Here Is Why US Army Will Never Win...

 ... a real war. As one historian correctly noted--Rommel's myth was created by Churchill and Monty in order to embellish own achievements on the secondary theater of operations against rather average military commander, while colossal spectacle was happening on the Eastern Front with military leaders on both sides who would make Rommel nothing but the average corps commander who rode the wave of Hitler's propaganda when things started to go really sour for Wehrmacht in USSR. So, here is H.R. McMaster still not understanding what real war is and exposing his ignorance of REAL military history. He should have "modeled" himself after at least Erich von Manstein or Walter Model--those were real serious deals and commanded masses of troops Rommel could only dream about. But here it is--ignorant arrogance. 

It is not accidental that on a number of occasions serious American historians absolutely trashed this amateurish copying of Wehrmacht by the US Army, while having practically no knowledge of the Red Army and circumstances of the Eastern Front described OBJECTIVELY. 

Historian and now-retired U.S. Army officer Antulio J. Echevarria II argues that the “US Army’s rather free and enthusiastic use of the term Auftragstaktik in the 1980s has become something of an embarrassment.”⁷ It remains so. Echevarria traces it to Trevor N. Dupuy’s Genius for War: The German Army and the General Staff, 1807-1945, “An oft-cited source of this confusion.”⁸ Furthermore, he has written that “Auftragstaktik has been greatly abused in military publications in recent years.”⁹ Its original understanding was as something of a free-form approach to directing troops on the battlefield, as opposed to Normaltaktik, which called for a “few standardized formations.”¹⁰ Hence Auftragstaktik originally referred more to the liberal use of skirmishers and firepower in infantry tactics over formal, heavy infantry columns or lines than anything else. Nonetheless, modern interest in the Auftragstaktik (and seemingly all things Wehrmacht [armed forces]) began with British and American efforts at crafting doctrine and tactics to counter the threat emanating from the Group of Soviet Occupation Forces in Germany, later the Group of Soviet Forces in Germany (German Democratic Republic), during the extended Anglo-American occupation of the Federal Republic of Germany during the Cold War (1945–1991). Echevarria is not alone in his critique, nor is he the first in calling out the U.S. Army’s infatuation with Germany’s supposed military prowess. Historian Roger A. Beaumont critiqued the Army’s uncritical infatuation with the Wehrmacht and asks the question, “If they were so good, why did they lose? Were the odds just too great? If they were so smart, after losing once, why did they try again?”

So, you see--American officers can think properly in tactical and operational terms, but for some reason very precious few of them make it to the top. Indeed, empirical question remains--if they were so good why did they lose? Well, they don't teach it at West Point or US Army War College as the views of Macgregor or McMaster demonstrate. But the delusion from Kool Aid of the Gulf War and confabulated history of the US Army, which suffered from the Rommel's force at the Kasserine Pass, but in a larger scheme of things it was an insignificant event at the secondary theater of operations, continues. Well, they will not learn, as template thinking and losing in SMO has become a hallmark of Pentagon's "planning". They really do not learn. They cannot. In related news, sorry SOBs from VSU are pulverized near border.  

P.S. One models oneself after winners, not losers. Just a hint. 

A Photo, A Contrast.

Do you know what photo is that? 

     

This is the photo of wives of the leaders of the NATO members on their gathering in Brussels. Yes, wives, all right? The dude in the second row right behind the right shoulder of always stunning Melania is also a... wife. He is a wife of Luxembourg PM Xavier Bettel and his (her, its?) name is Gauthier Destenay. This is so progressive and so... fabulous. 

I was reading today about T-4 Truman Kimbro, the recipient of Congressional Medal Of Honor, who died heroically at the Northern Face of the Bulge, saving his squad, while mining, being severely wounded, the cross-roads near Rocherath during the Battle of The Bulge. 25 year old kid sacrificed his life delaying the breakthrough of German armor into the rear of his 2nd Infantry Division and saving his combat buddies. I am preparing the post on Ardennes ordeal. The contrast between this photo and what Truman Kimbro did (Russians know an outstanding heroism when they see one) and what Western Europe, which Allies liberated, has become can not be starker. What would this real American hero say, should he be alive today, about the country near which he inscribed his name into the pantheon of military heroes? This is not a "What would Jesus do" type of question, this is a real moral metric relative to which one has to judge oneself. One could see this moral bar raised again in Russia with her immense Immortal Regiment marches. But as I said before, and I will repeat it again: 

     They didn't fight at Kursk and Omaha Beach for this.