IronDuke_slith
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ORIGINAL: IronDuke
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ORIGINAL: Curtis Lemay
You want us to believe that military commanders had no authority to do anything.
Pretty much at most levels.
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I think this just about sums up this entire long-winded post. It is beyond ridiculous.
But Curtis, surely you appreciate that whilst I back up my contention with logic, reason and real world examples, all you do is say "It is ridiculous".
If it is beyond ridiculous (which I'm guessing is like "really ridiciculous but even worse"), you should be able to prove it quite easily, but instead you duck out of the challenge and parrot "it is ridiculous". If I am wrong, prove it and embarrass me in front of the entire forum.
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But it is exactly what WEGO will model. I'm not going to waste time establishing that military decisions of all magnitudes were made more or less continuously - it's obvious.
You're making an unevidenced speculation "All commanders think on their feet and disobey orders depending on the
tactical situation" and then using it to prove something else is wrong. Logic dictates that whilst the first is unproven, everything else is unworkable, because you can't base further analysis on a very debateable assumption.
It also isn't obvious, as my posts amply illustrated. War is a team game, the minute someone deviates from the game plan the whole team has issues. To get a bit American, if the wide receiver isn't where he's supposed to be, that play perfect pass from the QB is going nowhere. The wide receiver may have spotted some nice space and deviated his path because the Corner back has slipped, but if he isn't at the end of the throw....
Continuous decision making at all levels is essentially a mis-reading of Auftragstaktics. You are throwing terms like this and "infiltration tactics" about the place without understanding what they mean, or taking out of date and fundamentally wrong definitions and going with them.
Aufstragtaktics was a relatively simple German idea based on the social order of early Prussian Armies. The King relied on the Nobility to get their men to the field to fight, he therefore couldn't order them to act like automatons and had to allow them to command their own men as they saw fit.
It didn't really derive from Mission orientated orders or anything like that. It evolved at only the highest level to the point where Army Commanders in the late 19th century had freedom of action. The Germans would send out Armies on parallel paths and rely on Army Commanders to interpret the sound of the guns and converge in line with the general operational plan set oiut by the Commander in Chief. However, it hurt them as much as it helped them, since Army Commanders got aggressive most of the time and ended up attacking forces many times their size with bloody results.
As Armies got bigger, this got more and more impractical since entire Armies couldn't veer off course on the whim of one man who had an imperfect understanding of the overall operational situation. In it's classical sense, only Guderian on the Meuse really tried it during WWII, and he had to resign and get reinstated and then play with the words "recce in force" in order to do it. Note his experiences later in the war at Smolensk when instead of pressing on east into what he felt were weak and fractured Russian defences, he first stayed put and tried to seal the pocket and then went south to seal the Kiev encirclement. At no point did he feel his forces were being used properly, and his response was.....to do as he was told.
The one time he did do as he wanted (albeit under extreme pressure), in withdrawing his Panzer Army after the assault on Moscow failed, he was denounced for it and sent into the wilderness for 18 months. This (let's remember) is the Army most credited with your (badly misused and misunderstood) infiltration tactics/Mission orders thing.
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Your misreading of history simply consists of oversimplifing the action.
Beware of the man who tells you you're misreading history but won't get into specifics because it is beneath him. Furthermore, there is only I actually going into the history. You just sit there and tell me I am mis-reading it without being bothered to explain why (presumably because it is "obvious").
I have cited evidence, people reading this are not blind, until you do the same everything you tell us is unproven and practically worthless. Why won't you get into the evidence? As amateur historians it is where we should live.
I cited Guderian on the Meuse, a member of the only Army to (occasionally) embrace mission orientated command during WWII, and he had to threaten to resign to be allowed to go on. Thus far, the only examples to support you have actually been quoted by me!
You're telling us that Commanders of every magnitude routinely made decisions based on how they saw the situation and not their orders, and yet from 6 years of war costing 50 million dead, you won't (or is it can't) provide any examples.
Let me provide some more from my "misread" history.
Read the operational plan for Goodwood, if the Armour broke free and established itself in it's objective areas, the orders in the summary for 2nd Army Corp Commanders on 18th july specifically stated:
"Main bodies of the three divisions will not be moved from areas (A), (B) and (C) without reference to me. "
"Me" was the 2nd Army Commander Dempsey. This is clear and unambiguous. The three Armoured divisions are told where to establish themselves and told to stop. This applies even if the way to Falaise is clear. they have objectives and a "stop" order. This was 700 tanks on the rampage and after they take their objectives, these armoured warriors are told to rein themselves in, hold and wait for the Army Commander to assess the situation.
This was how the British Army worked. Monty frequently bypassed Army commanders and worked directly with the Corp or even Divisional Commanders. This was top down command, period.
Even Wood in Lorraine (arguably America's finest Armoured Commander) appealed to Eddy (his Corp Commander) on numerous occasions to shift his AXIS of advance or concentrate his numerous Combat Commands into one striking force, or allow him to shift about because of the terrain and the casualties this was causing him but was rejected on every occasion. How and why he was rejected is irrelevant, what is important is that on each occasion he appealed to higher authority to allow him to amend his orders to suit what he saw as the operational conditions, and the abilities of his troops within that operational situation.
He didn't change anything, despite the fact he was very probably right. He asked for his Corp Commander to change his orders or allow a deviation. If Wood, a man who probably understood the possibilities of armour better than any man in NW Europe on the Allied side exercised no initiative in these circumstances, surely we can suppose no one did?
The Falaise gap is really the killer for your argument. If he had been exercising independent command, Patton could have closed it any time he wanted. He didn't because Bradley told him where to stop. Bradley told his finest Armoured Commander to stop at Argentan. Patton wanted to go further but was ordered not to. This is top down control of America's brashest and most independent Officer.
Indeed, the operational plan for the breakout still swung a Corp into Brittany to coral retreating Germans even when it became crystal clear fairly quickly that a real opportunity was being presented to the north. No one turned it around on his own initiative. They went where they were told.
If not Patton and Wood....then who?????
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WEGO forces are going to function more or less like they were commanded by General John Bell Hood: They’re going to proceed on to Nashville even though they were crushed at Franklin – because that’s what the plan was.
No, they are not, because if they get crushed at Franklin, they're not going to get through to Nashville without another turn to decide what to do, as indeed Hood got.
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Yes, they are. I was illustrating a principle with the example. Within any turn, no re-evaluation of the plan will take place if the force is crushed at the start. It will continue on to the next crushing in that same turn.
Not in CA, if it is crushed on it's first advance, it won't reach it's second planned attack. How can it since it's suffered a bad tactical defeat. Besides, as I have (fairly securely I think) established above, plans were not re-evaluated instantaneously on a rolling basis, and even when they were re-evaluated it was done from the top down and the orders took time to take full effect.
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How do you infiltrate strategically or even operationally?
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By taking the path of least resistance. By reinforcing success and abandoning failure. It applies at any scale.
But that isn't infiltration tactics. You are taking a very specific military term and deciding it actually means something else. This misunderstanding is fundamental to everything else you are saying. What source would you quote that supports the supposition that "infiltration tactics" were an operational construct designed to reinforce success and abandon failure?
Just give me one, I'm not asking for much.
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Conventional fighting forces will pour through these gaps and fight a conventional campaign until halted at which point the tactical response re-appears to force a gap again.
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That's infiltration!! You exploit success and abandon failure. Before infiltration, forces didn't shift reserves to exploit a gap in the line. They would shift them to help the attack that had run into trouble. This meant that a defense was a strong as its strongest point. The principles are applied at every scale level.
Where does this stuff actually come from? 
The standard text on infiltration tactics is by Bruce Gudmundsson. Entitled "Stormtroop tactics", it is almost 20 years old now. Infiltration tactics were a german development during the first world war to break the tactical stalemate. When you use them along enough of the front to tear open a sizeable hole, they have a mild operational dimension I suppose, but then "bayonet charges" have an operational dimension if you charge across a front of ten miles.
They were essentially about German infantry throwing the rule book out of the window, re-equipping with firepower intensive weaponry and working their way through trench lines by clearing the enemy where they could, or bypassing strongpoints for follow up formations. They made the Squad and platoon NCO a decision maker, but very much a tactical decision maker, well under the scale of any scenario in TOAW I have ever seen.
Tactical decision making was prevalent in all Armies, but that doesn't manifest itself on the operational level. Like I said earlier, an operational level game is not interested in how Easy took the farmhouse. Easy might decide to flank it left and right with fire teams whilst using the .30 cal as a base of fire support, but that is irrelevant to the operational situation. Indeed, they are not deviating from orders one bit, since they are still taking the farmhouse which was their objective..
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Blitzkrieg was just infiltration with tanks.
I would strongly advise against posting your description of "Blitzkrieg" anywhere where the knowledge of German operational method is higher than "Guderian did the tank thing really good, Man." It is more than innaccurate. You'll be offended by the responses.
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I'll consider the source first. And Blitzkrieg definitely traced its roots back to the German 1918 offensives. It was infiltration with tanks.
Absolutely and fundamentally wrong.
Blitzkrieg meant nothing to the Germans, it was a word that simply didn't feature in their Military vocabulary. If memory serves, Time magazine made it popular, not the Germans. Blitzkrieg as a word is like "shock and awe". It is a media friendly term to describe a concept that already existed but was made to appear fresh and exiting when it happened.
The German Miliutary knew Bewegungskrieg or war of movement. They operated this way well before the first world war and didn't stop until about 1943 with just the odd isolated example afterwards.
If anything traced it's roots back to 1918, it was maybe actions like the assault on Eban-Emael, but these were tactical not operational in nature.
Germany lost World War I because like everyone else she couldn't solve the essential operational problem of how do I pursue the enemy when my foot infantry moves slower than the trains bringing his reinforcements. The combustion engine answered that issue, but the Germans did nothing fundamentally different with it. They merely found that it allowed them to practise traditional German doctrine and operational method with more success.
At the tactical level, it is reasonable to suggest that much of the alleged German supremacy in Combat efficiency at the tactical levels traced it's roots partly back to the empowerment of the NCO and the squad, that resulted from the revolution in Squad infantry tactics that "stormtroop or infilration" tactics wrought in WWI.
At the operational level, Blitzkrieg was merely German operational method (the war of movement) alive and well because the combustion engine (not Tanks as Panzer Divisions were all Arms forces) gave them the ability to move quickly. Blitzkrieg didn't work because of infiltration tactics, it worked because it restored German mobility and allowed them to do what they trained for, move quickly and rapidly, outmaneuver, encircle and annihilate.
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And, again, how do you direct your reserves to exploit success instead of reinforce failure?
The next turn, much like you might in TOAW.
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In TOAW you can exploit in the same turn. By next turn the opportunity will have vanished. Conclusion: WEGO doesn't allow exploitation. IGOUGO does.
But if a Division advances and uses up half its MP before creating a gap in the line because the enemy RBC, you can exploit with other units with full MP despite the fact the "success" didn't occur technically until half way through the turn. This is artificial and completely unrealistic.
Also, by next turn the opportunity will not have disappeared. This is WEGO. As your unit forces the gap, the enemy reacts to it at the same time you do. He doesn't react whilst you sit quietly waiting for the PBEM file to come back. In other words, force a gap, and it is still there at the end of the turn. The advantage of WEGO is that you and the enemy Commander react to it simultaneously (which is realistic I would suggest).
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But path of least resistance is not known for several hours or even days. CA isn't 50Km per hex and 1 month turns. When you find path of least resistance, you gravitate towards it when your next turn starts.
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It's independent of scale. Once again, we're told that unit commanders are blind and brainless. Their superiors can't communicate with them, and can't make a decision even if they could. It's a silly model, but he's sticking to it.
See above, what examples would you provide to show my model is silly?
It is one thing to call it a silly model, but another to prove it apparently as your evidence and source notes are very thin on the ground. I have cited VIII Corp during Goodwood, Wood in Lorraine, Patton at Argentan, Guderian in Russia. I'm happy to sort out some more if it would help. The only example mildly in your favour is the one I provided of Guderian on the Meuse, but then he moved with the implicit approval of his higher Command after resigning and being reinstated.
It isn't silly, it is realistic. How quickly do you think Commanders can turn around formations numbering tens of thousands of men, with sometimes thousands of vehicles, with lengthy logistics chains and poor roads? The Russians never really tried it. the British never did, neither did the US. How do you wheel these forces around when there is another friendly army in contact on your right flank and another on your left flank and the enemy in front?
Patton was awarded God like status for pre-preparing plans to move north against the Bulge in 44, but even with this preparedness, it still took forty eight hours to get the show on the road. If the Staff work had been required first, how much longer would it have taken? In TOAW it is instantaneous. In CA, you have to plan it, at Army level and half week turns, it would take between 1 hour and 3.5 days in CA. how is this unrealistic? In some ways it could be too quick.
Armies are like supertankers, they don't turn on a "dime". Even if they could, they can't turn wherever they choose without blundering into another super tanker and running adrift.
What examples would you cite to show formations at all levels (or even any level) changing tack because of subordinate decision at odds with his Commanding Officer's direction? How long did it take? Note Patton did it WITH higher direction because Ike approved the plan.
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With respect, you need to read more. Linear was all Monty really did, and in Lorraine, Patton, US Godhead of maneuver, attacked across the length of his front. The drive on St Lo was linear as was the battle for the Hurtgen. Even Cobra was a wide attack initially as Bradley threw everything in he had.
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Linear tactics means the men form up into lines. Not exactly shoulder-to-shoulder like Napoleon did it, by WWI, but loosely in a line. By WWII they simply didn't do this. I expect you mean something else, but exactly what, I don't know.
I didn't use the word tactics. I meant that American Commanders tended to line everything they had up and drive the enemy back on a broad front. The British concentrated powerful formations up on a narrow front and drove a wedge into enemy lines. This concentration of effort never resulted in them penetrating into the depth of the enemy defences and roaming about al a Rommel, though, because they commanded from the top down and did not give subordinate Commanders the right to ponce about as they saw fit.
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That's why WWII battles were so fluid relative to WWI.
Fluid? WWII campaigns were generally static after mid 42, marked by sudden occasional breakthrough and pursuit before the next big set piece.
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For static, see the Western Front from about 1915-1917. At 15km/hex, not one single hex would have changed hands over that period. That's static! Why was WWII so relatively fluid? Because of infiltration principles.
It was fluid because of the combustion engine. The combustion engine allowed Armies to cross distance at speed before the enemy could react. It really is as simple as that. Whenever breakthroughs were engineered in WWI, Armies could not march through quickly because they had to drag their arty with them and arty (like Cavalry - the traditional exploitation arm) couldn't get forward over terrain chewed up by battle. This allowed the defender to bus in reserves over the train network and rebuild the line before the penetration was very deep.
The combustion engine (allied with caterpillar tracks) allowed strong combined arms forces to go anywhere at speed. this prevented the congealing of the line and gave warfare a mobile and fluid phase until armoured forces outran their logistics and were forced to halt, which was what generally allowed the defending forces to rebiuld a front line.
If you want more examples (do you have any for anything by the way?) see the western front in 44 when logistical issues stopped the Allies, anything the Russians ever did, and the Germans in Russia in 1941.
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What I was hinting at was that if a squad ran into a machinegun nest across their axis of advance, they weren't forced to launch a frontal assault on it. They had the latitude to maneuver against it, even coordinate with another squad or two. They could call for support, etc. The same was true at all scales.
No it wasn't true at all scales.
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Sure it was. Look at what you're saying. At the start of every turn, every operational factor is subject to complete revision however the players want. But, within the turn nothing is. (And then you claim you can adapt WEGO to any scale.) It's simply absurd. Your entire theory is driven entirely by what WEGO permits.
So, completely revising every operational factor on a hex by hex basis without the enemy reacting and with real time Staff orders devised instantaneously allowing entire Army Groups to change direction if a weak point is identified is what exactly?
WEGO builds in a historically verificable and very realistic delay of anything between 1 hour and the upper end of the scale. It also requires and simulates top down control which (all my examples show) was the norm.
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This all sounds roughly like programming the PO in TOAW scenario design, and then watching a PO vs. PO test. That’s not my idea of wargaming. And it produces ridiculous results like enemy forces ignoring each other as they move right by each other.
No, it's not remotely like that, because in TOAW you can't change the objective tracks turn by turn in response to operational conditions. you effectively do that in CA because each move allows you to reconsider and reset orders as appropriate.
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I didn't say it was exactly like that, just roughly like it.
But it isn't roughly like that either.
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There will definitely be a PO vs. PO tinge to WEGO.
We've gone from roughly to a "tinge".
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Players will recognize silly things they see the PO doing in their games now - like the "ships-passing-in-the-night" thing I listed above.
But the PO does that because it is following it's logic based on its objective track if I remember my scenario design flirtation correctly. You get to amend the objective track on a turn by turn basis in CA.
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My initial claim was that units in WEGO will be more or less like mindless robots.
In other words, they followed their orders until higher command gave them new ones or revised old ones. How many examples do we currently have of that from real life in this thread alone?
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You haven't done much, if anything, to dispel that impression. Rather, you're sticking to the ridiculous position that commanders really were mindless robots.
No, I am citing example after example after example of units acting on their orders. Commanders were not midless, but they were subordinates to someone else. They did not generally revise their orders because to do so threw the plans of a higher ranking Officer into disarray.
You are merely telling me this is ridiculous but providing no evidence to back that assertion. A single example would not prove your point as you want to write rules based on this assertion so really need to prove it was the majority rule (which requires multiple examples).
However, you start multiple examples with a single one, and then another and then another etc....
Where would you like to start? One will be enough to begin with, we don't want anyone to get dizzy  .
regards,
IronDuke
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