[WarInEur] Severe Weather Effects

[sgminfo]

Not certain exactly what any of you are trying to prove against one 
another ...

For that matter, not sure I understand what the 'panzer-pusher' 
mentality is that one has to take a stand against.

The discussion, correct me if I am missing the point,

seems to be at issue about whether MSUs should chain or not.

The proposition being put forward was that chaining should now be allowed,
because attrion actually put a lot of the elements of the 'do not chain' 
special rules
into the basic mix.

i.e. Allow chaining because it is not going to help much.

So the circle was attempting to be squared.

I am not sure that panzers were being pushed here....


As regards the general proposition,
that Germany had very little chance,
well, that speaks with the grand luxury of hindsight.

At the time,
Based upon all the experimental evidence available...
such a proposition (of Germany's inevitable doom) seemed itself to be 
patently crazy.

Germany was doing, what all the experts said, they obviously could not do.
Namely, win, and win big time.


What people often forget...
is that the German General Staff
were in the unenviable position,
of being required to wage
agressive forward war
on the territory of their neighbours,
because that was the position they were in,
and the task that had been set for them,
and theorey and doctrine predicated that as the best method to proceed with.

There is a significant body of evidence
to the general proposition that
OKW were more than lukewarm to thewhole idea.

The blitkrieg theorey itself,
has immense attractions
for the poor mans answer to modern warfare.

As far as I can see in a simplistic guise.

The kernel of the theorey
has little directly to do with Panzers per se.



The essence of the theorey is this:-

Modern society is complex,
with a highly complex interconnecting
political/economic/military structure.

Therefore...
If you can disrupt it sufficiently rapidly,
the entire interconnected infrastructure would tend to go into
shock, spasm, dislocation, and collapse.

Germany had some extensive experimental evidence of this.

The 30 years war,
and the effect of massive dislocation on a comparatively simplex society...

and the Collapse in 1918
when the infrastructure underpinning thewar effort
collapsed into nilitary, political,  and economic chaos at home
spiralling rapidly into defeat on all sides.

It is facile to say that this is merely being  sucked in by the whole 
'stabbing in the back' myth.

But perceptions are often the mother of reality.

Most people inside Germany did not see any military defeat in 1918, 
spawning a collapse, the armies were out beyond thefrontiers
all seemed well on that side. (The rumblings of trouble were as yet dim 
and distant),
What wasn't well,
were endemic food shortages,
the breakdown of rationing,
law and order,
the rising disaffection seen everyday on the streets,
with violence and rival factions beginning to fight each other.


So in any analysis post the event, such factors would loom excessively 
large,
simply because everyone had felt this to be going on.

Thus the idea and eventually the doctrine was formulated...

If Germay could impose such breaking strains on the societies about her,
and all the evidence pointed to the fact that these societies out there,
were already fractious and nearly all seeing as much choas as 1918 Germany,
Whilst being far more vulnerable because of their highly complex 
technological nature.

the proposition was not unreasonable to put forward,
that such re engineered 'stress' would cause exactly thesame sorts of 
dislocation and collapsearound her.

So it became a beguiling formula,
hit hard, hit fast, and with everything at hand,
rather like sumo,
Don't try to wrestle your opponent to the ground,
unbalance him and turn hisstrengths against him,
toppling him out of the ring, beforehe cangather his wits and his strength.

That very economic hegemony meant that the western powers were more 
interconnected, and hence much more vulnerable, to dislocating blows.


All these facts and figures on Germany's economic abilities,
were possibly entirely beside the point.

 Germany never intended to wage that kind of a war,
nor did she anticipate the conflict beng around long enough
that numbers and economic mass would get the chance to bury her,

So Russia was not about the numbers game,
it was all about thedislocation game.

We have,
on the face of it,
a corrupt and unloved monolithic state,
bearing down upon a disaffected and exploited population.

'One has only to kick in the door...'
Really does sum this up...but not quite for the reasons it is taken to 
mean today.

This idea was tested and proven, in Poland, Holland, Belgium, and France.
It was logical that the same equation would work even more effectively 
with a state that lacked the inherent cohesion of western styledemocracies.

So Barbarossa was never predicated on the numbers game,
that would never work,
and the whole point was actually to avoid that like the plague.


 possibly it went wrong,
simply because the German General Staff,
and Hitler himself,
became so enthralled by what was going on,
that they simply lost the plot.

The Kiev controversy in 1941 being a prime illustration,
that no one was completely sure how you could bring about the collapse 
of the soviet state,
a state so unlike any of the states they had taken on before.

Indeed I might suggest that Germany herself,
projected her own perceived weaknesses
onto the soviet state, dealing blows at her that
the German leaders felt they could not survive in any way themselves,
and that is thedeeper origin of the way Barbarossa may have miscarried.

Once 1941 was over,
the whole operational plan of victory
in theorey, and in practice,
was rendered bankrupt,
and Germany wasn't able to come up with a replacement
theoretical basis for the maintenance of the momentum they felt they had
up until November 1941.

The 'military option'
never was
and once forced back upon it,
the game was up...

The classic rules of warfare now held sway,
and the equations that garranteed her defeat,
began to grind her relentlessly down.

The clever bit, as I see it,
was the way she managed to call the tune,
without ever having to pay the piper.

November 1941,
was when the bill landed on her desk...
with only a handful of pocket change in her hands...


Our problem,
is partly this...

We only simulate the military angle,
and thus the operating mechanisms of Blitzkrieg
are only modelled indirectly,
and only partly effectively.

Hence the special rules,
such as the occupation of Paris,
or the Soviet Collapse rule,
or the German industrial collapse rule.
All are facets of this lurking theorey of Blitxkrieg.

-|steve|-