The comments are interesting. This is a tentative comment, since as I've said before I can understand nothing of military tactics and strategy--but if WWI was fought as incompetently as people say, by commanders who didn't learn the lessons of changed circumstances until its very end, then re-fighting its battles in a game form by modern players might produce bizarre results. I'm not sure why that wouldn't be entertaining, though.
I've gamed WWI on the table top at squad, platoon and company level, and it's pretty brutal. It's not true that nobody learned anything, but what is probably unfathomable today is that they pretty much chose to fight it the way that they did. Attritional warfare is never pretty, and even WWII was attritional (ask the Russians) and it didn't really end until the Axis powers ran out of stuff and people.
No fight is lost until one side is either destroyed or surrenders. That makes all fights where something is at stake--national survival, for instance--in the end attritional. Even a fast-moving blitzkrieg.
That's one of the things that made Rome so dangerous. Until the Punic wars, the idea in the Greek heritage of fighting in the Med was fight a battle, one side quits--the surrender part--and they work a treaty. Rome confronted Carthage with battle loss after battle loss, and repeated refusal to quit after repeated refusal, explicitly because "Neither of us is destroyed; there's no reason to quit"--the destroyed part.
That makes all fights where something is at stake--national survival, for instance--in the end attritional. Even a fast-moving blitzkrieg.
In the case of France in 1940, they surrendered to prevent the Nazis from destroying Paris. There may or may not have been the capacity to still wage war by the French, but not one they could win, and they were not willing to pay the price of continued armed resistance (as a nation, that is; individuals certainly stepped up to that particular plate).
War is not necessarily about attrition, it is about destroying the opponent's will to fight. Attrition is just one method. The US certainly didn't attrit down the British in our Revolutionary War, we just made victory too expensive and uncertain for them.
but if WWI was fought as incompetently as people say, by commanders who didn't learn the lessons of changed circumstances until its very end, then re-fighting its battles in a game form by modern players might produce bizarre results. I'm not sure why that wouldn't be entertaining, though.
Not all of them were idiots and cowards sending the best generations of Europe to die.
Pershing, for example, was quite clever and did not waste the lives of his AMerican soldiers. Those soldiers would be an important part to re militarizing in WWII.
6 comments:
The comments are interesting. This is a tentative comment, since as I've said before I can understand nothing of military tactics and strategy--but if WWI was fought as incompetently as people say, by commanders who didn't learn the lessons of changed circumstances until its very end, then re-fighting its battles in a game form by modern players might produce bizarre results. I'm not sure why that wouldn't be entertaining, though.
I've gamed WWI on the table top at squad, platoon and company level, and it's pretty brutal. It's not true that nobody learned anything, but what is probably unfathomable today is that they pretty much chose to fight it the way that they did. Attritional warfare is never pretty, and even WWII was attritional (ask the Russians) and it didn't really end until the Axis powers ran out of stuff and people.
No fight is lost until one side is either destroyed or surrenders. That makes all fights where something is at stake--national survival, for instance--in the end attritional. Even a fast-moving blitzkrieg.
That's one of the things that made Rome so dangerous. Until the Punic wars, the idea in the Greek heritage of fighting in the Med was fight a battle, one side quits--the surrender part--and they work a treaty. Rome confronted Carthage with battle loss after battle loss, and repeated refusal to quit after repeated refusal, explicitly because "Neither of us is destroyed; there's no reason to quit"--the destroyed part.
Eric Hines
That makes all fights where something is at stake--national survival, for instance--in the end attritional. Even a fast-moving blitzkrieg.
In the case of France in 1940, they surrendered to prevent the Nazis from destroying Paris. There may or may not have been the capacity to still wage war by the French, but not one they could win, and they were not willing to pay the price of continued armed resistance (as a nation, that is; individuals certainly stepped up to that particular plate).
War is not necessarily about attrition, it is about destroying the opponent's will to fight. Attrition is just one method. The US certainly didn't attrit down the British in our Revolutionary War, we just made victory too expensive and uncertain for them.
Russia banned one of those WWII games. Not patriotic enough.
but if WWI was fought as incompetently as people say, by commanders who didn't learn the lessons of changed circumstances until its very end, then re-fighting its battles in a game form by modern players might produce bizarre results. I'm not sure why that wouldn't be entertaining, though.
Not all of them were idiots and cowards sending the best generations of Europe to die.
Pershing, for example, was quite clever and did not waste the lives of his AMerican soldiers. Those soldiers would be an important part to re militarizing in WWII.
Post a Comment