AdA, consider the implications of Snake defending the American military against your arguements.
Epic indeed.
AdA, consider the implications of Snake defending the American military against your arguements.
The soviets used firepower+manoeuvre to kill more Germans faster. The US tried to use firepower before manoeuvre to minimize own casualties. There's a huge difference. Like I've said before, if we landed Chuikov's 8th guards Army on Iwo Jima they would clear the island of Japanese in a couple of days max...
I doubt Chuikov's 8th guards Army could have cleared Iwo Jima any faster than the USMC and USN. I believe Iwo is too small and rocky for mechanized maneuver combat, or much in the way of maneuver of any but small formations.
Besides, why is it bad to use technology and expend large amounts of ammunition instead of expending human lives? A lot of folks knock the USA for having lower casualty numbers than other countries in wars. What is wrong with that?
AdA, consider the implications of Snake defending the American military against your arguements.
The USSR took more combat casualties in the final drive to Berlin than the US did in the whole war. The USSR never compromised its operational conduct by searching to minimize casualties the way the US Army did.
Every Army uses fire and manouver. Its tacticts 1.0.1. Every account of Waterloo bashes Ney for not using fire and manouver properly. But the US, that had fought very agressively in WW1, took the balance towards an excessive reliance on firepower. When they had to crack a strong defensive position they either send in the poles, like in Casino, or bombed it until it it was defended by a few half dead shellshocked german zombies, as in Cobra. The one battle were they tried to go in and fight it without landscaping the place first was Hurtgen Forest, and see the drama they made about it.
I'm not saying that the US soldiers would not fight. They could, did well on ocasion, and no one acuses the US Army of lack of courage. They were not expected to "demerder" themselves the way other Armies were, and that somehow compromises their training and basic fighting abilities.
And Snake, you, of all people, acusing the Soviets of being too cautious with their soldiers lives...
When did I do that? I said the USSR had to do this by necessity because it was running out of manpower. The USA would have still be raising manpower had the war gone on longer. If Soviet strategy had worked as it had been intended to, the USSR would have been relying on machines and air power far more than it did IOTL. What happened to it IOTL was the consequence of the gruesome Pyrrhic victory of 1941 and the mistakes and learning from them of 1941-2.
"They did this by precisely wanting to fight a war with machines instead of human life"
"The USSR, it tends to be forgotten, was as addicted to over-reliance on firepower as the USA was"
Here. I might have taken it a bit out of context, and in fact it didn't sound much like your usal line of thought, but I've read it as a paralel btw the US and Soviet styles, wich I though was a bit forced.
Let me clarify my POV. The US was willing to compromise the tempo of operations in order to let its firepower degrade the oposition to the point their own casualties would be minimal. The soviets believed in maintaining the tempo of a given operation, even if that meant assaulting positions before they had been fully reduced.
The soviets thought like chess players in that respect.
That's what I meant by fire+manouvre rather than fire before manouvre.
No, the Soviets were able to throw multiple army groups into an offensive intending if necessary to neglect an area where offensives failed and use their mobility to reinforce the areas where they succeeded. The Soviets also carried out their offensives in a somewhat different fashion than the Anglo-Americans in the last phase of the war. If nothing else the larger size of the Soviet and Nazi armies both means it's not a simple task to compare Bagration, Jhassy-Kishinev, Vistula-Oder, and Berlin to the Allies' war in the West. Budapest was for the East what Aachen was to the West, Berlin was for the East what the Siegfried Line was for the West.
That has nothing to do with what I was saying. On a tactical, not operational level, if a soviet unit had to get somewere in a given time, it would be willing to pay a much higher price for it than a US unit.
I dont understand your problem with U.S tactics.
I see it as this.
Option A kill more opponents, lose more men, win the war.
Option B kill less opponents, lose less men, win the war.
War isint about bodycounts it's about winning, if anything commanders who complete the objective and lose less men are more useful than commanders that complete the objective and lose more men.
The comments are that the Soviet unit had less option with this than a US unit, not that either made the choice voluntarily or particularly felt this was a desirable thing.