Tannenberg book pt 2

Wibble edition

Continuing a dive into a great book and trying Philip Blood’s insistence not to compare the current war in Ukraine with earlier wars.

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Yet even he observed the “strange inconsistency” of insisting that a rival “is not to advance beyond a certain point if it be not intended to prevent him doing so at all costs... p41

Putin doesn’t know what a red line is. Remember all the clickbait posts about tactical nuclear weapons if Kherson falls? The endless endless threats from Russia about something or another. Putin is the most dangerous type of dictator, unpredictable. That doesn’t mean you should fear him. Because fear is one of his weapons of genocide.

It hardly represents a long-term triumph of statesmanship to talk an adversary initially intent on taking five of one’s fingers into resting content with only two. p41

Which is what some in the West, that means you Germany, and the Crypto Nazi submarines at the Quincy Institute, want Ukraine to do.

In a century shaped by two world wars and an ongoing threat of nuclear holocaust, negotiations tend to acquire talismanic significance lacking in earlier and simpler times. p41

I love the idiots who claim every war ends with negotiation. Like WW2?

Forward of the railheads the standard German horse-drawn supply wagons were heavy enough to make bogging down a constant risk. p44

Hey Trent Telenko, you suck, you racist MAGA genocidal racist.

German industrialists and capitalists, according to this interpretation, saw southeastern Europe as both a source of increasingly scarce raw materials and a field for investment and exploitation.p 53

Channeled into imperialism to the East during WW1 and then Hitler’s murder fields in the next war then German and Austrian capitalism Ostpolitick funding murder genocide corruption.

German and Austrian statesmen and opinion makers all too frequently demonstrated regrettable arrogance towards Slavs in general and Serbs in particular. p54

Nothing changes except they respect the filthy rich thieves who seized power with murder and corruption and theft. That means you, Abramovich and Lebedev.

An international commission surveying the conflict concluded that the fighting had been “as desperate as though extermination were the end sought.” As for Serbia’s self-proclaimed role as liberator and integrator, growing Albanian resistance to Serb occupation was only the most obvious contemporary indication that Serbia was no less imperialistic than her larger contemporaries. She had merely lacked opportunity to indulge her ambitions. p54

Hahahaha. Serbs have always (since whenever the concept of Serbia was created) loved Russia and genocide. They’ve never experienced Russian fraternal love up close. And they generally like to serve out the genocide than receive it.

Bucha - Picture: ALKIS KONSTANTINIDIS | Podpis: REUTERS

H.R. Trevor-Roper correctly observes that complete sovereignty for small states is a fiction, that “they are not free to conduct independent politics on a world scale.” p55

Brexit.

Brexit.

Brexit.

Deluded Britannia thinks its a world power when its not even a particularly powerful middle power. Its got nukes. But so has Pakistan and North Korea.

Since those years, the use of force has been increasingly described in the verbiage of peace. War departments become departments of defense. Towns are destroyed in order to save them. Military occupation of a neighbor becomes a process of liberating that neighbor from oppression. p55

Russia is liberating Ukrainians from Nazis by murder raping them.

By the end of his tenure as chief of staff, Moltke the Elder was suggesting that the army’s primary function lay in deterring wars rather than fighting them. p56

When will America’s generals learn this? Does America need to go through a bloody war on its territory to stop loving war? Because losing doesn’t teach America anything except to build the military more. The hammer becomes bigger. But America doesn’t want to hammer the genocidal Russian nail, obsessed with the hypothetical Chinese nail.

In view of the actual course of events in the east between 1914 and 1917, a question of increasing interest is why Russia’s power was so overrated in the years before 1914. Paul Kennedy suggests that Europe in general and Germany in particular were mesmerized by numbers in uniform. He goes on to demonstrate that despite the often-cited increases in Russia’s armed forces, her productive capacity was actually decreasing relative to Germany’s in the years before 1914. The military giant was an economic dwarf. Programs of military reform initiated after 1905 were frustrated by bureaucratic infighting and institutional inertia. The tsarist army’s inefficiency, other critics argue, was the systemic product of centuries, not to be overcome by technical innovations, new drill regulations, or shuffling of officers’ appointments. Russian generals themselves, when not speaking for public consumption, constantly questioned their army’s readiness for war. p57

Russia remains an economic dwarf.

While the United States was an uncertain participant in the game of power politics, Russia had a permanent seat at the table. Russian raw materials and Russian markets lured a Germany perceiving the limits of simple colonialism. But in the new century Russia’s image was changing sharply. Tolstoy, Dostoyevsky, Chekhov, brought new life to a Western culture that seemed increasingly mannered, increasingly sterile. Russian music filled concert halls. Russian ballet drew superlatives from the most jaded critics. Russia was “discovered” as a land of simple peasant virtues by neo-Romantic intellectuals, and as a vital frontier by travellers eager to ride the newly completed Trans-Siberian Railway. p58

Russian culture. In a country where 30% of homes don’t have internal plumbing. And all the boy Nazis obsessed with a country of values where every marriage ends with divorce, men live to drink and beat and rape women, the rich eat the poor, the Church is a mafia department of the mafia state and Russians despise everybody who isn’t a Russian.

And even marginal improvements in Russia’s military performance meant an exponential increase in the threat she posed. A skillful middleweight boxer’s chances against a clumsy, untutored heavyweight diminish significantly once his opponent assimilates a few pointers on footwork and timing. p59

I pointed out last year that POB’s assertions about Russian competence (what have the Russians ever invented) were misplaced. Russians are not THAT stupid. The stupid die first. The rest learn. Marginal improvement is killing Ukrainians. Idiots like the military pundits who pulled out the Winter War forgot that Russia won that war. Easily. Brutally. And learnt a lot.

And Russia will improve even more. Much as I despise the country, Russians aren’t THAT stupid.

Never go full POB.

As for the Russian army, its very shortcomings were a paradoxical advantage. A less-prepared force could learn more from its mistakes than one at the peak of efficiency. p60

You can’t discount the enemy as being idiots. That’s what some did. What Apple parts do Russians build? I don’t know, probably none. They build space craft and atomic bombs. Their advanced weapons are usually vaporware, though not always. But they also build tanks, artillery and drones. Some of which is terrible. But a terrible bullet kills. So does a terrible shell. And a single terrible tank can rule a town or demolish a village.

One of the reasons calling Russia a great power was always a myth. It lacks the ability to make use of a range of high technologies as a great power should (POB)

The German foreign office was receiving reports of new cartridge factories designed to work twenty-four-hour shifts. p61

WTF are the NATO factories not doing this (if they are, then build more). And remember when German tank producers sued each other instead of building more tanks? I’m a lawyer. I live on litigation - THIS TYPE OF IP LITIGATION. I don’t think you can sue the Russian army to death. Because I’m a coward lawyer, I wrote a book with friend. I didn’t sue Wagner. Or worse sue the Ukrainian army. So why did Krupp and Rheinmetall sue each other? Germans being Germans.

The “Germans” were forced to retreat from an operational triumph that had become a strategic disaster. p62.

This line about Germane war games applies generally to the modern Prussian way of war. Which is why the US military should continue learning from these winners and the US military should continue winning every war since 1945 despite being the world’s biggest economy and military power. Pax Brittanica was a lot more effective, boys.

Notice America started losing wars when they won against Germany and decided to become the Germans, who were masters at winning battles and losing the wars.

PS POB’s greatest hit - this man pretends to know war.

Historian Phillips O'Brien explains to James Holland and Al Murray his theory that land battles did not make a significant contribution to the outcome of the war. If you think Stalingrad and the Eastern Front were pivotal, think again

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