323. Golden Age for the casual study of military history

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Military history

I've been sitting on something I started months ago about this being the Golden Age for the casual study of military history, thanks to all the great things on YouTube. I may pull that in here, but, at least to start, I'm going to talk about last night.

It was cold and I decided to stay in with a bottle of wine and amuse myself on the computer. I had nothing particular in mind. So here's how I ended up spending my evening: "The Great War" channel was back with a new host and an episode on the German revolutions of 1918 and 1919. This got me off in a military history direction. 

The day before I had watched a "Military History Not Visualized" episode on "The Rzhev Meat Grinder." 

HERE's the link.

This was a Soviet campaign in 1942 that doesn't get the attention it deserves because there was very little movement. The Soviets attempted to smash in the German salient near Rzhev (it looks like the more famous Battle of the Bulge in 1944, but the German line held.) So, having been thinking about the consequences of that action, I finally clicked on something I had been ignoring for a long time, "TIK's" "Fall Blau 1942."

HERE's the link.

Military History Visualized, and now Military History Not Visualized, are often interesting and sometimes go into great detail on subjects like the actual composition of German divisions at various times during the war. But TIK may be my favorite military history presenter. His background is in economics and he's relatively new to military history. Unlike most of us, who have been reading about these topics for decades and who often started reading sub-standard books full of misinformation, he is starting fresh with the best sources he can get his hands on. And his economics background works to his advantage when it comes to logistics and the essential economic aspect of modern war. (Really any war.) His episode on the importance of oil for the Germans in WW2 is probably the first thing a student of the subject should view.

TIK has also done videos where he carefully looked at German and Soviet troop strength from year to year and where he broke down German reinforcements not just by year but by the particular front -- North, Center, South -- they were sent to. All this to show that much "common knowledge" about the relative strength in numbers of the two sides is simply wrong.

What I wanted to see in his presentation of Fall Blau, was if my guess from watching the Rzhev video was correct, that the Soviet offensives in the Center prevented sufficient strength from being sent to the South, where the Germans would fail to capture the oil resources they desperately required in the Caucasus. And the answer is, maybe.

According to TIK, the Germans were so successful in the opening phases of Fall Blau, that they concluded, mistakenly, that the Soviet Army in the South was broken and the battle was won. They then redeployed significant forces to the North and Center and even sent some divisions to the West, as the Anglo-Saxon Allies were starting to get a bit frisky. So you could argue that it was the strain of the Soviet attacks on the North and Center that pulled those troops up from the South where the Germans would soon run out of gas before reaching Grozny, and where the 6th Army would get trapped at Stalingrad when the remaining German forces in the South proved too weak to break them out.

But, of course, there's another way to look at this. When I said the Germans "ran out of gas" I meant this literally as well as figuratively. They were simply overextended. Every success had pushed their lines further from home and made the supply situation worse. They now had an increasingly active line to defend starting at Leningrad, running almost to Moscow, and then south past Stalingrad and into the Caucasus. And unlike the Allied shortage of supplies in France in 1944, this shortage wasn't temporary. Wasn't going to be made better in time as oil pipelines connected France to Britain and as the Allies finally won port facilities. For the Germans, with the failure to take the Caucasus, the future was simply the inevitable consumption of what little oil they had on hand.

What I don't know is which of the two factors most drove the decision to remove divisions from the army groups in the South. Was it mostly logistics or mostly the strain on the other fronts? Or was it an even blend of the two? 

Though it may not matter that much. One of the things I noticed watching TIK's excellent coverage of the British Operation Crusader in North Africa in 1941, is that you can look at these extended WW2 campaigns in the same way you look at a Napoleonic battle that takes place over a day or two. If you imagine Napoleon (and Berthier) in command on the Soviet side of this fight, they would have done exactly what the Soviets did. They would have spread the Germans out as thinly as possible, waited until they spent their attack, and then launched a shock attack. Stalingrad was a more vulnerable salient than the one at Rzhev and, since the Soviets actually had more to lose in the South anyway, breaking the German line there was almost ideal. It relieved Astrakhan as well as the Caucasus.

But this was just the start of my evening. Next was "The Chieftain's" lecture on the development of armored warfare by the French Army leading up to 1940. 

HERE's a link to his coverage of the Renault R35.

HERE's a link to part 1 for the SOMUA S35. Part 2 HERE.
The Chieftain is one of my experts on tanks and armored warfare. He has the distinction of actually being a tank commander with fairly recent experience in M-1 Abrams tanks. He's done a long series of videos about particular Armored Fighting Vehicles (AVFs) describing them inside and out -- with way too much information about track maintenance -- but his insights into the ergonomics of the various machines is particularly useful. And this is particularly true when it comes to the French Army tanks of 1940. After watching his videos, shot inside the turrets of these French tanks, you feel nothing but pity for the poor French tank crews. 

But this video is about the development of French tank doctrine and the uncomfortable relationship between the Army and the government in France at the time. He has done a similar video on the British situation which resulted in a fatally flawed doctrine that didn't get improved until 1942 -- and I still don't understand how the Brits screwed this up so badly. The French infantry, the French cavalry, and de Gaulle, all had quite reasonable ideas about what their armored warfare doctrine should be, but political factors seem to have made it impossible to implement these ideas. 

(Now, knowing something of the doctrine of the U.S. Army, the German, the British, and the French armies, it would seem that the French were actually closest to having it right in the 1930s. The Germans would end up having the advantage as they were able to learn from their mistakes in some relatively easy early operations, and at least their main tanks were solid enough to remain useful throughout the war.)

The ergonomic failures of the French tanks, especially their tiny turrets and the inability to see the battlefield around them, or to communicate with supporting elements, would not have been so fatal if the tanks had been used in the combined arms formations that everyone wrote about. Instead, nearly blind French tanks, in small numbers and unsupported by infantry or artillery, had to joust with Panzers that could see them, communicate with each other on the radio, and that had three man turret crews to efficiently deploy their weaponry. 


And finally, just as I was about to go to bed, Drachinifel, my favorite source of naval history information, posted his 29th question and answer video. Another 47 minutes of geeky delight. 

HERE's a link to the episode.

What amazes me is that these people can all find audiences. I certainly don't know anyone who would willingly submit to watching this much military history, or listening to, since all of these channels are mostly audio with some providing images or maps when absolutely required. 

And there is yet another channel, "Forgotten Weapons", that specializes in in-depth information about particular weapons. (The "Forgotten" part is a little confusing at this point as he also covers the best known weapons as well.) His episode on the first domestic machine gun used by the French Army is an engineering delight. 

In some ways, Forgotten Weapons is the best of these channels in that it presents information in a way that no other media could equal. Neither a documentary nor a book could be as informative as Ian taking apart, reassembling, and often firing the weapon in question. Watching Ian try to control a fully automatic M-14 tells you everything you need to know about why the weapon was a failure -- and it also suggests why the U.S. Army held on to the heavy B.A.R. as long as it did.

HERE's the link to the French St Etienne Mle machine gun of 1907.