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Comment by nickff | Hacker News Reader

Poland was completely conquered in 5 weeks (35 days), after having been attacked from two sides (by Germany and the Soviet Union). We are currently 26 days into this war, and Ukraine is holding up much better.

This map shows how far the Germans got in two weeks, and it's much more than what the Russians have done so far in Ukraine: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Poland2.jpg

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Keep in mind that while the popular conception of WWII is as a mechanized war, everyone (especially the fuel-starved Germans) was still incredibly reliant on foot and horse-based movement. I don't believe the German army even had experimental APCs at the start of the war.

The commonly cited number for how fast a traditional army can march is 20 miles per day, unopposed. The BTR-80 is rated for 50 miles per hour. Obviously APCs have to deal with refueling and maintenance and the like, but surely a modern mechanized army shouldn't moving slower than a comparable unmechanized one from 80 years ago.

It's extremely misleading, that sort of map view of a war like liveuamap tries to create. There is going to be no attempt to defend farmland, little towns or villages etc. The fact is that the administrative and economic centres of Ukraine are Ukraine. Once they are under Russian control, there is very little anyone can do.

The sort-of map view of a war is too flawed. It was more relevant in a time when the majority of a country's economy was located in the countryside - where people physically grew food, produced goods on a small scale etc. - and it lends itself nicely to video games (which, let's face it, are most people's only experience of grand strategy and warfare). It's just not how warfare works, and the victory condition for the Russian army is maybe a month and a half away at current pace, by my estimation.

The information in the map that you linked is meaningful for sure, but it neglects the details that actually determine any side's performance in the war - you cannot extract the war's velocity from it.

“ It was more relevant in a time when the majority of a country's economy was located in the countryside - where people physically grew food, produced goods on a small scale etc.”

This seems to describe Ukraine after Russia destroyed the city center…

The invasion of Poland was much bloodier than is often recalled. The Germans and Soviets invaded with 2 million soldiers and incurred 59 thousand casualties. The Russians are conducting direct combat operations with every major Ukrainian city except for Lviv and Odessa. The center of Ukraine is largely farmland and small villages.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Invasion_of_Poland

How can you compare two wars 80 years apart given the advancements in nearly every area. Polish soldiers couldn't watch German soldiers moving around from the safety of a bunker via a phone screen. The available, basic intelligence alone could keep a war like this going for months.

It's why I don't understand how it's happened. Wars like this - between modern countries - just should not exist as a matter of common sense (e.g. Mutual destruction theory).

German invasion involved a much larger army. Germans invaded with 1.5M infantry soldiers alone. Russia barely has 15k, 100 times less, right now in Ukraine, most are mechanized. The scale of the war is immensely different.

edit: I know there's a higher estimated Russian count but it's not infantry.

Russia has at least 150k troops in Ukraine and the estimate doesn't include those from Syria and Chechnya.

And of those a small part is infantry as I said, mostly those are mechanized units.

Thanks for the clarification - do you have a link to detailed stats about the invading army? Cant find a detailed breakdown.

The number would be closer to 100 000 russian soldiers according to the pentagon, with 70-80% of it engaged inside ukraine already. But yes that's still just a fraction of the total russian army, and the ukrainian army had very similar numbers on the ground at the start of the war. So it's not equivalent to ww2 at all.

But yes, the current situation is actually very different to WW2 with even the few similarities being at most superficial. But every war is compared to WW2 since it's a nice way to push for escalation under the pretext of stopping the next hitler. Yet WW1 is almost always a more appropriate example, but a pretty inconvenient one since it does not fit into war mongering narratives. Because I'm just not sure that saving serbia back in 1914 was really worth the lives of 10 million people in hindsight.

Wars just don't happen as quick as they used to?

It was 168 days from invasion to "First post-Saddam government" in 2003.

Actually, Poland was defeated in 26 days. The invasion started on Sept 1 and concluded on Sept 27.

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