Yet another interesting chat by Perun.
People expected Zaluzhnyi to be channelling Heinz Guderian, whereas he is actually channelling John Monash.
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An appraisal of the Ukrainian offensiveOctober 8th, 2023 |
 11 comments to An appraisal of the Ukrainian offensive |
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As ever, a good, well-balanced assessment. He makes good points about mines and the use of Russian elite forces in defensive roles.
I was less sure about his point about the Ukrainians being poor when it came to combined arms. What arms are they not using in their attacks? I wondered. Although his point about staff officers would be familiar to First World War historians.
Talking of the First World War, while Monash was undoubtedly a brilliant commander he wasn’t the only one. Plumer was using bite and hold tactics at Passchendaele and Byng introduced the predicted barrage at Cambrai. A key point is that Hamel – or Le Hamel as we call it on this side of the Equator – was fought in 1918. It was only by then that the British army had shells in the quantity and quality it needed and the soldiers with the skill and doctrine to make proper use of them. There, I think, really is a parallel – albeit a rather depressing one.
Ukraine is a strange war – with modern technology, tiny cameras and so on, I would expect far more coverage from the front lines than there is, and why is it so safe for politicians and celebrities to visit Kiev?
As for the First World War – as some French officers said at the time, had the Allies moved faster in 1914, after the German defeat on the Marne, the German forces would have been cut off. But General Joffe moved too slowly (nor was the victory on the Marne his work – but that is another story). Also had the British military been competent in 1915 Constantinople would have fallen and the Allies, Britain, France and Russia, would have linked up – the position of the Central Powers would have been hopeless. Such military historians as Colonel Barker (who specialised on Ottoman matters) and Brigadier Mallinson, undertood these matters long ago – as did Churchill’s biographer Gilbert. Sadly Andrew Roberts, the more recent biographer of Churchill, does not understand military history at all.
By the way – General Monash was an organiser, he was not a tactical commander. Organisation is incredibly important, logistics is vital.
Perhaps the best British commanders on the Western Front were, early on, Smith-Dorrien (before he was removed), the Earl of Cavan (often overlooked) and, Patrick is quite correct, Byng and Currie (Canadian army) and Plumer after he sussed things out – which takes time.
Rawlingson was poor at first – but learned. Haig and Gough started off poor – and remained so.
Would General Wilson have been any good? We shall never know as he turned down tactical command. By the way that may not just have been lack confidence in himself – we now know from the unedited version of the dairy of Wilson (rather than the sanitised version) that General Wilson despised Prime Minister David Lloyd-George more, far more, that he disliked General Haig. Far from aiming at dictatorship himself (as ignorant leftist writers claim about Wilson) Henry Wilson thought that David Lloyd-George was aiming at dictatorship, and wanted to create a total-state (the word “totalitarian” had not yet been coined) tyranny. David Lloyd-George’s later sympathy for the regimes that emerged in Italy and Germany (sympathy that his biographers try and shove down the Memory Hole) would have been no shock to Henry Wilson. It is often forgotten that the early 1900s “Minority Report” on the Poor Law (the “Majority Report” was written by people who had spent their lives, unpaid, caring for the poor – yet it recommended a partial rolling back of Poor Law provision) was written by fanatical total-state worshippers – Fabians such as the the Webbs, the Minority Report was intended over-the-long-term to give the state a stranglehold on Civil Society – not just for a small minority of very poor people, but for the general population (as has come to pass). David Lloyd-George was a strong supporter of the Minority Report – as was Winston Churchill (who, tragically, did not for some years grasp its implications – what its true objective was), Mr Churchill grew out of this – Lloyd-George never did.
Replacing General Robertson as head of the Imperial General Staff was one thing – but siding with Lloyd-George to take the position of General Haig was a bridge too far for Henry Wilson.
The British state went from aiding education to trying to gain a stranglehold on it with the Act of 1870 (1872 in the case of Scotland), and British industry started to fall behind (relatively speaking) due to the Disraeli Trade Union Act of 1875 (Disraeli also heaped compulsory functions on local government in 1875 – regardless of the wishes of local taxpayers) made worse by the terrible Act of 1906, but it was not till the acceptance of the “Minority Report” (written by Collectivist fanatics – whereas the Majority Report was written by people who had actually cared for the poor with their own hands) that the British state became committed to over-the-long-term taking over the basic functions of Civil Society for the general population.
The once famous Liberal John Morley, went from a being a supporter of all this to an opponent of it – but he could not convince his young friend Winston Churchill – who did not grasp where it was all leading till much later. F.A. Hayek was a great admirer of John Morley.
As for the First World War – the Conservatives were in support of fighting Germany from the start (although some people on the right now have tried to shove that fact down the Memory Hole), but many Liberals were not convinced till the German invasion of Belgium.
John Morley resigned – not so much because he had strong intellectual arguments against the Declaration of War (after the Imperial German invasion of Belgium even the German Ambassador understood that Britain would have to declare war now), but because he believed that the state was already getting too intrusive in society and massive war would only aid the process of the state getting ever bigger and more intrusive.
The thoughts of John Morley turned increasingly to death – even, perhaps, wishing for his own death.
General Smith-Dorrien, the best British commander of 1914, had similar opinions – he was horrified by the prospect of war (and he was no coward – as a life time of battle honours shows), and like General Sherman before the American Civil War, predicted casualties on a truly vast scale.
Both General Sherman and General Smith-Dorrien were thought insane – but their casualty estimates were fairly accurate.
As for the Ukrainian war – it is not even possible to get accurate casualty figures, the Russians claimed to have killed or wounded 400 thousand solders (Ukrainian and helpers), but it is very hard to believe this.
Everything in Ukraine is covered by the “fog of war” and by the propaganda claims of both sides.
One interesting question for future historians (future historians – it is not possible to make an assessment now), is how many operations are being conducted by Western trained Ukrainians (there has been a lot of Western arming and training of the Ukrainians since 2014 – something the utterly incompetent Mr Putin failed to take account of) and how many operations are being conducted by Western forces directly – rather than via Ukrainian forces.
For example, I rather doubt that the pipelines in the Baltic were blown up by the Ukrainians, it seems far more likely this was an American or British operation. My guess would be that it was an American operation.
How important British and American special forces are in the conflict we just do not know – ditto Polish volunteers and so on. They may be of only very minor importance, or they could be of rather more importance – we just do not know.
What we do know is that Mr Putin was an idiot – he assumed that the military situation was the same in 2021 as it had been in 2014, when (in reality) the military situation had totally changed due to Western arming and training of Ukrainian forces. With hindsight Mr Putin, from his perspective, should have gone into Kiev in 2014 – leaving everything to 2021 was a massive, perhaps fatal, blunder.
If Russia does manage to win this war, and as the film shows – that is unlikely now, it will be IN SPITE OF Mr Putin – not because of him.
As for Ukraine – the Ukrainians lose either way, either Mr Putin and his fellow criminal butchers conquer them, or they get sold out to the “international community”.
Heads – no independent Ukraine, tails – no independent Ukraine.
And what precisely is Russia going to win, if win they can? Will they occupy the entire country? Set up a puppet government of Ukraine less the disputed provinces?
What makes them think that Ukraine will be any more amenable to being conquered than Afghanistan or Syria? A country full of arms and explosives and folks who are pretty enterprising in putting them together in interesting ways*. Of course the fighting may end in a compromise semi-peace with the 2022 borders or something like with both sides exhausted, but would anybody in the world trust Russia not to restart it after a recovery period?
* The advent of cheap and deadly drones may make it practically impossible to occupy any country against serious resistance no matter how brutal the occupying force may be.
@rhoda klapp,
Not necessarily the case, I fear. You just have to be willing to depopulate the place, first.
Either kill the locals, or drive them off. Either one works.
Side-effects? Depends on how much you care. Most people doing these things… Don’t.
Hamas and Hezbollah win in Israel? They’d do just what they said they would, and there wouldn’t be an Israeli left inside the borders of what was Israel. Dead, most likely, some of the more attractive women and boys sold into sex slavery, and any survivors that got out would no longer be an issue. No people? No resistance.
You only have to worry about “resistance” when you’re interested in keeping the population as slaves or what have you. Don’t care? No problem.
Silly me – of course Mr Putin’s attack was in 2022 not 2021.
He did not, from a Russian perspective (obviously a Ukrainian would see things differently), waste seven years after 2014, he wasted eight years – whilst the enemies of Russia armed and trained Ukrainian forces, and worked out what they would do.
Mr Putin needs to retire to a monastery – or go to the next world.
It would be good if the Ukrainian people could have their own independent country – not under the thumb of the murdering Gangsters in Moscow, or the lunatics of the “international community” with their “Diversity” (i.e. genocide by the instalment plan) and “Trans Rights” for young children.
I have no idea how Ukraine can be independent – telling Moscow, Washington and Brussels to bugger off, but I would love to see it.
It’s going to get interesting in a couple of months when the nominations for the 2024 Russian Presidential Election open.
Even weirder, the Ukraininan 5-year-cycle has syncronised with the Russian 6-year-cycle so the Ukraininan election will be within a week of the Russian election both in mid-March! We’re going to see two countries at war with each other both in the middle of their respective leaders’ simultaneous election campaigns most of next Spring.
@Paul Marks,
In regards to this, of yours:
Uhmmmm… Yeah. Factor this in, please:
https://yle.fi/a/74-20054419
Baltic Connector and the communications cables cut simultaneously.
Hmmmm. I don’t think you’re gonna find any American ships having been in the area, but I’ll lay you long odds that the same bunch of Russian deep sea specialists were in the area. I’d also point out that the Russians are the only ones building specialist vessels designed specifically for this sort of work, attacking off-shore pipelines and cables.
Put this together with the attacks last year, and I think that odds are somewhat greater that Russia did both than that the US would have been so stupid and feckless as to have done NordStream. I mean, yeah, sure… Anything is possible. But, I suspect that the Russians did NordStream last year so as to be able to point fingers at others, when they started attacking other people’s undersea infrastructure.
Now that I think about it, it actually makes a kind of sense from the Russian perspective: Attack NordStream yourself, and then use that attack (conveniently blamed on half-a-dozen others…) to justify Russian attacks on other infrastructure in the Baltic and elsewhere.
Not that we’re at all likely to find out what happened. That Sy Hersh has been blown as an operative is kinda indicative… His fantasy about US Navy divers (not SEALs, BTW… Construction divers, guys who do salvage work in hardhat suits…) and Norwegian P-8s is pretty much certain indication that he’s been getting his information from FSB handlers, and that those handlers aren’t even trying, any more…
Kirk – at the risk of being like John Bright at the time of the Crimean War (correct – but horribly isolated), I am going to point that the idea that Mr Putin, idiot though he is (and Mr Putin is rather an idiot – as well a murdering gangster), blew up his own pipelines (almost on the day that the new pipeline from Norway came on stream) is utterly absurd.
It was clearly a Western operation – the only real question is whether it was a British or American operation. How many other British or American military operations there have been is something that may not be found out in our life times.
As for the “Ukrainian” attacks on Russians in Africa and elsewhere (including Russia itself) – I have my doubts about whether these are all Ukrainian attacks, they may be (it is possible), but I doubt it. The involvement of British and/or American Special Forces and intelligence services would seem logical.
Using Russian natural resources, and the natural resources of the Central Asian Republics, to prop up the Western Credit Bubble economies for a bit longer, has been suggested as the motivation for this “international community” activity over many years – but I do NOT believe this is the case. I believe the motivation of the international community (the CIA and so on) is ideological – NOT based on a desire to control Russian natural resources and the natural resources of the Central Asian Republics.
The problem with Mr Putin is that he is a murdering gangster (like Al Capone) – he thinks that people are just motivated by money, by economic factors. He does not understand how deeply ideological the international community is.