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this post was submitted on 13 Aug 2024
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Literally the "best defence is a good offence" case
I was watching an old documentary about ww2. When France declared war on Germany they just sat on there border watching them. Some British politician or general or something was there and asked why they didn't shoot them. They said "they aren't bothering us so we don't bother them". They made one offence at the start of the war when Germany's western flank was entirely exposed (it was also the only French offence of the entire war) they went about 100m then came back.
Then Germany attacked somewhere else and they folded.
Its actually amazing how much of a cluster fuck the start of ww2 was. Bringing back horses after inventing the tank 20 years before and using it ti win ww1 levels of intelligence.
This is asinine. Horses were extremely useful in WWII. Try watching less Hollywood movies.
One of the reasons Germans were so successful in their "lightning warfare" - they used horses which simplified logistics tremendously. A truck is no good if you don't have fuel, and fuel supplies have been cut. A horse can just eat grass and drink water.
You know what's extremely useful than horse in WW2? Imperial Japanese Army knocking on your door with soldiers on bicycle.
These are different applications.
And I wasn't going to argue against bicycles having been extremely useful.
When did the Germans use horses as offensive cavalry in WW2?
You can clearly find references of French and the British dragging their heels in the interwar years because presumably the posh boys want their horses.
You don't know what you are on about. What Hollywood movies are there about army modernisation in the interwar period you think I am watching? I'll actually enjoy watching it.
The person you replied to is not talking about cavalry. Horses were used by the Germans for moving men and equipment.
I know. But I made the original comment and I wasn't on about horses being used for moving men and equipment. I was talking about them being used instead of tanks.
Okay. Horses were used to move men and equipment. How is that related to my original point?
Dragoons are cavalry. That's how.
Yes, it's obvious they wouldn't use lancers. Even in WWI cavalry charges are a thing of post-war (Soviet, Polish, maybe others') propaganda much more than of actual use.
Literally no one used horses as offensive cavalry at any strategic scale in WW2.
Some exceptions occured: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Battle_of_Schoenfeld
I understood them to be talking about cavalry, in that sentence.
In the dragoon quality it was still useful.
Not against tanks which would be why the royal dragoons switched to tanks.
WWII has seen very fast evolution of warfare approaches. What Germans did in the beginning of the war was roughly similar to what Russians and Ukrainians have learned to do in the last few months. And if we consider that nobody had the brains to come to that theoretically, not NATO countries, not Israel, not even Iran with friends (who were the closest), then it becomes intuitively understandable why German military of those days is considered so genial - it went to war with the right premises (but with clearly fallacious overarching strategy) in the first place. Of course, Tukhachevsky and a few others have written about similar ideas, but didn't get the chance to actually employ them. What the end of the war looked like was the same thing conceptually, but scaled for full industrial potential of all sides.
Most historians I've read consider ww1 to have had a far greater evolution, starting with napoleonic tactics and ending with rolling artillery barrages and tanks.
However, I'm not sure of the point you're looking to make here. I mean, the polish army sending cavalry against the germans was an act of wild desperation. I think thats the point they were making there.
Strictly speaking, just like in any war, they've just forgotten\ignored most of wisdom present in all wars since Sargon the Great. As humans always do.
Specifically, say, human wave attacks at entrenched positions with machine guns were not a thing of somebody not understanding the results. There were plenty of works written at that point about what warfare should be, it's just that their authors wouldn't get promotions in peacetime. Actual commanders had plenty of lives at their disposal without any particular responsibility for those and needed to report some successes. Existential wars between European nations were a forgotten thing, they were either not existential or against a technologically outclassed enemy, so having such people in charge was fine until WWI itself.
But that's not what I meant, I meant that WWII has that peculiar trait that one of the sides (the one that started the show) was actually properly organized before gaining experience through many deaths. Like 3 critical rolls in a row in DnD, one can say. That's how they managed to wreak such havoc.
I know that actual contact use of cavalry was obsolete.
Its strange, you reply with the appearance of disagreeing but then say things that don't refute anything I've said and that I broadly agree with.
For sure and even before machine guns, there's examples of that like the seige of Badajoz which, for its time, was brutal (Napoleonic - like 5k in an hour or something).
To me though, and apologies if you know already, at the Battle of the somme the British army believed the germans to already be dread after days of shelling. As well as this, the many of the british troops were so poorly trained that they ordered mass sections to literally March, with their arms locked out in front of them with the barrel of their rifle pointing upwards, right at German machine guns hoping to charge at the end. Thats literally napoleonic tactics, only they were all "rifles" or light infantry, so they formed skirmishers lines instead of columns. The British artillery stopped shooting for the advance, so that they didn't shoot their own troops.
By the end of the war, soldiers huddled behind tanks advancing behind a rolling barage. The germans just did it on mass and had the armour more concentrated. One of the reasons they jumped so far ahead is the hard lessons they had suffered towards the end of the war. I mean, it was still a blood bath for everyone but for them it was an even worse blood bath. So, I agree very much with what you're saying.
My only point I'm making about the speed of change in warfare, to my understanding, is even greater still in ww1.
I wasn't really disagreeing. Except that guy who wrote as if using horses was something wrong. It's often not a bad idea even today, especially in mountains.
Fair enough, that makes way more sense.
I think they meant front line cavalry which, tbf, they should have specified.
For sure, I think horses, donkys and mules are still the best way to carry large supplies for fighting deep in jungles too. Well, outside of helicopters but they're not ad good at hiding under the jungle canopy. So, I 100% agree. I was just letting you know.
Is it? Russia just got new claims for this war.
Yeah they can claim to have fucked around and found out.
Casus belli typically doesn't work after the fact