Unfortunately, in the war planning for Iraq, Rumsfeld consistently pushed for a leaner and leaner invasion force, ignoring the views of his officers that a larger force would be necessary, particularly for a post-invasion occupation (a detailed description of the planning process and Rumsfeld’s pressure to cut troops is found in Cobra II: The Inside Story of the Invasion and Occupation of Iraq by Michael Gordon and Gen. Bernard Trainor). Most famously, Gen. Eric Shinseki, then Army Chief of Staff testified in a Senate Hearing before the invasion:
I would say that what’s been mobilized to this point – something on the order of several hundred thousand soldiers are probably, you know, a figure that would be required. We’re talking about post-hostilities control over a piece of geography that’s fairly significant, with the kinds of ethnic tensions that could lead to other problems. And so it takes a significant ground- force presence to maintain a safe and secure environment, to ensure that people are fed, that water is distributed, all the normal responsibilities that go along with administering a situation like this.The invasion and occupation forces were substantially smaller than this, and Gen. Shinseki’s remarks are widely attributed to be the reason for his quiet retirement at the end of his term several months later.
It wasn’t intended to say that the Soviets weren’t harsher. It was also not intended to say that we shouldn’t have used all means to attack buildings from which we were taking fire. My point was that we did use all means up to and including a nuclear bomb. Given suerrillas attacking us in Germany or Japan I have no doubt that we would have simply shot up everything in sight. We had no scruples about what we shot artillery at nor what fighter planes straffed nor what bombers bombed.
And the fact that war sucks isn’t exactly breaking news. That’s why it should only be an absolutely last resort.
Good post by RickJay. Insurgencies live and die by their popular support. They simply can’t operate effectively against an occupying force if the native population doesn’t support them both materially (supplies, safe havens, gathering intelligence, etc.) and also usually ideologically. If the insurgents attempt to coerce the local population to help them by force they run into big problems if the occupiers have any clue what they’re doing. That, or there will be a civil war.
Take Iraq. Depending on the poll, something like 80-90% of the population in non-Kurd areas want us out, and something like 60-70% support the idea of killing American troops. Well, that’s a problem and the insurgency isn’t going away until we change their mind or make it impossible for them to carry out their wishes. In occupied Germany, there wasn’t anything remotely like that. The Germans were ready for peace. Thus, even a fairly large guerilla campaign by Nazi holdouts would simply not work in the long run because the local population wouldn’t stand for it.
Another famous and well studied case of this type of situation is the Algerian War of Independence, where they kicked the French out en masse (1954-1962).
I would suggest that the closest comparison would be to the IRA or the ETA - a terrorist organization functioning within a Western European nation. The “werewolves” wouldn’t have prevented a Allied victory but they could have been an ongoing problem for the occupation forces and anti-werewolf Germans. The main difference would probably have been that, with an active underground Nazi organization in existence, the occupation would have been much harsher. German political, military, and economic independance would have been delayed for years, which would have had a major effect on the development of NATO and the EU.
Excellent. In addition to all you wrote, by the end of the war the Germans were simply overwhelmed and tired of the war. In his book The Last Battle Cornelius Ryan described the advance of one of our armored divisions, Maybe the 7th Division. Its vehicles took up about 60 miles of road and the sight of all those tanks, artillery and people pouring unopposed through their towns just took all of the desire to continue the war out of them. And that was just one unit. There were many, many more coming from the west and the Soviets in even greater numbers coming from the east. I don’t know this for a fact, but I strongly suspect that the Germans would have been harsher on anyone who wanted to continue the fight that we would have been.
The phones and the mail continued operating right through the Gotterdammerung- German officers would often phone up outlying bunkers to get situational reports and have Russian soldiers answering the phone.
Some were- most Wermacht and Luftwaffe personnel were simply sent home (in many cases without even being disarmed). Generally, personnel could just swear a statement to the fact that they were not members of the Nazi Party or had joined under duress and now hereby fully renounced National Socialism, and they’d then be given what was colloquially known as a “Persil”, basically a chit that said “This Person Is Not A Nazi”, and which was required to gain legitimate civilian employment.
I believe Officers and Party Members were put through the somewhat more rigorous De-Nazification process, though…
I’m rather intrigued by military history, so can anyone do me the favor of linking or suggesting a descriptive account of conflicts in which insurgencies have been succesfully beaten?
Thanks.
I would add to this and your other post that there is another major difference.
In Iraq Baathism and the Iraqi Army kept the entity we know as “Iraq” together - for better or worse. The dual loss of these pillars has created a situation where the society has almost literally come apart at the seams. The U.S. is now in the middle of a religious (primarily Shia and Shiite but not only) and Nationalist (Kurd vs. Arab vs. tribe/Clan) and nutjob (Republican Guard “deadenders” and Al Qaeda) Civil War all against each other and all, some more than others, against the U.S. and Iraqi Government.
The Nazi example doesn’t work unless we believe Catholic and Protestants would have begun warring and, say, Prussian fighters begin seeking independence and Southern Germany would be looking to even the score with the north.
I’ve had the good fortune of meeting a gentleman that survived the Battle of Britain as a child and then served in the British Army occupying Germany following the war. He made two key points in this subject:
The German populace was very glad the bombing had stopped.
The people (in West Germany, anyway) welcomed the American and British occupation because they weren’t the Russians.
Given these two points, I would imagine the popular and material support required to sustain an insurgency would be hard to come by in post-WWII Germany.
More to the OP, the question was could an insurgency have prevented the Allies from winning the war. Who would have mounted an insurgency? I suppose one could theorize that someone in the German leadership could have made a decision to formally surrender, sent the remaining army into hiding, and then mounted a meaningful insurrection. That decision would have had to have been made prior to the Battle of the Bulge (IMHO) on the Western front. I don’t know if it could have happened on the Eastern front. I think the Allies still would have “won”, but the occupation would have been much uglier.
The English did a pretty masterful job of keeping Wales, Ireland and Scotland under the British thumb for centuries. So basically the history of those countries from ~1300 - 1900.
A huge difference in the success rate of insurgencies is outside help. No one could or would smuggle arms and supplies to a Nazi resistance after 1945.
That’s not true for Scotland which was de facto an independent country from 1314 (and from 1328 de jure) until Union with England in 1707 (the crowns being unified in 1603). Obviously during that time there was much border skirmishing! After Union, the Jacobite Rebellions of 1715 and particularly 1745 certainly were insurgencies, but not ones that could be categorised simply as Scots v. English, and of course were soundly suppressed.
The British defeated a communist insurgency in Malaya at least on the scale of the South Vietnam,with conscript troops most of whom were deficient in pubic hair ,
The Brits also used the same aged troops in Korea,who did quite well,at the battle of Imjin,for example the Gloucster division ,while covering the retreat of American army units fought until surrounded by the N.Koreans and then fought on until every single man was killed or captured.
Yes. Von Braun and others travelled several hundred miles to surrender to the Americans rather than surrender to Soviet forces who were significantly closer. The thinking was that the Soviets intended to make every captured German pay for the wrongs that had been done to them. Had the Cold War not started up almost the moment WW II ended, the Soviets might have killed more Germans.
Actually, the Soviet propaganda line, even during the height of the war, was that the war was against the Nazi regime not the German people. The plan was that once the Soviets took over, they would punish the Nazis and welcome the Germans into an era of enlightened Marxism. Of course, if you were a German who didn’t support the Soviet occupation or Communism, then you must be a Nazi and therefore you’d be reclassified into the punishment category.
I know, I meant in the sense that Wales, Scotland and Ireland were forced to be part of something eventually called “Great Britain”. Also, while the rebellions in the eighteenth century might not have been purely Scot vs. English, certainly the Scots had been treated like conquered subjects, bitterly resented it, and jumped at the chance to rebel.