Doctrine
RHODESIAN COIN TACTICS
While the Rhodesian forces never really developed a successful antidote to the guerrillas’ mobilization of the masses, they displayed consummate skill in defeating the guerrillas in combat. Even low-calibre units such as the Police Field Reserve could easily repel guerrilla attacks, though the insurgents tended to be more aggressive against units such as Guard Force and Internal Affairs. In the…
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Panzer Forces in Poland
The interacting deconstructions have in turn generated opportunities for reconstruction. Blitzkrieg was certainly not a comprehensive principle for mobilizing Germany’s resources for a total war waged incrementally. Nor was it a structure of concepts like Air Land Battle or counterinsurgency, expressed in manuals, taught in schools, and practiced in maneuvers.…
THE EARLIEST SHARPSHOOTERS
An Austrian Jäger (Hunter) rifleman. Norwegian ski troops stabilize rifles on ski poles, approximately 1700. Despite their limited usefulness, rifles still occasionally managed to find their way into battle-and some of history’s most lucrative targets were among their first. Rifles were not adopted for general military issue, and with good…
The Dutch Reforms
Prince Maurice at the Battle of Nieuwpoort by Pauwels van Hillegaert. Oil on canvas. The army of Maurice of Nassau at Nieuport, 1600, in ‘battalions’. Note the English regiments of the de Veres in the advance guard In 1568 the Dutch began their long battle for independence from Spain and…
Cold War Maskirovka
By the late 1960s surprise had become an important ingredient in military operations. The Soviet Military Encyclopaedia described surprise as ‘one of the most important principles of military art (which) consists of the selection of times, techniques and methods of combat operations, which permit delivery of a strike when the…
1942: Japanese Options
Hitler’s blitz swept through Poland, the low countries, and France from September 1939 to June 1940, but it paled in comparison to the military feat accomplished by the Japanese in an even shorter period of time. Adolph’s European conquest geographically would not even cover the Japanese home islands, yet Japan…
German Doctrine 1918
While Erster Generalquartiermeister Erich Ludendorff had busied himself during the Brest-Litovsk negotiations sketching future borders on European maps with reckless abandon, his field commanders and staff had assessed Germany’s prospects for 1918. They were not cheery. More than one million draft-eligible men remained in war-related industries at home, and the…