/lit/ - Literature

[Anonymous No.6366879]

Have any of you read this? Is it worth a read?

[Anonymous No.6367132]

I've read it. Disclaimer: I'm a career Army officer.

If you think you would be interested in what Rommel has to say about fighting in World War One, you should read it. You probably wouldn't even know about this book otherwise, so do it, faggot. Be warned however, Rommel doesn't meditate on The Meaning Of It All; it's a straightforward description of his experience with a focus on the tactical.

He starts in France, and gives a firsthand description of how the Western Front stalemate developed. Then he's shot in the leg and evacuated and goes to Italy.

In Italy he uses speed and daring to defeat dug-in and numerically superior but clearly generally inept Italian troops. After proving he's King Badass of Shit Mountain, he sits out the rest of the war in a safe staff position.

You will get acquainted with why everyone thought Rommel was such a big deal even before World War 2. His experiences will make it very obvious how he (and every other German, who all read this book) saw the potential for maneuver warfare before ever seeing a tank or a radio. Rommel doesn't talk too much about himself, but by the end when he's a lieutenant in command of a battalion and rolling up entire enemy brigades, you can tell that he knows he's the shit.

If you've read other (especially English) memoirs of WW1, the ones where some literary type finds himself on the front and feels butthurt, this will also give you another perspective on the war, one from the kind of person (like nearly every senior officer in WW2) who wasn't soured on the concept of warfare by personal experience in WW1.

The book isn't a very long or hard read, either.

[Anonymous No.6367253]

[Anonymous No.6367256]

>>6367132
Uhm, they all got the manuevre warfare concept from jfc fuller. Just saying.

[Anonymous No.6367336]

>>6367132
Sounds like a good one. I'm also planning on reading Achtung - Panzer! and Panzer Leader too. Is Attacks required or encouraged reading for officers?

[Anonymous No.6367807]

>>6367256
JFC Fuller was an important theorist, but, like BL Hart, he had a tendency to overemphasize the importance of tanks and mechanized forces as shock forces in a frontal attack rather than combined arms and the general principle of speed and decisive action employed to find and exploit enemy weakness. Basically everything wrong with British thinking on armored warfare. Also, Fuller envisioned a form of mechanized warfare in which dismounted forces would be basically irrelevant (cf. Tanks In The Great War), and he never appreciated the importance of air power (then again, arguably the Germans didn't either, but I think that was more a failure of execution/lack of resources).

Obviously, at the end of WW1, the British were the experts on tanks, because no one else really had them. However, Fuller (and Hart's) thinking about them became increasingly detached from reality over the decades between the World Wars. Seriously, read Tanks In The Great War and Attacks and tell me whose experiences look more like modern maneuver warfare. I have, and my vote's on Rommel.

>>6367336
lol, I've never gotten around to reading either one of those books. Required reading: my required reading (West Point) was mostly overviews of military history, nothing that dug too much into detail. When it comes to learning tactics, you just read and discuss modern tactical manuals. There are recommended reading lists put out by various entities, but frankly not a lot of people read them, and it's as much about ~leadership and character~ (stuff like Once An Eagle) than historical tactics.

[Anonymous No.6367825]

>>6367807
Wow, you don't know what you're talking about and have clearly never read tanks in the great war.

You're an officer?

[Anonymous No.6367840]

>>6367825
Nice argument.

[Anonymous No.6367851]

>>6367840
I've read more jfc fuller, BH liddel hart, ewrin Rommel, gudarien, Hanley, Churchill, stern, Elles, and bacon than you so yes. It's pretty obvious you're an amateur.

[Anonymous No.6368751]

>>6367807
You should really read about Soviet Deep Battle if you want to know about the beginnings of maneuver warfare. They came up with a strategy that involved engaging the enemy along an entire front (in most cases the entire border Russia shared with Western Europe) and then probing for weak points to break through and get at the enemy's infrastructure. On a smaller scale they came up with the idea of using mechanized troops to move through breaches opened up at the front to strike at the rear echelons of the enemy. This was basically the epitome of maneuver warfare and the Russians came up with it on their own and really before.

Rommel was a good commander, but he is really remembered because he was more political than his peers (and openly against Hitler). Rommel wasn't some master strategist he was charismatic and intelligent, but he didn't revolutionize warfare like Guderian, Fuller, or Tukhachevsky.

[Anonymous No.6368795]

>>6367851
It's pretty obvious that you're full of shit.

[Anonymous No.6369337]

>>6368751
>>6368751
I'm more familiar with Russian tactics than strategy, to be honest. I've always sort of thought of Soviet strategy, particularly during WW2, as basically emergent: they ended up engaging along the entire front because what else are they going to do: have all 300 divisions or whatever line up behind each other? I'm obviously biased though, and probably not giving them enough credit. I read a summary of The Theory Of Operations Of Modern Armies once, but frankly the only thing I remember is that the Russian Army is supposed to move 12 miles per day.

Of course the Russians would have ideas about maneuver warfare; everybody thought about it after WW1. That doesn't mean the Russians influenced the Americans or even the Germans much. Not to mention Stalin had just about everybody with a clue shot; then again, most people don't know just how close the Bolsheviks came to defeat at the hands of the Whites.

Rommel in WW2 was basically the German Patton: a good tactician with a carefully cultivated public persona who was truly a bit of a loose cannon politically. He isn't *just* remembered for opposing Hitler. And he certainly didn't invent maneuver warfare on his own--but reading Attacks does give you an idea of how the experience of WW1 might have implied the benefit of all these newfangled doodads, and that you don't need to heavily centralize command (probably the main French mistake).

[Anonymous No.6369545]

>>6369337
>I'm more familiar with Russian tactics than strategy, to be honest. I've always sort of thought of Soviet strategy, particularly during WW2, as basically emergent: they ended up engaging along the entire front because what else are they going to do: have all 300 divisions or whatever line up behind each other?

Except they didn't. That's failed abysmally in 1941. Strategically the Soviets became masters of concentration and supporting success. The Uranus concentration, or Kursk counter concentration ought to be evidence.

[Anonymous No.6369585]

>>6369545
>Concentration
Is relative

[Anonymous No.6369590]

(Meanwhile, on the Western "front")

[Anonymous No.6369606]

>>6369585
I count 24 armies concentrated into the Kursk salient across 5 fronts. Out of those, only SW isn't concentrated in Kursk. That is basically all of the Soviet Union's warfighting capacity including STAVKA reserves.

And the Germans didn't know shit.

[Anonymous No.6369650]

>>6369606
I agree. Once they mobilized, the Soviets positioned forces along the entire Eastern front, and they also concentrated in specific areas with reserves available to exploit anticipated breakthroughs. I think the only "disagreement" is that I'm saying the Soviets didn't really follow their own doctrine initially (because they were getting run over, and most of their strategists were dead or otherwise unengaged). I (maybe not accurately) tend to think of this as the Soviets rediscovering what they already knew in e.g. 1935 but failed to put into practice. I don't believe the Soviets just got on line and pushed forward to Berlin; no one with a clue does.

[Anonymous No.6369667]

>>6369606
Although to be clear, the Soviet army groups to the north and south of Kursk weren't just sitting around jacking off until 1945. Kursk was the center of attention, but it wasn't the only thing going on.