In 1927, Robert Graves published a little book called Lars Porsena or the Future of Swearing and Improper Language. He noted a recent decline in the use of foul language by the English, and predicted that this decline would continue indefinitely, until foul language had all but disappeared from the average man’s vocabulary. History has not borne him out, to say the least: indeed, I have known economists make more accurate predictions.
Theodore Dalrymple, “Get stuffed, sunshine”, The Independent, 1998-10-10.
May 21, 2023
QotD: Swearing
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May 20, 2023
QotD: Alienation
It was a real enough insight into the psychology of factory work, and Marx deserves all the credit he got for it, but “alienation” was even more useful in a broad social context — the separation of man from the cultural products of his society. After all, if capitalism is the mode of production around which society organizes itself, and the products of capitalism are by definition alienated from their producers, then by extension capitalist society must be alienated from itself. Indeed, what could “society” even mean, in a world of lever-pullers and bearing-lubers and jam-clearers?
Again, a profound and important insight into the social conditions of the Industrial Age. Ours is a mechanical, transactional world, one not well-suited to the kind of organism we are. That’s why Marxism and its spacey little brother Nazism are both what Jeffrey Herf calls “reactionary modernism.” The Communists thought they were the endpoint of the Enlightenment; the Nazis rejected it entirely; but both of them were curdled Romantics, in love with Enlightenment science while terrified of that science’s society. Lenin said that Communism was “Soviet power plus electrification”. Goebbels wasn’t that pithy, but “the feudal system plus autobahns” is pretty much what he meant by Nazism, and both boil down to “medieval peasant villages with air conditioning”.
That the one excludes the other — necessarily, comrade, necessarily, in the full Hegelian sense of the word — never occurred to either of them shouldn’t really be held against them, since both of them were determined to freeze the world exactly as it was. Both were so terrified of individuality that they were determined to stamp it out, not realizing that individuality was the only thing that made their fantasy worlds possible. Medieval peasants who were happy being medieval peasants never would’ve invented air conditioning in the first place, nicht wahr?
Severian, “Alienation”, Rotten Chestnuts, 2020-10-29.
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May 19, 2023
QotD: The horses of the Eurasian Steppe
I wanted to start by stressing these dates just to note that the peoples of the Eurasian Steppe had a long time to adapt themselves to a nomadic lifestyle structured around horses and pastoralism, which, as we’ve seen, was not the case for the peoples of the Americas, whose development of a sustainable system of horse nomadism was violently disrupted.
That said, the steppe horse (perhaps more correctly, the steppe pony) is not quite the same as modern domesticated horses. The sorts of horses that occupy stables in Europe or America are the product of centuries of selective breeding for larger and stronger horses. Because those horses were stable fed (that is, fed grains and hay, in addition to grass), they could be bred much larger what a horse fed entirely on grass could support (with the irony that many of those breeds of horses, if released into the wild in their native steppe, would be unable to subsist themselves), because processed grains have much higher nutrition and calorie density than grass. So while most modern horses range between c. 145-180cm tall, the horses of the steppe were substantially smaller, 122-142cm. Again, just to be clear, this is essential because the big chargers and work-horses of the agrarian world cannot sustain themselves purely on grass and the Steppe nomad needs a horse which can feed itself (while we’re on horse-size, mustangs, the feral horses of the Americas, generally occupy the low-end of the horse range as well, typically 142-152cm in height – even when it is clear that their domesticated ancestors were breeds of much larger work horses).
Bret Devereaux, “That Dothraki Horde, Part II: Subsistence on the Hoof”, A Collection of Unmitigated Pedantry, 2020-12-11.
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May 18, 2023
QotD: The unironic joys of British cuisine
Indeed, it would be trivially easy to trace the shifting faultlines of broader political currents through the prism of food. Witness the sudden shift within America’s food culture, as a previous generations’ celebration of the diverse culinary options provided by mass immigration has morphed into stern lectures from diaspora commentators on the vaguely-defined evils of white people appropriating “ethnic” cuisine. In Britain, equally, a slim volume could easily be written on the political import uncomfortably burdened on fish and chips or chicken tikka masala by devotees of mass migration; a cultural theorist could likewise tease apart the “Proper” label now applied to a distinct category of foodstuff — proper pies, proper burgers, proper chips — as a marker of a specific type of middle-class yearning for proletarian authenticity, while maintaining socially acceptable levels of consumption standards. Like the fetishised fry-ups of London caffs in prosperous areas targeting themselves at tracksuit-wearing millennial creatives, the Proper Burger is the self-consciously gentrified football terrace of our national cuisine, a cultural marker of a precisely measurable socioeconomic bracket.
When this dynamic is considered, Britain’s strange relationship with food, and with its own national cuisine, becomes worthy of analysis. Though much mocked by online Americans, presumably inured to the Lovecraftian horrors of their own food culture, British cuisine at its best is hearty, simple fare, showcasing the natural bounty of these islands, our waters rich with fish and seafood (much of it exported abroad to more appreciative consumers), our rain-soaked pastures the nursemaid of the free-range meat and rich dairy goods Britain has excelled in for millennia. At its best, British food displays the worth of good ingredients cooked well — and at its worst, of poor ingredients cooked badly.
Yet the much-vaunted culinary renaissance in British food from the Nineties on, despite the buoyant effect of an endless stream of glossy cookbooks on the publishing industry, does not seem to have had an appreciable effect on the food most of us eat from day to day. Which British office worker does not recognise the moment of weary, grudging submission to the lunchtime meal deal, the limp and soggy sandwich which fuels the nation’s economy? If Britain has a national dish, it is more likely to be the Ballardian misery of the provincial train station panini, simultaneously scorching hot and half-raw, than it is a steaming steak and ale pie, its crust crisp with suet, or a plate of sizzling lamb’s liver fried in butter with farmhouse bacon.
There is, as there is with every aspect of British life, a strong class dynamic to British food. The most fervent appreciators of the frugal peasant dishes of the past, the nation’s only consumers of stewed beef shin or lamb sweetbreads, are more likely to be upper-middle class, middle-aged executives, who by lunching at St John or the Quality Chop House celebrate the forgotten folkways of their own country, than the call centre workers or shop assistants who have replaced our rural and industrial proletariat. Yet who in Britain is immune to the sudden craving for comfort satiable only by a serving of rich cauliflower cheese or of dark and savoury cottage pie, or has not felt the hobbit-like “Why shouldn’t I?” satisfaction of choosing the fry up at a hotel breakfast over the continental pastry selection?
Aris Roussinos, “How Britain eats itself”, UnHerd, 2023-02-03.
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May 17, 2023
QotD: How do you say “Catch-22” en français?
The nectar of the gods, French wines have a reputation for being cultivated in a sun-kissed vineyard surrounding a honey-stoned chateau, owned by a Hollywood star like Leonardo DiCaprio, or a Gallic aristo whose family escaped the guillotine. Jean-François is neither. And he is not the only vigneron who is struggling. Things are far from rosé for France’s small winemakers, as two hundred militants made clear outside the Prefecture in Bordeaux one Thursday last month. They follow the thousand who protested in the city last December, when vignerons hung a human effigy outside the doors of the Bordeaux Wine Council, to raise awareness for grape-growers at risk of suicide. “Every day there is a suicide in agriculture,” Didier Cousiney, president of the Viti 33 collective informed the crowd.
In the Bordeaux area alone, 500 vignerons are looking in the bottom of the glass and seeing financial ruin. And you can add to these the growers nearing retirement who cannot find buyers for their vineyards. Like Jean-François. In the Medoc, land prices are actually sinking.
Jean-François would like to simply abandon his vines. He cannot, because it is illegal. Abandoned vines are vectors for disease, which can spread to other vineyards. Vines must be either cultivated or grubbed up. But grubbing costs €2,000 per hectare, money Jean-François does not have.
Crisis in the French wine industry affects more than viticulteurs. In France, wine is not merely a drink: it’s a national symbol, the liquid affirmation of l’Art de vivre à la française. If you opened the arteries of Marianne, you would find them coursing with a Bordeaux Appellations d’Origine Contrôlée, the official certification for wine grown in the geographical region and made with requisite skill. Until 1981, French children were allowed to drink wine in school. So, when the wine industry turns sour, France’s identity suffers a hangover.
As does its income. Wine is France’s second biggest export after aircraft, worth about €15 billion a year according to the Fédération des Exportateurs de Vins et Spiritueux de France (FEVS).
What’s going wrong in the vineyards of La Belle France? Jean-François’s eloquent gestures indicate some of the causes. Doubtless French winegrowers have been complaining about the weather since the Gauls planted the first native vines in the fifth century BC. But in the last five years, the weather has lurched from one Biblical extreme to another. We’ve had drought, which did for my own few vines last year; we’ve had flooding; we’ve had hailstorms. A late frost in April 2021 affected 80% of the nation’s vineyards.
Such was the desperation of viticulteurs then that vineyards were heated overnight with candles and paraffin heaters, to keep the frost off the delicate buds of the fruit. The sight of the vineyards of Bordeaux, the sacred centre of the French wine industry, lit by geometrically exact lines of candlelight was magnificent, but the image ultimately came to symbolise the powerlessness of humans in the face of Mother Nature. After le gel historique, there were few climate change deniers in Bordeaux’s vineyards. According to the European Environmental Agency, France is suffering the biggest economic losses caused by climate change of any country in the world. The Hexagon took a hit of €4.2 billion in 2020 due to climate change.
John Lewis-Stempel, “The bourgeois war on French wine”, UnHerd, 2023-02-01.
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May 16, 2023
QotD: Ah-nuld
The reason you can’t make an “Arnold movie” without Arnold Schwarzenegger, the man, in a starring role isn’t because he’s such an indispensable thespian. It’s because Schwarzenegger doesn’t have an ironic bone in his body. Even when he’s doing comedy (and I think we can all admit, now that he’s in his 70s and effectively long retired, that he could be quite funny), he’s deadly serious. No matter how ludicrous the situation, he’s always 100% in it. No scriptwriter in the 1980s ever felt it necessary to explain how this enormous Austrian bodybuilder ended up being a colonel in the US Special Forces, or a small-town sheriff in Bumfuck, Idaho, or a New York cop, or a CIA agent, or whatever else. He just went with it, and because he did, we did.
In other words, buying a ticket to a Schwarzenegger flick was — like attending a rasslin’ show — an agreement to step outside of ourselves for two hours. We know The Undertaker isn’t a vampire (or whatever), just like we know there’s no possible sequence of events that ever could’ve happened in the real world that would end with an Austrian bodybuilder as a mattress salesman in Minneapolis. So why bother trying to “explain” it? We all agreed, when we bought the ticket, to put “the real world” aside and enter another. In this world, the spectacle’s world, there are vampires who can body slam and bodybuilders who save the world from Satan.
Those are the givens. It doesn’t matter how ludicrous they are, so long as you don’t break your own rules.
Severian, “Rasslin'”, Rotten Chestnuts, 2020-07-26.
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May 15, 2023
QotD: How military history shapes cultures and societies
Aeschylus, son of Euphorion, the Athenian lies beneath this marker
having perished in wheat-bearing Gela
Of his well-known prowess, the grove of Marathon can speak
And long-haired Mede knows it well.If a scholar wants to understand Aeschylus or his plays, don’t they also need to understand this side of his experience too? I know quite a number of scholars who ended up coming to military history this way, looking to answer questions that were not narrowly military, but which ended up touching on war and conflict. For that kind of research – for our potential scholar of Aeschylus – it is important that there be specialists working to understand war and conflict in the period. Of course this is particularly true in understanding historical politics and political narratives, given that most pre-modern states were primarily engines for the raising of revenues for the waging of war (with religious expenditures typically being the only ones comparable in scale).
Bret Devereaux, “Collections: Why Military History?”, A Collection of Unmitigated Pedantry, 2020-11-13.
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May 14, 2023
QotD: The original tabloid journalist
The son of a Congregationalist preacher, Stead grew up in a strict religious household in Northumberland, in a home where theatre was “the Devil’s chapel” and novels “the Devil’s Bible”. Taught to read by his father, the newsman’s nonconformism would inform his campaigns after he moved from the Northern Echo to the Gazette in London.
Stead was most of all famous for the first great newspaper investigation, in 1885, “The Maiden Tribute of Modern Babylon“, on the scandal of child prostitution. Stead had bought a girl called Eliza for £5, on the premise that she was to be taken to a brothel on the continent, using quite dubious methods that got him sent to jail for three months.
Despite this, the story succeeded – a national scandal which led to a change in the law, the age of consent raised from 13 to 16. The idea of English girls being trafficked into sex outraged and horrified the public, Stead’s story imprinted itself deeply into the public psyche, to the extent of influencing George Bernard Shaw’s Pygmalion — thus, Eliza Doolittle.
On the continent it helped to inspire a genre of vaguely pornographic literature about the sexual perversion rife in England, a fantasy that belied the fact that late Victorian London was not a nest of vice, relatively speaking. Most measures of squalor and child abuse had declined in the 19th century and a teenage girl by the end of the century was relatively safe, compared to a predecessor in almost any era; public moral outrage offered protection, even if it could be unforgiving for those same girls who transgressed.
Stead would become the most famous journalist of the era, so renowned that in 1912 he was invited to New York by the US President to attend a conference — and so booked a ticket on a famously unsinkable new liner. He was last seen helping women and children trying to get on to lifeboats, and, true to the chapel ethos of his parents, gave away his lifejacket. He was among the 1,500 who lost their lives on the Titanic.
Ed West, “Our Modern Babylon”, Wrong Side of History, 2023-02-11.
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May 13, 2023
QotD: The inherent absurdity of “Canadian content”
But the real folly of CanCon is not that it is impractical, or prone to abuse, or even unnecessary, though it is all of those things. It is rather that it is nonsensical at its root, in its very purpose – again, so far as anyone can define it. Is the point, after all, artistic or political? But it cannot be artistic: there is no theory of aesthetics that prefers that Canadian artists should make Canadian art that teaches Canadians how Canadian they are.
It is, rather, a political project: the inculcation of national feeling in the public, for the purpose of creating a political community, separate and distinct from the colossus to the south. Without the Maginot Line of CanCon quotas, it is suggested, we would be overwhelmed: first the artists, then the country.
But note the assumptions built into this emotive appeal: that a separate nationality cannot be maintained without cultural difference; that our cultural differences with the Americans are both sufficient in themselves to justify our statehood and yet so fragile as to be washed away in an instant; that, left to their own choices, Canadians would unhesitatingly choose the products of an incomprehensibly alien culture over their own; and that, by virtue of this diet of foreignism, we would no longer be Who We Are as Canadians. Therefore we must not be left to our own choices.
Which is nonsense, because we would still be Who We Are, even in that hypothetical dystopian future: it might not be Who We Were, but so what? The Who We Are we are now at such pains to preserve is itself vastly different from Who We Were before.
And who, in the end are we? As the comedian Martin Short once put it: “we’re the people who watch a lot of American TV”. The wholesale ingestion of a foreign culture – albeit much of it made by expat Canadians – is an integral part of our distinct national identity, an irony that must forever elude our cultural nationalists.
Andrew Coyne, “The concept of CanCon is pure folly. That’s the problem at the heart of Bill C-11”, The Globe and Mail, 2023-02-08.
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May 12, 2023
QotD: Great (but young) Romantic poets
[This is true of any Humanity, of course. Shelley and Keats have to be in the conversation for “greatest English poet,” right up there with Shakespeare. One or both of them might’ve been more naturally talented than the Bard. But Shakespeare was clearly a man of long, deep experience, whereas the Romantics … weren’t. For every “Ozymandias” or “To a Nightingale”, there’s at least one reminder that these guys died at 29 and 25, respectively. To call “The Masque of Anarchy” sophomoric is an insult to sophomores. “Like lions after slumber, In unvanquishable number.” Ugh. Good God, y’all].
Which is why that “social construction” stuff is so popular. Yeah yeah, it has some real (though really limited) explanatory power, but mostly it’s an excuse for kids who believe themselves clever to avoid contrary evidence. Calling, say, “masculinity” “just a social construction” frees you of the burden of entering the headspace of men who do things as men, because they’re men. To stick with a theme: Shakespeare could’ve written something like “the Masque of Anarchy” — probably as a wicked bit of characterization in Hamlet: The Wittenberg Years — but Shelley never could’ve written MacBeth’s “sound and fury” soliloquy. Shakespeare had obviously seen violent death; Shelley obviously hadn’t.
Knowledge of human nature is almost nonexistent in the Biz.
Severian, “How to Teach History”, Rotten Chestnuts, 2020-12-23.
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May 11, 2023
QotD: Divination
But that distinction is crucial, because what you are actually doing in a ritual involving divination is not asking questions about the future, but asking questions of the gods. Divination is not an exercise in seeing, but in hearing – that is, it is a communication, a conversation, with the divine. […]
Many current religions – especially monotheistic ones – tend to view God or the gods as a fundamentally distant, even alien being, decidedly outside of creation. The common metaphor is one where God is like a painter or an architect who creates a painting or a building, but cannot be in or part of that creation; the painter can paint himself, but cannot himself be in the painting and the architect may walk in the building but she cannot be a wall. Indeed, one of the mysteries – in the theological sense […] – of the Christian faith is how exactly a transcendent God made Himself part of creation, because this ought otherwise be inconceivable.
Polytheistic gods do not work this way. They exist within the world, and are typically created with it (as an aside: this is one point where, to get a sense of the religion, one must break with the philosophers; Plato waxes philosophic about his eternal demiurge, an ultimate creator-god, but no one in Greece actually practiced any kind of religion to the demiurge. Fundamentally, the demiurge, like so much fine Greek writing about the gods, was a philosophical construct rather than a religious reality). As we’ll get to next week, this makes the line between humans and gods a lot more fuzzy in really interesting ways. But for now, I want to focus on this basic idea: that the gods exist within creation and consequently can exist within communities of humans.
(Terminology sidenote: we’ve actually approached this distinction before, when we talked about polytheistic gods being immanent, meaning that they were active in shaping creation in a direct, observable way. In contrast, monotheistic God is often portrayed as transcendent, meaning that He sits fundamentally outside of creation, even if He still shapes it. Now, I don’t want to drive down the rabbit hole of the theological implications of these terms for modern faith (though I should note that while transcendence and immanence are typically presented as being opposed qualities, some gods are both transcendent and immanent; the resolution of an apparent contradiction of this sort in a divine act or being like this is what we call a mystery in the religious sense – “this should be impossible, but it becomes possible because of divine action”). But I do want to note the broad contrast between gods that exist within creation and the more common modern conception of a God whose existence supersedes the universe we know.)
Thus, to the polytheistic practitioner, the gods don’t exist outside of creation, or even outside of the community, but as very powerful – and sometimes inscrutable – members of the community. The exact nature of that membership varies culture to culture (for instance, the Roman view of the gods tends towards temperamental but generally benevolent guardians and partners of the state, whereas the Mesopotamian gods seem to have been more the harsh rulers set above human society; that distinction is reflected in the religious structure: in Rome, the final deciding body on religious matters was the Senate, whereas Mesopotamian cities had established, professional priesthoods). But gods do a lot of the things other powerful members of the community do: they own land (and even enslaved persons) within the community, they have homes in the community (this is how temples are typically imagined, as literal homes-away-from-home for the gods, when they’re not chilling in their normal digs), they may take part in civic or political life in their own unique way. […] some of these gods are even more tightly bound to a specific place within the community – a river, stream, hill, field.
And, like any other full member of the community (however “full membership” is defined by a society), the gods expect to be consulted about important decisions.
Bret Devereaux, “Collections: Practical Polytheism, Part III: Polling the Gods”, A Collection of Unmitigated Pedantry, 2019-11-08.
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May 10, 2023
QotD: The Deadly Force Paradigm
MAY – is the use of deadly force within the law (and in policy for the sworn acting in official capacity and/or within the scope of employment)? This element is also addressed objectively, long before the moment-of-decision presents. There are good books and lectures around for general information, and some for state specific analysis. The latter is very, very important. The legal concepts are not always the same for the LEO and non-sworn. When deadly force is used other than in defense of self, the legal issues become more complicated. Have you considered the legal and moral imperatives for having less-lethal equipment and skills? What about advance decision-making for the “aftermath”?
SHOULD – are the “rewards” significantly greater than the “risks”? Everything you are/have and ever will be/have are at stake. This element introduces subjectivity. Many firearms and “personal defense” trainers include this topic (one way or another) in their preset curriculum or address it by responding to questions and hypothetical scenarios. That’s fine, but their analysis cannot definitively answer much for you — you must have thought about and through “it” in advance. I stray away from providing others guidance on the SHOULD, other than to, in somewhat knee-jerk fashion, say sheepishly, “mind your own business”. But, I will note I am not the arbiter of what “your business” is, you are. Except, when something else is in play … or maybe not. Bottom line: It is your gunfight, your life, your future, etc., not the trainer’s. No matter how you stack up on the CAN, success in a deadly force encounter often includes some luck. A well-executed spin of the wheel can still produce varied results. Maybe it’s just a “crap shoot?”
MUST – will you or someone you cannot live without die or suffer great bodily injury unless deadly force is applied? This element calls for application of objective and subjective reasoning, grounded in your knowledge bases of the CAN and MAY. You will be second guessed … by those who were not present and have not had a similar experience. Does that really matter? Pardon me for asking, but do you know what constitutes great bodily harm and what “weapons” can cause it? The applicable legal definition of deadly force?
What about the interrelationship of the elements? Something well north of most of the time, a green light on the CAN and MAY doesn’t compel a green on the SHOULD. (Never lose perspective, especially just because there is a stand your ground law applicable). Similarly, a green on the MAY and SHOULD doesn’t mean the MUST is invoked. There are alternatives to the use of deadly force: Avoidance, disengagement, de-escalation, non-deadly force. Does it “go without saying” that noble intention, green lights on the MAY and SHOULD, and application of the MUST, may not matter a whit if you don’t possess the CAN?
Steven Harris, “The Deadly Force Paradigm Revisited: Can – May – Should – Must”, Modern Service Weapons, 2015-04-28.
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May 9, 2023
QotD: Changing German Panzer tactics in 1943
The following report, though obviously written in haste with little regard for elegance of expression, gives a good view of the changes in tank tactics which took place on the Eastern Front. This translation was made from a typed copy of the original and thus bears no signature. Nonetheless, there is good reason to believe that the author was the famous Fridolin von Senger und Etterlin, who commanded the 17th Armored Division at this time.
1. The tank tactics which led to the great successes of the years 1939, 1940, and 1941 must now be considered obsolete. Even if it were possible today to breakthrough an antitank front by means of the massive employment of concentrated waves of tanks, we would not be able to make use of these methods, which would once more lead to considerable losses, because of our [tank] production situation. These methods, often employed in rapid succession, would lead to such a quick reduction in tank strength that the character of an armored division would be fundamentally altered. This would lead to difficulties for the higher leadership.
The change in tank tactics is logical. The beginning successes of the weapon, the shock effect of which rested upon the technical achievement and overwhelming invincibility of the attacker, found at last its end in the development of appropriate defenses. From the point of view of production, the building of tanks could not keep pace with the building of antitank weapons. Apparently, a thousand antitank rifles, or dozens of antitank guns, can roll off the production lines for every tank.
The following are drawn from these insights.
2. The new tank tactics, which have already gained inevitable acceptance in the divisions, are outlined below.
The tank group no longer forms the nucleus of the armored division, about which other weapons are grouped as auxiliaries. The tank is a new arm acting in concert with and equal to the old arms. In cooperation with other weapons, it retains its power, even though its numbers are far below those called for by tables of organization.
Its meaning as a new arm is a function of the fact that it combines in itself a goodly portion of the two elements important to the attack: fire and maneuver. It derives these qualities from the fact that it is invulnerable, or less vulnerable, because of its armor.
Because the tank arm combines in itself firepower and mobility to a greater degree than other arms, it is the appropriate weapon for forming the main effort [Schwerpunkt].
The combat of the armored division is characterized by the fact that it is a mobile unit in all its parts and, as a result, the division commander is in a position, in the course of a battle, to chose and form a main effort [Schwerpunkt]. This principle excludes an irrevocable commitment of the tank group before an attack. Rigid employment within the framework of an already established battle plan is replaced by division commander himself holding [the tank group] in readiness and the flexibly employing it in the course of fighting against the required, or known to be appropriate, position.
The battle will begin with the infantry attack. The infantry attack provides the required foundation for the strength of the antitank front, for its length and depth. If the antitank front is known, then the tank attack can be ordered according to the classical principles for leading mobile units against the flanks or, if possible the rear, of an enemy defensive position. This attack should only be carried out exclusively by tanks when they can gain complete surprise. If surprise cannot be gained, then in this flank attack fire superiority must be fought for through the employment of artillery and, for the time being and to a certain extent the fire of the tanks themselves, until the enemy antitank front can be shaken or at least split up. If surprise can be gained, then a break-in against the flank of an antitank front can succeed without preparatory fire.
The attack against an enemy antitank front by means of a successful move against its flanks and rear cannot be carried out by tanks alone. It requires the support of artillery. In our experience, however, tank attacks carried out against the flanks and rear have outrun the artillery groups in direct support. Shifting fires by means of forward observers alone is not enough to ensure the shooting up of defensive fronts. What is needed here is thus the self-propelled batteries, which in the same manner as tanks themselves can quickly change their firing positions and thus attain the same mobility as the tank groups.
3. Now that these principles of the new tactics have been laid out, their use in practice will be explained.
a. The use of tanks as the first attack wave against a strongly fortified, deeply organized defensive position leads always to great losses and is thus false.
b. The use of tanks against deeply organized antitank positions is possible with the stipulation that it be commanded by an all-arms leader in close cooperation with other weapons after the formation of a main effort on the spot and that the further prosecution of the battle be steered by the same all-arms leader.
c. The employment of tanks leads to the greatest success when, sent into action and controlled by the all-arms leader, when they are used to strike the enemy in the flank, soon after the latter has begun an attack and before his antitank weapons have established firm antitank positions. Also in this last case, the attack must, with a view to direction and timing, be ordered by the all-arms leader on the spot. (With this last method the weak forces of the worn out 17th Armored Division annihilated one enemy division at Kuteinikowskaja on the 5th of January 1943 and another at Talowaja on the 27th of January, 1943.)
4. These new tactics are based upon the cooperation of the three main arms (infantry, tanks, and artillery) during the entire course of a battle. This cooperation can only be assured when the leader, that is to say, in all cases where the mass of the division is employed, the division commander himself, controls the cooperation of the arms on the spot throughout the entire battle. If, under the press of circumstance, as generally was the case during the battles between the Don and the Volga, widely separated battle groups [Kampfgruppen] of infantry, tanks and artillery had to be formed, it is essential that each of these battle groups be commanded by an all-arms leader, who is neither the commander of the tank element nor the infantry element of the battlegroup.
The all-arms leader’s means of command is the 10-watt radio built into a tank. With this equipment the leader is connected with the tank leaders as well as the leader of the infantry group, who, in case the proper radios are lacking, is provided with a tank. The all-arms commander is also in contact, by means of his armored personnel carrier, with battlegroups not forming part of the main effort and with his first general staff officer (Ia) working far to the rear.
The leader of the artillery group locates himself, according to the ordinary rules of command and control, with the all-arms leader. He is able, as was explained above, to give effective support only as the leader of an artillery group made up of self-propelled batteries. If he does not have access to some of these, there is always the danger the leader of the tank group would find his mobility limited by being bound to the less mobile towed artillery supporting him.
The place of the leader in combat is far forward, so that he can easily see the tank combat and, on the basis of these observations, can steer the course of the battle. He is sufficiently separated from the forward wave of tanks that he does not get involved in the tank-versus-tank and tank-versus-antitank battles, for this combat will focus his attention on the tanks fighting in the forward lines, to the point where tactical decisions which derive from the cooperation of all arms, can no longer be made.
The place of the leader can, however, rarely be chosen outside of the zone of enemy artillery fire. He can nevertheless remain mobile, thanks to the peculiar virtues of his means of command, namely voice radio. In the course of an attack in progress, he should be far enough forward to allow contact with the infantry group. Through it he can exert the leadership of a combined arms combat.
an armored personnel carrier used as a mobile command post in Russia in 1941From his location the leader should be in a position to himself assemble, according to the development of the situation and the requirements of the cooperation of arms, discrete tank groups.
Cooperation between discrete tank groups and infantry groups is possible if the all-arms leader remains in voice radio contact with the tank group in question. The attachment of tank groups to infantry groups is, as a matter of principle, always to be avoided. The infantry is not in a position to ensure the cooperation of infantry, heavy infantry weapons, and artillery as well as tanks because it is fully occupied with the conduct of the combat of other weapons. On this basis, the attachment of tanks to infantry divisions, which cannot be trained in the cooperation of the three arms, is, as a matter of principle, to be avoided.
The requirement to achieve success by the cooperation of all three arms does not exclude the concentration of all tanks in a single attack. This is still to be striven for. The concentration of tank power in the main effort [Schwerpunkt] will, however, not to striven for through systematic employment on the basis of an established plan, but rather in the course of the battle through the assembling of certain tank groups, in short, through the flexible combat leadership and formation of the main effort [Schwerpunkt] in the course of the battle through the all-arms leader himself.
This battle method, which aims at the close cooperation of the three main arms, cannot function without the formation of a special infantry group mounted in armored personnel carriers. Because it is essentially different, this group does not belong with the wheeled-vehicle mounted infantry of the division. They form, rather, an integrated part of the tank group. They can be attached to the later or will be employed according to the decision of the all-arms leader in accordance with the same principles that apply to the employment of tank waves.
The armored personnel carrier group of the infantry which is attached to the tank group corresponds closely to the self-propelled artillery. Both are special branches of their main arm, which work within the tank group itself and without which the cooperation of the tank group with the mass of the truck-mounted infantry and the towed artillery would not be possible.
5. The following deductions for the construction of tanks can be drawn from the aforementioned portrayal of the tactics and command techniques of the armored division. Because the race between tanks and anti-tank defenses can only be won by even heavier types and thus can not be guaranteed, the focus of effort [Schwerpunkt] in construction must be towards mobility and firepower.
The cooperation of arms can never be so close that artillery-infantry attacks alone can prepare an antitank front so that the tank attack can break through it in a rapid rollover. Instead, tanks must be an a position to use long-range fire to put anti-tank fronts out of action or at least so suppress them so as to make possible the further prosecution of the attack. They are only in a position to do this when they possess weapons of such a caliber that they can win superiority over immobile antitank weapons by means of fire and mobility.
According to this line of reasoning, great things can be expected from the creation of self-propelled artillery batteries. As unarmored fire units with greater range than tanks themselves they are in a position to attain that fire superiority which is necessary to gain the upper hand against the antitank defense.
During this winter’s fighting the best results were gained from assault gun battalions which, because of their great mobility and firepower, were employed and led in the same way as tanks. From the point of view of mobility, they outdid the tanks. Self- propelled guns were likewise successfully employed according to the same principles, to augment tank and assault gun groups, particularly by fire.
In contrast, the Tiger tanks, which were supposed to have fulfilled all three requirements, namely firepower, mobility, and heavy armor, were less successful, for their mobility was not sufficient for the elastic battle leadership outlined above. (In this experience it is important to take into account that the units sent fresh into battle were not at the height of their powers, especially where the use of radio was concerned. The impression of their lack of mobility, especially in rolling country with hard-frozen ground, however, would have been the same, even if the training of the personnel had been completed.)
These lessons of the more and more similar tactics of tanks, assault guns, and self-propelled artillery, which in more or less ad hoc arrangements establish the principle of fast-moving heavy firepower, causes one to wish that these weapons could be organized under a single leader with the goal of combining under him standardized training and well-schooled cooperation. This commander is the commander of the division’s tank group, that is to say, all more or less armored weapons mounted on tracked vehicles that are used for the fire battle. He must also have attached as an essential part an infantry group mounted in armored personnel carriers which should be made available according to a ratio of at least one infantry company for each three tank companies of whatever type.
The self-propelled artillery battalion should not be made an organic part of the tank group because of artillery training and the proposed design that will allow the guns to be dismounted. It should remain an organic part of the artillery regiment and be as- signed, on a case by case basis, to the commander of the tank group.
Unsigned report, probably authored by Fridolin von Senger und Etterlin, who commanded 17th Panzer Division at that time, via Bruce Gudmundsson’s Tactical Notebook, 2023-02-06.
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May 8, 2023
QotD: The “science” of history
A moment’s glance at the “science” of history guys like Marx actually produced, though, show the flaw in that line of thought. Here again, Shelley’s novel is instructive. Victor Frankenstein could give his creature life, but it wouldn’t obey him — being alive, it had free will and a mind of its own. So “scientific” history always, in the end, means something like “anthropomorphic History, capital-H”. “Life” obeys certain laws, the way falling objects obey the law of gravity, but just as there’s no such physical object as “gravity”, there’s no such thing as “life”, an abstract notion over and above the behavior of individual living things. I know Aquinas is dead, and we have killed him (to steal a phrase from Nietzsche), but these things only make sense in Thomist terms: Just as “gravity” is mathematical shorthand for the actualization of an object’s potential to fall towards a center of mass, so “life” is just the blanket term for actualization of a living thing’s various potentials. When we say things like “gravity caused the avalanche”, we don’t mean that a living, purposive force decided to pull the rocks down …
… and yet, when you get down to it, “scientific” history always ends up meaning “History — a living, purposive force” — decided to do this or that. We assign a telos to history, in other words, in a way we simply don’t to any other “force” governed by “scientific” “laws”. Sorry for all the quotation marks, but I want to make this as clear as I can. Nobody but a poet would say that Gravity, a living force, longs for all things to return to its bosom, but the authors of “scientific” history all write as if History, a living force, longs for this or that outcome. C.f. Karl Marx and his merry band of murderers getting all lathered up about The Revolution. The words on the page are all about scientific necessity, but the tone is pure hosanna.
Severian, “The Science of History”, Rotten Chestnuts, 2010-09-22.
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May 7, 2023
QotD: The long-term instability of bison hunting on the Great Plains
So to be clear, the Great Plains Native Americans are not living off of their horses, they are using their horses to live off of the bison. The subsistence system isn’t horse based, but bison-based.
At the same time, as Isenberg (op. cit. 70ff) makes clear that this pure-hunting nomadism still existed in a narrow edge of subsistence. From his description, it is hard not to conclude that the margin or survival was quite a bit narrower than the Eurasian Steppe subsistence system and it is also clear that group-size and population density were quite a bit lower. It’s also not clear that this system was fully sustainable in the long run; Pekka Hämäläinen argues in The Comanche Empire (2008) that Comanche bison hunting was potentially already unsustainable in the very long term by the 1830s. It worked well enough in wet years, but an extended drought (which the Plains are subjected to every so often) could cause catastrophic decline in bison numbers, as seems to have happened the 1840s and 1850s. A sequence of such events might have created a receding wave phenomenon among bison numbers – recovering after each dry spell, but a little less each time. Isenberg (op. cit., 83ff) also hints at this, pointing out that once one factors for things like natural predators, illness and so on, estimates of Native American bison hunting look to come dangerously close to tipping over sustainability, although Isenberg does not offer an opinion as to if they did tip over that line. Remember: complete reliance on bison hunting was new, not a centuries tested form of subsistence – if there was an equilibrium to be reached, it had not yet been reached.
In any event, the arrival of commercial bison hunting along with increasing markets for bison goods drove the entire system into a tailspin much faster than the Plains population would have alone. Bison numbers begin to collapse in the 1860s, wrecking the entire system about a century and a half after it had started. I find myself wondering if, given a longer time frame to experiment and adapt the new horses to the Great Plains if Native American society on the plains would have increasingly resembled the pastoral societies of the Eurasian Steppe, perhaps even domesticating and herding bison (as is now sometimes done!) or other animals. In any event, the westward expansion of the United States did not leave time for that system to emerge.
Consequently, the Native Americans of the plains make a bad match for the Dothraki in a lot of ways. They don’t maintain population density of the necessary scale. Isenberg (op. cit., 59) presents a chart of this, to assess the impact of the 1780s smallpox epidemics, noting that even before the epidemic, most of the Plains Native American groups numbered in the single-digit thousands, with just a couple over 10,000 individuals. The largest, the Sioux at 20,000, far less than what we see on the Eurasian Steppe and also less than the 40,000 warriors – and presumably c. 120-150,000 individuals that implies – that Khal Drogo alone supposedly has [in Game of Thrones]. They haven’t had access to the horse for nearly as long or have access to the vast supply of them or live in a part of the world where there are simply large herds of wild horses available. They haven’t had long-term direct trade access to major settled cities and their market goods (which expresses itself particularly in relatively low access to metal products). It is also clear that the Dothraki Sea lacks large herds of animals for the Dothraki to hunt as the Native Americans could hunt bison; there are the rare large predators like the hrakkar, but that is it. Mostly importantly, the Plains Native American subsistence system was still sharply in flux and may not have been sustainable in the long term, whereas the Dothraki have been living as they do, apparently for many centuries.
Bret Devereaux, “That Dothraki Horde, Part II: Subsistence on the Hoof”, A Collection of Unmitigated Pedantry, 2020-12-11.
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