re: Is the Fall of France the greatest military achievement in history?

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The Russians seem to be empire killers. Read their history of successfully defeating great armies/empires Ottoman Napoleon Hitler

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What’s amazing is that the only force they couldn’t really end (but still put up one hell of a fight) was the Mongols. And that’s because the Mongol horde traveled as a self sustaining nation state. They had no supply lines so the expanse if Russia that doomed so many didn’t apply to them

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You are leaving out the part that without France helping, the US likley would not have won.

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The American Revolution was an unpopular war in Great Britain almost from the word "go." There were many members of Parliament sympathetic to our plight. After their defeat at Saratoga in 1777 and the subsequent entry of France into the conflict, it was essentially the stubbornness of King George III that kept Britain fighting in the colonies. By that point most of England just wanted to wash their hands clean of North America and its rebellious citizenry.

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And it really blows my mind how people underestimate the total arse kicking we gave Saddam and the Iraqi army in the First Gulf War. They had one of the largest militaries on the planet in 1990 and many of them had been battle-hardened by the Iran-Iraq War of the 1980s. Analysts were predicting it was going to be a blood bath. Instead? We drove right through them with superior technology and tactics. The war was virtually over in a matter of days once the shooting actually started.

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I remember my dad telling me the Iraqi perimeter radar system was top of the line Russian technology but that the system was set up that stations did not over lap all that much, ie if one went out there was a sizable gap.

In order to avoid exploiting this the stations were linked in pairs randomly and not geographically near each other, so if those two went out the knew/assumed it was a technical error, but if only one went out it was an attack. Through intelligence we figured out which ones were linked and took out a pair with low to ground Apache helicopters.

We then flew in night hawks and destroyed all the sams inside the city and flew in every fricking plane we wanted through that radar gap, knowing the AA guns were not really effective.

This resulted in the US basically having complete and total air superiority with minimal to no risk of ground based defenses within the first 4 hours of the fight.

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beats the fall of those feckless frogs.

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Good alliteration. Can one be “feckful” though? How much feck is required

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Cautionary Tales: How Britain Invented, then ignored, Blitzkrieg

If you have time listen to this podcast. An arrogant British officer basically invented modern tank warfare but because of politics and personality he was ostracized and his ideas practically ignored by England and France. However Germany didn’t ignore his theories and military philosophies and that is how they dominated WWII early on

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Blitzkrieg integrated quite a bit from a lot of different sources. Intellectual influence from the British and Soviets, practical lessons learned from the Spanish Nationalists, etc. A concept that sweeping and revolutionary doesn't just appear out of thin air.

This book's detailed and accurate description of the evolution of infantry tactics during WW I allows a strong argument to be made that Imperial German Army "infiltration" or "stormtroop" tactics are the basis for "blitzkrieg" methods.

The term "blitzkrieg" itself, as you probably already know, was invented by an english-speaking journalist, not a German. The Germans of WW II were simply practicing and improving on their tactical and operational methods that they developed in WW I. They didn't call it "blitzkrieg" as though it were something completely new.

The British inter-war mobile war theorists also based their thinking on German infantry tactical and operational methods of 1918.

LINK

Maybe in modern times? People forget that because of the First World War 40% of Frances male fighting age population were casualties in it, that kind of carnage will wreak havoc on future populations and military doctrine. France gets all of the shite for how quickly they fell but the BEF got ran of the continent in 2 and a half weeks also, they werent alone in this defeat, their doctrine wasnt up to snuff yet either.

I have a couple other military achievements I would put up there, the Battle of Alesia where Julius Caesar was surrounded by a confederacy of Gauls tribes and managed to break out and smash them and the insurgency.

The battle of Cannae where Hannibal enveloped an entire Roman legion and proceeded to kill them all over the course of a day is a good one too. Hell the modern world wouldnt see casualty numbers like the one day at Cannae until the first day of The Somme over 2 thousand years later.

Last would be the Alexanders military conquest of Persia and Egypt. I could go into more detail about this one but other posters have made sufficient points.

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Khan’s campaigns were unmatched.

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Unlike Hitler's Germany, Genghis Khan's Mongols were able to win a 2 front war. And they whipped both the Medieval Euros and the Chinese.

Later they decided to mosey on down and destroy the Muslim armies.

The only thing that stopped the Khans were the deaths of the Khans