One relatively recent example of this is the Falklands War between Argentina and Great Britain:
Even though the Falklands were only a few hundred miles from Argentina, but 8,000 miles from Great Britain, the British beat the shit out of Argentina (a military dictatorship at the time).
Anyone here remember following the war at the time?
All those quotes tell me is that American forces preferred to use firepower to increase their chances of winning, not that they were afraid to fight. What’s the point of gaining your objective if you lose most of your men in the battle? You just leave yourself incredibly vulnerable to counterattacks. And the amount of soldiers is not inifinite. How much of the decline of the German army in the final years was due to their best soldiers being killed off in useless fights to the death?
Plus I think your overall premise is confused. The reason the Allies never really sufferred from deprivation is because their governments never mishandled the war that badly. The reason people resorted to cannibalism in Leningrad was because of Stalin’s utter incompetence as a war leader. As to the notion democratic soldiers can never endure severe losses, what about the British at the Somme/French at Verdun/either side at numerous American Civil War battles?
I think that the bottom line is that the Germans had a good army because the Germans had a good army; the nature of the government had little to do with it. If Hitler hadn’t come to power in 1933, and a war had broken out a few years later between a democratic Weimar Germany and Stalin’s U.S.S.R, chances are the Wehrmacht would have fought just as effectively.
As a result of those losses at Verdun and the Somme we got ‘peace for our time’, which shows how willing we were to risk those types of casualties again. Montgomery responded to Churchill’s criticism of his slow advance by telling the Prime Minister that he was the one who said that he didn’t want any more Sommes.
As to Stalin’s incompetence; I’m not saying that the model is an ideal way of waging war. Simply look what happened to Germany and later the USSR. But they produced, man for man, the best soldiers and generals of the war, which is the question. Who had the most firepower is a different question.
As AK84 said, bullshit. The armies of dictatorships have no inherent disadvantage as opposed to the armies of democracies, and certainly can’t be described as “poorly trained, undisciplined thug armies trained and experienced mainly in keeping the civilian populace in line” with exceptions. What you are trying to classify as the exception is actually the rule. The armies that created the largest empires in history - the Romans, the Mongols, Napoleon, etc. - were the armies of dictatorships. Being experienced at keeping the populace in line doesn’t prevent an army from being professional or leave it vulnerable to even more professional armies; Sparta’s army spent plenty of time keeping the helots in line but they were the most professional army in Greek antiquity. They also defeated the democracy of Athens in the Peloponnesian War.
Totalitarian states are, by definition, dictatorships. I mean, sure, you can be pedantic and hair-splitty, and say that “totalitarian” means the structure and “dictatorship” means the people who impose the structure, but unless you’re claiming there are totalitarian states that are not dictatorships, IE have actual free elections and and a genuinely enfranchised population, then I’m not seeing any non-pedantic difference.
If modern China isn’t a totalitarian state, what would you call it? The Communist Party of China dictates everything, elections don’t affect anything important, and the Chinese population does not have free access to information. How is that not a totalitarian dictatorship? Are you too young to remember tanks running over protesting students in Tiananmen Square in 1989? Because I remember that very clearly.
I found it interesting to contrast right wing totalitarian states with left wing ones, in terms of how effective they’ve been militarily. It was just a comparison, I wasn’t trying to make it into a left vs right argument. Why do you object so strongly to comparing right-wing totalitarian states to left-wing ones?
Perhaps because the terms right wing and left wing, a least as referring to dictatorships, are utterly anachronistic? If, in fact, they ever meant anything beyond propaganda.
I agree that totalitarian dictatorships are all pretty similar in terms of effect, whatever ideology they espouse, but I do think it’s important to point out that the Nazis (and various other dictatorships) were politically right-wing because I’ve seen on this forum people attempting to define all totalitarian states as “left-wing”.
Not really? The government was a coalition “unity government”, that included members of all of the parties except for a small left wing populist party called the Small Farmers Party, and, with the exception of the Rangell cabinet of 1941-March 1943, a right wing nationalist/fascist party called the Patriotic People’s Movement. In the Rangell government, Vilho Annala, one of the party leaders, became minister of transport. But the party pretty much fizzled and died, then, as party members accused the party of selling out by joining the cabinet, and the party pretty much fell apart.
Finland had six prime ministers from the beginning of the war to the end; Ryti, Rangell, Linkomies, Hackzell, Castren, and Paasikiviti. Of those six, Ryti was a centrist, Rangell was center-right, Linkomies was an opportunist who changed his positions fairly frequently, Hackzell was center right, and Castren and Paaskikiviti’s positions don’t really matter, because by that time, Finland had signed an armistice with the Soviet Union, and the only major political issue was how to avoid being a Soviet puppet without risking a Russian invasion.
The Finnish government at the time was right wing the same way, say, the British government was, in that the Prime Minister was the member of a democratic right wing party in a grand coalition. But the government wasn’t by any means totalitarian, or even particularly authoritarian. The Communist Party was banned and there was some censorship of films. But there was guaranteed freedom of speech and the press.
I’d point you to a plethora of cites showing that there are well understood distinctions between authoritarian and totalitarian regimes, but really, what’s the use. You’re not arguing a political agenda so much as defending your own ignorance. But feel free to remain offended at “fast and loose”, bub.
I certainly agree that the Nazis were right-wing before they came into power; after that, though, the term became irrelevant. Think about it - if only one political party is allowed, how can there be a left and a right wing?
Also, one of the primary duties of the peace loving, democratic, human rights upholding British Army was garrisoning colonies.
As for DUTCHBAT III, despite the excuses that we have seen made for them in this thread they did not cover themselves in glory did they? Indeed, the airstike was cancelled because the Serbs were holding 50 Dutch troops prisoner and had threatened to kill them. They had a simple mission, defend the enclave. Instead they went out, bearing gifts from the Serbs. Unless, of course, that was their mission in the first place, in which case I take it back, they played their part very well. Would explain why their CO was promoted, not cashiered.
To be fair, they did confront some viciously sharp slices of mango.
I guess someone with a better knowledge than me could compare the soldiers of the Roman Republic to the soldiers of the Roman Empire. It seems like you might be dealing with less changing variables that way.
The Republic ended around the time the Army became professional. When moat people say “Roman Army”, they mean the post Marian reform organisation.
The Germans had the best army out of all the belligerents because they had the best training and the best discipline.
They lost because they were fighting against huge odds in a two front war, and being given incredibly incompetent orders from Hitler of which they had no choice but to obey.
Nitpick: Given that the Falklands* are islands, the effectiveness of the ground troops was secondary to naval and air power. As Japan discovered in WW2, it doesn’t matter how die hard your garrison troops are if they can’t be resupplied.
*****“Malvinas”
And was the post-Marian army better than the pre-Marian army?
Certainly it was better at the tasks that it was given, which is policing the empire and expansion. The fact they did not have to call levies to the field of Mars every time there was conflict and the vastly expanded recruitment base certainly improved their performances. A standing army also ensured that the Romans would have the supporting professional arms of engineers, sappers and other assorted troops on a full time basis, which the pre Marian reforms army did not.
I am fairly certain that reverses suffered in Judea during the revolt for instance would have been fatal to the old style army. Just look at Africa in the first Punic War and the difficulties in Spain and Macedon pacification.
Indeed, the relative distances aren’t very impressive given that Britain was a world power that had long projected military force thousands of miles from its shores. It’s like giving the US extra credit for fighting China to a draw in Korea since Korea was thousands of miles from the US but next door to China; the US was a superpower, that it could project force to Korea wasn’t surprising. To split hairs, Argentina was ruled by a junta, not a dictator, but close enough. The war was also a much closer run affair than the British simply beating the shit out of Argentina. The war exposed just how vulnerable to low level air attack the Royal Navy had allowed itself to become, both with the retirement of the flat deck carriers and the focus on the wartime NATO mission of anti-submarine warfare which left the ship pitifully armed to deal with air attack; the frigates and destroyers of WW2 were vastly better armed in this respect than the frigates and destroyers of 1982 were. Had Argentina taken delivery of more than 6 Exocets before the war, or if they had simply adjusted the fuzes on the Mk 82 retarded bombs the war could easily have gone the other way. Many of the bombs that hit British ships had been dropped from too low of an altitude to allow the fuze to arm before impact. HMS Antelope was lost when attempts to deal with one of the two unexploded bombs inside her failed and caused it to detonate.