Quotes About Tactics

Alexander the Great would have found it difficult to succeed in forcing a breach in the German line in 1914-1915, and the defeats Haig's armies suffered in 1916 and 1917 - those notorious disasters on the Somme and at Passchendaele - should not obscure the fact that it was Haig who commanded the British armies that spearheaded the Allied victory in 1918 and showed the other armies how this war should be fought; even General Foch admitted that.

The Somme began as an offensive; it ended as a battle of attrition.

There was, however, a deeper failure, a failure to realize that the current conventional tactics were not working. The focus was on solving the shortages of men and guns and of increasing the weight of attacks - which only increased the scale of loss.

The generals, British, French and German, were unable to achieve a breakthrough because the defences were always too strong and the facilities available to reduce them were not fully developed, either technically or tactically.

the men of the French Army have never been short of guts. Clad in their brilliant uniforms, carrying swords and wearing white gloves, the officers of this gallant army led their men into the German machine-gun fire in 1914 . . . and then war was suddenly not glorious any more. A million men were killed or wounded trying to make this tactic work.

Haig wanted Fourth Army to achieve a breakthrough of the first and second lines in the first phase; Rawlinson thought that if his men took the German first line in the first phase they would be doing well. This is the by-now-familiar 'breakthrough' or 'bite and hold' argument and, since Rawlinson's view prevailed, his proposals are the ones to examine.

What Joffre wanted on the Somme was not a tactical battle. As he saw it, the attempt at a breakthrough had failed and now, as so often before, the task of breaking the enemy line would get even harder. Therefore, since it was probably impossible to break through the enemy line, the next best thing was to attack all along the line, and engage the enemy in a battle that would force him to remove divisions from the Verdun front

The orders given to the troops were not the result of stupidity or ignorance but attempts to cope with the hard and oft-repeated fact that there was no way of communicating with those troops once they had left their trenches. Hence the daylight attack, hence the general shortage of smoke, hence the advance in extended line, hence the 'creeping', or 'drifting', barrage.

As time went by, matters improved; the armies, especially the British and French Armies, became better at staying alive while killing larger numbers of the enemy which, though hardly a matter for satisfaction in human terms, is what well-trained armies are supposed to do.

while the means to cause casualties had vastly increased, the means to reduce them had yet to be thought of. This applied in particular to the attack, because the armies, all the armies, were fighting a twentieth-century war with nineteenth-century tactics - even though the new technology had made those tactics either obsolescent or positively dangerous.

The regular lesson of the Western Front, one the generals seemed unable to learn, was that - using the currently conventional methods - most attacks simply did not come off, whoever carried them out

Sidestep their attack and deflect it against the problem.

Break the vicious cycle by refusing to react. Instead of pushing back, sidestep their attack and deflect it against the problem. As in the Oriental martial arts of judo and jujitsu, avoid pitting your strength against theirs directly; instead, use your skill to step aside and turn their strength to your ends. Rather than resisting their force, channel it into exploring interests, inventing options for mutual gain, and searching for independent standards.

You imported a master strategist, you'd better listen to what he has to say.

Cornwallis had grown so desperate that he infected blacks with smallpox and forced them to wander toward enemy lines in an attempt to sicken the opposing forces.

The British were unhinged by the colonists' unorthodox fighting style and shocking failure to abide by gentlemanly rules of engagement. One scandalized British soldier complained that the American riflemen 'conceal themselves behind trees etc. till an opportunity presents itself of taking a shot at our advance sentries, which done, they immediately retreat. What an unfair method of carrying on a war!

One scandalized British soldier complained that the American riflemen "conceal themselves behind trees etc. till an opportunity presents itself of taking a shot at our advance sentries, which done, they immediately retreat. What an unfair method of carrying on a war!

John Adams summed up the case succinctly: "In general, our generals have been outgeneralled.

Things seldom happened accidentally to George Washington, but he managed them with such consummate skill that they often seemed to happen accidentally. By 1775 he had a fine sense of power—how to gain it, how to keep it, how to wield it.

The idea was not to compete, at least not too openly.

With virtuosic brilliance, Rockefeller and Flagler played these three railroads against each other in seemingly endless permutations.

Yet Rockefeller didn't apply this pressure lightly and preferred patience and reason—if possible—to terror.

Segundo consta, foi Putnam que teria dado a seguinte instrução a seus homens, em Bunker Hill: "Não atirem antes de verem o branco dos olhos deles. E aí atirem baixo.

Hamilton sketched out this phantom force in microscopic detail, producing comprehensive charts for regiments, battalions, and companies. In a typical passage, Hamilton was to write, "A company is subdivided equally into two platoons, a platoon into two sections and a section into two squads, a squad consisting of four files of three or six files of two."89 He assigned ranks to officers, set up recruiting stations, stocked arsenals with ammunition, and drew up numerous regulations.