I don’t think it was solely a matter of generals. I feel that a key factor in the Confederates’ early success was that they were building up a new army while the Americans were expanding an existing army.
When a large number of southern soldiers quit the American army to join the Confederate cause, they gave the Confederate government a supply of soldiers with military experience that they could use to form new units around. That meant that newly formed Confederate units all had some experienced men to show the raw recruits what to do and provide an example for them.
The American army, on the other hand, kept its existing units intact and kept its pre-war soldiers in those units. The army was expanded by forming new units composed entirely of raw recruits; enlisted men, NCO’s, and junior officers. These units, understandably, did not perform very well in the early months of the war.
This situation equalized as the soldiers on both sides acquired experience on the battlefield (or died). The Confederates made the mistake of thinking the soldiers they were fighting in 1863 were the same as the soldiers they had fought in 1861.
Sorry, but those are all details. The truth is that the Nazis were absymal at managing anything (much less giant overextended conquests) and the whole regime would have crumbled on its own within a decade at the most. Hitler gets an undeserved reputation as the guy who turned the German economy around in the interwar ; but in reality that’s really a belated effect of pre-Nazi measures and people. The Nazis were horribly terrible at any kind of planning, didn’t understand economics, didn’t understand people. Everything they did or built was inefficient and dysfunctional. As the Nazis took more and more power, they replaced more and more people who knew how to do shit or had good ideas with stooges and “ideologically pure” sycophants and what’s more, Hitler positively loved having multiple departments perform the same general tasks and pit them against one another which is hilariously dumb (ask Sears why).
To give you an example, the Nazis started working on nuclear bombs in early 39, long before the Manhattan Project began. But Hitler didn’t have “the German Manhattan Project” : there were **nine **separate projects, all squabbling over the same resources, none sharing any data or ideas with the others (in fact, they sometimes actively sabotaged each other) and all having to deal with Hitler (the ahem scientific genius) acting as a referee and fickle-mindedly favouring, not those who were the best, but those who most strictly adhered to “German physics” (none of that Jew relativity stuff for honest Germans ! Yeah…), those who bullshitted their reports best, those who were most skilled at sucking up to him. It of course didn’t help that most of the high-powered brains in nuclear physics were, well, Jews. Who fled, and wound up working in the Manhattan Project.
And that, to Hitler, was excellent social darwinism, the absolute best system.
Imagine that applied to logistics, macro-economics, distribution of goods, industrial subsidies… Nazi Germany was a shitshow from top to bottom. It really was. I guarantee that you can think of any topic or facet of society, examine how the Nazis did it or wanted to do it or expected it to work, and palmface hard. Which is why it was spiralling the drain long before Genius Strategist Hitler attacked West because he *really *wanted to attack East.
Also, Hitler met Franco once and immediately took a profound personal dislike to the man (for, as far as I know, unknown reasons). He said afterwards that he’d rather get all of his teeth pulled out than having to talk with Franco again.
I don’t think it was an immediate reaction. Hitler had assisted Franco in winning the Spanish Civil War and felt that Franco owed him. He wanted Franco to join the world war as a German ally.
But Franco was smarter than Hitler and saw that Germany’s victory in the war was questionable. Franco had no desire to join what might be the losing side. But at the same time, he knew it would be unwise to refuse Hitler outright because that might prompt Hitler to declare war on Spain.
So Franco declared support for Germany without ever actually committing Spain. He deliberately kept stringing out the negotiations until Hitler finally gave up in frustration.
One of the things that really stuck with me from high school history is how Hitler set up his organization so that lots of people had overlapping roles and responsibilities and powers. He did this to ensure that they’d be too busy squabbling among themselves to reach for his throne. This may be an effective way of ensuring that your underlings are too ineffectual to challenge your authority… But… It’s an effective way of ensuring that your underlings are ineffectual, and that therefore your entire organization is ineffectual. This led to some… issues. Like the fact that nobody was able to send in Panzer reinforcements on D-Day because Hitler was asleep.
People have this image of the Nazis as terrifying tactial geniuses. In some cases, maybe. But overall? Hitler was an idiot, and his organization was incredibly awful at actually achieving its goals. And that’s without getting into the whole “the enemy is weak because we’re aryans” bullshit.
I noted the same thing when Neocons were talking about how the UN was nothing but a talking shop and how the UN was successfully countering Neocon plans.
This attitude seems to combine a pretty deep case of Dunning-Kruger because they couldn’t emotionally bear to examine their flaws combined with projecting onto others the flaws they cannot bear to admit are in themselves.
Thanks for that one. The Romans themselves used guerilla tactics when the Fabian strategy prevailed over Hannibal.
How come Davis never learned to fire bad generals and promote good ones?
Do we see a major difference between new Union units entirely composed of raw recruits and old Union units composed of experienced men?
It’s an interesting question to wonder how to expand military units and replace losses. In Vietnam, the US tried integrating raw recruits into experienced units on an individual basis and it didn’t turn out well. What would be the possible alternatives to those 2 mistaken ways of doing things?
There also wasn’t much to send in the way of support; those were the years when potato omelette was made from maize flour and orange peels, rather than from eggs and potatoes. The ideological makeup of those who made up the División Azul (the one corps which Spain did sent to join the Nazi army) was a mixture of two extremes, both of which were bothersome to the dictator: true believers plus people who, being from families that were known to have a long history of progressive leanings, joined as a sort of expiation/a way to draw ire away from their relatives.
Well, the US had a General-in-Chief (Scott) who understood the grand strategy that could lead to a victory, right from the beginning. The rebels had some good tacticians, but I don’t think they ever had a grand strategy (or leadership aware that they needed one).
The population difference between the US and the rebels is really striking. The largest city in the South was New Orleans - and there were more Irish Americans in NYC in 1860 than there were people in New Orleans.
Good at tactics, bad at strategy. Lots of distorted romantic notions but little clear calculation. Did the Old South also try to make up for their flaws by going for superweapons or élan vital/banzai? We often hear about them thinking their superior warrior spirit/elan/banzai/honor code would give them the advantage but how many times did they try it at the tactical or strategic levels? Pickett’s charge comes closest as far as I know but people more knowledgeable about the Civil War may be able to offer more examples.
At the risk of pointing out the obvious, countries do not start wars just because they think they could win. The United States could conquer Canada in two weeks, but I do not expect an invasion because it is not in the interests of the United States to do that. However, were they to try, Canada would fight back, even though that would be a hopeless cause.
The South started the Civil War because its ruling class perceived the war to be in their interests. To continue being part of the USA would be equivalent to CERTAIN defeat; they believed, almost certainly correctly, that continued partnership in the Union would result in the end of slavery and the Southern economic and social order. A war offered the chance to avoid that, and anyone who says Southern defeat was inevitable is fooling themselves. It absolutely was not inevitable, and the matter was still up in the air in the first half of 1863. Remember, they were less than a century removed from the War of Independence, when a fledgling government defeated the greatest military power on earth.
The Nazis started World War II because they perceived it to be in their interest. Nazis believe that war is the permanent condition of all humanity, and in September 1939 it looked like the right time to start a war. For awhile they were right, too; bear in mind the overwhelming odds of 1944 were not what they looked like in 1939.
First of all, it’s not easy to know who’s a good general and who isn’t until it’s too late. Absolutely no one in 1861 would have thought Grant was a better general than McLellan. I’m not sure Grant’s wife would have thought that. It took a lot of painful experience for that to be proven.
Secondly, generalships in the Civil War were often a matter of politics. The Union and Confederate armies were NOT like the United States armed services today. Today’s US military is a wholly professional force that relies purely on meritocracy to assign duties. The armies of 1861 were highly political things, in keeping with the principles of Jacksonian democracy. Men often elected their own officers, and the command of regiments was just as often handed out by state governors as repayment for political owesies. Even general’s stars were often political awards meant to curry favor in states were favor needed to be curried.
Third, the Confederacy just didn’t have a lot of senior officers, which is what you’d expect when your entire army is built in a span of a year. In many cases bad generals had been fine colonels; Hood is a perfect example, as was Burnside. Again, whaddya gonna do? You don’t know a guy is Peter Principled until he is.
Lastly, in fairness, Davis was an arrogant ass who never admitted he was wrong. No one liked him (except, in one of history’s greatest ironies, his slaves, whom he treated with a degree of respect he rarely afforded white people. Yeah, it was weird.) He didn’t take counsel easily, was not good at dealing with internal conflict, and far overestimated his own knowledge.
I have no idea but it was a common crop in Spain’s less-dry areas, albeit one which had previously been considered a cereal of last resort; it was used almost exclusively for animal fodder.
Yeah, trying to equate the two from a planning and strategic standpoint isn’t really an easy thing to do.
I believe that, while the confederate soldiers may have been filled with piss and vinegar - we can whip them easy! - the leadership knew what was what. It’s why they focused on breaking the nerve of the Union. Both the early invasions that ended at Antietam and Gettysburg were really designed to make the Union believe cutting a deal was better than continuing the war.
Even the appeal to Great Britain wasn’t really intended to involve them in combat but to place pressure on the Union to throw in the towel and cut a deal.
The Nazis, on the other hand, were much more straightforward. They believed they had the ability to take what they wanted without working with other people if they could help it. A little subtlety could have gone a long way, there. But Hitler and his staff largely lacked the imagination to expand their approach that it went poorly for them.
For a time the South was doing well. It would make sense for them to believe they would win. Why wouldn’t they? The North had to win a war of conquest and occupation. They did not expect such a thing as total war on the citizenry. It wasn’t the modus operandi of the US military quite yet. Today it would be foolish to underestimate the sheer depths of immorality the US military is capable of.
AIUI, while Nazi Germany didn’t have to start a war at all, at a certain point, once the war got to certain junctures, it became less about what Germany wanted to do and what it had to do. They had to invade Russia, because otherwise eventually a much-stronger Russia would probably wage war on them down the road, and so it was now or never, even if it was in Germany’s interest to focus on consolidating its existing hold in France and the other occupied territories. (Sure, there was Lebensraum and the other reasons for invading Russia, but they couldn’t just let Stalin and Russia be.)
That and also, Germany’s smashing success in the earlier phases of the war did indeed give the Nazis some logical confidence that they could win this war. Hitler’s statement that “we just need to kick in the door and the (Russian) structure will come crashing down” was taking that confidence way too far, but Germany was indeed the most formidable military in Europe for some time being, with victory after victory to back up its psyche.
Both were prepared and ready to fight a different war than the ones they ended up fighting.
Before the Civil War people believed in the big battle theory. At Waterloo Napoleon lost one battle and that caused France to lose the war. The planners of the day thought the Civil War was going to be like that. One huge battle and whoever wins that battle wins the war.
In a case like that, the Union’s vast manpower and industrial advantages don’t matter. The south had the most professional soldiers and their people were mostly rural farmers who knew how to use guns. No one was prepared for the kind of carnage both sides were willing to put up with. The Mexican war had cost the defeated side 15,000 soldiers killed and they had surrendered.
The Union suffered horrible defeats early in the war but never relented and the south was forced to fight a war of attrition which they could not hope to win.
Likewise the Nazis thought that they were going to be fighting a war like they did against France. France had one of the best militaries in the world and some of the best weapons. However it did not matter because tactically the Germans were so superior. They were able to use combined arms and the element of surprise to defeat a large force with low casualties. Once the french army was defeated the government capitulated quickly.
Against the USSR they were planning to do the same thing. They would attack with a surprise combined assault, capture or destroy the Soviet army and then the government would capitulate quickly. It worked very well at first and they captured or destroyed a larger amount of troops then they thought the russians had. However after handing the USSR some of the largest defeats in the history of warfare, the USSR kept fighting.
Once the initial attack was blunted they ended up fighting a war of attrition versus a foe that had a huge manpower advantage and once the US got into the war an ally with a huge industrial advantage. This type of war they had no chance of winning.
I’m not a big fan of psychohistory but I think it’s relevant here. I feel that Confederate government figures let their experience of the slavery system warp their thinking.
Southern plantation owners, who controlled the political system in the southern states, had grown up a system of masters and slaves. You were either in complete charge of everything or you were nothing. In an apt metaphor, it was a society of black and white absolutes.
So the Confederates often felt that they needed to assert control of events, even when doing so was not in their best overall interest. Davis ordered the shelling of Fort Sumter and the declaration of war against the United States even though it would have suited the Confederates better to have dragged out negotiations. The Confederate government declared an immediate embargo on cotton sales in order to force European to accept their demands rather than negotiate with the implied threat of an embargo in the background. Lee and other generals kept trying to lead invasions and fight battles even though this favored the United States with its numeric superiority; the Confederacy should have adopted a passive defensive strategy.
In all of these cases, you see Confederate leaders trying to deny the reality that they were in the weaker position. They were trying to show that they were in control of events and other people had to do what the Confederates were telling them to do.
Oh no, that’s just rhetorical bombast. The insane “taking confidence too far” is found in further things, like invading Russia and not bringing any winter gear whatsoever. Not because they forgot, or the factories had been damaged and couldn’t produce enough, or because it cost too much and had to be taken out of the budget, or anything like that - things that you and me could understand (although we’d go from them to “then maybe don’t start a war with Russia until you’ve fixed the thing ?”)
But that’s not stupid enough a reason.
The Germans deliberately didn’t bring any winter gear because the Führer had promised the war would be over before Christmas - and fine, that’s a bit daft to say (especially when you’ve been through WW1…) but just a harmless stump speech promise… except they were Nazis and had to turn it sinister. So the Führer’s promise became a suicide pact. They didn’t bring winter gear, because bringing winter gear would have demonstrated that they did not 100% believe what the Führer had said, thus that they allowed doubt to infiltrate the pure certainty of the Aryan thought process and lacked trust in their German comrade in arms, and bad things would happen to them. They didn’t bring winter gear because they could point that out to the Führer and earn brownie points. They didn’t bring winter gear because Hitler was legit convinced that as Aryans, his soldiers could thrive in sub-zero temperatures in nothing more than lederhosen. He fucking said that :
[QUOTE=a different stable genius]
Hitler was proud of his own hardiness in the cold, boasting on August 12, 1942, how “having to change into long trousers was always a misery to me. Even with a temperature of 10 below zero, I used to go about in lederhosen. The feeling of freedom they give you is wonderful. Abandoning my shorts was one of the biggest sacrifices I had to make… Anything up to five degrees below zero I don’t even notice. Quite a number of young people of today already wear shorts all the year round; it is just a question of habit. In the future, I shall have an SS Highland Brigade in lederhosen.”
[/QUOTE]
So Hans, just shut up and march on, because the immensity that is Russia **will **be conquered before winter - and remember, they kicked off the invasion in June. Sure, 6 months is plenty enough time to conquer a continent, what ?
But wouldn’t they have needed winter gear anyway, for the subsequent occupation and systematic murder of Russians ? Shut up. Don’t doubt the Führer. He’s a genius, our generals are the envy of untermenschen everywhere and you’ll get us both shot you keep running your mouth like that.
This is a common statement but is generally not true. For one, most people in the North were farmers, too; it was much more urbanized than the South but was still mostly an agrarian economy. This is still the 19th century. For another, gun use wasn’t as commonplace as the movies would have you believe. Gun ownership was fairly common, but not universal, and people weren’t shooting them a lot; that was an expensive hobby. Most people had pretty limited experience with firearms and of course using them in war is a rather different beast.
Guns became much more common and popular AFTER the war than they had been before, in part because they were becoming cheaper and easier to use.
Both seemed to have issues with admitting doubt, even only to oneself.
There seems to be some common ground between Bertrand Russel’s quote " The whole problem with the world is that fools and fanatics are always so certain of themselves, and wiser people so full of doubts.", the Dunning-Kruger effect and honor culture.