This is obviously pointless to the discussion, but for the heck of it, would you care to elaborate? “If Switzerland did what the Israelis did … and then was defeated by Russia, then indeed it would not have prepared properly.” Send your intelligence to Switzerland, my friend, and every other European country too! No body wanna miss out on this. I guess the plan involves “fighting for your life” and “American equipment”, eh? That’s GQ for you!
Wak, I understand your frustration. I’m researching it a bit on my end and will provide my take when it’s clear enough.
The Arab Officers withheld information from each other, and killed morale by stealing pay and food from the troops, and sold spare parts on the Black Market.
Yes, they actually did.
Ok, thanks, EM, sorry for the disruption. 
Well, if Switzerland decided to strike Russia and attacked it first in a surprise attack, which is what Israel did in 1967 with Egypt, Syria and Jordan… then, if Switzerland were to be defeated, it obviously would mean that Switzerland did not prepare adequately, for it dared to start a war that it ended up losing.
If you are going to strike first against an enemy that has numerical superiority and whose territory is much vaster than yours, then you damn better make sure you will be very well prepared. If you start the war and end up losing, it goes to show that you were not prepared, or at the very least that you were not as prepared as you thought you were (and in “being prepared” I include “having an accurate understanding of the strength and capabilities of your enemy”).
Is that clear enough for you now?
It’s not just “brave soldiers”. It’s “very well-trained and well-equipped soldiers”.
There had to be some reason why Israel won, right? But it looks like you’ve decided a priori that you’re going to reject every reason anyone comes up with. Whenever someone says “Israel won because they did X”, you reply with “Does that mean that if a country loses a war, that means they didn’t do X?”.
God did promise this land to the Israelites kinda early in the narrative … why wouldn’t He lend a hand? …
Joke person Milton Berle claimed it was over in six days because they rented the equipment.
Actually reading histories of the Yom Kippur war I was surprised at how well the Egyptian forces fought and how -hair close they came to defeating the Israelis. It came down to Kissinger convincing Nixon to resupply the Israelis, and at that time we still had most of the assets of MACV while the Arabs were stuck with the Soviets trying to keep up shoveling in munitions with a teaspoon. Go ahead and make fun of the sad sack Iraqis and Saudis but those Egyptians are some bad boys.
‘The Lord is our shepherd,’ says the psalm / But just in case, we better get a bomb.
So Moyshe says to Miriam: Miriam, he says, don’t you want to go out with me this weekend? And Miriam says, But my father says there’s going to be a war. So Moyshe says, That’s okay Miriam. How about next weekend? BaDump!
Got that from a junior high school history teacher.
While it seems like a simple statement, I don’t really know what people mean by this.
In war, every soldier values his (or her) own life. And in way, virtually every solider wants to leave the battlefield intact. Often, those willing to fight more or harder put their lives more at risk than those that don’t.
So does “fighting for their life” mean that they want to ensure that they have a life after the battle? Or that they are willing to risk that life?
I think what we really mean is that for an Israeli soldier, he believed that if they lost the war, their life, and that of their wives, sons, daughters, parents etc. was going to be in grave danger at best. So he was willing to risk his life because the war was truly a life or death struggle for him and his loved ones.
I’d guess the average Arab solider knew that if they lost the war, they’d just go home without much in the way of repercussions. In short, the downside to losing was much greater for the Israelis, so they were willing to risk more.
Between the two wars, Egypt tossed ot their Soviet advisors and started programs to think and act like a real military. They encouraged innovation and shied away from Soviet doctrine (although they used Soviet equipment). Syria and Jordan kept their advisors.
THe result was plain: Egypt used innovation to cut through the sand berm leading to Siani, then rolled in with specific gains designed to be taken while Isreal mobilized. THen they sat on them and let their missile shield cover them from the IAF, which had not innovated much since the 6 day war - Isreal had victory disease.
Egyot would be sitting pretty but Syria got into a mess because their doctrine was still the same old ceremonial armies with Soviet doctrine and they got pounded. So they pressured Egypt to attack as a diversion, which they did but had to leave their missile cover to do so…and got pounded by the IAF.
Still, the Egyptian innovation did pay off, when Isreali forces surrounded an Egyptian Army they held together wheras in the past they would have likely dissolved.
“Why Arabs Lose Wars,” by US Col. Norvell B. De Atkine (Middle East Quarterly, December 1999) has by now become a well-known brief summary of the (then) current thinking, and certainly as historical observation.
A significant factor is that the Israeli side had only command authority. Their opponents were several countries, each with their own set of Generals & Leaders. (And ones who didn’t much like or trust each other, either.) It’s always easier to coordinate your forces when they are all under your command.
[That was a significant problem for the Allies in WWII also.
Eisenhower spent a lot of effort in getting people like Montgomery & Patton to work together. To say nothing of the British & American Navies. He was helped by the fact that the top levels, FDR & Churchill liked & trusted each other. (Stalin they didn’t, but his forces were off on the Eastern Front.)
Even within your own forces, dealing with the Army, Navy, Marines, & Air Force can cause problems. That’s why in recent wars, like Iraq, the US has an Area Commander who is in charge and can give orders to armed forces in any of the branches.]
The Six Day War and Yom Kippur War were the culmination of the blitzkrieg largely thanks to the jet engine.
The blitzkrieg is based on the idea of concentrating heavy firepower using combined arms on a small part of the enemy line, penetrating it and exploiting the breakthrough by pouring into the breach to attack rear areas (e.g.: HQ, artillery) and encircle/roll up the rest of the enemy line. The idea of concentrating your forces on one part of the enemy line isn’t new and goes back at least to the battle of Leuctra. Battle of Leuctra - Wikipedia As an analogy, think of a 1 inch square piece of metal with 10 pounds of pressure behind it. It won’t be much good at penetrating. Now make the piece of metal be 1mm square. All of a sudden, the pressure on the contact point is 645 times greater. If you want to cut into large swathes, you proceed much like you would with a knife; You apply a great amount of pressure on a tiny area, cut through it then proceed to the next tiny area. In some ways, the principle is similar to HEAT rounds High-explosive anti-tank - Wikipedia
A possible counter to the blitzkrieg is the hedgehog defense Hedgehog defence - Wikipedia which involves concentrating forces in strongpoints which are deployed in depth rather than along a continuous line. The enemy then has to choose between slowing down and allocating resources to defeat those strong points or proceeding forward but leaving itself vulnerable to counterattacks that can cut their supply lines or attack their rear and flanks.
Early in the Six Day war, the Israelis were able to take out the bulk of the enemy air force which gave IAF a lot of freedom to operate. Air dominance meant Israel could reconnoiter the enemy far more than the enemy could reconnoiter Israel. Thus, the Israelis had a lot more information than its enemies about what its enemies were up to, where it had weaknesses and where it was strong. The Israelis could learn a lot and do something about it quickly.
What keeps coming back in my readings is that Israel’s enemies kept getting decimated by aircraft. Israel was able to see the enemy massing up into strongpoints or in preparation for counterattacks and was able to attack those concentrations with far more speed and payload than would have been possible during in WWII because the aircraft were powered by jet engines. The enemy then had a difficult choice: concentrate and become tempting targets for quick heavy airstrikes or disperse and leave yourself vulnerable to concentrated Israeli ground forces. The same kind of choice goes back to at least the Middles Ages where it was best to disperse when facing archers but preferable to concentrate when facing melee units.
Jet planes enabled not only the support of penetration and breakthrough by focusing quick heavy firepower on enemy frontline units but also struck at high-value targets in rear areas like enemy HQs and artillery which left enemy ground forces weaker and less coordinated. Much of the Arab units must have been largely static and tactically isolated. As an analogy, if you have 2 people against 10 but the 10 don’t act in a coordinated, mutually supporting way, the better coordinated 2 can make it a series of 2-on-1 fights rather than a 2-on-10 fight. After penetrating through Arab lines, it must have been easy to exploit breakthroughs since the desert is great for maneuver warfare.
The Yom Kippur war seems to have been won in much the same way with the exception that the Israelis didn’t have the benefit of striking first, fought on two simultaneous fronts and had to contend with the greater use of SAMs and ATGMs by its enemies.
Training, tactics, motivation and an easier logistics picture. I suppose equipment too could be a factor, but really training, tactics, and motivation are probably the biggest factors in deciding the outcome of both conflicts. The Arab armies were poorly trained, used poor tactics, had poor leadership and were highly unmotivated, by and large. That they also had crap equipment and a much more difficult logistics challenge (which, again, they were ill prepared for) was just the icing on the cake. Not to take anything away from the IDF, mind.
I thought the Korean War returned the border between North and South to approximately what it was when the war began.
Because the Germans needed to knock out the Soviet Union in the first year in order to actually win the war. The moment they hesitated taking Moscow and allowing the Soviets to regroup the war was over because they could no longer due a single massive knock-out blow like they intended earlier. Instead they dragged themselves into their own war for attrition for the next 4 years.
Same thing with Japan, they had the same plan of destroying the US with a single decisive blow and wound up dragging themselves into a war of attrition they couldn’t possibly win.
The net result of which was for Syria to vastly improve their IADS, and for Israel to take that seriously enough to try and mitigate it through Operation Drugstore in 1982.
Move-Countermove. It still comes back to the Israelis having better overall equipment, tactics, leaders, and morale which others have stated far better than I can.