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Comment by JohnMakin | Hacker News Reader

> Military theorists have long described the defense as the strongest form of war, and current doctrine agrees.

Indeed - one of the first wars fought with modern rifling, the American Civil War, had General Lee learn this lesson in a very hard way on the last day of the Battle of Gettysburg, in a failed infantry assault known as "Pickett's Charge."[0]

Lee mistakenly attacked a position that was very easily defensible by Union artillery on faulty theory that it would be weakened due to a (failed) artillery barrage that happened previously. The Union correctly predicted Lee would attack there, and he sent over 12,000 men in a futile assault that resulted in 50% casualties in less than 1 hour, one of the bloodiest hours of the entire war.

[0]https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pickett%27s_Charge

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Meanwhile going unacknowledged is Lee's defense of Richmond & Petersburg where he successfully innovated trench warfare 50 years before WW1, where we won't talk about the Battle of the Crater.

But hating on Lee is still one of the strongest virtue signals we have. So you'll continue going on about Pickett's charge, Lee 'hagiography' and the Lost Cause mythos.

I suspect you’re projecting a lot of your personal beliefs on whatever you think I’m saying - I’m pointing out that a major casualty event in an extremely pivotal moment in a major US war was decided by a defending force in a city assault, which is what the parent article and quote is commenting about . I’d love to hear where in the parent comment you think is “hating” on Lee, unless you take the position that pointing out facts is “hate.” surely one can point out historical facts without writing an essay on military tactics on every other battle that happened during the civil war - surely you could agree?

I am well versed on this subject and would love a debate. curious you don’t mention fredericksburg because that would actually support whatever point you think you’re making.

Why would we be interested in debate? This isn't high school, this isn't debate class.

Why would I care what you (we? who is we?) think about this discussion? I am hoping the gp comment you’re replying to expands on what they are trying to contribute to this discussion. Also, on that note, what are you bringing?

You did not answer the question.

Why would I care about answering your question? Given the amount of upvotes I've received - plenty of people seem interested. Your narcissism is not my problem. Have a good day!

Good point. For a counter point, the German Blitzkrieg helped them get France in WW2.

Only worked because armor was so dominant and anti armor wasn't there yet.

This is in my opinion an oversimplification. Generally, the success of blitzkrieg had more to do with speed and coordination than the strength of armour. A combination of mechanised infantry, tanks, and close air support were instrumental to the tactics. German tanks were the only ones universally equipped with radio units at the start of the war.

And, counterintuitively, lack of coordination. Blitzkrieg units were uniquely autonomous and trusted to meet higher level objectives how they saw fit rather than following a recipe book written weeks before and miles away from the action.

the ghost division :-)

The point is that tanks at the time were faster(along with mechanized infantry) and virtually unstoppable past enemy lines. This is pretty much unprecedented which allowed them to basically take strategic objectives uncontested.

This would not happen today because the exposed tanks would be taken out by relatively cheap anti tank missiles.

There were several innovations bundled into Blitzkrieg so I don't think it's productive to clarify what the point is.

Virtually unstoppable armor helped, extreme local coordination helped, and extreme general decoupling helped. All of these factors are relevant to Blitzkrieg's success.

Afaik, while better anti-tank weapons did come about during the war, a lot of it was also to do with adapting tactics and usage of existing weapons to counter the new "meta". For example, the flak 88 and the 90mm M1 were originally intended for use as antiaircraft weapons and were widely deployed as early as 1936-38. They just so happened to also be excellent antitank weapons, once people figured out how to deploy them as such.

The speed of logistics is more important than the speed of combat troops. Tanks can go behind enemy lines, but only for a short while. If they don't return, they will quickly run out of fuel and become vulnerable.

Genghis Khan would have laughed at the slow German Blitzkrieg.

Genghis had the advantage that his tanks ate grass, and grass grew everywhere the Mongols decided to conquer.

That said, they still specifically timed their campaign cycles around the availability of forage in the country to be attacked.

And his soldiers could eat tanks, if necessary.

A Mongol army could have reached Paris in 2-3 days, because their troops could operate without support for a while. WW2 Germany still relied largely on horse-drawn carts for logistics, and its armies could not advance substantially faster than a Roman legion.

> Genghis had the advantage that his tanks ate grass, and grass grew everywhere the Mongols decided to conquer.

More like: wherever you didn't have abundant grass, Mongol armies essentially couldn't go, or at least lost so much advantage that they usually chose not to.

On a related point: the southern half of Ukraine has some of the best soil in the world for agriculture, yet for centuries it was very thinly populated and called the "Wild Fields", because it's naturally steppe and living there put you in reach of the Crimean Tartars, descendants of the Mongols who also used the same tactics for devastating raids. Further north, where the land was covered in forest, they did not go.

> That said, they still specifically timed their campaign cycles around the availability of forage in the country to be attacked.

Everyone did that (had to) back then.

See also Russia's campaign to rapidly take Kyiv using highly centralized command that failed catastrophically when faced with mobile, autonomous, hit-and-run tactics using antitank missiles like Javelin.

I think this is the correct analysis.

In the context of the conversation, Blitzkrieg worked because it specifically avoided getting bogged down in heavily fortified urban areas. The German army of WWII was not at all suited to long battles like what they encountered in WWI (see the eastern front casualty numbers for a good illustration of how that went).

Stalingrad (mentioned in the article) is rather famous for being a perfect urban battlefield to grind a massive and well equipped modern (for the time) army into pulp. They couldn't blitzkrieg it, and so it defeated them.

The German Army ca. WWII's entire doctrine centered on (as podcaster Dan Carlin describes it) throwing a haymaker and ending the fight quickly. They by no means had a glass jaw, but compared to the Americans or (especially) the Soviets, they simply could not sustain a battle of attrition. And urban warfare so heavily favors the defenders that assaulting a city is almost always a battle of attrition.

The Blitzkrieg worked because the French political leadership was incapable of effectively directing its military, refusing to budge from a "Defend everywhere! All of the time!" strategy.

Folks forget that the French had rather excellent tanks ~1939 [0], especially in their calvary arms (the Hotchkiss H35 and SOMUA S35).

Which makes sense, since they essentially invented the modern tank in the FT. [1]

The rapid success of the Blitzkrieg was mostly a result of (a) France still being in the middle of re-organizing, equiping, and training their armored forces, (b) some bullshit at Sedan, and (c) French leadership making terrible strategic military decisions again and again [2].

Had the DCr's been supplied (who knew tanks need fuel?) and used to effectively counterattack, as designed, German plans would have ground to a halt.

Instead, you had the French Prime Minister declaring that all was lost six days after the Germans invaded the low countries.

[0] https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tanks_of_France#Inter_War

[1] https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Renault_FT

[2] https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Battle_of_France#French_lead...

"speed and coordination"

Meth.

https://time.com/5752114/nazi-military-drugs/

The british and French assumed the germans were going to swing though belgium again as they had done in WW1. Also they spread their tanks out as infantry support the germans had concentrated tank units.

No. There was relatively little actual fighting during the BLitzkrieg. It was about speed and the cutting of communications (in the military sense of roads and bridges rather than radio and telephone). France also had staggeringly poor command structures and they were so invested in the Maginot Line scenario that they simply didn't take the invasion seriously at first.

Surprisingly, one of the best histories of Blitzkrieg I've read was a pop-history book (just called 'Blitzkrieg') by Len Deighton, better known for his spy novels. What it lacks in detail, biographical material and so on is made up for by its broad scope, going from industrial production and methods during the interwar rearmament period through to the logistics of the BEF evacuation at Dunkirk.

I think French tank commanders lacked radio to coordinate their movements.

Even more modern example: The little green men who seized Ukraine.

Eh, seized a small sliver and failed with extremely high casualties to seize a much larger chunk.

The botched invasion was nothing like the German Blitzkrieg.

Just because the defense is stronger doesn't guarantee it will always win. Take two sports teams with different levels of skill, for example. In a single game, the team considered weaker can pull off a surprise win. However, over a span of several games, the stronger team will usually pull ahead.

In war, various factors, like the element of surprise, can allow the offense to temporarily overcome an inherently stronger defense. In 1940, the Germans quickly overran the French by catching them off guard tactically and strategically. The French couldn't adapt their defense quickly enough and suffered too many crucial losses early on.

Next year, the Soviets fared even worse than the French initially; but due to geography they managed to survive two crucial years and, at Kursk in 1943, they showed how a well designed defense could stop cold even the best German tanks. The French themselves had a similar experience in WW1: after initially surviving for two hard years, they gave the German attackers a very bloody nose at Verdun.

>but due to geography they managed to survive two crucial years and, at Kursk in 1943, they showed how a well designed defense could stop cold even the best German tanks.

At Kursk as your first example? I agree that the battle of Kursk showed the Germans how their best tanks could be crushed, but it's not a good example of your point as I understand it.

Firstly because the main reason for victory wasn't so much the ability to destroy German tanks. The Soviets already had this well before July of 1943. Instead victory was because they knew German attack planning in advance and were able to prepare an incredibly robust defense in depth against them while also concealing a superbly equipped counterattack.

Secondly, Kursk isn't the best example because the Battle of Stalingrad much earlier showed how it was possible to stop and then destroy a powerful, well equipped German Army with a tenacious defense and then even mount a ferocious counter offensive (operation Uranus).

Part of the success of Stalingrad for the Soviets was also due to a major earlier blunder of confidence by Hitler, who thought the 6th army alone was enough to take Stalingrad and ordered its accompanying 4th army to separate away from 6th and continue south to join the rest of the previously already split Army Group South (in an even earlier Hitler order that further weakened the later attack on Stalingrad) for an attack on the Caucasus

I felt Kursk was a good example of the superiority of defense over offense in WW2 as the other factors were generally even (no major surprise, both sides had good logistics etc.) Everything you say about Soviet preparations is right, that's how good you could make a defense with WW2 tech if you knew what you were doing!

>I felt Kursk was a good example of the superiority of defense over offense in WW2 as the other factors were generally even (no major surprise, both sides had good logistics etc.)

Fair enough and I see your point, though I still consider Stalingrad a more interesting example of how effective defense can be specifically because there (unlike at the Kursk Salient), the Soviet forces were at first inferior, weakly prepared and poorly commanded, yet still managed to grind the Germans to a gradual halt before grinding them down entirely through sheer tenacity.

And if we're arguing about the wider viability of both organized and even improvised defense tactics vs. intense, well-done offensive tactics, especially when you draw enemies into a complex urban area, Stalingrad excels as an example of what's possible.

The Blitzkrieg isn't a great counterpoint since the objective is to avoid frontal attacks on heavily defended positions, which is how the Germans did actually manage to get France. Using a blitzkrieg against a hardened position is doomed to failure.

The WWII invasion of France was so successful because they struck through the undefended Ardennes, rather than frontally attacking the Maginot line. In that sense the Maginot Line was actually a success, since it prevented a direct invasion of France from Germany, and forced the Germans to attack through other countries.

Traditionally, you sort of had to take heavily defended positions in order to conquer territory because if you didn't, the defenders would cut of your supply lines and attack your rear.

A key idea of Blitzkrieg (or "maneuver warfare" as it's called today) is that if you can move fast enough, this stops being true. You don't rely on fixed supply lines, and they can't attack your rear when they're not sure where you are and could be somewhere else by the time they organize an attack.

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