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Politics : Foreign Affairs Discussion Group -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: unclewest who wrote (122284)	12/27/2003 10:31:25 PM
From: broadstbull	Respond to of 281500

<<<To get a large nation to cry uncle requires that you kill more of them than it is possible for a blitzkrieg to do>>> Depends on the country. France, Belgium and Denmark pretty much lay down and took it. Poland, Russia and other Eastern European countries didn't get a chance to fight back after the Blitzkrieg. The SS quickly eliminated the elite, academics, politicians, and any other possible resistance as soon as an area was conquered.

To: unclewest who wrote (122284)	12/28/2003 7:45:29 AM
From: jttmab	Read Replies (2) \| Respond to of 281500

We may be yet forced to totally take an entire population off the map. You may have stumbled on the win-win solution. The other side may have the same solution in mind. With nuclear and biological weapons as they are, both sides can achieve the same goal. jttmab

To: unclewest who wrote (122284)	12/28/2003 1:25:17 PM
From: Bilow	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 281500

Hi unclewest; Re: "The Nazis walked into Paris, drank confiscated cognac by day and slept with Frenchmen's wives and daughters by night and the French would not fight. The same tactic was repeated in different countries over and over." This is very true. But while the German defeat of the French in 1940 was (essentially) bloodless, their occupation was not. Hey, Blitzkrieg is a great tactic for liberation. But it only works in occupation if the occupation that follows it is sufficiently bloody. This is a very simple and obvious fact of history. Just because you can knock the wind out of the other guy doesn't mean that you've won the fight. As a soldier, you should know this instinctively. After you knock the wind out of him (win by other than attrition), you have to either kill him or put him in handcuffs to be sure that you have ended the fight. Getting the other guy to leave some distant land is easier. In that case, you can knock the wind out of him and ship him home. He won't come back because he'll remember the lesson. But to take his home is tougher. People defend their homes viciously. You can cow small nations into easy submission. The example of partisan activity in occupied Europe is a great example. The small nations gave no trouble to the Germans because they knew that they were very expendable. It was the large nations (i.e. the ethnic groups with large population size) that generally provided the most resistance to the Germans. And the Germans were vicious. We're not. Consequently, our forces, when they are in enemy territory, meet tougher resistance than the Germans did. Big nations do not give up so easily. Germany ended up detailing large forces to deal with partisans throughout occupied Europe. Similarly, our forces, which were originally planned to be removed in July, are still stuck in Iraq. -- Carl