Dimitri > Recent Status Updates

(Pre)War Plan Orange nailed the 3 phases of the real Pacific: Japanese seizure of a perimeter answered by U.S. island-hopping incombination with naval blockade. An invasion was too costly on 'alternatingly steep & soaked geography' of the Home Islands, unless to install democracy & only àfter aerial destruction of Japan's industry by B-29's woth M-69 (napalm) , concentrated in those fireprone cities ....

German withdrawal to the Ourcq allowed the Allies to reopen the full length of the Paris-Chalons railway, an unfettered supply line to Eastern France. This opening proved especially important to the Americans who now had access to a full network from the Atlantic ports to their new operational bases near St. Michiel, Toul & Nancy.

"What was immediately needed in 1915, however, was the means of making a voice heard up to 4 miles away amidst the white heat of battle and that kind of magic was not quite ready"

"No soldier has ever stamped his individuality&teaching moe strongly upon the army of which he was the Chief. Schlieffen stamped his individuality upon the course of European history with fearful effect"

Pre-war negociations were conducted correctly by the Finns, fearful of occupation as would happen to the Baltic (even if no historical proof for a plan for the 1940 occupation was ever unearthed). "Old Finn" negociators knew Russia must have its place. The personal participation of Molotov&Stalin shows the strategic importance of revised borders for Leningrad&Murmansk.

With their most loyal troops soon to be gone from Petrograd, the time seemed ripe to round up the Bolshevik leaders, but the date was leaked (7 july) Lenin fled timely to Finland, leaving the Menshevik Trotsky to speech an overthrow of Kerensky, with generous rubbls (again) buying the bayonets of the lukewarm. Curiously, Trotsky didn't know exactly what to do with his enthousiastic armed mob. It broke down in 48h.

Amidst a century of patriotic heroism, the contemporary objective is lost from sight. Why the Australians at Pozières on 23 july ? To try n' outflank Thiepval! Topography looked promising. Amphitheater shape at "le petit ridge" gives local superiority over the German garrison & 'switch treches' that run backward at an angle from the front line help against stormtrooper-ish flanking.

Chelmsford overruled the first camp CO who wanted standard defence measures, such as entrenching in front of wagons & strewn broken glass. Good natural protection from mountain in the rear & rocky sides would do with Ulundi in view 50 mls distant. Once again Zulu decoy camp fires worked, setting Chelmsford off with 2.500 men in the wrong direction to clash with an approaching enemy.

Widow's pension was introduced together with the abolition of flogging in 1881; rotten teeth were treated with gunpowder at risk of facial injury & troops imported new strains of syphilis. Such were the lives of the ranks fighting a war sanctioned not by London but by South Africa's High Commissioner...Via the open ford at Rorke's Drift rather than the protection of Fort Pine 4 ml upstream...

14 weeks of battle were well spent on the 3rd position. Pozières & Thiepval on the left in combo with Guillemont & Ginchy on the right gave the Germans strong shoulders against Brittish attacks on the middle ridge, or against French attacks on their 2nd line just north of the river.

Tke Kerensky offensive came too late to help the Allies by 2 months & to turn the Petrograd garrison around (a prime unit, the 1st Machine-Gun Regiment, a transfer from Galicia) by cleansing their agitation in the flame of battle. Whole WHY is muddled but redistribution was ruled out as mutineers would only infect other units with the Bolshevik virus & its slogan "ours we will not yield but others we do not seek"

the Battle of Mametz Wood (5-12 july) saw vicious close quarter fighting & the sack for many pre-war BEF corps&division commanders, with talented civilians in uniform as replacements. At Bazentin-le-Petit & Longueval (on the 2nd line) they already showed more tactical surprise & a more crushing bombardment, at 18x density of 1 July.

Stalin presumably sought to prevent Japan from restraining his postwar Far East ambitions & foreclose the chance that Japan might capitaculate before he obtained the spoils promised at Yalta. Jettisoning unconditional surrender thus wouldn't be viewed benignly.

Ambitions indeed! Complete with a planned occupation of Hokkaido!

In World War II the ratio of American casualties in ground combat was ca 4 wounded to 1 killed, with missing accounting for only a few %. In naval & aerial combat however, the ratios tended to run closer to 1 wounded to 1 killed. The number of missing was more substantial but more of the missing ended up as presumed dead.

The Germans knew how to play the tension. Don't attack. Let the men think, desert 1 by 1. Let Lenin do his worst. Let it rot & collapse from the inside. Kerensky had plans on the Straits for July, but never repeated the Black Sea Fleet scouting of Constantinople, charting the city defences by airplane until a German wing chased them away.

By April 1918, Kerensky's Provisional Government was already all but that - provisional. It enacted laws about corporal punishment, amnesty, exile to Siberia, but no idea on how to handle 7 million troops whose right to discuss orders via their Sovjets under "Order N°1" made discipline difficult. This in stark contrast to Lenin's coherent April Theses, a virtual blueprint for the Oktober Revolution.

Official war chants still sounded blood-curling:

"You made a good job of it, you British! Seven days & nights you rapped & hammered on our door! Now your reception is going to match your turbulent longing to enter!"

German money was the key to the Bolshevik rise. With its own press to circulate pamphlets by 100.000s tailored to sailors & front troops. From a fancy new HQ , they were paying people to carry "Down With The War" protest signs, a bit like the artificial crowds outside the US embassy at Teheran.

General von Bulow declared on July 3: "the enemy should hae to carve his way over heaps of corpses." This meant those original defenders and reinforcement trickles strewn between the 1st&2nd lines. To the last man, while guns were hauled to reorganize the 2nd line. Marked the start of a process that would grind the life out of the German Army.

It was also difficult to develop new equipment in a hurry to meet these challenges. “Victory will belong to the one who can first mount a cannon on a vehicle capable of moving in all types of terrain.” “The French Army had to learn how to fight a new war in real time, bought with the lives of its soldiers."

Philpott is already a devotee of the attrition theory (see his 2015 book), putting Liddel Hart's conclusion of 1916 as a failed breakthrough strategy in the wrong.

Either way, Verdun sector was kept quiet but not passive to minimize the volume of German troop transfers after the 'official' battle winded down to 'normal' levels.

When somebody tries to kill you from a distance, you cannot believe it's meant for you, there must be some mistake. This is quite wrong, for when gunners or bomb-aimers throw their loads of steel they have worked meticulously to kill you & you are merely a cypher like X or Y and your fear of death does not affect the world.

Stalin wanted to avoid a new Pearl Harbour scenario & somehow [Gaddis is frustratingly brief here] secured Mao's willingness to go along with his "let Americans be our neighbours" courtesy; a mass of Chinese troops reversed the NATO invasion past Seoul to its original deadlock onto the 38th paralel.

A 700m long pier splitting the lagoon had been designated the first target, since machine guns could spray all passing boats on both sides. Marine snipers & engineers nibbled away at it with everything in their arsenal, from flamethrowers to knives, chewing down one improvised blockade after anothern , yet they couldn't swallow the whole thing.

Tactical acumen aside, France was ill-equipped to meet the demands of industrial warfare, where the only answer to attrition was continuous replenishment of weapons in ever greater numbers.
The Soixante-Quinzes were firing themselves worn already at extreme ranges, while the occupation of the Briey bassin forced it to rely on expensive imports of coal & iron.

The snake ate its own tail. The Anzio landings had been conceived to break the stalemate at Cassino, yet now a new offensive in the mountains was judged necessary to assist the beleagured beachhead.

It was small comfort to the first wave that they picked the north side of the island, the landing site least expected by the Japanese & incompletely defended.
Like a German 88mm Flak could cook a Sherman, their 75mm AA could brew up an LVT.
Crumbles made it ashore; a mix of infantry, the Shermans in their Pacific debut & radio operators linked to the naval guns offshore.

The moral outrage over the destruction of Monte Cassino came too little, too late. On the Home Front, the wolf had taken possession of the human heart... War gnawed away at everything: civilisation, reason, youth, innocence, mountains and men alike.

The Big Problem at Tarawa was the 4 ft draft necessary to carry the various landing craft over the corral reef. Only the Landing Vehicle, Tracked (LVT's) could make truly amphibious shuttle runs, but there were not nearly enough to go around, forcing most Marines to go hundreds of yards like wading ducks, visible as slow-moving dots from an observation airplane.

"the Alliesll be in Rome in 2 days! the BBC declared triumphantly.
Unfortunately the BBC forgot to consult Field Marshall Albert Kesselring