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Old September 8th, 2016, 11:11 AM

IronDuke99 IronDuke99 is offline
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Default Re: Acceptable US Casualties Against 3rd World Armies

In some respects this is the most interesting speech at this Conference. He identifies a lot of common military thinking failures.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=q2zLzW86134

Worth noting though that the US Army took great note of the German Army in WWII because no one ever really defeated them with equal resources. All the Western allies required more men, more air power, more guns, more tanks and more supply to win large scale battles, the same was true of the Soviets (who also needed a whole lot of US trucks and half tracks often fought through to them, at considerable cost, by, mainly, the Royal Navy).

German doctrine and officer, especially staff officer training, was simply better than her enemies on a tactical and, often, operational level. Thankfully this was not true on a strategic level, were Anglo-US cooperation worked, on the whole, very well, despite disputes and often strong arguments.

A lot of the modern idea of a thinking and flexible Army, to me, has its roots in German WWI and WWII doctrine and Staff training.
Especially when you hear about Senior officers being "eyes on and hands off." That is pretty much exactly the pre WWII German idea of give a subordinate an objective but let him come up with the means. C. 1937-2016 and it is, supposedly new...
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