The Great War
Published on 30 Apr 2018Visit the Museum: http://hohenlockstedt-museum.de/
During World War 1 Finnish volunteers were trained in Northern Germany. The 27th Jäger Battalion is an important part of Finnish history and we explored their beginnings in Hohenlockstedt or Lockstedter Lager as it was called in 1915.
May 1, 2018
The Finnish Jägers In World War 1 I THE GREAT WAR On The Road
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April 20, 2018
Food for thought on those “second US civil war” comments
Tom Kratman, Mil-SF author and former US Army officer responds to a Quora article titled “Why does the 2nd Amendment bother Europeans so much?” and shared some of his answer on Facebook:
More fun on Quora:
https://www.quora.com/Why-does-the-2nd-Amendment-bother-Europeans-so-much/answer/Pietro-Del-Buono#
A Sample: And here; since you’re not apparently ambitious enough to read it, I’ll copy you what I sent Stafford on just this question:
The Viet Cong, the Taliban, and the Iraqi resistance would all, at this point in time, be terribly surprised to learn of the omnipotence of the US Army, Navy, Air Force, and Marine Corps (retired lieutenant colonel, Infantry, former faculty of the war college, to boot; yes, I’ve had a varied and fun life). It isn’t, remember, a million citizens with arms, it’s probably over 80 million, just to begin with, most of us armed to deck out the wives, children, grandchildren, and no small number of the neighbors. I can, personally, outfit at least one short platoon while my former law firm, when I was in practice, could have fielded a company, less mortars and anti-tank, yes, to include with automatic weapons (machine guns, which are also legal here, though pricey).
How they would do this is perhaps more detailed and more bloody minded than you want, but, basically, tanks do not move when small arms dominating the roads mean they don’t get fuel delivered (no, aerial resupply is highly problematic). Neither do aircraft fly when no trucks or rail bring aviation fuel. Police, who are actually the decisive arm of counter-insurgency (see your own Sir Robert Thompson), pretty much require a disarmed citizenry to exercise control. Facing an armed citizenry willing to kill them, their risks and losses are too great for effectiveness. And then there’s sheer terror: “Nice family you have, Officer Quigley; be a damned shame if, say, you didn’t look the other way when we tell you to and they all ended up dead, don’t you think?”
Most of the US military preponderance is technological. Martin van Creveld has an interesting observation on that, which goes to the effect that high tech really only works well in very simple environments, air, open desert, at sea, and that a) it tends to fail badly when the environment gets more complex, while b) the human heart is the most complex environment of all. In other words, the forces of government would rarely know just who their enemies were in order to bring that tech to bear.
And then there’s the last aspect, an aspect, I think, Euros have the greatest difficulty understanding. Our police and armed forces are simply not reliable, over most of the country (remember, too, we have no real national police force or gendarmerie, not of any size and power, anyway) to the federal government. No, I don’t mean only the state based National Guards; the _regular_ forces actually draw most of their personnel from areas where folk revere the country and the constitution, but tend to detest the federal government. Called on to suppress a rebellion with which they by and large agreed, they’d defect in droves.Indeed, they might be at the forefront of rebellion. You may recall Obama talking about a civilian force, equal in size, budget, and power to DoD? I’ve never been able to shake the feeling that he had Pinochet and Allende in mind when he spoke those words, because he knew, deep down, that he and the left (our left, which is, of course, to the right, generally, of the Euro left) could not rule out a coup in the event of their pushing their agenda just that little bit too far.
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April 19, 2018
“Blitzkrieg” – What most people get Wrong – Myth vs “Reality”
Military History Visualized
Published on 18 Aug 2017“Blitzkrieg” is probably the most wrongly used word when it comes to Military History. Its buzzword effect is widely known. The question is what was “Blitzkrieg” actually and is it used “correctly” at all? Additionally, the question if “Blitzkrieg” was something unique to the Wehrmacht will be answered?
Military History Visualized provides a series of short narrative and visual presentations like documentaries based on academic literature or sometimes primary sources. Videos are intended as introduction to military history, but also contain a lot of details for history buffs. Since the aim is to keep the episodes short and comprehensive some details are often cut.
» SOURCES «
Citino, Robert M.: The German Way of War
Hughes, Daniel J.: “Blitzkrieg”, in: Brassey’s Encyclopedia of Land Forces and Warfare, p. 155-162
Ong, Weichong: “Blitzkrieg: Revolution or Evolution?”, in: RUSI December 2017 – Vol. 152 No. 6, p. 82-87
Harris, J.P.: “The Myth of Blitzkrieg”, in War in History 1995 2 (3), p. 335-352
Frieser, Karl-Heinz: The Blitzkrieg Legend
Frieser, Karl-Heinz: “The war in the West, 1939-1940: an unplanned Blitzkrieg”. In: Cambridge History of the Second World War, Volume I: p. 287-314
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April 15, 2018
Canada’s military – the difference between fighting wars in the 20th Century and fighting wars today
In a post from earlier this week about defence spending priorities for the Canadian military, Ted Campbell looks at how wars changed between the first half of the 20th century and the post-Cold War situation we face today:
Is the 2% goal wrong?
No … it’s a pretty sensible level of defence spending for countries that really want to maintain a world at peace, as opposed to those, like Canada and many of its allies, that just want to hope for peace. But 2% is not a magic bullet … 1.5% of GDP, spent carefully, will do more than 2% spent as a job creation slush fund. But spending too little, cutting defence spending again and again and again just because it is unpopular can leave a country with what I have described as a Potemkin Village, a military that is more show than force.
The advent of a nuclear face-off circa 1950 changed the strategic calculus for the rest of the 20th century. We suddenly had the “come as you are war” which meant having regular, professional forces in being and not being able to rely upon time and space to give us time, as we had in past wars, to mobilize our reserves. We would do well, 101 years after the battle of Vimy Ridge, to recall that it, in April 1917, was the first time since war was declared (in the summer of 1914) that the full Canadian Corps, of four infantry divisions, was in battle as a corps ~ it took us over 30 months to get from a tiny standing army backed by small but eager reserves to a full corps composed of about 100,000 of the Canadians who served overseas during that war. We went to war again in the late summer of 1939 and it was not until the summer of 1943, over 40 months later, that we had a small corps, of only two divisions and an independent armoured brigade, in battle, in Italy. It takes a long time to mobilize and equip and train an army. The operational doctrine of the long and expensive cold war said that we could no longer have that time.
It is not clear that we must or even should still have small reserves and a relatively larger permanent force. Perhaps the time has come to re-examine the assumptions that underlie our force structure ideas. Maybe we need 150,000 uniformed people but, maybe, the split should be 50/50 or 75,000 full time and 75,000 part time sailors, soldiers and air force members. Maybe a country like Canada, with a population that will, in 2050, approach 40 million, should have a larger force: say 75,000 full time and even 150,000 part time military members … maybe our reserve force “regiments’ should have 500 or 750 soldiers and be required to “generate” a trained company (125 soldiers) rather than having only 150 soldiers and being hard pressed to “generate” a platoon of only 30 soldiers. I have my own ideas, but someone who has the necessary information at their disposal needs to look ahead at our strategic situation and develop a force model and a sane budget for 2050. That should be a job for skilled civil servants in the defence policy staff.
Our strategic priorities for the next 30 years or more need to be:
- Containing and reducing threats to global peace and security by helping to maintain alliances like NATO and groupings like AUSCANNZUKUS and supporting global peacemaking and peacekeeping efforts, even the generally worthless United Nations efforts;
- Confronting current threats to peace ~ like Russia ~ and deterring (by matching the growth in military power of) potential future threats ~ like China;
- Cooperating with the USA in the protection of North America; and
- Securing the land we claim as our own, the waters contiguous to it and the airspace over both.
When we work out the costs, of people, above all, but also of ships, tanks, guns and aircraft, and of ammunition, food and fuel and everything else, of doing those four things ~ and of doing them well enough ~ then we will know what what sort of forces we need and how much we must budget to build and maintain them. But no matter what the size and what the cost, I guarantee that people will still be the biggest single expense if we keep our priorities straight: and the overarching priority is that people cost more than machines because they matter more than machines.
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March 17, 2018
The Battle of Cannae (Second Punic War) (Lecture)
The Study of Antiquity and the Middle Ages
Published on 16 Mar 2018This lecture aimed towards High School students features the battle of Cannae.
The Battle of Cannae (/ˈkæniˌ-neɪˌ-naɪ/[) was a major battle of the Second Punic War that took place on 2 August 216 BC in Apulia, in southeast Italy. The army of Carthage, under Hannibal, surrounded and decisively defeated a larger army of the Roman Republic under the consuls Lucius Aemilius Paullus and Gaius Terentius Varro. It is regarded both as one of the greatest tactical feats in military history and as one of the worst defeats in Roman history.
Having recovered from their losses at Trebia (218 BC) and Lake Trasimene (217 BC), the Romans decided to engage Hannibal at Cannae, with roughly 86,000 Roman and allied troops. They massed their heavy infantry in a deeper formation than usual, while Hannibal used the double-envelopment tactic. This was so successful that the Roman army was effectively destroyed as a fighting force. Following the defeat, Capua and several other Italian city-states defected from the Roman Republic to Carthage.
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March 16, 2018
How Rifles & Railroads influenced Warfare in the 19th Century
Military History Vlogs
Published on 23 Feb 2018The introduction of the breech-loading rifle and the railroad had a tremendous influence on Warfare in the 19th Century. Although, not everyone was as fast or able to adopt then the Prussians. Austria, France and Russia had major issues. Most notably visible in the Austro-Prussian War (1866) and Franco-Prussian War (1870-1871).
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March 14, 2018
Battle Stack: The Battle of Isandlwana tactics
BattleStack
Published on 25 Nov 2016The Battle of Isandlwana was fought between the British and Zulus in 1879. Find out what happened with this animated tactics video!
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March 13, 2018
German Tactics For 1918 Spring Offensive I THE GREAT WAR Special
The Great War
Published on 12 Mar 2018The German Spring Offensive in 1918, the so called Kaiserschlacht or Operation Michael, was the biggest German offensive of World War 1 and Quartermaster-general Erich Ludendorff prepared his troops for this battle by incorporating everything the German Army had learned in this war until now. Hutier Infiltration Tactics, Georg Bruchmüller’s artillery targeting and more lessons from the Eastern Front mean the Entente was facing a different army than before.
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March 3, 2018
How A Man Shall Be Armed: 11th Century
Royal Armouries
Published on 20 Feb 2017Discover how a Norman knight of the 11th Century would be armed for battle with the finest equipment available.
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February 25, 2018
Feature History – Russo-Japanese War
Feature History
Published on 28 May 2017Hello and welcome to Feature History, featuring a Russian and Japanese disagreement, and why you don’t record when sick.
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February 19, 2018
Why the Pith Helmet?
Major Sven Gaming
Published on 14 Apr 2017Anyone love the old Zulu movie staring Michael Caine?
I do, but why did the British wear these awesome hats? Well watch and you will find out…
And a link to more info on these wonderful Helmets. http://www.throughouthistory.com/?p=3153
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February 15, 2018
The Volkswagen Thing Is Slow, Old, Unsafe… and Amazing
Doug DeMuro
Published on Oct 13, 2016GO READ MY COLUMN! http://autotradr.co/Oversteer
Thank you to Morrie’s Heritage Car Connection for letting me borrow your Thing!!
http://morriesheritage.com/
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February 4, 2018
The Winter War: A Soviet Failure
KnowledgeHub
Published on 29 Dec 2017Signup for your FREE trial to The Great Courses Plus here: http://ow.ly/6YHs30b1QVm
In the midst of WWII, Stalin decided to invade the small nation of Finland. It did not go the way he wanted it to. This is the story of the quagmire of 1939 that often isn’t talked about between the Fins and the Russians.
Music:
Russian Slapstick by Hakan Erikson
Dramatic Orchestral Strings by Gavin Luke
Winds of Winter by Yi Natiro“The Great Courses Plus is currently available to watch through a web browser to almost anyone in the world and optimized for the US market. The Great Courses Plus is currently working to both optimize the product globally and accept credit card payments globally.”
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January 21, 2018
Sun Tzu – The Art of War l HISTORY OF CHINA
IT’S HISTORY
Published on 8 Aug 2015Sun Tzu’s The Art of War is a book on military strategies written around 500 BC, between the collapse of the Zhou dynasty and the rise of the first emperor of imperial China. Today Tzu’s guidelines are still as applicable as ever. They are still being read by military commanders, politicians and businesspeople all over the world. Also known as “Master Sun’s Military Methods”, the book explains basics like the “Strategy of Attack”, “Moving the Army” and even “Employing Spies” in 13 short chapters, restricting itself to general principles rather than detailed instructions of strategy and tactics. Learn all about this timeless and influential military masterpiece on IT’S HISTORY.
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January 16, 2018
Yet another money squeeze for Britain’s military
At the Thin Pinstriped Line, Sir Humphrey outlines the difficult financial position the British Ministry of Defence (MOD) finds itself in and the very limited options available for the decision makers to choose among:
The Times has broken details of the planned cuts put forward by the MOD to meet the likely scale of budget cuts needed under the ongoing national Security Review being conducted in the Cabinet Office. The planned cuts as leaked to the Times highlight the sheer scale of the challenge facing the MOD at the moment, and seem to resort to many of the ‘greatest hits’ intended to arouse strong opposition, such as ‘merging the Parachute Regiment and Royal Marines’ option.
It is indicated that the Prime Minister has opposed the measures put forward, and that this in turn will lead to a full blown Strategic Defence and Security Review [SDSR], which will look again at force structures and outputs, and hopefully deliver a more balanced force in due course. The challenge is doing this against a budget which reportedly is £20bn in debt, with no meaningful way to find savings without serious pain.
[…]
The difficulty then for Defence is conducting an SDSR in a world where politicians seem unsure as to what their ambition is for the UK in the next 5-10 years, and whether they want to find the money to do this or not. There is probably strong political support for the idea of maritime and air power, both of which can easily be deployed (and recovered) discretely and with no long-term entanglements. It is reasonable to assume that the RN and RAF have a compelling case that they should receive the lions share of investment in the review.
By contrast the Army will find itself facing a difficult time – it is telling that all three options presented in the Times focused on a major loss of Army manpower, and capability reduction. What is also likely is the wider impact of further delays in procurement and reduction of exercises, training and other tools essential to keeping the Army credible. As its vehicle fleet ages, and with almost all of its primary weapon systems verging on becoming near obsolete, politicians face a difficult choice – do they continue to direct funding into high end high capability ground equipment, or do they take the ‘UOR [Urgent Operational Requirement] it on the day’ option of reducing the size of the Army and hope that come the next long-term ground operation, there is enough time to sort a round of UOR purchases out to equip people to the right standard.
At its heart though is the difficulty that the UK seems pathologically incapable of taking and sticking to credible long-term plans on defence and seeing them through to fruition. Strategic now seems to mean ‘two-year horizon’ at best, and there is a real sense that for all the glossy PowerPoint slides and publications, it is a department in a perpetual state of crisis as it struggles to afford the equipment needed to do the tasks asked of it.
This cycle of unaffordability is not new, in fact it seems never ending. There is an occasional period of a few years when things seem a bit better, but then another thing goes wrong and the Department is back to square one. Part of this problem lies in an eternally optimistic set of planning assumptions, coupled with such regular turn over of staff that no one ever has to see through the impact of their work.
The other problem is that rather than bite the bullet, take some incredibly tough decisions and wholesale withdrawal from commitments and capability, the Department lurches on, occasionally being bailed out by some deal that finds a few extra quid to just about see it through. What isn’t happening is systematic and thorough reforms to really grip and address the problems that the Department has got to stop them cropping up time and time again.
At some point the UK must have a serious policy discussion about what it really wants from its defence and national security capability. Does it want to seriously fund it, at a time of economic challenge and government austerity, or does it want to scale back ambition in order to find funding for other national projects? This conversation will not happen though in any meaningful sense, and instead the debate will be shallow, superficial and focus on numbers not outputs and leaked papers warning of an inability to defend the UK if something is cut.
It is all very well having an SDSR again (the third in 8 years), but unless there is a real change in behaviours, there will simply be another one in a couple of years’ time when the new plan proves unaffordable and unworkable. We cannot go on like this indefinitely.
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