Help needed from History buffs

[Lori]

Dorks.

371331[/snapback]

Yup.

[Crap Throwing Monkey]

Oh, don't fugging start...Geek.

 

There are always those with the theories, but it takes a rounded visionary that's been in the field to practicalize them. Rommel was a student, not a teacher.

 

Next thing, you will be telling me John Holland was the secret behind Doenitz.

371322[/snapback]

 

Rommel's tactical style goes straight back to his experience as an infantry commander in Italy in WWI...long before Guderian hit the scene. Don't get me wrong, I don't mean to slight Guderian; he had the vision to synthesize everyone else's theories with the C3 elements and support arms available to him to make them work. But that's not tactics, that's operational theory. The tactics, at the spearhead of the advance, at the Meuse crossings at Dinant and Houx, against Gort's counterattack at Arras, were Rommel's.

[Ghost of BiB]

Rommel's tactical style goes straight back to his experience as an infantry commander in Italy in WWI...long before Guderian hit the scene.  Don't get me wrong, I don't mean to slight Guderian; he had the vision to synthesize everyone else's theories with the C3 elements and support arms available to him to make them work.  But that's not tactics, that's operational theory.  The tactics, at the spearhead of the advance, at the Meuse crossings at Dinant and Houx, against Gort's counterattack at Arras, were Rommel's.

371374[/snapback]

 

In the field is what counts. Not in the theory papers. Advanatge, Heinz.

 

I notice you have totally blown off my John Holland reference through contracts with Ireland to help shape the WW1 U-Boat fleet?

 

Galipoli was a disaster, could have been less if cetain people could have kept certain ships of the line.

 

You even KNOW anything about submarine tactics off Turkey circa WW!?

 

Wimp.

[Crap Throwing Monkey]

In the field is what counts. Not in the theory papers. Advanatge, Heinz.

 

I notice you have totally blown off my John Holland reference through contracts with Ireland to help shape the WW1 U-Boat fleet?

 

Galipoli was a disaster, could have been less if cetain people could have kept certain ships of the line.

 

You even KNOW anything about submarine tactics off Turkey circa WW!?

 

Wimp.

371386[/snapback]

 

I blew off the Holland reference because we're discussing whether the tactical doctrine on France in 1940 was more Rommel's or Guderian's responsibility (and as I keep saying: Guderian's synthesis of theory was important, and I take nothing away from him. But saying he "invented" it is a stretch, like saying Ford invented the automobile). But if you REALLY want to talk about Holland's contribution to Doenitz's tactical innovation...well, then don't bring up WW1 naval warfare in the Eastern Med.

 

(Plus...Doenitz was a poser. For all the publicity his wolfpack tactics got, they only worked twice...that's twice, as in "against two out of God-knows-how-many North Atlantic Convoys". The rest of the U-boat's notable successes came despite his wolfpack tactics, not because of them.)

[aussiew]

Hey - isn't "dork" a whale penis?

[Britbillsfan]

Dorks.

371331[/snapback]

I personally prefer nerd......

[Britbillsfan]

Except that de Gaulle was FAR too junior for such a post, and the French Army suffered from a severe internal rot that no general was likely to address in less than five or ten peacetime years.  The French in 1940 had severe problems that went well beyond leadership and doctrine...the only two things that de Gaulle really could have influenced in time.

371057[/snapback]

I am well aware of the junior level of de Gaulle at that time, it was just a what if.....

 

The Germans in 1940 also had a whole heap of problems in 1940 and devised a stategem that essentially relied on the French being led by idiots. A gamble, but a highly successful one.

[aussiew]

Galipoli was a disaster

 

Kind of like an Aussie suicide.