Dimitri > Recent Status Updates

Thanks to cordial relationships between Haig & Pétain, French reinforcements for the beleaguered 5th Army (who held the poilus' former trenches) were speedy and generous - at first. Then the question arose whether a drive on Paris was in the cards by 55 divisions yet unaccounted for on the map - a reserve as large as the troops pushing Gouch into a fighting withdrawal. Front cohesion became the n°1 French priority.

However, he marks the casualties for 21 March 1918 as the largest for one days' fighting in the war [true or false?] plus a record number of British prisoners. For the Germans the pace went unusually well too, reaching their 1 day objectives in a mere 3 days, as opposed to the usual weeks or months or just never.

Stevenson doesn't dwell on the "heaviest bombardment of the war" numbers game: it was simply effective enough with lots of mustard gas & left, for only 6.000 dead, the other 94.000 in no state to put up much of a fight.

The morning most of 21 March gets equally short shrift. Ask either Official history and it'll say it hindered the other side less.

Likewise the defense in depth system copied off the adversary [Red, Blue & Green Zone] demanded more labour than avaliable. Restructuring divisions into nine divisions at the cost of a fractured unit identity alleviated little.

Fingers crossed that the thinly spread troops in their incomplete positions, without permission to steel their heart through counterattack, had enough firepower AND balls to hold.

The BEF was indeed strapped for soldiers after Passchendaele. The government husbanded the remainder carefully. With priority to industry, agriculture & AA, compliments of the U-boats & Gotha bombers). Haig was to remain deprived of meat for his next grinder. Yet on the Western Front even in quiet sectors/periods 41.000 monthly casualties was considered "normal" wastage among fighting troops.

"Why defend it at all ?.. Verdun was a point on a map, not France herself..A docile French press had little appetite for exalting a place the High Command risked losing any day [but] try as they might, the German gunners could neither penetrate every recess nor destroy every obstacle with their 10:1 superiority in heavy shells.

Ironically, the Kaiserschlacht accelerated US troop shipments, kind of like commiting suicide for fear of death. Pershing was not amused: he planned a Big Push from Lorraine for '19 with a unified army, straight onto Germany and handsome post-war political dividends. He was OK with taking over quiet sectors to release French troops, though. Much like Germany's East-West dynamic.

Local superiority might be created by a MASS of aircraft & heavy guns & a good slice of those 36 released attack divisions* trained in Stormtroop tricks.. but mass couldn't restore MOBILITY beyond the railhead to an army crippingly short on both horses and lorry fuel.

*total numbers fell from 85 to 47 in the East and increased in the West from 147 to 191.

Stormtroop tactics have received more attention than they deserve, since the warlong evolution towards deep defence countered them. By comparison artillery by Bruchmüller are understudied. A centralized fireplan focused first on counterbattery fire (gas lingers in gun pits) next on forward positions & then morphed into a Feuerwalz. It required careful trial of each gun's unique idiosyncrasies on a testing range.

Haig's philosophy for 1917 was to live up to the Chantilly agenda: synchronized offensives all around the Central Powers' "Ring of Iron" wth no excuses & hopefully no German surprises to upset the shedule. Thus he wanted to wait until May to link up with Russia and Italy, but Lloyd George, more impressed with Nivelle's sanguine, secured the war cabinet behind him at the Calais Conference (26-27/2) to speed things up.

When the 17th Armoured Division in Herat rebelled, it instigated nationwide minor revolts that the regime was too weak to supress on its own. The Moscow reflex as it would remain: angry, confused, more aid, more 'military advisors'... the U.S. meanwhile started discreet aid to the Muhadeens.

Taraki perished in blood in september '79, leaving a weakened Amin between a hostile Kabul and provinces overrun by rebels.

Most of the 191 German divisions that went over the top on 21 March 1918 were in fact NOT veterans of open warfare transferred from the East, but veterans from the West, replaced and released from quiet sectors into a strategic reserve capable of locally outnumbering the 175 Allied divisions.

Nivelle's "Verdun school" of rapid, narrow thrusts reminiscent of '14 sat well with Paris, but Stevenson paints him as in over his head. Plus, logistical circumstances beyond his control diminished his odds of succes from the start. The railroads in Picardy were overworked because the canals froze in the artic winter of '17. For the same reason, French industry suffered from coal shortages & turned out less shells.

Moscow thus never found an Afghan political leader who, once in power, continued to be a faithful subordinate. Taraki & Amin started infighting. Repression and conscription caused both city flight (even Kabuli cinema lovers had to trade Hollywood westerns & Bollywood musicals for Russian fare) & internal migration. Among the refugees in the countryside, the agnostically ostracized Mullah's influence grew...

With exhausted Allies & the U boats' failure to tilt the influx of U.S. troops, the only German ace left was a short-term favourable manpower balance. The defensive posture in the West was draining morale; at Cambrai the line had barely held. They had to attack or face gradual death by exhaustion.

The months befóre rather than after July 1918 determined the war's outcome. The Allied success on the defensive was the precondition for their success on the offensive and would enable them to end the fighting on their terms. The Central Powers neither captured vital territory nor broke their opponent's will, while so damaging themselves that the Allied counterattack took place against beaten armies.

Railroad traffic out of Calcutta and the Himalaya "Hump" had to compensate for all the lost supply line, with the former under extreme weather circumstances "Tropical below, Yeti Above" and with low priority. 13 Airfields in India, 6 in China, 84.000 Allied troops & 2 million Indian labourers kept a fleet of 700 airplanes going at a median rate of a plane every 2 minutes ... and a casualty per 350 tons delivered.

Nivelle's mirage for the Final Push towards both Meuse & Rhine hovered before the eyes of a French leadership parching for a morale boost. The meagre results of '16 put both civilian and military conduct under scrutiny.

His finely tuned artillery-infantry coordination, with dispersed preliminary attacks to keep his opponent guessing where the real thrust came, seemed to hold promise, as did the 48 hour deadline...

All Soviet attempts to export their model to Third World countries eventually failed. Marx' recipe for revolution, designed to fit onto the socio-economic structure of industrialized Western Europe, could not be reverse-engineered to more medieval and/or agricultural societies. [Try Russia without Petrograd & the Great War]

The U.S. did everything it could to support China's capacity for sucking in Japanese strength, but the supply lines could be counted on the fingers of one hand as they were sliced off one by one. Indochina (with the port of Hanoi) & the Burma road - Forgotten Army or not - were for these intents and purposes overrun. Persia & Turkestan were a limited option thanks to the neutrality pact with the USSR of April '41.

"Allthough French Leaders wanted the starring role in an Allied victory, they were not averse to Britain taking more casualties" - The geographically separate attacks in Picardy while the French military convalesced from its mutinies illustrate this naked truth of coalition warfare.

The foreign policy of Soviet Afghanistan as transplanted from Moscow served only to alienate all neighbouring countries, such as declaring Baluchistan (the legendary North-Western Frontier of the Raj) part of the Republic...

Amin & Taraki introduced Afghanistan to the playbook of 1917: Gender equality & land reform programs went hand in hand with the Red Terror style purge of tribal leaders, the senior military, engineers and bureaucrats. But the USSR (again in true 1917 style) had trouble filling the brain gap. Peter Tomsen identifies Andropov - as personification of an ossified leadership - as a factor in this short-sighted policy.

the Germans and French alike discounted the USA as its entry seemed too far from imminent in late '16. France instead reached an optimistic secret "Doumergue" agreement with Russia over the war aims which rhyme so well with territorial gains. The Dual-Alliance pledged mutual endorsement of annexation for Saarland in the West and both German and Austrian Poland (cfr. Galicia and East Prussia), respectively.

"They knew they had to go along" - even a prima donna like MacArthur knew the safe limits of inter-service rivalry. Japan never created a Joint Chiefs of Staff to soften hers, which lay at the root of the North vs. South debate and would root again. On the plus side, the loose nature of the Axis pact meant she had no Allies to answer to, no LST ships to juggle.

"Indeed, the Soviet role was at this stage not dissimilar to the role being played by China in the Pacific." The US Navy used a 70% ratio in favour of the ETO in compliance with the "Germany first" grand strategy; the Marine Corps executed most of the ground attacks. MacArthur got off easy with a SW Pacific Command (New Guinea, the Solomons & Philippines) Nimitz took responsibility for the other half & the UK Birma.

Moscow didn't lack eminent Afghan scholars to help formulate a policy, but its default Marxist-Leninist strategy of political infiltration to raise the many against the few didn't take in a country made up of innumerable tribal clusters instead of a pyramid from whose top the Kremlin would unquestionably be obeyed by all lower echelons of a broad power base. Compromise by an Afghan leader only made rivals, too.

At first, the Soviet Invasion of Afghanistan seemed to crown a period of uncontested domination. U.S. aid had shrunk to a stop & only in 2004 would its embassy reopen. A major tribal rift between the Khalhq & Parcham factions weakened the People's Democratic Party of Afghanistan, but the Khalhq's domination within the army and secret police secured a winning purge.

This Japanese phase of contemplation gave the USA some much-needed time to mobilize its industry and do some soul-searching of its own. Now that "Bunker the Army in the Philippines and wait for the Navy" was out, a new strategy needed to be balanced out with the Atlantic Campaign. As Samuel Morrison worded it, America faced a two-ocean war.

What next ? How to bring the USA to the conference table to recognize the "Great East Asia Co-Prosperity Sphere" ? Conquer Hawaii ? Invade Australia ? Neither option was realistic with 1.5 million or 70% of their military effectives tied up on the Chinese horizons. Possession of Midway, however, would interdict Allied convoys in the South Pacific .. and the battle would draw the Navy out for that final showdown.