Tag: Military Defeats

Failed Attacks

History time again!

There have been some valiant but disastrous attacks in history…..and this is a breakdown of some of those failed attempts….

On July 3, 1863, the Army of the Potomac fought a defensive battle against the Army of Northern Virginia at the Pennsylvania town of Gettysburg. On the last day of battle, Confederate Major General George Pickett was one of three Confederate generals to lead the final assault on Union lines, lending his name to the battle, a battle that has become synonymous with futility. Here we list 5 of the most valiant, and yet most futile fatal attacks in military history, with no significance to the order listed.

5 Valiant but Failed Attacks

I agree with most of them….but Battle of the Emus?

I would have included the first attack in the Kasserine Pass, Tunisia…..

Kasserine Pass, a 2-mile-wide gap in Tunisia’s Dorsal Mountains, which was defended by American troops. His first strike was repulsed, but with tank reinforcements, Rommel broke through on February 20, inflicting devastating casualties on the U.S. forces. The Americans withdrew from their position, leaving behind most of their equipment. More than 1,000 American soldiers were killed by Rommel’s offensive, and hundreds were taken prisoner. The United States had finally tasted defeat in battle.

https://nationalinterest.org/blog/kasserine-pass-americas-most-humiliating-defeat-world-war-ii-19574

The Americans regrouped an the second attempt was successful and broke the back of the Afrika Corps…

Then I would also include the Tet Offensive in South Vietnam…January 1968

The Tet Offensive was a coordinated series of North Vietnamese attacks on more than 100 cities and outposts in South Vietnam. The offensive was an attempt to foment rebellion among the South Vietnamese population and encourage the United States to scale back its involvement in the Vietnam War. Though U.S. and South Vietnamese forces managed to hold off the attacks, news coverage of the massive offensive shocked the American public and eroded support for the war effort. Despite heavy casualties, North Vietnam achieved a strategic victory with the Tet Offensive, as the attacks marked a turning point in the Vietnam War and the beginning of the slow, painful American withdrawal from the region.

https://www.history.com/topics/vietnam-war/tet-offensive

Finally the Battle of Hattin…..where the Crusaders decided to attack the forces of Saladin and the crusaders took it in the butt and in turn their decision lost the Middle East to Saladin….

The Battle of Hattin was fought July 4, 1187, during the Crusades. In 1187, after a series of disputes, the Ayyubid armies of Saladin commenced moving against the Crusader states including the Kingdom of Jerusalem. Meeting the Crusader army west of Tiberias on July 3, Saladin engaged in a running battle as it moved towards the town. Surrounded during the night, the Crusaders, who were short on water, were unable to break out. In the resulting fight, the bulk of their army was destroyed or captured. Saladin’s victory opened the way for the recapture of Jerusalem later that year.

https://www.thoughtco.com/the-crusades-battle-of-hattin-2360712

Just a couple of thoughts off the top of my head…..

Do you have any thoughts of this or something to add?

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Managing War

I am an antiwar person and I have studied conflicts, management and resolution….my hatred for war came from my 2 and half years in Vietnam in the late 60s early 70s…..

I look at the institution of war….and yes it is an institution especially now when we are fighting the same war for 18 years……

War is controlled (managed) by several ways……a quick look at the parts of the management……

Military commanders and their staffs rely on a variety of conceptual models to assist in their planning for and conduct of operations. Civilian defence thinkers and academics also employ the same tools to help illustrate their ideas. Among the those used are the Phases of Operations and the Spectrum of Conflict. While there is no standard design for each, they do have a certain style. In the U.S. system, the phases of battle model generally begins at Phase 0, which represents the period of shaping for the coming campaign, and ends at Phase 5, which covers enabling civil authority. Visual depictions of the Spectrum of Conflict usually place non-warfighting operations on one side and progress through increasing graduations of levels of violence and risk to the other side, culminating with nuclear war. Between these two extremes, war can be divided into a multitude of categories.

https://www.realcleardefense.com/articles/2019/01/22/the_war_cycle_a_model_for_managing_war_114128.html
 
The problem is that our generals in their education at the War College are taught Clausewitz, the Master of War……this is a Prussian from the 19th century…and war has moved well,beyond the days of cavalry charges and massive troop encounters….
 
A couple of things of Clausewitz……
 
Clausewitz book, On War, is the bible of warfare instruction…..we need to stop teaching his theories and start thinking in 21st century tactics…..
 

I am not insisting that Clausewitz does not provide valuable lessons. But by focusing on Clausewitz we miss important discussion that should be brought to military education. This leads me to the purpose of this article, for which I have two primary goals. First, to point out specific things which Clausewitz got wrong and reasons why we should stop teaching On War. Think of it like moving from a devotional reading of The Bible to a historical critical examination of it. Second, to identify what we should start teaching more of in all military education.

Let’s first look at what Clausewitz got wrong.

https://taskandpurpose.com/just-say-no-to-clausewitz

What got me to thinking about this was so,ething I read in The American Conservative……

The most curious thing about our four defeats in Fourth Generation War—Lebanon, Somalia, Iraq, and Afghanistan—is the utter silence in the American officer corps. Defeat in Vietnam bred a generation of military reformers, men such as Col. John Boyd USAF, Col. Mike Wyly USMC, and Col. Huba Wass de Czege USA, each of whom led a major effort to reorient his service. Today, the landscape is barren. Not a military voice is heard calling for thoughtful, substantive change. Just more money, please.

Such a moral and intellectual collapse of the officer corps is one of the worst disasters that can afflict a military because it means it cannot adapt to new realities. It is on its way to history’s wastebasket. The situation brings to mind an anecdote an Air Force friend, now a military historian, liked to tell some years ago. Every military, he said, occasionally craps in its own mess kit. The Prussians did it in 1806, after which they designed and put into service a much improved new model messkit, through the Scharnhorst military reforms. The French did it in 1870, after which they took down from the shelf an old-model messkit—the mass, draft army of the First Republic—and put it back in service. The Japanese did it in 1945, after which they threw their mess kit away, swearing they would never eat again. And we did it in Korea, in Vietnam, and now in four new wars. So far, we’ve had the only military that’s just kept on eating.

https://www.theamericanconservative.com/articles/an-officer-corps-that-cant-score/

All in all the US is working on outdated instruction….the education of our military people is as bad as the education of our citizens.

Why Hitler’s Grand Plan Collapsed

I have noticed an uptick of Nazi programming on the History Channel…..everything from secret plans to infectious bugs to death rays to…..well you get the drift.

Hitler started off with a grand plan of a 1000 year Reich and the master of the world…..it failed (in case you did not pay attention in class)…but why did his plan collapse?

There have been many theories  for his failure from insanity to heavy drug use…..but the truth about his failure was far simpler…..

His first stupid decision was to invade Russia…..apparently he learned nothing from the French invasion…..he overlooked the two greatest generals of the USSR….General January and General February….the second idiotic plunder was declaring war on the US after the attack on Pearl Harbor.

Two key factors undermined Germany’s campaign: US involvement boosted the allies’ arms-producing capabilities, while sheer Soviet manpower led to catastrophic defeat in Russia.

Two years into the war, in September 1941, German arms seemed to be carrying all before them. Western Europe had been decisively conquered, and there were few signs of any serious resistance to German rule. The failure of the Italians to establish Mussolini’s much-vaunted new Roman empire in the Mediterranean had been made good by German intervention. German forces had overrun Greece, and subjugated Yugoslavia. In north Africa, Rommel’s brilliant generalship was pushing the British and allied forces eastwards towards Egypt and threatening the Suez canal. Above all, the invasion of the Soviet Union in June 1941 had reaped stunning rewards, with Leningrad (the present-day St Petersburg) besieged by German and Finnish troops, Smolensk and Kiev taken, and millions of Red Army troops killed or captured in a series of vast encircling operations that brought the German armed forces within reach of Moscow. Surrounded by a girdle of allies, from Vichy France and Finland to Romania and Hungary, and with the more or less benevolent neutrality of countries such as Sweden and Switzerland posing no serious threat, the Greater German Reich seemed to be unstoppable in its drive for supremacy in Europe.

Source: Why Hitler’s grand plan during the second world war collapsed | World news | The Guardian

Those are the two reason Hitler failed….period!

Class Dismissed!