Posted on 07/17/2023 4:19:29 AM PDT by MtnClimber
"I think I am not exaggerating when I say that the campaign against Russia has been won in fourteen days.”
General Franz Halder, June, 1941, Chief of Staff, Oberbefehlshaber des Heeres
Masters and commanders of history who have sworn that they have defeated an incompetent, disorganized, and corrupt Russian army are legion. For a time they seemed to have been correct. But there is a pattern to their encounters with the Russian army that is germane to the current Ukrainian offensive.
In 1707, Swedish King Charles XII appeared like he could successfully invade Russia in the manner that he had defeated Russian armies. But by 1709, he had wrecked the Swedish army against a numerically superior enemy that seemed to grow despite losing battles.
Napoleon won more battles than he lost in Russia, took, and burned Moscow—and destroyed his own French army in the process. The famous invasion chart of Charles Joseph Minard graphically demonstrated how his Grand Army shrunk each day it advanced further into Russia.
The 3.5 million-man Wehrmacht expeditionary force consistently crushed the Russian army for nearly two months following its invasion of June 22, 1944—killing nearly 3 million Russians. Such catastrophic losses would have broken any Western army.
But by December 1941, the Germans could no longer win the war in the east.
One might object that it is a truism that invading the vast landscape and enduring the harsh weather of Mother Russia is a prescription for disaster; yet Russian armies do poorly when they invade other countries and fight as aggressors outside of their homeland.
Yes and no.
Certainly, the preemptive Russian attack on Kyiv proved an utter disaster. Who can forget the scenes of last winter when sitting-duck, long columns of stalled Russian vehicles were picked off in shooting-gallery fashion by...
(Excerpt) Read more at amgreatness.com ...
VDH ping
Things to remember about pre WW2 wars -
1. Superior numbers could almost always overwhelm smaller forces with superior weaponry and skills. Even an army with a contingent of longbowmen would eventually fall to a horde with swords.
2. Go 50 miles in any direction away from a medieval battle and nobody would be able to give you a running commentary.
These days the problem isn’t too little information from the front, it’s information overload in real time combined with cognitive biases and propaganda filters.
Also these days, a single good strike on one target can be a real game changer. At the start of the SMO Russia was all over the Azov sea, lobbing rockets into Ukraine. Then the Moskva got sunk. Since then, the Russian navy hasn’t exactly been instrumental to offensive action.
June 22, 1944? These kinds of serious errors suggests that AI is undermining plain text these days. is a tinfoil hat even necessary anymore? This is not a mistake that VDH would ever make. I used to think it was just sloppy editing but now I am not so sure.
You’ve fell victim to one of the classic blunders! The most famous is never get involved in a land war in Asia.
Yes this is a cultural reference.
He should have listened to Bernd Von Kleist:
“The German Army in fighting Russia is like an elephant attacking a host of ants. The elephant will kill thousands, perhaps even millions, of ants, but in the end their numbers will overcome him, and he will be eaten to the bone.”
First, to understand how Russia fights you have to uderstand the influence of Mongolian tactics on Russia because the Mongols attacked Russia, killed lots of Russians and held vast parts of Russia. Those tactics are based upon luring the opposing army into death traps - like the Russian defenses. They rely on deception, like the so-called attack on Kiev, which was according to some analysts a feint to fix Ukrainian forces near Kiev while the main effort moved into the Donbas.
I could go on.
VDH is better than this and knows better than this. And Russians are not stupid and incompetent any more than Americans are stupid and incompetent, which is mostly true of those inhabiting Washington DC.
Seems pretty basic.
“Zeeper” Humm rules perhaps or are we all equal but some are more equal than others?
There is a difference between winning and stalemate.
Is it your opinion that Putin envisioned this would be the state of his “SMO” at this point?
Is Ukraine winning well they certainly don’t look like they have lost.
Let’s look at Russian goals
Demilitarize Ukraine, nope
Stop NATO expansion, nope
Denazify Ukraine, no idea what that even means
Expand Russian territory, partial
Then there is the tons of hard to replace equipment, manpower, sacking of generals left and right, economic issues, smoking accidents….
Russian invaders have had a hard time true, Russia invading has been an issue for them in the past as well, paging Finland along with Georgia, Chechnya, Afghanistan.
I think Ukraine can be added to this list as well unless you are part of the
“All going according to plan” crowd
Just my 2 cents
...and - a bit further down - in 1939 Russia invaded Poland FROM THE WEST?
From the article: Will we soon see upscale houses in liberal communities with new lawn signs, “In this house, we believe in cluster bombs?”
If you read the original article at the link, there is no mistake in the date.
Ukraine is not invading Russia. Putin’s Russia is not Stalin’s Russia.
Heinrich Von Kleist
Resilience and recovery from disasters are the historical trademarks of the Russian army. From May to September 1939, a Russian army under the soon to be heralded General Zhukov fought a large Japanese force on the Mongolian-Manchurian border. Despite the battle hardened and military ascendant imperial Japanese military, the Russians withstood every Japanese assault, and eventually destroyed 75 percent of Japanese forces.
The three-and-a-half month Finnish-Russian “Winter War” of 1939-40 is usually referenced as an example of the gritty heroism of the outnumbered Finnish army and the general ineptness of the invading Russian behemoth that outnumbered the heroic Finns by more than two to one. When the tattered Russian army finally ground down the Finns and forced them to negotiate, they had suffered nearly 400,000 casualties, perhaps five times Finnish losses.
The Russian invasion was poorly planned, inadequately supplied, incompetently led, and characterized by low morale. And yet the invasion was eventually mostly successful given the numerical and material advantages of Russia—and Moscow’s seeming indifference to its massive losses. Its trademark war of attrition eventually proved too costly for tiny Finland.
FR Index of his articles: Victor Davis Hanson on FR
Town Hall: Victor Davis Hanson on Town Hall
American Greatness: Victor Davis Hanson on American Greatness
His website: Victor Davis Hanson
Please let me know if you want on or off this new VDH ping list.
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AI might make ‘mistakes’ but I trust their fairness and analytical ability a whole lot more than all the collective MAGA haters at the New York Times and Washington Post put together.
“...and - a bit further down - in 1939 Russia invaded Poland FROM THE WEST?”
I think you misread VDH.
The actual quote is this: “On September 17, 1939, a duplicitous Soviet Russia invaded Poland from the east, under the agreements of the Molotov-Ribbentrop Pact of August 1939.”
“In frenzied fashion, the desperate Russians have nearly finished a modern version of a Maginot Line of zigzagging interconnected trenches, reinforced concrete tank traps, minefields, artillery crossfire fields—all protected by mobile reserves and aircraft, missile, and drone support”
This sounds a lot more like the buildup to the battle of Kursk when the massive belts of Russian minefields, anti-tank traps and trenches ground down the Wehrmacht Panzer armies until they were all used up.
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