Thread 64394159

Why are contemporary military leaders so irrelevant? You never hear about them coming up with a great new strategy or a way to outsmart the enemy

>>64394159 (OP)

Western generals today are little more than civil servants piloting desks and have zero meaningful battlefield experience; we also have top-heavy bureaucratic militaries with more brigadiers than battalions to even command, and pensions matter more than glory.

Eastern generals ha e more chance to actually fight, but any commander enjoying too much of his own celebrity tends to be perceived as a threat to the regime and end up being disposed of, so ironically victory is a great way to sabotage yourself. It's a lot safer to just funnel troops into the meat grinder and not think.

Both situations discourage military genius.

Because it's now about keeping your head down and agreeing with what you're told. That's how you get promoted

>>64394159 (OP)
>the winning side always has the worse generals
either we dont actually know what makes a good general or being worse at your job makes your side win

Because militaries are more like modern corporations than they are like militaries as one would imagine. Lots of worrying about your career and being a cultural fit so you can (slowly) move up.

This guy has a really good presentation on the topic "Why our Generals were Successful during WWII"

https://youtu.be/OehvY94N-WA?si=ZiGyWeyVIt-9A_g1

>2025
>I am forgotten

even ww1/2 generals seemed like they were less significant than people like bonaparte or frederick the great or even lee and jackson. is it because of technology or polticis?

>>64394230
Warlords are basically echoes of premodern battle commanders.

>>64394330
>is it because of technology or polticis?
its hard to seperate the actual abilities of napoleon, washington, alexander, etc from their mythology

if napoleon had existed in WW2 and was exactly as good as he was in his time, its doubtful he would have had the same legacy as he did
WW1 and 2 werent really won by excellent generals, even when they are admitted to have played a large part
they were won by geopolitical factors, the US had a massive manpower pool and mountains of resources, which snowballed into a larger industrial base and just outproduce the axis

>is it because of technology or polticis?
both, but because of how they shaped public perception rather than the technology itself
the historiography of WW2 has largely focused on the technology that won it, which is why statements like atom bomb/radar won the war for casual non-history people
or on industrial capacity for history buffs rather than the contributions of individual people

>>64394159 (OP)
wars aren't actually supposed to be won anymore. part of the point is dragging them out as long as possible. kinda why rommel got killed to but that was more about hitler being a retarded fatalist

>>64394362
>rommel got killed to but that was more about hitler being a retarded fatalist
Elaborate

>>64394159 (OP)
Is that Joe Biden?

Nice bait ^

>>64394367
afaik rommel started criticising hitler or made him look back for instance after being ordered to secure the atlantic wall and realizing it was all a little too late. kinda like when command refused to send in the tanks to squash normandy and how some of the brass realized it was fucking jover as soon as the allies gained that foothold.

either or shit still kept going with the battle of the bulge right to the end with crap like operation steiner. if anything they still wanted it to keep going on even after losing the war with operation werewolf doing partisan stuff. hitler himself for that matter sabotaged the war effort insisting on bullshit wunderweapons while shutting down actual game changers like the sturmgewehr 44 to the point of command having to reintroduce stuff under different names. same for his refusal to adopt/copy penicillin because he wanted a homebrew version. or him sticking with the things like the enigma depsite it being obvious it had been cracked/figured out.

rudolph hess had the absolute right idea to fly over to the UK and beg for peace. if hitler had been a realist he would sued for peace after some of his initial successes but he got high on his own supply. if he hadn't attacked the soviet union and they had launched an attack first, maybe a decade later or whatever, chances are america might have even supported the axis. as matter of fact, the prior to the war the germans even trained parts of the russian officer corps in their tank doctrine.

>>64394393
>kinda like when command refused to send in the tanks to squash normandy
they did send tanks to try and push the americans out of omaha, they were just scattered by naval gunfire and so were easily able to be defeated piecemeal
the first intact panthers to be sent to the US for evaluation came from the first 30 sent in

the argument they were having was whether it would have been better to place the panzers forward to attack the allied beachhead when it was still vulnerable (but make them vulnerable to naval gunfire) or if it was better to place them inland and react to allied movements instead (but if the allies already have a beachhead, it might be too late)
in reality, neither solution was going to work, since the allies were ready and able to exploit the weakness of either tactic, allies had multiple battleships and cruisers ready to destroy any concentrated forces deployed forward and they had the logistical capability to land men faster than the germans could react to them
but the "compromise" the germans chose was arguably the worst possible choice, with half their tanks forward and half their tanks in reserve

>>64394393
Your information is over 30 years outdated.

>>64394428
aye, prolly. coincidently so am I

>>64394440
Just word for word the same as what was taught in the world at war series in the 60s or 70s when the only fucking source we had on the Wehrmacht were generals who had A LOT of motivation to try cleaning their hands of Hitler and throwing him under the bus.
Books like Lost Victories and Panzer Leader belong in the fiction section

>>64394457
I dunno dawg. maybe the truth lies somewhere in the middle because all that greatest story never told narrative doesn't seem like all that either. parts of the officer corps tried to coup that guy for reason and very much wasn't a genius all things considered. the getting sentimental about hitler not having done anything wrong seems like wishful thinking even if you're a full blown nazi. but again what do I know.

Rommel seemed to believe that the only way to achieve final victory for the Germany was through the Suez Canal, so he arbitrarily attacked the El Alamein defenses, leading to the collapse of the North African front.
A general with a tendency to act against orders from his superiors is understandably viewed as dangerous.

>>64394479
When the fuck did I advocate a fictitious documentary on Hitler?

>>64394537
you know what I'm saying

>>64394550
To say Hitler wasn't as idiotic as his generals said is not admission to him actually being a genius.
This is why history is nearly impossible to actually talk about.

>>64394393
>if hitler had been a realist he would sued for peace after some of his initial successes
He did. England didn't listen. "A last appeal to reason." After the Battle of France.

>>64394853
The speech in its entirety:

https://www.ibiblio.org/pha/policy/1940/1940-07-19b.html

>>64394200
>the winning side always has the worse generals
Name a single conflict this had occured in.

>>64394987
He was saying the contrary, least I can tell

>>64394393
Thanks history channel for being wrong on purpose. Hitler didn't want to change calibers in the middle of the biggest war in human history, go figure. They also needed the wunderwaffen because they didn't have the fuel and other resources for a shitload of tanks and instead had to focus on extreme quality.

>>64395060
>They also needed the wunderwaffen
It was because hitler had a pipe dream that he could somehow force Britain into a ceasefire in the hopes of waiting out for a soviet
No historian outside the youtubcomment section even today thinks the maus was a logical allocatiob of resources

>and other resources for a shitload of tanks and instead had to focus on extreme quality.
Germans also focused on quantity
They kept obsolete tanks in production and often downgraded their performance so that they could maximize hull production even at the cost of hull performance

>>64395060
Few people actually understand that. God what a fucking relief

>>64395072
>They kept obsolete tanks in production and often downgraded their performance so that they could maximize hull production even at the cost of hull performance
You want a SEVERELY acute shortage of armor? Cease all production of a backbone armored vehicle.
Fucking retard

>>64395079
>Fucking retard
Germans just focused on quantity over quality like everyone else
Their primary concern was just having enough vehicles at all

>>64395083
Then what the fuck was your point? First you rail because they stuck with "obsolete" tanks, but then you about face and say "well they needed tanks, just doing what everyone else was doing"

>>64395091
>hen what the fuck was your point?
That the germans rather pointedly did not believe in "extreme quality" as mentioned in the other post
The prioritized quantity and would enact several cost cutting measures to their designs throughout the war

>>64394393
He needed to keep the US out of the war. There is no counter to that amount of production capacity outside of strategic bomber range, not that they had the capacity to field such bombers even if their air doctrine permitted it. Even if the submarine campaign had been more effective allies have figured it out eventually.
Painter also needed to not split the armies and take Moscow. And not flown in the face of fascist thought by getting addicted to opiates.
I want to view the timeline where Smedley Butler accepted the fascist coup plot and the US remains isolationist or enters on the axis side. I bet we'd have moonbases.

Hitler was ignorant and tyrannical, but one can only sympathize with him for the fact that his orders to switch to long-barreled 50mm guns were ignored by the army at a critical time before the war with the Soviet Union.

>>64395138
It was a bit more complicated than that
The 5cm gun wouldnt be available in number for a while, so the decision to stick with the 37mm wasnt totally insane
The two camps were "stick with the even crappier tank until the 5cm armed tank was available" or "have a semi-decent gun now"
Hitlers compromise was to arm them with 37mm guns now but have them capable of switching to the 5cm when available, which was not a bad decision in hindsight

Dudes be like "why didn't they just use better guns? That's what I would have done"

>>64395136
Dude just take Moscow
It's so easy
Just take this massive city at the core of all Soviet logistics and at the tail end of Germany's
It'll be so much easier than Stalingrad, we definitely won't have a meat grinder at Rzhev

>>64394159 (OP)
because rommel was a nazi propaganda poster boy that huffed his own farts and wrote his own self aggrandizing autobiography midwar. that's why you know about him. because the PR'd himself into fame. nobody gives a shit about the desk clerks who were actually responsible for handling the complex set of logistics and direction of personnel and gear that ultimately won the war, because they're not cool looking.
this myth about tank/aviation aces who can do everything by themselves is just pure propaganda, made palatable to americans post ww2 because of course, the american dream is about the worship of the self made man, who made its own fortune and success by the skin of his balls.

>>64394987
Napoleonic Wars.

>>64395352
>hannibal considered one of the greatest commanders of all time
>battle of cannae is often the only thing that people remember about the punic wars
>even his eyepatch is mythologized
>he actually lost the war

>>64395347
I like how this post slowly goes off the deep end.

>>64394159 (OP)
>You never hear about them coming up with a great new strategy or a way to outsmart the enemy
Why would they if everything is already set, and they are not responsible for it?

>>64394853
>Beliving Hitler would do/did something just because he Said so
Lmao

>>64395347
> made palatable to americans post ww2 because of course, the american dream is about the worship of the self made man
they should really worship Hitler then
he went from a being a destitute bumb to leading his nation

>>64396041
You're not gonna believe which western country has nazi parades

>>64396059
nigger

>>64396059
Based, where?

>>64394200
>>64395352
>>64395416
Wellington was actually good, and Hannibal lost because he was beaten by a general he regarded as more skilled than himself.
The side with worse leadership winning wars doesn't indicate that they tend to be winners on average, what it really proves is that victory over a superior side often only needs a few, or even just one skilled general or administrator with strategic vision. That or just plain luck.

>>64396041
By that Logic everyone from Justinian tto Xi should be worshiped by americans

>>64396059
pls tell me so I can join one

>>64396071
If anything all those case prove is that logistics, resources and strategic Level operations are war winners.
Hanibal Lost mainly due to the romans being able to endlessly throw armies at him as well as being deprived of resuply.
Wellington had much more strategic mobility then his peters he could and did hit the French in places where they could not match him.
Not to say both of these were not very skilled
>>64396081
There was a fairly big One in Moscow in 1944 shame you could not join

>>64396091
>There was a fairly big One in Moscow in 1944 shame you could not join
50k POWs of Army Group Center

>>64396095
That is a nazi parade is it not?

>>64396098
It's a Wehrmacht POW parade.

>>64396101
So its nazis parading
A nazi parade

>>64396133
Tell that to all the Alsatian, Czech, and Polish "volksdeutsche" who flooded the ranks by mid 44.

>>64394457
Could you please recommend any new good books?

>>64396069
chicago, illinois

>>64396041
are you kidding? americans absolutely LOVE rommel. and there's a really sizeable chunk of american people that likes hitler. don't believe me? lurk /pol/

>>64396041
the USA was seriously considering joining the axis before the japs ruined everything for everybody with pearl harbor

>>64396246
With the way FDR sucked commie cock, I have my gravest of doubts

>>64396246
>the USA was seriously considering joining the axis