Again, not Lee’s call, and Jefferson Davis ordered an evacuation of Richmond only when the U.S. Army broke through at Petersburg and Lee told him that the Confederate Army couldn’t protect the city any longer.
The Confederate Army couldn’t protect itself much longer when Richmond fell, which was the point. Yes it was Davis’s call, but there is no way he would not listen to Lee if he told him so, they all knew the British capture of Washington did not end the 1812 War, nor did the loss of how so many capitals in the Revolution. So its not like they were unprepared to lose major towns and fight on.
Lee was basically an 18th century general facing a modern one in Grant, he was interested in the capture of cities, Grant knew that no city (unless it was a communication junction like Atlanta) was worth your Army. Even besides that, when Lee sent Early on his sortie to Washington, he completely exposed the Shenandoah, one part of Virginia that was worth protecting.
Banzai charges were in reality suicide attacks. Rather than surrender, you just screamed “10,000 years” and charged to your death.
The problem for all the island garrisons is that they had no way to resupply and no way to retreat. So once the allies show up, your garrison is doomed and the only thing you can do is take as many of the enemy with you. Or, you know, surrender.
Considering the cost of transporting, feeding, housing, and guarding masses of prisoners, I wonder if mass surrender would have been more of a drain of the American war machine than fighting to the last man. “It is your patriotic duty to surrender to help defeat the foreign devils!”
We fed the whole damn country after the war.
But Virginia was not exactly Russia in winter; nor was it a three-to-ten week uncertain sea voyage from the Union’s capital. Lee abandoning Virginia wouldn’t be suckering Union troops into being stranded in a hard-to-supply and out of touch situation, it would be giving up a huge chunk (economically, politically, and emotionally) of what he was trying to defend, and letting Union troops and supplies ride railroads right up to the North Carolina border.
And remember, it’s not like the vast majority of the people living in the Confederacy were united against the invaders and ready to wage intense guerrilla war; quite a large number of them saw the Union quite literally as liberators.
Also, Lee was a Virginian first and a Confederate second. Asking him to abandon Virginia would have literally been asking him to lose the war, as he saw it.
True, and more or less what I wanted to post.
Then again, going one level up, the whole grand strategy of Imperial Japan was up its arse because they never quite revised their original estimate : “We’ll ninja a bunch of places, set up rugged defenses, and taking 'em back will be too costly for the Americans to stomach. All we have to do is to not give an inch, kill a few thousand more of them and they’ll cave. A bit more. Just a bit more. They’ll cave aaaaany minute now…”
I’d say the war was already lost when Hitler lost his gamble on a quick victory from the Barbarossa attack. His “no retreat” ordered probably hastened the final defeat, but IMO didn’t fundamentally change the outcome.
I take it that you didn’t have opportunity to actually read my post, so let me quote it again:
Note that the banzai charges were developed in China. I’m sure you are aware that Japan was “in reality” at war for several years there before attacking the Western Allies. The banzai charge was implemented as an offensive tactic and was quite successful again the inferior Chinese troops.
That is what I meant in my post. It must have been confusing to you as it wasn’t spelled out.
There actually were “in reality” a few times where the banzai charges were used as an alternative to surrender, but the majority were not, “in reality” such, but were “in reality” an attempt to make an offensive move well before they were forced into either surrendering or committing suicide.
Later in the war, the Japanese finally got wise and greatly reduced the banzai charges, which made Iwo Jima and Okinawa such bloody fights. Iwojima was actually the only battle where the total number of US casualties outnumbered those of the Japanese. Of course, that included the wounded on the US side, where almost all of the Japanese casualties were KIA.
Because the Japanese had started digging in and fighting smarter, the US was forced to reconsider its invasion plans. Fortunately, the Soviet entry into the war and the atomic bombs eliminated that need.
Any number of books and articles on the war can provide a basic overview of this.
There are a number of books on fighting on Iwojima and Okinawa which discuss this accurately.
I think that this statement pretty much sums up your knowledge of the war and doesn’t require any further comment.
Interesting and all, but what the hell?