Warfare & Military history – Page 6

The Battle of Kursk – David M. Glantz & Jonathan M. House

Published on August 8, 2010

The Battle of Kursk

The Battle of Kursk
David M. Glantz & Jonathan M. House
472 pages including index and notes
published in 1999

Kursk is a name most people probably only know from that Russian submarine that sank some years ago. Much fewer people know what that submarine was named after: one of the bloodiest and most important battles of World War II. The Battle of Kursk was fought in 1943, the largest tank battle of the war and was the last battle in which the Germans had the strategic initiative. After Kursk it was the Russians who held the upper hand and the Germans who had to defend. What’s more it was the first battle in which the Russian forces managed to stop the German blitzkrieg
It’s also a battle loved by war nerds, as it got the German panzer army at its peak taking on endless waves of Russian T-34s and Su-76s on the endless steppes and is so much more interesting than the infantry slog of Stalingrad…

However much of what we used to know about Kursk has come from German sources, as Soviet archives have only come available since the end of the USSR. So it has always been about the heroic deeds of the panzer commanders against the endless Slavic hordes so to speak. The emphasis has largely been on the Germans plans for the battle, on what went wrong for them and especially in the memoirs of those particpated, how it was not their fault that the battle was lost but Hitler’s. The Battle of Kursk is one of the first books on the battle to make full use of Soviet archives as well as German ones, giving a much more complete picture of the battle.

Fields of Conflict – Douglas Scott, Lawrence Babits & Charles Haecker

Published on May 15, 2010

Cover of Fields of Conflict

Fields of Conflicts is a collection of essays on battlefield archaeology, based on papers presented on a conference of the same title as the book, held in 2004. Battlefield archaeology as a separate discipline is a relatively recent development, even if military history is of course of quite ancient vintage. Astounding as it may seems, battlefield archaeology only got started in the early eighties, with a groundbreaking research paper on the Little Bighorn battlefield. Though it seems obvious in retrospect to apply archaeological techniques in researching battles and battlefields, battlefields are such ephemeral sites, battles rarely lasting more than a day, while archaeology traditionally focused on sites that had been inhabitated for centuries, that it’s no wonder it took so long for somebody to do so. That somebody was Douglas Scott, also one of the editors of this volume and you realise the impact of his research by seeing how often in the essays collected here it is refered to.

In fact, Douglas Scott is so influential that I’ve seen him on the History Channel showcasing his Little Big Horn research a few years ago, which was the first time I heard of battlefield archaeology. It was fascinating to see how it was possible to almost track the movement of single soldiers on the battlefield by hunting for the detritus they left behind in the course of the battle. Fields of Conflicts shows how much can be known of even obscure battles this way, through creative use of archaeological techniques and especially metal dectoring, but also how much still remains unknownable as well. It’s a fascinating read even for armchair historians like myself, a glimpse in how the real professionals handle these problems.

D-Day

Published on June 6, 20093 Comments

Five years ago I wrote this about the Dutch contribution to D-Day:

At D-Day, Dutch B-25’s bombarded targets in Normandy, including the headquarters of a German armoured division; eight of them were lost on operations in June 1944. The Dutch gunboats Hr. Ms. Soemba and Hr. Ms. Flores supported the invasion, targeting German positions on the landing beaches; they were valued so much by the British they gave them the nick name “The Terrible Twins”. To counter the threat of German torpedo boats, the dreaded “Schnellbote”, Dutch motor torpedo boats were active, while Dutch minesweepers were making the Normandy coast safe, one of which, the Hr.Ms. Marken was destroyed while doing so on 20th May 1944, sinking with only one survivor. A Dutch cruiser, the Hr. Ms.Sumatra was deliberately sank as a wave breaker for the two artificial harbours the Allies constructed at the Normandy coast. (Some of the caissons built for the construction of those harbours and not needed for them were later used to mend Dutch dykes damaged by Allied bombardement later in the year, as well as after the 1953 flood.) Finally, a large number of Navy and merchant marine people and ships were of course used to transport Allied soldiers and supplies to the beaches.

Most of the attention today has justifiably been on the English, Canadian, American and French contributions to the invasion, but the other countries that took part in it should not be forgotten: there were Dutch, Belgian, Polish, Czech, Commonwealth soldiers who died that day as well.

AK-47 – Larry Kahaner

Published on March 24, 2009

Cover of AK-47

AK-47
Larry Kahaner
258 pages including index
published in 2007

The AK-47 is such an iconic weapon that it’s even present on the flag of Mozambique. As a brand, ít’s as global as Coca Cola, as omnipresent as McDonalds. It’s the prefered weapon of every guerilla or freedom fighter everywhere and is therefore almost always used as the weapon of choice for Hollywood bad guys, just like its heroes used the true blue American M-16. More seriously, the AK-47, because it’s so widespread and cheap has influenced the outcome of more wars in the past sixty years than perhaps any other weapon. In America meanwhile it not only became the symbol of the third world terorist, but also the face of domestic crime, as “the gnagbanger with an AK-47” became the symbol of the evil the gun control lobby was fighting against with the assault rifle ban.

Such an iconic weapon deserves a history that does justice to it, something that goes beyond the usual war nerd recitation of design history and battle use, but which also looks at the cultural and political impact of the AK 47. Larry Kahaner has tried to write such a book with AK-47: The Weapon that Changed the Face of War, but isn’t quite up to the task. Judging from the list of titles mentioned on the inside front cover, his true calling lies more in business management books. AK-47 is too slight and too shallow to do justice to this weapon.

Georgia should be all Hezbollah now

Published on September 9, 2008

According to at least one anonymous US military adviser Georgia should emulate Hezbollah:

A defense analyst I spoke with, who advises American ground forces, said to rebuild the Georgian military along conventional lines might be the wrong approach. Instead he suggested a different force model, that of Hezbollah. What Hezbollah did so effectively, as was shown in the 2006 Lebanon war, was combine modern weaponry with a distributed infantry force that fought in guerrilla fashion. Fighting as distributed networks, Hezbollah rarely presented an inviting target for Israeli air and artillery attack, but their well trained tactical units were able to swarm at the point of attack of Israeli armored incursions and hit the Israelis hard with precision anti-tank weaponry.

Equipped with top-shelf anti-armor systems, such as the U.S. Dragon and Javelin and the Russian-built RPG-29 and AT-14 Kornet, such a force would perhaps better be able to exploit Georgia’s mountainous and urbanized terrain against channelized Russian armored columns than a conventionally organized combat brigade, as Hezbollah did in south Lebanon. The lessons from the initial Russian incursion into Grozny in 1994 are instructive as well. Fighting in small tactical teams organized around close range anti-armor weapons, the Chechens savaged Russian
tank columns.

This “analysis” only makes sense if you believe in the Official Truth of Georgia as innocent victim of the perfidious Russia of course. A Hezbollah style army doesn’t work so well if you actually want to invade any seccessionist areas protected by the neighbouring superpower. Not that this model of resistance would work as well against the Russians as against the Israelis in 2006 as unlike them, the Russians are not that bothered about losing a couple of thousand soldiers subjugating a difficult enemy. The Chechens may have beaten off the Russians back in 1994, but didn’t do quite so well the second time around.

(Via Jamie.)