Russian forces attempted to cross the Siverskyi Donets river in eastern Ukraine this month using a pontoon bridge, but their tanks and armoured vehicles were picked off by Ukrainian artillery. So they tried it again. And again. And again. The Russian army made nine attempts to cross the river in the second week of May, according to Ukrainian defence chiefs. Russia lost about 80 tanks or other vehicles and more than 400 men in the ill-fated operation … It is part of a pattern of Russian behaviour since the invasion began three months ago. By contrast, Ukraine’s forces have proved to be agile, using the leeway afforded to company and even platoon commanders to shape their tactics according to the conditions on the ground.
A whole lot of "extrapolation" from one military blunder. playing into the pre-conceived stereotypes of "western agility" vs. "eastern rigidity". The failed crossing of Seversky Donetsk was much discussed as an exemplary failure of command in Russian Telegram channels (behind some of which are some very well informed and connected military persons), but it is an exception that proves the rule - in this war the Ukrainian side has been the rigid and inflexible one (dig in, defend anything to the point of encirclement and annihilation), while the Russians moved and maneuvered over a 800km length of battlefield, changing axis of attack and intensity many times.
The results are slowly becoming visible - the Ukrainians are losing the war.
It’s also pretty weird considering Russia’s outnumbered, highly mechanized force has constantly set the rules of the engagement and Ukraine’s massive mobilized force, it seems, is fundamentally reactive. Russia cutting its losses in Kiev and Ukraine hunkering suicidally in Mariupol and now Sievierodonetsk are indicative.
Tooze is reading too much into the existence of Ukraine’s cadre of elite, NATO-trained officers, a large number of which, by the way, have become casualties. The bulk of the war has the Russians as the putative “Germans”.
Yup, just penned my own take Sunday morning, same conclusion. The West still, as shown by the agonizing two week debate on the "allowable" range and use of our rocket systems, don't let them hit the Russian sources wherever they are, limited to Russian fire coming from within the old border, Ukraine that is...the perfect and continued example of deferring to Putin's stipulations and threats time and time again. The Donbas resembles the great fixed position battles of the Eastern front in WWII and along the WEstern front, WWI: massive artillery fire exchanged but without the massive infantry/armor follow up. So far at least.
Sorry folks: only boots on the ground with greater firepower and use of A-10 Warthogs flown by American pilots can save this situation, and yes I know that the Warthogs must have close to air superiority with all that implies (taking out Russian command and control and electronics wherever they are situated)...
So far, Putin has dominated the chess board after the initial tactical victories which Professor Tooze traces back for us to a history of WEstern military thinking. But so far, the grand chessboard of the war is dominated by the cautious politics of Joe Biden, as taught to Putin in his fiasco of "negotiations" with Joe Manchin domestically. Putin has read Biden just the way Hitler read the west's response to the Spanish Civil War, and the Germany response to Russian economics after Putin's rise. Very similar to the German response to the West in Europe, 1935-1938.
I think we are in a much deeper hole than the public realizes, and our Western elites is more than happy to sacrifice tens of thousands of Ukrainian lives, civilian and military, and the destruction of vast tracts of infrastructure to keep the risk level down. Remind anyone of the sacrifice of the working class to globalization?
When the drift of events, especially the rise of Donald Trump and his good friend in the Kremlin, Putin, show a willingness to use the big lie repeatedly and to whip their followers up with tales of the criminality of blacks 7 immigrants in the US and in Russia, Nazis taking over the Ukraine (and Putin doing very well to use German Nazis tactics against Ukraine, paralleling the fate of Warsaw in 1944), to try to recapture the glories of Tsarist and USSR territorial range, while domestically making a cult of World War II heroics and forging a conservative alliance with the Russian Orthodox Church, I think readings in the history of the Weimar Republic, and yes, a good biography of Hitler, like Ian Kershaw's two volume one, are in order. And of course, your response is equivalent to calling me the crazy one! Many of the dominant top 10% in the West, especially in the US, use your tactic of ruling Hitler analogies off the table; of course, scholars like Timothy Snyder and Fritz Stern have been issuing warnings for some time, and I find the more I read about Weimar Germany, 1919-1933, the closer the US seems to me to be ready to duplicate the experience - in its own way, but close enough. While our level of political violence does not come close to matching the left-right violence in the streets of Germany during those 14 years, our level of militias on the right and 300-400 million guns in the hands of mostly those on the Right, even if they dress in "white shirts and khakis" plus the stances of Donald Trump - give me all the signals I need to worry, and to revive reading the best biographies of the Austrian agitator. Hitler. Trump has long since crossed the line of being just an American authoritarian like Father Coughlin or Joe McCarthy - he attempted a coup on Jan. 6th which turned out much like the Beer Hall Putsch in 1923 which Hitler tried to pull off...but the time was not quite ready, and the German Right then did not march with him...it would take a decade.
This is probably the most uneducated, historically and politically slanted, inaccurate nonsense I’ve ever read! You are arrogant and pompous with an agenda to spread your false information to rally other ignorant like minded fools. I’m guessing you never served in uniform nor have you faced a real enemy as you hid in your basement pontificating about things you have imagined to be true. You're hate for President Trump has blinded your mind, heart and soul from seeing facts for what they are and logic to be able to honestly access past, current and future events. Go back to you basement and ask your parents for your allowance so you can fly to a country that will except your unique slant on war politics.
And still people cannot see that there are so many things that were risked by backing Ukraine and now risk assessment says a US loss will reveal much more about how the world really needs to stop following one big gdm loser that always ends up screwing them.
Why do people believe this obviously biased Ukrainian view of what happened at that river crossing? The Russians are clearly winning the war and the Ukrainians have not shown any special "agility". There is a reason why Ukraine release no information on casualties. Just look at the maps (from Ukrainian sources) of where engagements are happening and it is very obvious that Ukraine is retreating everywhere. Believing propaganda can be very dangerous to the soldiers on the front lines.
I'm not that sure. Clearly, the Russians want to seal off the coast all the way to Odessa, and even with all their numerical superiority are only proceeding at a snail's pace everywhere. 'Something' is making it very hard for them at every point of contact... but it's not their willingness to shed the lives of their own soldiers. It's so funny... Trump, Johnson, Putin... Really not where they'd planned to be by 7/4/2022, is it?
The Ukrainian Army has had eight years to build the defences of the Donbass, and also Russia has not committed anywhere near a majority of its armed forces. Instead, after the initial few weeks it has relied upon its massive advantage with artillery to slowly pulverize the Ukrainian positions whilst minimizing its own casualties. The result was the breakthrough at Popasna and the developing envelopment of Slavyansk, as such defences tend to hold in place until they break, and then they break quite quickly.
To extrapolate from a single incident, the attempted river crossing, commits a fundamental scientific and statistical error. Looking at the bigger picture of the war in general, the Russians are winning in a very loss-effective manner. Once beyond the in-depth defences of the Donbass, and with much of the professional Ukrainian army under the ground, a prisoner of war, or injured beyond recovery to the field (or refusing to fight as has been shown in multiple cases), the war tempo will move much faster.
Zelensky and his government have made a major strategic error in pouring in men and arms into a salient thats will inevitably collapse, a meat grinder being used by the Russians to destroy the Ukrainian army. This is a major reason why the fight is slow, as Zelensky throws more and more of his army into this cauldron. Once the cauldron, and much of the Ukrainian Army, is finished who will be left to defend the rest of Ukraine?
The recent calls for the mobilization of women and children shows a significant level of alarm by the Ukrainian authorities at the losses (probably at least 1,000 a day). Let's also remember that the Soviet Army destroyed the vast majority of the Nazi forces (85%) in WW2, while the rest of the allies fought only a small proportion.
Anyone who thinks that the NATO forces are superior to the Russian army should take the time to read Andrei Martyanov's books for a rude awakening.
I think you misread Model. His moves in defense of Operation Mars and the Rzhev salient were a prime example of Auftragstaktik, as well as his intentional withholding of armored units for defensive purposes during the Citadel assault (disobeying Hitler's specific orders). Anyway, the Russians proved they learned from their mistakes during WWII, and can't simply be pigeonholed as unimaginative and inflexible due to their leadership culture. But the extraordinarily poor performance of the Russian army in the first few months of the Ukraine invasion does nothing but reinforce this myth.
"According to Ukrainian defence chiefs" pretty well sums it up. Ukraine is losing the war that it has been preparing defensive positions for during the past seven years. Its casualties are far greater than Russia's. It is reduced to conscripting women. It has sent its local part time defense forces to fill in the gaps in its defensive positions... and this is 'agility' learned from the Wehrmacht and, of course, the legendary Prussian General staff tradition.
I would be much more cynical about information derived from the Ukrainian leadership, either military or political. The major influences on both are certainly German but more from the SS than from the Wehrmacht tradition.
The Ukraine military has been defeated for two months already. I don't know what kind of funding you are smoking, Adam, but the only successes in Ukraine are the people cleaning up all the dead Ukrainian soldiers.
It is beyond disgusting that people are pretending that those facts are not real. You are killing these men and women. They all should have surrendered long ago and every death is just another mark of American hubris.
It's amazing that no one yet has blamed the Biden administration for creating the moment, triggering it and then using it to deflect from the poor success at home. And everyone bought it.
This moment is 30 years in the making, so I am assuming there are too many people that we should be pointing our fingers at that are hiding their culpability.
I'm confused. If the Germans were so much better than the Russians, why did the Russians win the war in the East? Why are those NATO trained Ukrainians getting mauled everywhere?
Even an exemplary army shouldn't try to take on the entire world. The Germans didn't have nearly the industrial capacity of the Allies, and their navy could never rival Britain's either. The German army actually did some wargaming of an invasion of the USSR beforehand and concluded that they didn't have enough troops, but Hitler insisted anyway.
To be fair, the US probably saved Russia thru Lend Lease. Spam (the food) kept them from starving. The Russians suffered Biblical losses (hence why they are not playing games with anything close to a "nazi"), and Russia suffered many defeats. Even in victory, Russia lost. The siege of Leningrad ALONE cost Russia more casualties than all the US war dead from all wars COMBINED in their 250 year history.
Only after Hitler declared war on everybody (and their mother) did victory become a mathematical impossibly for Germany. If it wasn't for German military acumen, they would have been beaten years earlier.
You wrote that: "The open secret amongst military experts is that NATO’s “mission command” concept so widely touted as a precious gift from “West” was, in fact, taken directly from the German military tradition and most immediately from Hitler’s Wehrmacht." In fact, Prussia (not so much the rest of Germany) is the source of this military philosophy and the Hitler period was in contrast to this tradition as Hitler micro-managed the war, frequently overruling the military professionals, creating the type of inflexibility you rightly decry.
When you wrote about mobile defense, I'm surprised you didn't mention Erich von Manstein who was a master of it. But Hitler upbraided Manstein for giving up the territory involved in setting up counterstrikes and greatly preferred commanders such as Model who dutifully held on to every inch of territory and completely adhered to Fuhrerprinzip (leader principle). Fuhrerprinzip was the opposite of the philosophy you rightly laud.
Leaders like Halder were regularly overruled and disparaged by Hitler. They maintained their Prussian training to the end, but with diminished influence and results. They did have a positive influence on Nato doctrine, but one thet should not be over-emphasized. US doctrine had already relied on empowered NCOs during WWII.
Very interesting with much learning displayed. Unfortunately, you are about a month behind a shift in Russian tactics to a lower risk (fewer riskier attacks like the fiasco of the river crossing) to all out numerical superiority in artillery and rockets brought to bear on strong points in Ukraine's Donbas lines, after light probing attacks meant to discover the strong and weak points. With an advantage of some say 10:1 in artillery/rockets, Russia is inflicting 100-300 deaths per day on U kraine, and 500 per day wounded. That is unsustainable; meanwhile it took the US two weeks of back and forth to decide to send longer range rocketry to Ukraine and finally with stipulations that they would not (range of up to 50 kil., not 200 although that may be hidden at this point) and accounts I've read in the NYTimes says it hasn't arrived yet (first ten day of June) and so Ukraine infantry is "fighting" an enemy they never see except for the shellbursts coming from 10-30 miles away and much further when it is some form of missile or rocket attacks (the rockets vary widely in range).
This may not be "imaginative" warfare by western standards, but it is the historical, WWII based Russian strength and the Biden and NATO imposed limitations - no troops on the ground, no planes in the air - is showing its great weakness, and, by the way, that NY Times account indicated Russia has aircraft fly over dominance over the battlefield in Donbas, just to clarify or countermand all the media coverage in line with the US party line: no Western Planes needed, Ukraine is doing fine without us in the air.
Contrary to the flow of your writing Professor Tooze, I think Ukraine is losing, and Joe Biden and the American fear of facing Russia directly is the cause, which could have been prevented by US troops to Ukraine in Dec.-Jan. of 2021-2022, since we were so sure of invasion.
To me the most important take away from the war in Ukraine is the importance of supplies, and technologically superior (or at least adequate) equipment. Ukraine is not itself producing the weapons that are keeping it in the fight. These weapons are supplied by the West. I am not a military strategist but it is difficult for me to imagine Ukraine hanging on for as long as it has without this support.
In business there is a concept sometimes referred to as your daily nut. What is the bare minimum you need to keep the lights on and the business going? I think that’s what we are talking about with the weapons supplies.
Of course the next logical question is, once Ukraine gets these weapons, what do they do with them? And here talk of military strategies becomes relevant.
I am just guessing but I suspect Russia was clearly unprepared for the resistance shown by Ukraine, which was made possible by these weapons. So perhaps the deficiency in Russian strategy was due to deficiency in their assessment of the facts and expectations regarding Western material support for Ukraine. I think it is fully possible that Russia will adapt, and I am not convinced that a war of attrition favors Ukraine. Finland too performed well in the beginning but eventually ceded territory. Of course, I don’t think they were supplied to any great extent by other countries, so Ukraines case may well turn out better (at least that’s my hope.)
Fascinating. I was an unwilling NCO in CI at a corps HQ in the early 70s, and I once asked the young officers who were war gaming two questions: why didnt the Russians nuke us first instead of letting us nuke them and what had we learned from the German retreat from Russia in 43, 44, & 45? The answers were that they didnt have tactical nukes and hand waving. I hated the goddam army and couldnt wait to get out and only learned years later that not everyone in it other than the unwilling werent actually morons. A great post. Thank you.
It's been a week and look where this is at. Ukraine is losing and will lose another major city, as reported. It no longer affects the Black Sea. It WILL NOT do anything with the million-dollar HIMARS, because those did very little for the outcome in Afghanistan, be it ISIS or the Taliban.
For Europe, they have been sucked in by Biden. They buy Russian oil from India. They are returning to coal. Brussels in protest. The UK, as well. They are PROVING that NATO cannot win a war, but not for might, but for economical reasons.
And then the reality of it all. Russians have rallied around Putin. He is not dying (fake news by the US). The ruble propped up. Half of the $600 billion of gold resevres in tact. Russia finding new markets.
And the deafening of how the world cannot dick around with the Biden administration on foreign policy.
Admit it. Russia has won, will win, will demand all sanctions removed. And Ukraine, for its efforts better remove crooked Zelenskyy and admit that their sacrifices were in vain.
Folks, don't follow America and it's crooked agenda to control the world through wars, covert actions and thru central banking. Replace your politicians and now. America has attacked emerging nations thru a weaponized dollar and has engaged in actions against every oil and gas leader- Russia, Iraq, Iran, Venezuela, Libya, Syria. It will seek to disrupt Turkey, destabilizing that region. It has even disrupted semi-innocent Ukraine.
At home, America wants to get people's guns, but doesn't want to go into the inner city to get those guns. DC is crooked.
"Auftragstaktik has had a convoluted history. ...it is, like the term blitzkrieg, one of those German terms that has had more of a life outside of Germany than inside it. For the record, it appears hardly at all in the professional literature of the twentieth-century German army...". Robert M. Citino, Death of the Wehrmacht: The German Campaigns of 1942 (Kansas, 2007) p.16 n.9.
A couple of weeks ago, alternative media sources posted a series of videos purporting to be Ukrainian soldiers.
In each, a group of about 30 men would pose as if for a group photo, and the leader would speak to the camera. Generally the message was "you've sent us here with no support or clear mission, so we're quitting the war." I think they were shared on Telegram amongst the soldiers (why they are all so similar).
If these are real (and alternative media has lately been walking back a lot fewer claims than the western-approved), it goes directly to one serious downside to mission control. The mission leader can override the larger purposes of central command.
American reporting in with a little bit of proud nationalism. New reader, loving the perspective.
In the Revolutionary war, the European detachments learned from the Colonists barbaric ambushes of British troops, our guerrilla warfare against columns that faced each other and “FIRE’ed” ;)
True of the British but also of countries with no real stake, who were merely observers.
edit: wouldn’t be surprising if the Colonists learned the style from the Native Americans
Mission command. You do not give that history the nod it deserves, my dude. Otherwise, carry on, your lucidity is a gift and I very much appreciate it.
God save us from our modern rebels, fed a diet of incessant trash, made up and meaningless TRE45ONs.
A whole lot of "extrapolation" from one military blunder. playing into the pre-conceived stereotypes of "western agility" vs. "eastern rigidity". The failed crossing of Seversky Donetsk was much discussed as an exemplary failure of command in Russian Telegram channels (behind some of which are some very well informed and connected military persons), but it is an exception that proves the rule - in this war the Ukrainian side has been the rigid and inflexible one (dig in, defend anything to the point of encirclement and annihilation), while the Russians moved and maneuvered over a 800km length of battlefield, changing axis of attack and intensity many times.
The results are slowly becoming visible - the Ukrainians are losing the war.
It’s also pretty weird considering Russia’s outnumbered, highly mechanized force has constantly set the rules of the engagement and Ukraine’s massive mobilized force, it seems, is fundamentally reactive. Russia cutting its losses in Kiev and Ukraine hunkering suicidally in Mariupol and now Sievierodonetsk are indicative.
Tooze is reading too much into the existence of Ukraine’s cadre of elite, NATO-trained officers, a large number of which, by the way, have become casualties. The bulk of the war has the Russians as the putative “Germans”.
Yup, just penned my own take Sunday morning, same conclusion. The West still, as shown by the agonizing two week debate on the "allowable" range and use of our rocket systems, don't let them hit the Russian sources wherever they are, limited to Russian fire coming from within the old border, Ukraine that is...the perfect and continued example of deferring to Putin's stipulations and threats time and time again. The Donbas resembles the great fixed position battles of the Eastern front in WWII and along the WEstern front, WWI: massive artillery fire exchanged but without the massive infantry/armor follow up. So far at least.
Sorry folks: only boots on the ground with greater firepower and use of A-10 Warthogs flown by American pilots can save this situation, and yes I know that the Warthogs must have close to air superiority with all that implies (taking out Russian command and control and electronics wherever they are situated)...
So far, Putin has dominated the chess board after the initial tactical victories which Professor Tooze traces back for us to a history of WEstern military thinking. But so far, the grand chessboard of the war is dominated by the cautious politics of Joe Biden, as taught to Putin in his fiasco of "negotiations" with Joe Manchin domestically. Putin has read Biden just the way Hitler read the west's response to the Spanish Civil War, and the Germany response to Russian economics after Putin's rise. Very similar to the German response to the West in Europe, 1935-1938.
I think we are in a much deeper hole than the public realizes, and our Western elites is more than happy to sacrifice tens of thousands of Ukrainian lives, civilian and military, and the destruction of vast tracts of infrastructure to keep the risk level down. Remind anyone of the sacrifice of the working class to globalization?
Hysterical, as is usual when someone invokes Hitler.
When the drift of events, especially the rise of Donald Trump and his good friend in the Kremlin, Putin, show a willingness to use the big lie repeatedly and to whip their followers up with tales of the criminality of blacks 7 immigrants in the US and in Russia, Nazis taking over the Ukraine (and Putin doing very well to use German Nazis tactics against Ukraine, paralleling the fate of Warsaw in 1944), to try to recapture the glories of Tsarist and USSR territorial range, while domestically making a cult of World War II heroics and forging a conservative alliance with the Russian Orthodox Church, I think readings in the history of the Weimar Republic, and yes, a good biography of Hitler, like Ian Kershaw's two volume one, are in order. And of course, your response is equivalent to calling me the crazy one! Many of the dominant top 10% in the West, especially in the US, use your tactic of ruling Hitler analogies off the table; of course, scholars like Timothy Snyder and Fritz Stern have been issuing warnings for some time, and I find the more I read about Weimar Germany, 1919-1933, the closer the US seems to me to be ready to duplicate the experience - in its own way, but close enough. While our level of political violence does not come close to matching the left-right violence in the streets of Germany during those 14 years, our level of militias on the right and 300-400 million guns in the hands of mostly those on the Right, even if they dress in "white shirts and khakis" plus the stances of Donald Trump - give me all the signals I need to worry, and to revive reading the best biographies of the Austrian agitator. Hitler. Trump has long since crossed the line of being just an American authoritarian like Father Coughlin or Joe McCarthy - he attempted a coup on Jan. 6th which turned out much like the Beer Hall Putsch in 1923 which Hitler tried to pull off...but the time was not quite ready, and the German Right then did not march with him...it would take a decade.
You just repeated yourself. Still hysterial and wrong. Not interested in this "conversation".
Likewise you can be sure Sir.
This is probably the most uneducated, historically and politically slanted, inaccurate nonsense I’ve ever read! You are arrogant and pompous with an agenda to spread your false information to rally other ignorant like minded fools. I’m guessing you never served in uniform nor have you faced a real enemy as you hid in your basement pontificating about things you have imagined to be true. You're hate for President Trump has blinded your mind, heart and soul from seeing facts for what they are and logic to be able to honestly access past, current and future events. Go back to you basement and ask your parents for your allowance so you can fly to a country that will except your unique slant on war politics.
And still people cannot see that there are so many things that were risked by backing Ukraine and now risk assessment says a US loss will reveal much more about how the world really needs to stop following one big gdm loser that always ends up screwing them.
Why do people believe this obviously biased Ukrainian view of what happened at that river crossing? The Russians are clearly winning the war and the Ukrainians have not shown any special "agility". There is a reason why Ukraine release no information on casualties. Just look at the maps (from Ukrainian sources) of where engagements are happening and it is very obvious that Ukraine is retreating everywhere. Believing propaganda can be very dangerous to the soldiers on the front lines.
and a full collapse is coming
I'm not that sure. Clearly, the Russians want to seal off the coast all the way to Odessa, and even with all their numerical superiority are only proceeding at a snail's pace everywhere. 'Something' is making it very hard for them at every point of contact... but it's not their willingness to shed the lives of their own soldiers. It's so funny... Trump, Johnson, Putin... Really not where they'd planned to be by 7/4/2022, is it?
The Ukrainian Army has had eight years to build the defences of the Donbass, and also Russia has not committed anywhere near a majority of its armed forces. Instead, after the initial few weeks it has relied upon its massive advantage with artillery to slowly pulverize the Ukrainian positions whilst minimizing its own casualties. The result was the breakthrough at Popasna and the developing envelopment of Slavyansk, as such defences tend to hold in place until they break, and then they break quite quickly.
To extrapolate from a single incident, the attempted river crossing, commits a fundamental scientific and statistical error. Looking at the bigger picture of the war in general, the Russians are winning in a very loss-effective manner. Once beyond the in-depth defences of the Donbass, and with much of the professional Ukrainian army under the ground, a prisoner of war, or injured beyond recovery to the field (or refusing to fight as has been shown in multiple cases), the war tempo will move much faster.
Zelensky and his government have made a major strategic error in pouring in men and arms into a salient thats will inevitably collapse, a meat grinder being used by the Russians to destroy the Ukrainian army. This is a major reason why the fight is slow, as Zelensky throws more and more of his army into this cauldron. Once the cauldron, and much of the Ukrainian Army, is finished who will be left to defend the rest of Ukraine?
The recent calls for the mobilization of women and children shows a significant level of alarm by the Ukrainian authorities at the losses (probably at least 1,000 a day). Let's also remember that the Soviet Army destroyed the vast majority of the Nazi forces (85%) in WW2, while the rest of the allies fought only a small proportion.
Anyone who thinks that the NATO forces are superior to the Russian army should take the time to read Andrei Martyanov's books for a rude awakening.
I think you misread Model. His moves in defense of Operation Mars and the Rzhev salient were a prime example of Auftragstaktik, as well as his intentional withholding of armored units for defensive purposes during the Citadel assault (disobeying Hitler's specific orders). Anyway, the Russians proved they learned from their mistakes during WWII, and can't simply be pigeonholed as unimaginative and inflexible due to their leadership culture. But the extraordinarily poor performance of the Russian army in the first few months of the Ukraine invasion does nothing but reinforce this myth.
"According to Ukrainian defence chiefs" pretty well sums it up. Ukraine is losing the war that it has been preparing defensive positions for during the past seven years. Its casualties are far greater than Russia's. It is reduced to conscripting women. It has sent its local part time defense forces to fill in the gaps in its defensive positions... and this is 'agility' learned from the Wehrmacht and, of course, the legendary Prussian General staff tradition.
I would be much more cynical about information derived from the Ukrainian leadership, either military or political. The major influences on both are certainly German but more from the SS than from the Wehrmacht tradition.
The USSR also had to resort to conscripting women, and they ultimately beat the Germans. Not that Ukraine has comparable resources to mobilize here.
The Ukraine military has been defeated for two months already. I don't know what kind of funding you are smoking, Adam, but the only successes in Ukraine are the people cleaning up all the dead Ukrainian soldiers.
It is beyond disgusting that people are pretending that those facts are not real. You are killing these men and women. They all should have surrendered long ago and every death is just another mark of American hubris.
It's amazing that no one yet has blamed the Biden administration for creating the moment, triggering it and then using it to deflect from the poor success at home. And everyone bought it.
This moment is 30 years in the making, so I am assuming there are too many people that we should be pointing our fingers at that are hiding their culpability.
I'm confused. If the Germans were so much better than the Russians, why did the Russians win the war in the East? Why are those NATO trained Ukrainians getting mauled everywhere?
Even an exemplary army shouldn't try to take on the entire world. The Germans didn't have nearly the industrial capacity of the Allies, and their navy could never rival Britain's either. The German army actually did some wargaming of an invasion of the USSR beforehand and concluded that they didn't have enough troops, but Hitler insisted anyway.
To be fair, the US probably saved Russia thru Lend Lease. Spam (the food) kept them from starving. The Russians suffered Biblical losses (hence why they are not playing games with anything close to a "nazi"), and Russia suffered many defeats. Even in victory, Russia lost. The siege of Leningrad ALONE cost Russia more casualties than all the US war dead from all wars COMBINED in their 250 year history.
Only after Hitler declared war on everybody (and their mother) did victory become a mathematical impossibly for Germany. If it wasn't for German military acumen, they would have been beaten years earlier.
agreed; Russians lost something like 31 million (soldiers/civilians); US something like 280,000. Should be worth a mention , some sympathy .
You wrote that: "The open secret amongst military experts is that NATO’s “mission command” concept so widely touted as a precious gift from “West” was, in fact, taken directly from the German military tradition and most immediately from Hitler’s Wehrmacht." In fact, Prussia (not so much the rest of Germany) is the source of this military philosophy and the Hitler period was in contrast to this tradition as Hitler micro-managed the war, frequently overruling the military professionals, creating the type of inflexibility you rightly decry.
When you wrote about mobile defense, I'm surprised you didn't mention Erich von Manstein who was a master of it. But Hitler upbraided Manstein for giving up the territory involved in setting up counterstrikes and greatly preferred commanders such as Model who dutifully held on to every inch of territory and completely adhered to Fuhrerprinzip (leader principle). Fuhrerprinzip was the opposite of the philosophy you rightly laud.
Leaders like Halder were regularly overruled and disparaged by Hitler. They maintained their Prussian training to the end, but with diminished influence and results. They did have a positive influence on Nato doctrine, but one thet should not be over-emphasized. US doctrine had already relied on empowered NCOs during WWII.
Very interesting with much learning displayed. Unfortunately, you are about a month behind a shift in Russian tactics to a lower risk (fewer riskier attacks like the fiasco of the river crossing) to all out numerical superiority in artillery and rockets brought to bear on strong points in Ukraine's Donbas lines, after light probing attacks meant to discover the strong and weak points. With an advantage of some say 10:1 in artillery/rockets, Russia is inflicting 100-300 deaths per day on U kraine, and 500 per day wounded. That is unsustainable; meanwhile it took the US two weeks of back and forth to decide to send longer range rocketry to Ukraine and finally with stipulations that they would not (range of up to 50 kil., not 200 although that may be hidden at this point) and accounts I've read in the NYTimes says it hasn't arrived yet (first ten day of June) and so Ukraine infantry is "fighting" an enemy they never see except for the shellbursts coming from 10-30 miles away and much further when it is some form of missile or rocket attacks (the rockets vary widely in range).
This may not be "imaginative" warfare by western standards, but it is the historical, WWII based Russian strength and the Biden and NATO imposed limitations - no troops on the ground, no planes in the air - is showing its great weakness, and, by the way, that NY Times account indicated Russia has aircraft fly over dominance over the battlefield in Donbas, just to clarify or countermand all the media coverage in line with the US party line: no Western Planes needed, Ukraine is doing fine without us in the air.
Contrary to the flow of your writing Professor Tooze, I think Ukraine is losing, and Joe Biden and the American fear of facing Russia directly is the cause, which could have been prevented by US troops to Ukraine in Dec.-Jan. of 2021-2022, since we were so sure of invasion.
To me the most important take away from the war in Ukraine is the importance of supplies, and technologically superior (or at least adequate) equipment. Ukraine is not itself producing the weapons that are keeping it in the fight. These weapons are supplied by the West. I am not a military strategist but it is difficult for me to imagine Ukraine hanging on for as long as it has without this support.
In business there is a concept sometimes referred to as your daily nut. What is the bare minimum you need to keep the lights on and the business going? I think that’s what we are talking about with the weapons supplies.
Of course the next logical question is, once Ukraine gets these weapons, what do they do with them? And here talk of military strategies becomes relevant.
I am just guessing but I suspect Russia was clearly unprepared for the resistance shown by Ukraine, which was made possible by these weapons. So perhaps the deficiency in Russian strategy was due to deficiency in their assessment of the facts and expectations regarding Western material support for Ukraine. I think it is fully possible that Russia will adapt, and I am not convinced that a war of attrition favors Ukraine. Finland too performed well in the beginning but eventually ceded territory. Of course, I don’t think they were supplied to any great extent by other countries, so Ukraines case may well turn out better (at least that’s my hope.)
Fascinating. I was an unwilling NCO in CI at a corps HQ in the early 70s, and I once asked the young officers who were war gaming two questions: why didnt the Russians nuke us first instead of letting us nuke them and what had we learned from the German retreat from Russia in 43, 44, & 45? The answers were that they didnt have tactical nukes and hand waving. I hated the goddam army and couldnt wait to get out and only learned years later that not everyone in it other than the unwilling werent actually morons. A great post. Thank you.
It's been a week and look where this is at. Ukraine is losing and will lose another major city, as reported. It no longer affects the Black Sea. It WILL NOT do anything with the million-dollar HIMARS, because those did very little for the outcome in Afghanistan, be it ISIS or the Taliban.
For Europe, they have been sucked in by Biden. They buy Russian oil from India. They are returning to coal. Brussels in protest. The UK, as well. They are PROVING that NATO cannot win a war, but not for might, but for economical reasons.
And then the reality of it all. Russians have rallied around Putin. He is not dying (fake news by the US). The ruble propped up. Half of the $600 billion of gold resevres in tact. Russia finding new markets.
And the deafening of how the world cannot dick around with the Biden administration on foreign policy.
Admit it. Russia has won, will win, will demand all sanctions removed. And Ukraine, for its efforts better remove crooked Zelenskyy and admit that their sacrifices were in vain.
Folks, don't follow America and it's crooked agenda to control the world through wars, covert actions and thru central banking. Replace your politicians and now. America has attacked emerging nations thru a weaponized dollar and has engaged in actions against every oil and gas leader- Russia, Iraq, Iran, Venezuela, Libya, Syria. It will seek to disrupt Turkey, destabilizing that region. It has even disrupted semi-innocent Ukraine.
At home, America wants to get people's guns, but doesn't want to go into the inner city to get those guns. DC is crooked.
Real simple... Putin wins and wins with sanctions lifted.
Alternate View: https://www.moonofalabama.org/2022/06/ukraine-bits-no-ammo-more-casualties-thin-lines-propaganda-and-passing-the-buck.html#comments
"Auftragstaktik has had a convoluted history. ...it is, like the term blitzkrieg, one of those German terms that has had more of a life outside of Germany than inside it. For the record, it appears hardly at all in the professional literature of the twentieth-century German army...". Robert M. Citino, Death of the Wehrmacht: The German Campaigns of 1942 (Kansas, 2007) p.16 n.9.
Great history and perspective.
A couple of weeks ago, alternative media sources posted a series of videos purporting to be Ukrainian soldiers.
In each, a group of about 30 men would pose as if for a group photo, and the leader would speak to the camera. Generally the message was "you've sent us here with no support or clear mission, so we're quitting the war." I think they were shared on Telegram amongst the soldiers (why they are all so similar).
If these are real (and alternative media has lately been walking back a lot fewer claims than the western-approved), it goes directly to one serious downside to mission control. The mission leader can override the larger purposes of central command.
American reporting in with a little bit of proud nationalism. New reader, loving the perspective.
In the Revolutionary war, the European detachments learned from the Colonists barbaric ambushes of British troops, our guerrilla warfare against columns that faced each other and “FIRE’ed” ;)
True of the British but also of countries with no real stake, who were merely observers.
edit: wouldn’t be surprising if the Colonists learned the style from the Native Americans
Mission command. You do not give that history the nod it deserves, my dude. Otherwise, carry on, your lucidity is a gift and I very much appreciate it.
God save us from our modern rebels, fed a diet of incessant trash, made up and meaningless TRE45ONs.