Thursday, February 7, 2008
Military Doctrine in Europe
It was very interesting to see the differences in military doctrine between Great Britian and Germany. I think it is very fascinating that their was a huge difference in theory on how war was supposed to be fought. J.F.C Fuller did not believe that tanks and infantry could work together and the military in Great Britian was divided into the three main parts of infantry, tanks, and air power. At the same time Germany had a much different theory. They adopted the military advancement of blitzkreig, or lightning war, which believed in the combined arms theory. One real advantage that Germany did have was the chance to build a military from brand new. Obviously Germany took the approach of using all their resources to help each other. While Fuller took the idea that they should be used separately and differently.
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4 comments:
I agree that it was good the Germany started to build their military from scratch. However, I think that had England and France realized that a war was imminent I think their technological advancements might have been greater than what Germany could produced from scratch. While I do not know much about military arms, I think having a foundation would make advancements easier.
I agree with amy that advancements would've been easier with an army already established but the French were to nieve to learn from the mistakes they made in WWI. Germany, however, did learn from their mistakes and improved and kept improving. This is why the US is so strong militarily because we are always improving our military and training. If the US had to start from scartch tomorrow we would be in a lot of trouble.
if you want to talk about learning from mistakes, don't forget that the Allies (mainly the U.S.) let themselves fall into the same situation in Dec. 1944 in the Ardennes that the French had in the spring of 1940 in the same forest.
It as been said that necessity is the mother of inventions, and I believe that this was true for Germany in this case. Hitler had a clear plan from the beginning of conquest and had limited resource to make that happen when he came to power. So brilliant military minds had to figure out how to fight a war with their limited resources and blitzkrieg was the result.
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