Patterns of Conflict
| The works of |
| Works of John Boyd |
|---|
OODA WIKI Edition
Quantico Transcription
Okay. The major advance between World War I and World War II has come up. First we see these things begin to go on. Soviet revolutionary strategy. And note that, what we’re saying here. The importance of the crisis and vanguard. And the idea that it really plays upon the moral/psychological play. It’s a big play now, and not just physical operations being the primary.
[35:00] And then the lightning war, the blitzkrieg, which came out of World War I. Actually pulling all these things together, the tank, motorized artillery, et cetera. An initial idea by J.F.C. Fuller, in the British army, that he had in 1919. Of course, it didn’t take place because the war ended. And then Guderian, remember Guderian25— how many people knew that Guderian was not an infantry officer during World War I? What was he? Anybody?
[Cross talking]
Boyd: Signals officer, communications officer, that’s exactly right. He was a signals officer in World War I. Initially, he was an infantry officer before that. In fact, he got canned because he got in some trouble, and was forced to go into signals. Their signal corps, the equivalent to our signal corps. So he was a signals officer, as they called it then. Today I guess we call them communications officers. But he was a signals officer.
And so he was familiar and privy to the German infiltration techniques. He read the British pamphlets. Plus, he understood the importance of communications. He put all that together, and therefore he became the innovator of the blitzkrieg. How important that was.
And of course, his was to generate a breakthrough by piercing with multiple narrow thrusts. Note that, multiple narrow thrusts. We’re going to talk about that later on. Using armor, motorized infantry, and follow-on infantry divisions, supported by tactical aircraft.
25 Heinz Guderian developed many of the tactics used successfully by Germany’s mechanized forces at the outset of World War II. He directly commanded panzer forces during both the invasions of Poland and France. In 1941, following the Wehrmacht’s failed attempt to capture Moscow, Guderian was relieved of command for pulling his forces back in direct contradiction to Hitler’s orders. Thereafter, he held largely ceremonial positions in the German military until the end of the war.
And then guerrilla war, Mao Tse-tung. Note what he did. He took Sun Tzu’s ideas. He actually had some Napoleonic ideas, et. cetera, and embraced, embedded them under the so-called Soviet revolutionary strategy, and came up with a new way for waging war, guerrilla war. As a matter of fact, it’s total war. Why do I say it’s total war, his version of guerrilla war, anyway? It’s more
total than blitzkrieg. Why is that? I’m making that statement. Do you people want to dispute me on that? It’s more of a total war than blitzkrieg. You say, Boyd, you goddamn lost your mind.
Audience: Because it encompasses political—
Boyd: Say it.
Audience: —economic, social, all aspect—
Boyd: Because he involves the whole fabric of society, like you said. When you talk about blitzkrieg, it’s only going against the armies and the government. The people sort of remain in the background. But his thing, he’s involving the whole nine yards in it, the political, economic,
the social. He involves the whole fabric of society. That’s why.
So in that sense, I don't care whether you use primitive instruments or not. The point is, he’s got them all involved, as a result, he has a greater totality. Whether the instruments are primitive or not is a different issue. And that’s the point. And that’s something we haven't come to grips with, is guerrilla wars, they have in many ways a greater totality than so-called regular warfare. We have to come to grips with that.
So with that in mind, now let’s go— we’ll look through. We’ll work our way through all three of these. First, the Soviet revolutionary strategy.