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Gott ist mitt uns!
A century ago this very time, the world was freaking out! As WWI kicked out it's first month, those naughty Imperial Deutschers were kicking the living chiz out of France.
Dead von Schlieffen's "Schlieffen Plan" was pretty much on schedule as Germany flung her mighty military might dang near in total against Belgium, The Brits and their BEF and of course - the French.
"Let the last cat on the right brush his sleeve against the Channel" and "Only make the right wing strong" were amoung von Schlieffen's FYI to future Generals in a bold move that forecast the defeat of the Allies in 6 weeks, granting Germany time to accept France's surrender, cut Peace Deals with Belgium and Great Britain and then xfer her victorious armies east to handle any Czarist Russian chicanery.
As Germany sprang her ginourmas wheeling armies into France, other German forces guarding the Franco-German border would
purposely withdraw (luring the French Army into the trap), the main
German Army would invade Belgium, enter northern France, swing around
Paris and then move on the rear of the French Army, trapping it between
the frontier and the Germany Army. It was supposed to succeed in six
weeks (how long the Germans assumed it would take the Russian Army to
mobilize) and was designed as a battle of annihilation.
And the last cat on the right who was gon brush the Channel with his sleeve was General Alexander von Kluck. Commanding the biggest German Army ever assembled up to 1914, Kluck's cats had to march the furtherest the fastest to touch the Channel and sweetly swing behind Paris thus becoming the anvil on which the 2nd and 3rd Armies (commanded by Bulow and Hausen respectively) would bash the French and any BEF forces that were falling back.
Blasting across the frontier in record time, the 3 German armies handily defeated the Allies. von Kluck 1st army rec'v'd a nasty surprise as the Brits BEF held out at Mons and delivered as good as they got, holding up the advance by a day.
von Kluck fighting both the French and Brits, wanted to wipe out the BEF who kept up desperate rearguard actions and kept slipping away to fight again the next day. Piles of jettisoned boots, heavy coats and even ammo convinced von Kluck that he was pursuing a beaten foe.
The German troops were fighting their own fatigue as well as the Allies, trying to force march fast as possible to keep up the pressure and maintain Schlieffen Plan's 6 week window. A tattle tale junior officer pointed out a lot of the troops were drunk to excess, though von Kluck LOL'd such worries. "Abnormal demands require abnormal stimuli."
A very real concern was that gaps were opening up betwixt the 3 armies swinging like a gate through France to envelope Paris. As time exponentially expanded the gaps - more troops were needed to fill the gaps. And reinforcements were not coming. The 3 Corps pulled out of line to reinforce 8th Army at Tannenberg in Prussia - ultimately recalled - were miles behind the lines in Belgium goofing off enroute to railway stations.
von Kluck decided instead of brushing the Channel with his sleeve - he would brush Paris on the inside in direct pursuit of France's 5th army and the BEF fleeing pell mell towards the Marne.
Prepped by indoctrination, war games, staff rides and manuevers - German generals were expected to find the correct solution to a given military problem. Tho a significant diversion from von Schlieffen's orignal plan, von Kluck's idea of ignoring Paris and pursue the retreating Allies appeared as the correct solution. German military theory stressed a fort like Paris need not be attacked until all mobile force were destroyed. Once overwhelmed, all the fruits of victory follow.
Germany's 2nd Army Commander - von Bulow requested help on von Klucks's right to "Gain the full advantage of victory" over the fleeing 5th French Army.
Those bloody gaps again.
von Kluck made his decision to turn inward and the end was in sight: the scheduled defeat of France by day 36 - 40.
As von Kluck's Turn became appearant to the increasingly freaked out French at French High Command HQ - it was clear the Germans offered their flank to the fortress troops of Paris.
The Battle of the Marne, as ebberdobby knows, ended in a German defeat. Betwixt the Ourcq and the Grand Morin, in the four days left of their schedule, Imperial Deutschland lost her bid for decisive victory, and her best opp for winning the war.
The What Ifs accumulate - aside from von Kluck's Turn - if Germany hadn't withdrawn 3 Corps for Tannenberg (recalled though way too late to participate at the Marne) von Kluck could have used one to bridge the gap betwen him and von Bulow. The other two could have overwhelmed Foch at the Marne.
A hundred years ago today Germany came so close to victory - she reached out and touched it at the Marne.
Pic - "Only the certainty of early victory and a triumphal entry into Paris keeps the men going..."
Defeating the IS/ISIS/ISIL Caliphate?
Giving Baghdadi more time as caliph might only make him more plausible in the role and allow him to draw more fighters to his state. If that is true, one concerned Western scholar told me, we would be wise to kill him fast. Right now only an infinitesimal number of Muslims have sworn fealty to him. The biggest danger is letting that number grow. Once he becomes a popular figure instead of a divisive one, his death will have spillover effects.
A balanced and effective approach, then, would be to kill him as fast as possible and to use Kurdish and Shia proxies to arrest his state’s expansion. By confining U.S. action to surgical raids and proxy war, we might avoid accidentally anointing him or his successor Grand Poobah of the Mujahedin.
It’s also true that killing one caliph can extinguish a whole line.
ISIS almost certainly has a successor in mind. But the supply of caliphs is not infinite, according to some Baghdadi-aligned Islamic scholars studied by Bunzel. One of those scholars, the Bahraini cleric Turki al-Bin’ali, cites a saying attributed to Muhammad that predicts a total of twelve caliphs before the end of the world. Bin’ali considers only seven of the caliphs of history legitimate. That makes Baghdadi the eighth out of twelve—and in some Sunni traditions, the name of the twelfth and final caliph, Muhammad ibn Abdullah, has already been foretold.
These beliefs would be merely peculiar, if the punctilious nature of ISIS did not suggest that its leaders believe in the literal truth of prophecy and will act accordingly.
If ISIS scholars are right, we could be as few as four air strikes away from forcing the caliphate to find and appoint a physically robust man named Muhammad ibn Abdullah, who has both eyes and no missing limbs. The end of the world may be coming, one Hellfire missile at a time.
Pic - "Nevertheless, the perception that the Islamic State is something new and different and aberrational compared with the Islamic-supremacist threat we’ve been living with for three decades is wrong, perhaps dangerously so."
Ever get the tore up tummy feeling that a bunch of former senators like Def Sec Hagel, Sec o States HRC and John F Kery, the VP and 44 hisself are worse than a JV team?
Ever reckon it's cause their worldview is - shallow?
Thursday, August 28th, 2014, will go down as one of those rare moments when a President of the United States admitted publicly that the United States didn’t know how to deal with a major foreign policy crisis. When 44 declared, “we don’t have a strategy yet” to confront ISIS, he was merely admitting what his Administration’s actions, or lack thereof, had made obvious.
Every President has to deal with a chaotic world that often seems focused on wrecking havoc on America’s self-interest. Presidents fail at foreign policy objectives more frequently than they succeed. Yet rarely have we seen a President so openly struggle with a declaration of American purpose and goals. Some of this is undoubtedly due to 44's personality and the reluctance he shows in leading on many issues, foreign and domestic. But for the first time since JFK, we have a President who is not a product of the Cold War era—and the ramifications of that are profound.
More often than not, 44 defines America’s moral worth—our “goodness”—by comparing America’s past to some future in which the values in which he believes will be the norm. In that matrix, it’s not about us versus them—it’s about what we are versus what we can be. It’s us vs. us. America is “good” because we are getting “better.” We are at our best not when we fight the evils of the world, but the “injustice” of our society, primarily prejudice, for which there is an evolving test. He ran for office in 2008 opposed to gay marriage; now the issue is no longer gay marriage but “marriage equality,” and to be opposed to equality is a sign of prejudice. Justice demands equality; therefore justice demands gay marriage.
At the heart of this value system is an assumption that some essential elements of human decency push our society inevitably toward the values he shares. This premise is at the root of his frequent invocation of “the wrong side of history.”
The problems of applying a social justice framework to international crisis are not unlike applying a cold war formulation to, say, welfare reform. It just doesn’t work. After the horror of James Foley’s murder, 44 said of ISIS: “People like this ultimately fail. They fail because the future is won by those who build and not destroy.”
A nice turn of phrase, but is it remotely accurate? Don’t maniacal movements like ISIS end only when good people rise up with the willingness to die to stop them?
It seems incredibly naïve and American-centric not to grasp that the Islamic fanatics of ISIS are very much about building—building a new world in their vision.
Most troubling, when America and the world are crying out for action and leadership, this homily is a call for inaction cloaked in moral smugness. If ISIS will “ultimately fail,” why the need to do anything?
Pic - "The impact and the danger of the no-strategy remark could be exacerbated by earlier 44 comments in which he seemed to dramatically underestimate the ISIL threat."
Kosaken Kommen!
Way back about this time last century, Imperial Deutschland was like totally throwing her mighty military might against France, Belgium and Great Britain's BEF in the famous Schliefflen Plan as the 1st month of combat in WWI got all crunk up.
With Imperial Russia mobilizing to attack Germany, the vaunted German General Staff took meticulously planned advantage of interior rail roads and logistics to deploy most of her troops - over 34 Corps (2 or more divisons each) - like nearly a million soldiers to overwhelm and annihilate Western Front Allied armies, accept a French surrender and cut peace deals with Great Britain and Belgium and then transport her victorious armies to the Ost Front and derail the dreaded "Russian Steamroller" as it began to finally advance on Germany.
As a scarecrow of sorts, Deutschland left her 8th Army (4 and a half Corps, a cavalry division and the Konigsberg garrison) in what was then Ost Prussia.
Imperial High Command via von Moltke (the younger) instructed 8th Army:
Defend West and East Prussia yet not get overwhelmed by superior forces or be driven into the fortress of Konigsberg. If 8th army were threatened by superior forces - it was to high tail it behind the Vistula river - leaving East Prussia to Russia until victorious truppen fresh from the West Front would reinforce, counter attack and retake it.
Russia surprised everyone with her scheme of "Forward Mobilization" and fielded two ginourmous armies happily named the 1st and 2nd armies that formed up and struck into East Prussia a month ahead of schedule.
8th army had a rowdy rebellious Corps commander who dissed orders and launched an all out attack on the Russians 1st army at the frontier. Such a move could pull 8th army corps by corps away from her prepped defensive positions into an awful killing machine leaving part of Russia's 2nd Army with a chance to cut off and destroy most - if not all of 8th army.
Another spoiling attack on 1st Army caused an additional corps to flee from the Russians, 8th army was in very real danger of being driven into Konigsberg which OHL had expressly forbidden.
"Keep 8th Army intact. Don't be driven from the Vistula, yet in case of extreme need abandon the region east of the Vistula"
8th Army commander von Prittwitz felt the extreme need was now. Ringing up OHL at Coblenz, he announced his intention to retreat to Vistula river if not behind it. He added the waters in the summer heat were at low ebb and he was doubtful if he could even hold the river without reinforcements.
High Command was shocked. Reinforcements! Where on earth could they come from save West Front - where every last battalion was engaged? Worse - Russians on Vistula river would threaten Berlin, the Austrian flank and even Vienna. Giving up the valuable dairy and grain regions of the Reich would be a tremendous morale and prestige loss.
8th Army's junior commanders argued against such a retreat. Utilizing railways on which so much brain power had been expended would allow 8th Army to regroup, refresh and mass against the nearest danger - the Russian 2nd army. A full envelopment and defeat of the Russians could be achieved and then repeat the manuever on the 1st army.
Refusing anything but withdrawal secured von Prittwitz's dismissal from 8th army.
Recalling von Hindenburg from retirement and Ludendorf from capturing the fortresses of Belgium to command 8th army they concurred with 8th Army's staff's plan to regroup and attack 2nd army.
Suddenly an extrodinary phone call all the way from OHL - pledging 3 additional corps (about 6 divisions) - came through. Ludendorf - who knew down to the last decimal the required density of manpower per kilometre - could hardly believe what he heard.
In distributing Prussian refugees across Germany, the Germans had succeeded in frightening themselves. Tearful pleas of of high born Junker ladies to the Kaiserine, vast estates left for maurading cossacks and fears of a Russian advance into the heart of the Reich pulled those corps from the victory at Namur in Belgium.
8th army argued passionately against their transfer and the 3 corps were only out of line for a week in the West.
The battle began
Two armies, now totally committed, surged and gripped and broke apart and clashed again in confused and seperate combats over a front of 40 miles for days. A regiment advanced, it's neighbor was thrown back, gaps appeared, the enemy thrust through or, unaccountably did not. Artillery roared, cavalry squadrons, infantry units, horse-drawn field gun batteries moved and floundered through villages and forrests, between lakes, across fields and roads. Three hundred thousand men flailed at each other, marched, counter marched and died as the great battle of the Eastern Front was fought out.
95,000 Russians troops were captured in the action; an estimated 30,000 were killed or wounded, and of his original 150,000 total, only around 10,000 of Samsonov's men escaped. The Germans suffered fewer than 20,000 casualties and, in addition to prisoners captured over 500 guns. Sixty trains were required to transport captured equipment to Germany.
Tannenberg was a great victory for Germany, restored her faith in ultimate victory and made living legends out of von Hindenburg and Ludendorf in the 1st month of the war.
Yet withdrawing those 3 corps from West Front - even for a short time - ensured that Germany would lose the war in the coming few days...
Pic - "We had not merely to win a victory over Samsonof. We had to annihilate him."
At dawn on September 1st, Luftwaffe struck at Polish airfields destroying most of the planes before they could get off the ground. With control of the skies assured wicked Wehrmacht began the systematic destruction of railroads and the few communications nodes. From the very outset the Poles mobilization plan was seriously compromised. Before the day ended, chaos reigned at Polish Army HQ.
The first phase of the campaign, fought on the frontiers was over by September 5th and the morning of the 7th found reconnaissance elements of Army Group South’s 10th Army just 36 miles southwest of Warsaw. Meanwhile, also on September 5th, vBock’s Army Group North had cut across the corridor and turned southeast for Warsaw. Units of the 3rd Army reached the banks of the River Narew on September 7th, just 25 miles north of Warsaw. The fast moving armored panzer 'Schwerpunkts' of blitzing attacks left the immobile Polish armies cut up, surrounded and out of supply.
Meanwhile the closing of the inner ring at Warsaw witnessed some tough fighting as the Polish Poznan Army, bypassed in the first week of the war, charged heading and attacked toward Warsaw to the southeast. The German 8th and 10th Armies were put to the test as they were forced to turn some divisions completely around to meet the desperate Polish assault. In the end the gallant attack fell short and by September 19th the Poznan Army surrendered some 100,000 men and Poland’s last intact army.
As this was occurring the second, more deeper envelopment led by General Heinz Guderian’s panzers took the city of Brest-Litovsk on September 17th, and continued past the city where they made contact with the 10th Army spearhead at Wlodowa 30 miles to the south.
The war, for all practical purposes was over by September 17th. Lvov surrendered on the 19th. Warsaw held out until September 27th, gave up the ghost and the last organized resistance ended October 6th with the surrender of 17,000 Polish soldiers at Kock.
The campaign had lasted less than two months and ended in the destruction of the Polish Army and the fourth partition of Poland. German losses were surprisingly heavy considering the brevity of the campaign.
Deutsch casualties total some 48,000 of which 16,000 were killed. Fully one quarter of the panzers the German committed to battle were lost to Polish anti-panzer guns. Luftwaffe was forced to trash 550 aircraft.
It was not a cheap victory by any means but it did confirm to the generals of Wehrmacht that the military machine that they had built was indeed the best in the world and worthy of their confidence.
Reaction around the world on 1 Sept 1939?
France - mobilized her military and demanded Deutschland withdraw from Poland.
Great Britain - mobilized her army and RAF (the Navy was mobilized the day before) and demanded Germany withdraw from Poland.
Italy - Announced no military plans or initiatives.
Russia - warned concern for civilian population of Russian descent and fear of Polish bandits would warrant armed intervention. She also mobilized her military.
Great Satan - Demanded a halt of indescriminate bombing of towns and civilians.
Finland, Norway, Sweden and the Swiss - announced neutrality
Deutschland - "Determined to eliminate insecurity and perpetual civil war from the borders of the Reich"
Poland - appealed to Great Britain and France to intervene in honour of the Mutual Assistance Treaty of 1939.
1 September is the day an old world order was violently overturned, chock full of lessons, promises and harbingers that echo still today.
The modern air forces built by autocratic Arab monarchies are designed primarily for self-defense, not attack. For Saudi Arabia, for example, the bogeyman is Iran. Saudi Arabia has bought scores of Eurofighter Typhoons from Britain, the front line equipment of many European powers. However, the Typhoon was designed in the 1980s for Cold War combat that envisaged Top Gun style dogfights between fighters, not close air support and ground attacks.
The Saudi Arabian Typhoons are of a later model that has been adapted to carry air-to-ground missiles for use on a battlefield, but it is not an ideal platform for that role. (After finding the limitations of Typhoons in the Libyan conflict the Europeans are only now making them more effective for precision attacks on ground forces.) The Saudi military is still essentially locked in a defensive mindset. Nonetheless it does have the region’s most sophisticated systems for managing air power, including the ability to refuel fighters in the air. They have carried out small strikes against terrorists in the Yemen, but a sustained campaign against ISIS would call for a far more public commitment and strength of will than any Saudi regime has so far exhibited.
Other Gulf powers have the same mindset. The UAE is buying the latest Predator drones, but is far from ready to use them. Tiny Qatar is shopping for 72 advanced fighters like the Typhoon but will not have an effective air force for years
Turkey is the closest of all countries to the conflict but is inhibited not by a lack of resources – it has a large force of U.S.-supplied F-16s and even an intelligence satellite – but by its tricky position in the region, with military links to NATO, Europe and the U.S., a delicate internal balance of secular and Islamic allegiances, and an evolving relationship with the Kurds after years of mutual hostility.
Jordan is in an even more delicate position, and a country that ISIS would dearly like to swallow. It also has a large force of U.S.-supplied F-16s. But Jordan’s highest priority seems to be a fear of insurgency and this year it is equipping its special forces with two highly lethal gunships, based on an Airbus supplied military airplane but armed by ATK, a U.S. supplier. Gunships are fearsome but they operate at low altitudes where they are vulnerable to the kind of shoulder-fired weaponry that ISIS most certainly has. Jordan doesn’t want to get into this air war any more than Turkey.
But if the Arab states mustered the will, they could demolish ISIS, as history has shown.
Seventy years ago, on Aug. 23 1944, General Dwight D. Eisenhower, the commander of the D-Day landings, went to inspect a battlefield in northern France. His forces had finally broken out of Normandy and were pursuing the remnants of a once-mighty Nazi battle group who were in full retreat.
The Germans were annihilated. They had no air cover and their exposed columns were like a fish in a barrel. The Allies had mastered a military equation that the Germans invented: the blitzkrieg, which combined air and land forces into one rapidly-moving killing machine. From that moment on it was obvious that any army without air cover would be fatally vulnerable – as long as there was air power to deal with it.
The Era of Dirty Wars?
Americans don’t always like to acknowledge it, but the U.S. has a long history of fighting so-called dirty wars.
Perhaps rather than insisting we should never get involved in these conflicts, we should learn how to do so as cleanly and efficiently as possible.
