuikov led the defense of Stalingrad - he fought on to Berlin and accepted the german surrender there

http://www.nytimes.com/1982/03/20/obituaries/marshal-vasily-chuikov-82-dies-commanded-stalingrad-s-defense.html

[TMF]

In regards to our current wars...

You can't achieve an objective, without clearly defining one. Winning isn't an objective.

We are fighting an idea. Every taliban we kill creates two more. There are 15 yr old kids that know only this war in their homeland. It's best we leave in my opinion

We did. There aren't combat troops conducting operations anymore. There are more troops in Clarksville than the entire country of Afghanistan.

[espacef1fan]

My current point of view from Afghanistan causes me to disagree that we aren't engaged in combat anymore ;)

[TMF]

My current point of view from Afghanistan causes me to disagree that we aren't engaged in combat anymore ;)

What view would that be and what is your metric? I've been in and out of Afghanistan for a long time running. Whatever is happening now is practically nil compared to this time last year, and is a fraction of a fraction compared to just a few years ago.

[espacef1fan]

Being fractionally there is still there. We haven't pulled out, not yet. I agree its diminished exponentially over the past few years. I'm just kinda saying they've paused the drawdown for reasons that don't make sense

[TMF]

Being fractionally there is still there. We haven't pulled out, not yet. I agree its diminished exponentially over the past few years. I'm just kinda saying they've paused the drawdown for reasons that don't make sense

We are fractionally in a lot of countries, and operating in a similar capacity in those countries. It just isn't hot news. There are less than 10k troops in Astan. There is a long list of countries with far more US troops than Astan. Why not ask why we are in those countries? I'm sure there are compelling arguments to remove troops from every country other than the US. There are also compelling arguments to keep them there. It isn't black and white though. I'm curious though, why be so adamant about pulling all troops out of a place with relatively few troops, while not being equally adamant about pulling troops from the 170+ countries they are currently in? Edited December 27, 2015 by TMF

[espacef1fan]

Because on a daily basis in Afghanistan our troops are in actual combat. Germany, not so much;)

[espacef1fan]

We can talk about each country on a one by one basis, if you would like. I just wanted to dispel the myth that combat wasn't occurring involving US forces in Afghanistan.

[TMF]

We can talk about each country on a one by one basis, if you would like. I just wanted to dispel the myth that combat wasn't occurring involving US forces in Afghanistan.

I never said it was a myth, but the way you indicated was as if this is a common or widespread occurrence, which it is not. The point is, we have very low numbers compared with what they once were, Afghans are the ones conducting offensive operations, and our involvement in this country is not without precedent. The last two countries we pulled out of prior to stabilization were Vietnam and Iraq, and we know how those turned out. However, we stayed in Japan, Germany, S. Korea, Panama, Kuwait, and even still Kosovo.

While it's easy to offhandedly say we shouldn't have even on American troop in Afghanistan, that isn't how it works and it shouldn't be. We don't know what the future holds, but I can guarantee that our word and our reputation will proceed us if we prematurely leave a country swinging in the breeze after they begged us to stay. Especially since we invaded it and installed one of the most corrupt governments in modern history with the expectation they would be effective in governing a country with no national identity in some of the most difficult terrain on the planet.

[espacef1fan]

I can agree with you on those points, but I'm not sure staying helps either. Especially with the rest of our economic/foreign policy blunders of the last 50 or so years...

What were we talking about in this thread again...haha