Patterns of Conflict
| The works of |
| Works of John Boyd |
|---|
OODA WIKI Edition
Quantico Transcription
So if we look into this, World War II, blitz/counter-blitz strategic design and many other ones, what we see is Leuctra/Leuthen/Schlieffen. Manstein was the architect of phase one.
Anybody that has read anything about the German operation, Manstein came up with the idea where they came crawling out of the Ardennes, or I mean not crawling, roaring out of the Ardennes against the French. Manstein had a beautiful operation. The question mark, I’ll address that in a few moments. Manstein— Kerch Peninsula, anybody ever look at Lost Victories, that Kerch Peninsula operation? He was outnumbered by the Russians on a very narrow front, and you should see how nice he slickered them to get in behind. And at the same time he usually called a Grodich [PH] Brigade, remember that? He sent them down the whole length just to make the Russians, to put their attention on them so they couldn’t realize his true purpose.
It’s a beautiful operation. In fact, I thought it was one of the most beautiful operations, because if you look at the circumstances and the terrible circumstance, he had fewer troops, it was a narrow front, and yet he was able to still penetrate the front, capture a couple, two hundred thousand Russian soldiers and roll over the whole Kerch Peninsula. You’ve got to read it. I said goddamn, that’s beautiful! So he had, psychologically, he’s totally inside of them, they didn’t know what the hell hit them, totally inside of them.
Okay, the Caucasus/Stalingrad counterstroke. Once again, this is a Manstein operation. No, no, excuse me, this is the OKW, this is why I call it a counterstroke. Initially, it was supposed to be a stroke. The Russian intelligence got wind of the German operation, in fact I should have shown you that in the previous chart, let me go back to that. I don’t know if it showed it or not. It doesn’t show it here, it doesn’t show it. But initially, the Russians got wind of the German operation, so they knew it was coming because their own intelligence penetrated the German intelligence. So what they did, they leaped on with a preemptive offensive against the Germans. The Germans then, as they pulled into the German system, they didn’t panic, they just pulled out and let them come in, choked them off, got about a couple hundred thousand troops, leaped in the back of them and spooked— still blew the operation, then they went against Stalingrad. So their thing that was initially set up as a stroke, took on the aspect of a counterstroke. In other words, a bait and envelop.
And it’s real interesting. To the Germans’ credit, instead of panic, they just adjusted to it, [15:00] and bagged a couple hundred thousand Russian troops, and then leaped into the void. And then still blew it. I mean they had everything going for them, and then they still blew it.
Okay, Man— this is the one I was trying to think of, Manstein— Donetz counterstroke. This is after Stalingrad. And this is Manstein, what I call his reverse blitz. And Hitler was furious at him.
He’s made what he called this long step backward, all the way back to the Donetz River. Way back, just pulling his forces, pulling them back further and further. What he wanted to do, he wanted the Russian fangs really to come out, “we’ve got those sons of bitches running,” they’re going for it, see. And he’s back, and I forget the name of the city, and Hitler visited him. He says you’re crazy, but Hitler’s afraid to fire him at that point, because Stalingrad was so bad. And so he says, “when are you going to launch the counterstroke?” He says, “not until I can see him outside my headquarters. I’ve got ‘em stretched out as far as Plosse [PH].” So Hitler got in his plane and whoosh, took off, pissed off at Manstein. And he didn’t launch until he could see the smoke of the tanks coming in. He says now! Whoo, chopped it off and in two weeks they had gained everything back they’d lost, all the way back to the previous— not to the, to Stalingrad, but previous to the Stalingrad operation.
And then of course, the spring rains set in and they couldn’t go any further and everything bogged down, everything bogged down. It was beautiful operation, it was a reverse blitz. If you want to read it, it’s beautiful. But then, like he said, like Balck said, all you’ve got to do, in fact, Balck talked about it, he said it was beautiful. He said, all you’ve got to do, is you’ve got to have nerve to do it. Just all you need is iron nerve. He said, and Manstein had that iron nerve.
Manstein proposal for counterstroke from Kharkov to Sea of Azov. He proposed that in lieu of the Kerch operation, pinching off Kerch. He recognized that preparations were going too long, he felt the Russians had wind of it, and he said, well, why not really thin out our forces down in the southern sector, the southern wing? Thin them out and do it, even though it looks like we’re trying to hide it, don’t hide it too much, so the Russians can get wind of it, because their fangs are still out. They’ll make a huge stroke into our system, and when they start streaking way out past the Sea of Azov, then they’re going to launch, they’re going to gather, the Germans will have their forces against up there north, I’ll show you what I mean, this chart, if they got, it’s upside down.
They have Kharkov, yeah, Kharkov here, [refers back to map on slide 167] he wanted to thin out the whole southern sector here and let them go through, and then loop down here, and then pinch them off against the Sea of Azov and the Black Sea and roll them up in the rear, the whole southern Russian wing. And of course, Hitler said, “you’re mad. We defend every foot.” Wouldn’t let him do it. It was a brilliant idea. Because if we can do that, then we’ll take out a huge bunch of their forces and then we can go back in the offensive mode again. Disapproved, wouldn’t let him do it. And Balck and a lot of the other guys said it was good, but they didn’t have enough guts to take on Hitler, they should have made more of a noise. He was already in a weakened position because of Stalingrad, they said if they would have pushed it, they probably could have pulled that off.
So that was down-voted. See, once again, what was he doing, a super reverse blitz. Okay, and then Rundstedt/Rommel proposal— Normandy, they wanted to do a similar thing in Normandy. And then of course, the Ardennes in ’45, you know about that.
Then the Cannae, Poland ’39, France Phase Two, Russia ’41, and the Kursk operation. You know about them. Okay, now notice I have questions marks up there, why do I have those there? Well, it’s a natural question.