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On the other hand, while Haig was confident to the point of hubris that he could deliver over a demoralized & hungry Heer before the leaves fall. in the wake of the Chemin Des Dames fiasco LLoyd George and Poincaré feared that further grand offensives might weaken the Allies fatally before 1918. A well-defined alternative seemed to lay beyond their imagination.

Passchendaele has deep & numerous roots. Some were nurtured by classic English geostrategy, which abhorred singular domination of the Channel coast by any European power. Others grew away from the grinding coalition battle on the Somme, to the light of a British solo effort that could deliver a rapid breakthrough. the U-boat crisis (2/17) made the concrete pens of Flotille Flandern even more alluring.

Early success was a matter of either toroughly prepared infiltration (the Powisle power station provided energy throughout the uprising) or sheer luck through surprise. The Gesiowka prison yielded highly motivated Jewish volunteers.

The infamous central SS police district & the huge brick citadel built by the Russians after the 1830 uprising were two more prominent islands of resistance, whose isolation nevertheless made them vulnerable. Makeshift barricades manned by civilians & reinforced against tanks by AK engineers drew random but fixed battle lines onto the street pattern of Warsaw.

The attacks in the first few days were badly coordinated, suffered from a lack of manpower to seize their ambitious objectives & an even more severe shortage of weaponry. The Germans were easily able to hold onto heavily protected vital infastructure (standard doctrine in occupied cities) such as the Gdansk railway viaduct, both airports (Okecie, Bielany) & bridges to the Praga district.

The Uprising starts without detailed knowledge of the reach of the Russian advance. the AK pictures a drive over the Vistula, not a pincher movement. Ironically, the Uprising gave Stalin a good reason to do nothing: the most heavily guarded sections of the city'd been too strong for the regular army to wrestle from their old Waffen-SS opponents.

In a reverse exodus, elite Waffen-SS units such as Viking, Totenkopf and Hermann Göring sent detachments by train from Italy.

On July 29, Model's ferocious counter strike was audible in Warsaw, where the anxious anticipation of the AK reached a pitch. It was a lose-lose situation: attack a reinforced garrison with small chance of success or be overrun by Russia. They had underestimated German resolve to hold Fortress Warsaw - the last metropolis en route to Berlin - by personal order of Hitler on July 27.

In reality, the President possessed the Southern Progressives' usual suspicion of re-armament, discerning jingoes, high finance and heavy industry behind any Crusade. To Wilson, America's mission centered on neutrality & mediation, NOT on preparation for war... unlike Teddy Rossevelt, who argued an intervention given time to prepare a powerful military. The U.S. Navy League supported him of course - for shipbuilding.

A more sober Realpolitik assessment was "Whatever the outcome of the European War, we shall have to fight the victor".

Even Brave Little Belgium's reputation suffered when the inconclusive 1906 military talks with Henry Wilson were made public.

Wilson - reportedly - had a draft version of his 14 points ready by September '14 but American antagonism towards Germany was about classic political interests such as its intrusion in strategic Caribbean/Latin markets & recognition of the Huerta regime in Mexico.

Churchill for his part was sympathetic to Poland but the prevailing view was that the Soviet blood of millions bought the Allied victory, so the old Polish Question, however embarrassing, could not be allowed to threaten Stalin's willingness to carry on the fight. Britain has no eternal enemies or friends, only eternal interests.

Operation Bagration brought the pincers of the Red Army to the edge of Warsaw in 2 weeks' time. By then, the AK plan to maximize its chances of success by timing their urban uprising to coincide with the arrival of the Russian advance guard proved to be a political error of great magnitude, for the failed assassination attempt on Hitler on 20 July had given new impetus to Stalin's overlord designs on Eastern Europe.

Pakistan's foreign policy, unfortunately, took a turn for the Sharia. It even tried to supply rebels around Kabul with rockets until the USA whistled it off. This pattern continues under the present conflict: a local ceasefire allowed Bin Laden to escape the Tora Bora caves, cornered by Pakistani-Afghan ground troops and the U.S. Air Force.

The BIGGEST missed opportunity in modern Afghan history occured after the ceremonial Soviet exit over the Friendship Bridge (into the Uzbekistan SR) around 1991-92 : an alternative policy of hosting US-Soviet talks, perhaps including Pakistan as the Ally/new local outside power, but excluding either way non-moderate Afghanis of all political denominations. Moderates saw a US presence as vital to prevent their rise.

As the German stream of shells dried up, the British answer made the surprise of 21 March hard to replicate: by the 28th a humble field gun spewed forth 750 grenades/day. Reinforcements shipped in from the UK as copious as the French under the new Generalissimo Foch (Dullens Conference, 26/3) to protect the southern flank at Amiens behind which lay the most important railways to Paris & then the Channel ports.

The scope of the Kerensky offensive was already dictated by food transport problems and rearmament shortages, while the morale had already plummeted to the point where even 'decent' units barely advanced beyond the preliminary bombardment. While the Bolsheviks were still just that, a political minority, but Soviets multiplied along with fraternization, Central Powers' propaganda circulation & foot desertions.

The Afghan Army had already voted with their feet under Amin: half the effective had deserted, sometimes by brigade and often after massacring its own officer corps, or at least the Soviet 'advisors' attached, before fleeing into Pakistan.

The Soviet invasion had been the brainchild of the KGB, who had but a rudimentary grasp on the Afghan spirit (a common defect of determinism) & pushed for a Politburo decision by 12 december 1979. It became their christmas present.

NO amount of analysis or preposition can make more of the Kerensky offensive than the doomed failiure that it was. In a reverse of Nivelle, the liberals of the provisional government pushed the army into a final offensive to secure a general or separate peace lest the Centrals strike first. At least it served Russian interests more than previous failures, which were more in tune with the Chantilly synchronization.

The leading divisions were pushed to exhaustion and immobilisation. Captured food stocks didn't include horse fodder, while at 70 km distance they were twice as far removed from their railway heads as on the Marne in '14. Muddening rain & the broken ground of the old Somme battlefield slowed the dwindling resupply capacity by lorry to a crawl.

The political game to subjugate Haig had everyone's confidence. As long as Nivelle delivered on shedule & did not voice his fears over a German retreat... which happened, spoiling both his element of surprise and the Chantillyesque coordination with Russia & Italy. Pétain laconically countered his confusing reassurances to assorted allied representatives, at the Compiège conference on 6.4.17 with "In sum, what?".

Amin shorty perished in a poisonous Red Wedding of his own. Puppet rulers or not, the USSR was there to stay. "Sovietization" was followed in '86 by "Aghanisation" - similar to the USA's capacity building among allies today. Not that either policy abated Wahabi fury. It kept pushing until the last "defiant" tanks pulled out over the bridge on 15/02/89. Afghanistan morphed into the world's terror training haven.

It was a bleak April for the Allies all over: while a tsarless Russia began to crumble, Cadorna got cold feet over a pre-emptive strike by the Austrians (he was right! see Caparetto). During the retreat to the Siegfriedstellung, Germans captured an HQ directive on Nivelle's plans. Air recon confirmed new railways around Reims/Soissons & reinforced their trenches as to not touch their post-retreat manpower reserve.

1756: Montcalm (later of Quebec fame) brings more Indian allies & a better appreciation of Indian tactics to the fight, tough he's as wary of the militia's irregularity as of native cruelty. The British defense on the northern frontier (NY) collapsed with the pallisades of Fort Oswego while bloody raids from Ohio put most of the western colonists (PA etc) to flight.

Washington at Fort Dufresque: Ohio is ours. Kindly leave. French reply: Nope, it's ours. Kindly mind your own business ànd we attack your crummy Fort Necessity. And we give the first Regular column sent by London hawks the "Mel Gibson ambush" treatment. And your other 3 columns to Fort Niagara etc. will get nowhere either. Transplanting Anti-French policy to the New World didn't start well for Britain in 1755....

Ludendorff's optimism (hubris?) caused the German armies to deviate from the Michael plan, fan out rather than simply roll up the British, creating untenable salients.

The subsequent Mars/Georgette offensives were mostly meant to revive the impetus, but he never cut the Allied junction or even reached Amiens.

For centuries, the Iroquois confederacy played an alliance game of European sophistication, dominating all tribes around the Great Lakes and beyond while playing off the French and English as the 'power' in the Ohio valley, which was the easiest waterway connecting the Mississippi and Great Lakes. But gradually, their clients started to pull away and an Anglo-French direct clash approached...

"In reality, the outlook was less menacing and the Allies quickly remedied the crisis in command while the measures adopted took effect and German weaknesses were exposed: ... the enterprise was beyond the Reichswehr's strength."