[…]neo-neocon » Blog Archive » Question authority: Part III (Daniel Ellsberg and the Pentagon Papers)[…]…

Had to have the will to LOSE FIVE SHERMANS to get a SINGLE tiger. Not easy stuff.

Indeed, the Panther (Panzer V) was a response to the T-34 which was, cheaper, faster and sufficiently powerfully armed to defeat the Panther III’s, aided also by superior numbers. That all still makes Spank wrong, Panther (Panzer V) was the best tank in the war. But the Soviets still won the East. Willpower.

“When Spank makes fun of science fiction and military science fiction writers like David Weber and John Ringo, Spank is showing his prejudice. If you read David Weber’s Honor Harrington series, you would actually learn more about politics, than you would just by watching Fox News. The political machinations are very complex, very detailed, very plausible, and quite Real in the sense that it has happened.”

In other words, you can learn more from reality by reading made-up stories than you can from actual reality. And you disagree with me that image has replaced reality? Silly little Yammer. You go on right ahead learning about the world via story-time.

Shorter Yammer: “What could have possibly caused me to say something wrong, and then immediately backtrack? Could it be because…I was wrong? I’ll never admit it.”

Second shorter Yammer: “Willpower is the most important thing – even if you don’t have tanks, you can just will your way to victory.Based on what I know of history, this worked well for Hitler in 1944!”

For example, you’re little diatribe on your site (Does anyone but me read it? What will you do when I stop finding this amusing and you lose your audience?):

Not exactly polite of course. Why do people want to read Spank’s abusive conduct towards Ymar, when what he is replying to is on Ymar’s site?

Not very good conduct in polite company, is it.

As for the making things up. I do hope people understand me well enough to realize that I don’t attach emotional significance to being “right”. I don’t get my kicks from that, unlike other people. This means, I treat people different. If Neo tells me I got a fact wrong, I might reconsider changing my statements, and in most situations I do, after I look it up.

People who are my enemies, who hold enmity towards me, who are hostile to my very existence. People like that, don’t deserve to be treated in an honorable and honest fashion. And I don’t, really.

I don’t actively lie of course, cause that’s too much work to make up stuff about history. But I also don’t take great care to correct my spelling, grammer, or anything else to make it easier for my enemies to read me.

Spank picked up on it, when he said that the panzers worked well in rural areas, so why did I say they worked well in urban areas and then say the Soviets could not beat them out in the “open” and drew the tanks into the cities?

Why would I say that the people in WWI did not use tanks because they didn’t travel very far or fast. Then say immediately afterwards, that the exisgencies of war changes strategic thinking? Why would I even bring up WWI after I said that Romans didn’t use heavy armored horse because of the logistics issues it had when out in the hot Syrian desert, and was only forced to use heavy horse to match the Parthian/Persian cataphracts on the field of battle?

Wouldn’t Spank like to know. But I’m not going to tell him. Why should I give my opponents a better read on my beliefs, when I can get them to overextend?

Douglass,

Specifically the Germans had Panzer IIIs I believe, or something close, out on the Eastern Front. When the Russians rolled out the T-34, the weak armor of the Panzer III did not shape up.

The unusually heavy rear armor of the Panzer III was a weight penalty that was not commensurate with its combat value. Although several tanks of the early war period had heavy rear armor, in general the design trend during the war was to thin the side and rear armor as much as possible, concentrating heavy armor in the frontal quadrant. For example, the Panther tank had very heavy frontal armor but thin side and rear armor.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Panzer_III

Presumably if the T-34 has all the armor on the front and a good gun, and a Panzer III tried to fight it, the III would lose. And it probably did.

If of course did type in urban when I was talking about “rural”. As the logic would point out. Rural is out in the open, while urban is cities. So no, wasn’t really talking about the Tiger tank.

Concerning willpower, that is a complex subject. You can want something, but if you don’t DO anything, then you’re not going to get it. Thus willpower is not just desire for something.

Willpower in the military sense, consists of logistics, tactics, and strategy. Because it is inter-weaved with all this stuff. If you lose your discipline and your will to fight, then your entire tactics and logistics and strategy goes to hell in a hand basket. That’s why Napoleon said the moral is to the physical as is 3 is to 1. He understood that if you can break the enemy’s will to fight, it don’t matter what tactics, strategy, or logistics you or the enemy has.

This applies as much to Vietnam and Hannibal’s invasion of Rome in the 2nd Punic Wars, as it does to WWI and WWII and the current war.

When Spank makes fun of science fiction and military science fiction writers like David Weber and John Ringo, Spank is showing his prejudice. If you read David Weber’s Honor Harrington series, you would actually learn more about politics, than you would just by watching Fox News. The political machinations are very complex, very detailed, very plausible, and quite Real in the sense that it has happened.

Besides, it’s just not people like me who read John Ringo. Presumably John Ringo who was part of the 82 nd Airborne also reads John Ringo and David Weber. Then there is Black Five, which claims to read John Ringo because a fellow mil blogger got him onto the wagon.

So if Spank chooses to smear me with the ad hominem that because I read science fiction, that I’m a cooky nutcase and nobody should pay attention to, he is free to do so. As Spank pointed out, I can’t physically do anything to him, even if I was willing to sully my hands with his kind, douglass.

The Panther (listen (help·info)) was a tank of Germany in World War II that served from mid-1943 to end of the war in Europe in 1945. It was intended as a counter to the T-34, and to replace the Panzer IV and III, though it served along with them and the heavier Tigers until the end of the war.

Until 1944 it was designated as the Panzerkampfwagen V Panther and had the Ordnance inventory designation of Sd.Kfz. 171. On 27 February 1944, Hitler ordered that the tank only be known as Panther.

They didn’t make the Panzer 5s until much later, when the Russian’s tanks were kicking German ass.

Going back to willpower. Spank advocates that “smart tactics” (presumably stuff he thinks up) will win wars and not just sheer willpower.

I think most people will realize that if your boss is a hardcase and a genius at the same time, does it really matter then if you just quit the job cause you don’t want to work at it anymore?

Without willpower, what good are the God general tactics that Spank will output?

Without people willing to be sent to the furnace, because Spank thought up a good “strategy”, what is the purpose of a commander who has no troops to command?

Or how else are they going to fund their giant freedom-giving armies?

The Tiger was probably anything but an urban tank. This is largely beside the point; Soviet equipment for most of the war was superior to or the equal of German equipment, most of the fighting was done by the infantry, most of it was outside urban areas, etc.

The point is this: that Yammer just does not know history, period.

But you bring up “willpower,” and perfectly illustrate its uselessness as a measure of military effectiveness. You pick US outproduction of Germany in tanks as evidence that we had superior “willpower.” “Willpower,” then, becomes a meaningless quality. If you simply point to whatever actually won a war – better tactics, greater production, superior equipment, whatever, and assign “willpower” as the cause of this, then “willpower” simply means “that quality by which victory was produced.” It’s sort of like “a dog is a dog because it has the quality of being a dog.”

Morale, as distinct from “willpower,” is certainly a factor in combat. But willpower qua the will is basically meaningless. It’s an excuse to talk about anything but the real causes for victory. America produced more tanks because it could affor to, and because it had the industrial capacity to do so. Germany didn’t. We can either talk about industrial capacity and output, real things that are measurable, or some fantasy concept of “willpower” as being the motivator for production.

It took roughly five Shermans to take out a single Tiger. The Allies were simply lucky that the Germans could never mass produce the Tiger or Tiger II. We simply outproduced them. If we had lacked the industrial capacity to produce five Shermans for every Tiger, but still had the “will,” how would those Tigers be destroyed? Would they just…will it to happen?

Sure it is. Domestic vs. Foreign policy. Have as small a government as you can, but that might mean a big military…