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Wars are Won or Lost in the Mind

iWe
@iWe
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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.

This post was promoted to the Main Feed at the recommendation of Ricochet's members.

Discussion (25)

  • mildlyo@mildlyo

    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.

  • Fake John/Jane Galt@FakeJohnJaneGalt

    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.

  • Miffed White Male@MiffedWhiteMale
    iWe (View Post):

    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.

    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?

  • Jerry Giordano (Arizona Patriot)@ArizonaPatriot

    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.

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