Quotes About Strategy

As required by the unwritten rules of military calamity, the initial attack went well.

His animating principle, as the official history explained, was "that in order to destroy anything it is necessary to destroy everything." By the late fall of 1944, Harris claimed that forty-five of sixty listed German cities had been "virtually destroyed," at a rate of more than two each month, with a dwindling number awaiting evisceration.

I suffer from the usual difficulty that besets the higher commander—things can be ordered and started, but actual execution at the front has to be turned over to someone else.

Proverbially, no military plan survives contact with the enemy. That is never truer than when there is no plan to begin with.

nothing is more difficult in war than to adhere to a single strategic plan" and to resist the "constant temptation to desert the chosen line of action in favor of another one.

Even Colonel Lang, watching the Americans from the other side of Djebel Naemia, had been surprised by their timid initial approach to the Maknassy heights; a more forceful attack, he concluded, could have shortened the Tunisian campaign by weeks. In his view, the Americans appeared reluctant to risk heavy casualties in a decisive battle, preferring to crush their foes with material superiority even if that meant extending the fight. There was truth in that assessment too.

There is nothing I dread so much," he said, "as these brave generals." Keenly aware of America's size and the temper of her people, he had advocated a strategy of naval blockade rather than a land war, again to no avail.

The cardinal principle of concentrating military force had been abandoned by George and his ministers; so, too, had the pursuit of clear strategic goals while avoiding diversionary sideshows.

the prime minister's physician concluded that "Monty wants to be a king." Eisenhower came to believe that "Monty is a good man to serve under, a difficult man to serve with, and an impossible man to serve over." That maxim would tidily sum up the Allied high command in Europe.

Rick Atkinson

And into the holds went: a platoon of carrier pigeons, six flyswatters and sixty rolls of fly-paper for each 1,000 soldiers, plus five pounds of rat poison per company.

The balance of the campaign—indeed, the balance of the war—would require learning not only how to fight but how to rule.

There are apparently two types of successful soldiers," Patton had recently written his son. "Those who get on by being unobtrusive and those who get on by being obtrusive. I am of the latter type." True enough

One can always do what one wants if it takes people by surprise," he explained. "There is not time for plotters to develop their nefarious plans.

The largest contingent of invaders—drawn from the U.S. 1st Infantry and 1st Armored divisions aboard thirty-four transport ships—would storm ashore at Beach Z near Arzew, a fishing town sixteen miles east of Oran. Two

The battle," Rommel famously observed, "is fought and decided by the quartermasters before the shooting begins.

Secondary Attack Against Fortress Europe,'" n.d., NARA RG 319, OCMH, 2-3.7

Montgomery professed to spend one-third of his day "making sure I'm not sacked" and another third inspiriting the troops, which "leaves one-third of my time to defeat the enemy.

Senior officers in First Army would spend the rest of their lives trying to explain the tactical logic behind the Hürtgen battle plan. "All we could do was sit back and pray to God that nothing would happen," General Thorson, the operations officer, later lamented. "It was a horrible business, the forest.… We had the bear by the tail, and we just couldn't turn loose.

At noon on Tuesday, August 1, his U.S. Third Army officially came into being, with nine divisions under three corps. At the same instant, Bradley ascended to command the new 12th Army Group, complementing 21st Army Group while still subordinate to Montgomery.

A French writer once observed that, "in the new colonies, the Spanish start by building a church, the English a tavern, and the French a fort.

Yet Allied unity remained the central principle of his command and he would go to great lengths to preserve it, including self-delusion. "The team is working well," he wrote Marshall in September.

Brittany reflected an inflexible adherence to the OVERLORD plan. "We must take Brest in order to maintain the illusion of the fact that the U.S. Army cannot be beaten," Bradley told Patton, who agreed. The war ended with not a single cargo ship or troopship having berthed at Brest, which bombs and a half million American shells knocked to rubble.

Churchill composed his own aphorism, much quoted: "There is only one thing worse than fighting with allies, and that is fighting without them.