Fordtunate Son

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Military Pron - Bunker Busters (3bof4) - The Lil' uns

Jan 28, 2022, 3:32 PM

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Last time we covered pre-WW1 Germany and its hoe, Austria-Hungary, and their concern that they would be DP’d and spit-roasted by Britain, France, and Russia in the next war.

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Germany only had 8 armies to work with prior to WW1, so the question became “do we put 4 in the West to fight France and Britain, and 4 in the East to fight Russia, or go 5-3, or 6-2, or what?” They spent a lot of time and effort working that question.

Russia was pathetic at that time, but France and Britain were a serious, if not superior threat, so they ultimately decided to put 7 armies in the West and only 1 against Russia.

The thinking was that Russia was so damm primitive in roads and rails that it would take them forever to even mobilize and field armies if war came. Plus, they had a shidload of internal problems. Like brewing revolutionary sentiment all over the place.

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Czar Nicolas II blessing his troops. They need a blessing, and he needed one too. Russia had to fight a World War, a Civil War, and a Revolution all at the same time. Yikes.

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Russian General: Why do we need these fortifications your majesty? The Germans won’t get this far.
Czar Nicolas II: We need them for when our troops come home.
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The Russians even had a revolution/mutiny on this battleship, the Potemkin, in 1905. That was years before the more famous one in 1917. Seems the sailors on the Potemkin didn’t like eating maggot-infested meat, so they rose up and shot some officers, burned down the port of Odessa, and did all the usual riotous revolution stuff. They even made a movie about it.

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So the Germans were absolutely correct in their assessment of the Russian military. It was awful.

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When WW1 did come, that single German army in the East (the 8th) promptly shattered two Russian armies (1st and 2nd) as soon as they formed up at the Battle of Tannenberg, in 1914.

The Germans basically pulled the old “divide and conquer” routine Napoleon was so famous for. They smashed one army, then turned around and smashed the other before the two could combine...because bad roads and rails, ya know. Just like the Germans figured.

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The defeat was so bad that the overall Russian commander committed suicide out of shame. And that one battle set the Russian military back over 2 full years. The Germans didn’t have to worry about the mighty bear again until almost 1917. Bam!

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The Battle of Tannenburg

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The self-shamed one-man suicide squad, and commander of the Russian armies, Samsonov Vasilevich

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The German victor in that battle happened to be a guy named Paul von Hindenburg, for the curious.

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The Russians were axx-whipped so badly they couldn’t even launch another offensive again at all till 1916, and only then against the living-dead, Austria-Hungary.

Russia vs. the corpse turned out to be a close, but hard fought victory. I mean, even the Russians, as bad as they were, could beat the dead. Barely. But more on that at another time.

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I love political cartoons. Daddy Germany, dragging Austria to war, dragging Italy to war, who just wants to play with his old friend the French chicken. Not exactly accurate but funny. Austria actually started the whole military mess, in Serbia. And the Serbs started the whole political mess via assassination.

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Bosnian uber-nationalist Gavrilo Princip. He was the match that set the powder keg alight by assassinating an Austrian Archduke and his wife. Today, it’s the Middle East that’s the hot zone. 100 years ago, it was the Balkans. Bosnia for Bosnians.

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Archduke Franz Ferdinand of Serbia and his wife Sophie

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Getting back to the military hostilities, the huge victory at Tannenberg was all well and good for Germany, but France was a whole other matter. And although they had bought some time in the East, the war with France was gonna be a knock-down, drag-out fight between virtual equals.

The basic German plan, after about 20 years of thought, was to sweep in like a clock hand (going counter-clockwise) across the Low Counties of Belgium and the Netherlands and take all the ports on the English Channel.

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I’ll let her explain.

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Well, maybe a map would help more. The red lines are the German plan. The blue lines are French counterattack, Plan 17. They postulated 16 earlier ones. 17 was no better. It failed after about 2 days.

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Taking the channel ports was to prevent the British from easily helping France with troops and supplies. Britain could still get to France, but they’d have to go the long way around though Brittany. The German strategy was called the Schlieffen Plan, and was named after this guy, who died before war began.

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Alfred von Schlieffen, Field Marshal and Chief of Staff of the Imperial German Army

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Once we get into WW1 proper we’ll return to him, and Sergeant York (at Obed’s request!), for that matter. But for now, what’s important is to know the basic strategy. As it turned out, the Germans didn’t have quite enough men for such a broad, bold sweep all the way across and around France when the war started. So, they had to settle for a fugged up bastardization called the Moltke Plan.

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Moltke. Helmuth von Moltke. Schlieffen’s successor.

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The Moltke Plan made due with what was available at the time, and tried to pulled off the grand sweep that Schlieffen had envisioned. But Moltke simply didn’t have enough men take all of the ports on the English Channel AND go for Paris. So instead he just went for Paris.

That meant that instead of a good old fashioned Green Bay Sweep, the Germans kind of got a fugged up off-tackle dive where the runner trips over his lineman’s leg and falls forward for a few yards.

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Ernest NO! Byner fumbles off-tackle just like the Germans did in front of Paris with the Moltke Plan. I lost several weeks allowance on that game. Taught me not to gamble. Unless it’s a can’t-lose bet, of course.

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The Moltke Plan, in purple. Schlieffen in the green dashed lines.

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The German lack of a knockout blow in 1914 in the West led on to another 3 years of stalemate and trench warfare, and all the technology and thought to overcome those trenches. We covered some of that in the tank stuff, if you remember back to the break-though tanks and the exploitation tanks.

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A slow, thick-skinned Matilda I break-though tank

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A fast, thin-skinned Crusader exploitation tank

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But while the British and French excelled in the technology and theory that helped to win WW1, ie, tanks and planes, the Germans perfected the British and Russian concept of “deep battle,” and used it just 20 years later to defeat the West, and damm near Russia too.

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This is an excellent example of how the blitzkrieg really worked. It wasn’t just a bum rush. It was a very organized attack, at high speed. Tanks at the front, busting through the line; Anti-tank guns and infantry peeling off to the sides to protect the supply line; unarmored trucks racing up the protected middle to resupply everyone along the way. We’ll get back to this in just a bit.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kE_jX9E40M0
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You might have heard the old adage about “fighting the last war, not the current war.” That is EXACTLY what Britain and France did in 1940, to a “T”, just 20 years after the end of WW1.

But in 1940 the Germans were fighting the new war, not the old 1914 war, and they were about to pull one of the greatest sucker punches in history. When we pick up in next time I’ll show you exactly how, and where, and how the mysterious hand-held bunker-busters helped them do it so quickly.

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