Comment by zeteo | Hacker News Reader

Comment by zeteo | Hacker News Reader

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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.

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