Comments

1. On December 2, 2025 at 10:22 pm, Georgiaboy61 said:

   Part of the reason the Ardennes Offensive caught the Anglo-American allies so badly off-guard is that by fall 1944, their access to Enigma secret intelligence had been severely restricted if not cut off entirely.

   Prior to the invasion of Europe in June, 1944, the German high command had to rely heavily upon its Enigma encoding machines and communications network to rely orders to the far-flung fronts upon which German forces were fighting, from deep inside the U.S.S.R. to Italy to North Africa.

   But as each of these objectives was taken in its turn by the Allies – North Africa, Sicily, Italy, etc. – Germany’s interior lines contracted. By the summer of 1944, Germany had – apart from her forces in Italy who were fighting a stubborn rear-guard action against the Allies – nearly-continuous interior lines. Relying messages from Berlin to France no longer required use of the Enigma system. Teletype machines, telegraphs, and telephones were used increasingly, as well as motorcycle messengers and aerial couriers as well.

   Back at Bletchley Park in the U.K. the code-breakers found that their window into German intentions was now closed or at least not as open as it once had been – at least when it came to operations on the European mainland proper.

   Taking a page from the book of the Allies, whose deceptions before D-Day June 6th 1944, had worked so well, the Germans went to great lengths to hide their plans for the general counter-offensive in the West. They flooded the circuits with dated and/or useless information, planted misleading clues, and otherwise did their best to obfuscate Hitler’s plans, which themselves were kept locked-down under extreme secrecy.

   SHAEF failed to foresee the Battle of the Bulge and the German counter-offensive which made it happen, for the simple reason that with the exception of a few senior officers like Patton and their staffs, they failed to get inside the mind of the enemy. Instead, many of the men on the SHAEF staff bought into the commonly-held belief that the “Germans were done” and that the war would soon be over, perhaps even in time for Christmas.

   In reality, though badly-hurt, the Germans still retained considerable war-fighting power by fall 1944. The fallacy that they were done for should have been put paid by the fiasco of Operation Market-Garden, but apparently that lesson was not taken to heart by everyone.

2. On December 3, 2025 at 3:00 am, Georgiaboy61 said:

   Patton’s brilliance can be understood in many ways. The “generations of warfare” model provides one such means by which the iconoclastic general can be understood – both in terms of his personality and the success he achieved.

   William Lind and Colonel Thomas Hammes, USMC (ret.) are generally credited with creating the generations of warfare model, which categorizes different types and/or eras of conflict into several classes or generations.

   In between the First and Second World War, the major armies of the world struggled to understand viable lessons learned from the Great War, the largest and most-costly war in human history up to that time.

   The U.S. military, because of its close relationship with the French armed forces during the war, retained a pronounced French flavor in its approach to warfare, which was second-generation warfare otherwise known as attrition warfare or industrialized war. Procedure and adherence to previously agreed-upon strategy, tactics and plans are prized, whereas initiative, flexibility and creativity are not – in this model of how to wage conflict.

   Meanwhile, the Germans were innovating a new form of warfare in the late 1930s, based upon tactics they had used near the end of the Great War with their “Storm Troops” or special attack squads, which were a radical departure from static trench-warfare methods used up to that time.

   The world came to know this form of warfare as “Lightning War” or Blitzkrieg. Aggressive, fast-moving mechanized forces – supported by tactical air forces – penetrate the enemy’s front-line defenses and surge into their rear, spreading chaos, fear and uncertainty as they go. Strong-points are bypassed to be reduced later, flank security may be minimal or absent in the interests of maintaining the speed of the advance. Which if successful can result in huge encirclements of enemy personnel and equipment, which are captured or destroyed. Radio and other forms of communication aid the advance.

   “Mission orders” are paramount: If the lower-ranking officers and their men lose contact with their leaders, they are still expected to act in accordance with their overall objectives or mission orders, which generally did not specify how an objective was to be taken, just that it was to be taken. Trust and cohesion are vital.

   The U.S. Army entered WW2 in North Africa, Sicily & Italy and finally in NW Europe proper as a second-generation entity. Combat leaders like Patton helped to transform it into a third-generation fighting force, at least some of the time. Patton was a master of “combined arms warfare,” what he and other Americans named fast-moving mobile operations modeled upon the German example.

   Patton understood the ideas of the Germans like Rommel, for example, because he had taken the trouble to study their writings and theories in detail. He was a military historian and tactician of the first rank, and because of this he often knew what the German high command wanted to do even before they did. As evidenced by his prescient reading of German intentions on the eve of the Ardennes Counter-Offensive late in 1944.

   Like many senior officers who are successful combat leaders, Patton found himself at odds with less-daring and more-conventional senior officers regularly, not just those in the U.S. Army, but the British Army as well. The innate conservatism and caution of men like Field Marshal Bernard Law Montgomery of the British Army and General Omar Bradley – whom Patton called “Omar the Tent Maker” behind his back! – were two examples among many.

   Among the German high command, Patton was the most-respected of the senior Anglo-American generals, and they were stunned later on after the invasion of Normandy on 6 June 1944, that Patton had not been placed in over-all command, as they had expected. Patton finally got back into action with the breakout from the Normandy hedgerow country and was in his element again.

   Many historians now believe that if Ike had not diverted men and logistical support from Patton’s 3rd Army to support Monty’s gamble at Market Garden in Holland, Patton would have broken into Germany via the southern route, well before any northern thrust into Germany would have borne fruit.

   But of course, such speculation lies in the realm of “what if” or alternative history.

   Time has only put into even greater relief that Patton was a military genius, who could see things in the fast-moving chaos of modern warfare that less-gifted men could not. He and a handful of other insightful, resourceful and daring senior officers – men like Creighton Abrams, John Shirley Wood, and a few others – turned an inexperienced and green fighting force into one of the finest forces of its kind ever fielded.

3. On December 3, 2025 at 7:47 am, Wes said:

   @ Georgiaboy61: Nicely done.

4. On December 3, 2025 at 2:08 pm, Georgiaboy61 said:

   Thanks! I guess once you get me started, you can’t shut me up! LOL…

5. On December 3, 2025 at 2:24 pm, Georgiaboy61 said:

   A concluding point not made explicitly in my previous post: George Patton was one of the men who introduced 3GW – third-generation warfare, also known as maneuver warfare – into the U.S. Army and employed its techniques successfully on an operational basis.

   As Lind et al. have noted many times since creating their model in the late 1980s, militaries vacillate back-and-forth between different models of war and how it ought to be waged. The same was true back in the 1940s and 1950s after the war ended; the army – which had briefly embraced 3GW – reverted back to 2GW institutionally.

   Neither the Army nor the Marine Corps has permanently embraced 3GW, let alone 4th or 5th gen. warfare, but the U.S.M.C. is probably the closest to attaining that status of the major branches of service – but within each branch are “heretics” who disagree with the institutional model dominant at any given time.

   Of course, with the dramatic changes in the conduct of war in recent years, i.e., comprehensive ISR by remote sensors; small numerous and cheap drones; etc. – further changes will probably be incoming in how militaries and those in them think about and conduct wars.

   Even though Patton died eighty years ago, no serious student of military affairs would miss doing a deep dive on the man and his contributions to the field of arms. Still essential study, in particular for anyone who will be fulfilling a highly-mobile cavalry-type role.

   Patton trivia: Did you know that G.S. Patton designed the very last cavalry saber issued to U.S. forces, namely the pattern 1912 saber?

   Cavalry trivia: The last horse-mounted Cavalry unit of the U.S. Army – the 26th Cavalry of the Philippine Scouts – was disbanded in 1942 and their horses converted to rations for the starving men inside the Japanese blockade of the Philippines. The men then went to fight as dismounted horse soldiers, a.k.a. infantry.

6. On December 3, 2025 at 10:00 pm, Ozark Redneck said:

   @Georgiaboy61; Brilliant as usual, thank you sir!

7. On December 4, 2025 at 3:14 am, Georgiaboy61 said:

   @ Ozark Redneck

   Thanks! Just trying to earn my keep around here!

RSS feed for comments on this post. TrackBack URL

Leave a comment