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Wars are Won or Lost in the Mind
I was thinking on how the perceptions of the outcome of a battle can matter a lot more than the actual reality. The Tet Offensive was apparently devastating to the North – but the Americans chalked it up as a loss, and so it was. Similarly, The Telegraph summarizes the 1943 Battle of Kursk:
An even more powerful collective memory in Russia is the Battle of Kursk in 1943. Codenamed “Operation Citadel” by the Germans, Kursk has gone down in history as the largest battle of all time, involving millions of men and several thousand armoured vehicles, including the Wehrmacht’s new Panthers, Tigers and Ferdinands. It was thus on an entirely different scale to the much smaller incursion now under way.
Recent research has modified the propaganda version of Kursk, particularly the legend of the “greatest tank battle in history” at Prokhorovka. It is now clear that the price paid by the Red Army for throwing the German offensive into reverse was much higher than previously thought.
The ratio of Soviet to German human losses was at least four to one and of materiel up to seven to one. Only the Anglo-American invasion of Sicily, which prompted Hitler’s premature decision to call a halt to Citadel, may have saved Stalin from disaster.
Nevertheless, the architect of the Panzer divisions, General Guderian, described Kursk as “a decisive defeat” for the Germans. As such it has been etched into Russian mythology almost as deeply as the Battle of Stalingrad.
Mythology matters. Perceptions matter. They are the best indicator of grit and resolve.
How the Russia-Ukraine war resolves will depend far more on the PR war than on the boots on the ground. Especially if ultimately it comes down to whether or not leadership stays in power.
Published in Foreign Policy
Yes, yes. If we kill every Ukrainian on the planet and Putin loses power we will call it a win.
The Russian Federation is a successor state of the Soviet Union, not a continuation or remnant.
Vladimir Putin is the George Washington of the Russian Federation and we are the British. We are never going to like him.
The Soviets apparently knew the German attack was coming at Kursk/Prokhorovka.
I do not understand the Ukraine thing. Trump and the GOP had a handle on it when Trump was in office. All my life I have heard from Putin and others that the West moving into Ukraine was a big issue from their point of view. While I understand that the Ukrainians and other would like to be part of the West for many reasons mostly involving money. I do not know why the powers that be want to poke the Russian Bear at this time. Especially since Putin is 70+ years old and his time in power is coming to and end. Seems things would have been better from the Trump / GOP aspect of waiting for Putin to move on as opposed to the Biden / Democrat point of view of lets start a fight and spend a bunch of money.
I’m not seeing the link as to why “the price paid by the Red Army…was high” has any impact on whether the “greatest tank battle in history” is a “legend”.
Can’t both things be true?
This post makes sense to me. Not that I agree, but I can understand why someone who desperately wants to believe that Ukraine can win, and is winning, would want to think that wars are won or lost “in the mind.”
The Russians take the more sensible view that wars are won by imposing unsustainable losses on the enemy.
I think that the Tet example gets it backward. I was just a baby myself, so I have no personal recollection. My historical study suggests that the American people were misled by the military and the government, and believed that the war was going well and the enemy was almost broken. They thought they had won, “in the mind.” But Tet proved otherwise. Tet proved that the enemy was tough, resourceful, determined, and far stronger than we had been led to believe.
Tet was like the WWII Kursk, in a way, I think. The winning side had far larger losses than the losing side.
Both sides in the current Israel/Iran war think that they are winning. Which is why it will never end.
The Germans were not close to victory at Kursk. It’s true that the Russians suffered much larger losses than the Germans during the battle. So what? That was true all the way through the war, including the final battle in Berlin. The Soviet way of war spent lives profligately.
The Russians had several armies, including tank armies, sitting in reserve waiting for the decisive moment to intervene. They anticipated the attack at Kursk, developed defenses in depth, and waited for the Germans to spend themselves working through minefields and antitank gun defensive belts. The Panther and Tiger tanks Hitler put so much hope in were still new and many suffered mechanical failures before even engaging the Russians.
The true meaning of Kursk is found in the aftermath. A few weeks after the battle the Soviets launched their own massive offensive – using those tank armies sitting in reserve – and captured the strategic initiative for good. Within a few months they chased the Germans back across the Dnieper River and beyond. No mythology or PR was necessary. It was obvious the Germans were doomed.
It’s been a while and I don’t remember whether it was one of VDH’s books or an article he wrote, but I seem to recall him saying the outcome of WWII was decided by the far greater industrial, material, and human resources of the Allies — especially the US. And it didn’t help that the Nazis were using slave labor, which was uninspired to produce Germany’s best.
I see the same situation in the Ukraine War, with Ukraine at a severe disadvantage in a war of attrition. I share the opinion of Christopher Roach (who obviously has much more knowledge and expertise than I) that the Kursk offensive is an attempt to secure a more advantageous (or less disadvantageous) negotiating position. But, it could also have the effect of poking the Russian Bear (h/t FJ/JG) which could very well decide to end this thing once and for all.
https://amgreatness.com/2024/08/20/ukraines-kursk-incursion-p-r-stunt-or-strategic-turnaround/
We’ll only know after it’s over, but in the meantime, Ukrainians are being slaughtered and their country destroyed. I’d like to see something of is preserved and I think the only way that happens is to sue for peace and accept their losses.
I thought it was Walter Cronkite – “the most trusted man in America” – who deemed it a loss . . .
The powers that be didn’t provoke Putin- his sense of mortality did as well a a his psychopathic personality. Ukraine wasn’t on a fast track to NATO. Putin wanted to cement his legacy as a leader of “greater Russia” and the existence of an increasingly successful, democratic Slavic nation on his border threatened the legitimacy of his regime. If Ukraine could continue to reform & become a more & more successful democracy, many Russians would wonder why they were on the opposite path. South Korea similarly provokes North Korea. Ukraine “provoked” Putin by existing- just as Jews provoked Islamists by breathing. Add to that the evident weakness of the Biden administration and you have a recipe for war.
It definitely wants to do that, but it can’t do it quickly. If it puts its conscript army into battle immediately, that’s a huge risk to Putin’s regime. So far he has managed to keep the conscripts in relative safety doing non-combat work. But it might manage to get enough of the country gradually used to accepting conscript losses. Biden was a great help in dragging out the war to give Putin time to get people used to the new way of war, and Harris could continue that game.
The latest I’m hearing from the curated clips of propagandists on Russian TV is, “Yes, it’s serious. Let’s not fool ourselves. Yes, it’s a big problem. Yes, it should never have happened. Mistakes were made. This incursion has exposed problems at all levels. No, it can’t be fixed quickly. It will take time to remove the Ukrainians. Let’s shut up about it [by way of censorship] and go for the win.” Only Karen Shakhnazarov (the movie director) is saying “We could lose,” and of course he’s careful about how he says it.
The usual suspects are also repeating for the umpteenth the lines about how they should start bombing England.
The other participants in the panels look at their shoes while these things are being said.
Yes. The message to the public was very positive and optimistic. The Viet Cong was destroyed. So was the credibility of American policy.
That’s an odd historical analogy.
Ukraine was part of the Soviet Union that is now fighting for its independence against a superpower trying to preserve/restore its empire. That would make Zelenskyy a better fit for the role of Washington, with Putin playing the part of George III.
As for us, in this analogy, we’re France — a rich and powerful but fickle ally with ulterior motives for joining the fight.
You’re reminding me that I still haven’t put together a combo Gadsen flag/Ukraine flag. I got the idea on my evening bike ride a few days ago when a pickup with Gadsen flag passed me.
Google Translate translates “Don’t Tread on Me” as
не наступай на меня (Russian) and не топчи мене (Ukrainian)
I thought I recognized наступай as similar to наступление, which I’ve heard a lot in Russian war documentaries and now in war news, as the word for offensive, as in “going on the offensive.” But Russian has fallen into disfavor in Ukraine these days, even though most Ukrainian soldiers can speak it without an accent and have have used that ability in Kursk to add to the confusion on the Russian side among people and soldiers who have had no experience fighting Ukrainians. But I want to use Ukrainian.
Google Translate says топчи means trample. It’s a word I’ve never encountered before. But it also says “don’t step on me” can be translated as не наступай на мене, much as in Russian. I will have to consult with a Ukrainian speaker about which of these would be more appropriate for the Gadsen flag.
Vladimir Putin can also be thought of as the Joe Biden of the Russian Federation, considering that he and Biden both use the same type of lawfare to go after political opponents.
odd takes all around.
Putin as George Washington should make one vomit- Putin never relinquished an iota of power he seized…while George spurned kingship & stepped back after 2 terms as president – recall King George:
King George III qustioned the American-born painter Benjamin West what Washington would do now he had won the war. “Oh,” said West, “they say he will return to his farm.” “If he does that,” said the king, “he will be the greatest man in the world.”
Putin has systematically murder political opponents around the world. He has returned autocratic rule to Russia after a brief period when Russia might have become a democracy-he is the anti- George Washington. Only a blind man could see any similarity between the two- Washington one of the truly great men of history & Putin a second rate, a wanna be, Stalin.
One of the ironies for Putin, is that Stalin’s forced incorporation of Eastern Poland into Ukraine after 1945, pulled Ukraine towards the west & helped to set the stage for the reawakening of Ukrainian nationalism -which his invasion of the Donbas in 2014 greatly accelerated (despite Putin’s claim Ukrainians are not Russians).
Biden is no Putin- he is corrupt and incompetent, but is not a murderer and it is extremely foolish to conflate the two. Biden has made all manner of ill-advised attempts to avoid war (thereby creating incentives for Putin) while Putin seeks war.
Demonizing one’s political opponents is not advisable and hopefully, not a recipe for success in the USA. One can oppose Biden for a whole host of reasons, but comparing him to Putin is a reprehensible as the Dems incessant calling GOP candidates racists & fascists.
https://www.hoover.org/research/putin-stalins-mirror
I believe when someone asked Washington why he didn’t want to be king, he said something like, “I didn’t fight King George the Third so I could become King George the First.”
Yet I will continue to compare the two. In fact, anything can be compared to anything.
If you would reread what I wrote, you would see that the main comparison I gave is on the use of lawfare. Putin and Biden most certainly have similarities in how they use lawfare and the state security services to go after political opposition. I was watching Navalny for about ten years, and it was impossible not to notice the parallels in how Biden was later using raids by the state security services to do the same to Trump that had happened to Navalny.
The fact that Biden is not a murderer on the order of Putin should be credited more to American institutions and customs that won’t let him get by with it than to differences in morality between the two. But whatever the reason for a less bloody trail in Biden’s history, that’s no reason not to compare the two on the important points where there actions have been more similar.
And we shouldn’t think the difference between our societies is black and white. I just read (listened to) the book Skies of Thunder about the mission to fly supplies over the hump into China during WWII. I learned that at one point, later in the war, FDR personally told Gen. Stilwell that he should get rid of Chiang Kai-shek and find someone else to take his place if he continued to be intractable. “You know what I mean,” FDR told him. So Stilwell came up with a plan for Chiang and his wife to have an unfortunate plane accident. He never needed to act on it, though.
The difference between the bad guys and the good guys isn’t always as great as one might wish it could be. Comparisons are very much in order.
Biden & Putin-a difference in such a great degree so as to be as difference in kind.
Biden could never be Putin- he isn’t competent enough nor evil enough.
He isn’t competent enough. The American people and American institutions aren’t evil enough. That doesn’t mean the comparison isn’t apt and proper.
Biden is a figurehead. Putin wasn’t, and due to his willingness to have inconvenient people thrown into prison or out of windows, he still hangs on, though that can change.
From Real Clear History Today: The Battle of Kursk
There are lessons to be learned from the Tet Offensive. The Tet Offensive involved the NVA and the Viet Cong. The NVA suffered heavy losses and were unable to take or hold the territory they attacked. What the Tet Offensive exposed was the idiocy of a bean counter from General Motors who admitted that there was no desire or plan to win in Vietnam.
The idiocy of Rolling Thunder and holding fire bases and patrolling the same jungle foot paths day after day. The lessons not learned haunt us today in Ukraine and Israel.
a good review:
https://warfarehistorynetwork.com/article/the-battle-of-kursk-showdown-at-prokhorovka-and-oboian/