Well, there was always the strategic option of maintaing a static western European front and winning the war elsewhere. e.g. overwhelming the Russian Empire and then concentrating your troops and using Stosstruppen tactics you’ve developed in the meantime. But keeping that front static wasn’t an option.
You mean on part of Germany? I believe the French and British were inflicting greater rates of attrition on the German front, so just in terms of manpower, they would have eventually overwhelmed the Germans… but the price in lives would have been so horrendous it was always going to come down whose political base collapses first.
Then again, it has been a while since I read the series, and I’m by no means an expert. Maybe the benefit of hindsight and modern analysis would show ways out of that dilemma that wouldn’t have been visible to the commanders at the time – the fog of war was very thick, as far as I can tell.
I now had the time to read it again and think about your comment more thoroughly.
The problem the stormtroopers ran into was that they would succeed at punching through lines, but they still couldn’t solve the issue that the defender had railways and prepared trenches to quickly deploy reinforcements and deliver ammunition, while the attacker’s logistics would be hampered by having to traverse the broken ground. They could secure ground, but not hold it, because the technology to back them up effectively wasn’t there yet.
Essentially, the meme’s approach would see the knights move in under the other guy’s covering fire, butcher the defenders, then get shot by enemies arriving by car while their buddy is still running down the hallway on foot to provide more cover.
Well, there was always the strategic option of maintaing a static western European front and winning the war elsewhere. e.g. overwhelming the Russian Empire and then concentrating your troops and using Stosstruppen tactics you’ve developed in the meantime. But keeping that front static wasn’t an option.
You mean on part of Germany? I believe the French and British were inflicting greater rates of attrition on the German front, so just in terms of manpower, they would have eventually overwhelmed the Germans… but the price in lives would have been so horrendous it was always going to come down whose political base collapses first.
Then again, it has been a while since I read the series, and I’m by no means an expert. Maybe the benefit of hindsight and modern analysis would show ways out of that dilemma that wouldn’t have been visible to the commanders at the time – the fog of war was very thick, as far as I can tell.
I’ll have to read that article you link above, it’s been a decade or so since I did any reading on technological revolutions in military affairs.
I now had the time to read it again and think about your comment more thoroughly.
The problem the stormtroopers ran into was that they would succeed at punching through lines, but they still couldn’t solve the issue that the defender had railways and prepared trenches to quickly deploy reinforcements and deliver ammunition, while the attacker’s logistics would be hampered by having to traverse the broken ground. They could secure ground, but not hold it, because the technology to back them up effectively wasn’t there yet.
Essentially, the meme’s approach would see the knights move in under the other guy’s covering fire, butcher the defenders, then get shot by enemies arriving by car while their buddy is still running down the hallway on foot to provide more cover.
Yeah, that sounds about right, I just started reading up on it a bit more and realize there’s a lot I don’t know about it.
Ain’t that how it usually goes with history? We climb on a hill of understanding to look at the mountains of the unknown beyond.