2013/12/27

Balck/Mellenthin on Tactics

.
This is a document which I discovered (elsewhere) years ago. It's about time to share. Thirty years ago two German WW2 generals wargamed with Americans the corps-level defence at Fulda.

Don't take this document at face value. The most interesting stuff isn't the operational art content by itself, but the attitudes and behaviour of the people involved. It's an interesting look at how these people (the involved Americans and the two elderly generals) thought and behaved thirty years ago.



I love such documents. One of my favourite books about aviation is an antique book from the late 50's. The Boeing 707 was about to triumph and establish the (still) dominant design for airliners*, but the authors didn't know this yet. They discussed and speculated about options which look outright ridiculous now with the benefit of hindsight.
 
It's enlightening to think about our time as similarly ridden by ignorance, the misguided spirit of the age ... and inevitable ridiculousness.

S O

*: Moderately pointy radome nose, one passenger deck, luggage deck below, normal tail, turbojets (later turbofans) under the wings in single nacelles, low swept wing.
.

1 comment:

  1. 1. Definitvely since the Americans started to mentally onnanize about german military ways they started to win the battles and loose the wars.
    2. Those "expert" losers, sorry ahem generals, don't even recognize the difference between Russian and general member of the red army. No way in hell there is the same mentality between an Uigur and a Russian for example.

    ReplyDelete