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Never march by flank in front of an army in position. This principle is absolute.
Napoleon Bonaparte 

The only exception to this rule is well known for being an exception to this rule.  Lee had Stonewall Jackson do this at Chancellorsville.  Knowing his enemy, Joesph Hooker, Lee knew he would get away with it.  And he did.

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Sherfy Barn, Emmitsburg Pike, Gettysburg

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The Devil's Den, Gettysburg

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Headstones, Evergreen Cemetery, Getttysburg

Yap

Oh, I am heartily tired of hearing about what Lee is going to do. Some of you always seem to think he is suddenly going to turn a double somersault, and land in our rear and on both of our flanks at the same time. Go back to your command, and try to think what are we going to do ourselves, instead of what Lee is going to do.
Ulysses S. Grant- the only time he ever lost his temper on the battlefield, after hearing once too often about Lee's ability.

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Names of Pennsylvania Civil War soldiers, Pennsylvania Monument, Cemetery Ridge, Gettysburg

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Pennsylvania Monument and mist on Cemetery Ridge, viewed from the Emmitsburg Pike just south of Gettysburg.  The Southerners briefly captured this part of the ridge late on the 2nd day.  Click on the image for big. 

A Red Line in Syria

     Photo: Al Jazeera

It was beginning to look like the Syrian civil war would end in a permanent stalemate.  The Economist predicted the country would be functionally be divided in 3.  The Alawites taking the belt from Damascus to Aleppo and west to the coast.  The rebels controlling the Euphrates valley, and the Kurds their North East portion.  Such a result might be viable as the many 3rd parties to the affair could maintain their interests at a relatively low price.  Nobody would win, but nobody would lose either. 

However, that assumes no game changers.  The apparent chemical attacks this week near Damascus could be such a game changer.  Somewhere there is a red line, and Assad may have just crossed it.

Chemical weapons have not been used widely since they were banned after WW1.  Expensive, finicky, subject to wild swings in efficacy due to weather, and just as dangerous to the attackers as the defenders, chemical weapons have been more trouble than they were worth.  It's simply too difficult to get a reliable tactical advantage on the battlefield sufficient to outweigh the political costs.  Those political costs are based on the terror chemical weapons inspire in civilians.

Assad seems to have found a way to use them as a poor man's nuke.  Lobbing chemical weapons into opposition neighborhoods overcomes the tactical disadvantages.  If they are ineffective due to weather, its no loss.  The distance between your forces and the targets will be sufficient to avoid exposure if the wind blows the wrong way.  There is no effective counter-measure for the rebels.  Though their usefulness is limited to terrorizing civilians.

But there is a political cost.  At some point, after some red line, the International Community will put aside their differences and squash the Assad regime as a common threat.  Last year, the Russians let it be known that they strongly opposed the use of chemical weapons in Syria.  Their current rhetoric insists not that its OK to use the weapons, but absent conclusive proof, they have not been used at all.  Widespread and blatant use by Assad would render that position untenible.  In the big picture, Assad is not an essential asset to the Russians.  They will throw him to the wolves if it suits them.  Iran will still be there, but Iran cannot stop the Western powers if they decide to intervene.

All this means that Assad can go too far and lose everything.  As of today, it looks like the red line has been found.

Gettysburg Gate

This is the gate of the Evergreen Cemetery, which gives Cemetery hill its name.  It looks much the same as it did in July 1863, apart from the paved road and the nice landscaping.  On the second day, the Southerners took the crest of this hill, along with the gate.  But they were unsupported, and were driven off by Union re-reinforcements.  Lee's best chance to win the battle slipped away due to poor generalship by Ewell, who turned out to be a disappointing replacement for the dead Stonewall Jackson.

Gettysburg: Stars & Bars

I've just come back from a few days at Gettysburg.  More photos will be forthcoming.

To start, I was surprised at the number of Confederate flags on the battlefield and at the trinkets and trash stores around town.  The almost equal time given to this symbol creates the impression that this was all a civilized discussion that got tragically out of hand.  I wonder how Americans would feel about the Germans putting swastikas all over Omaha beach?  To me its almost the same thing.  This is a symbol of slavery, discrimination and the ruthless exploitation of people for profit. 

Gettysburg and Stalingrad

     The Sharpshooter's Den, Alexander Gardiner, 1863

    Stalingrad Attack, Georgie Zelma, 1942

    The most iconic images of the two battles.  Both staged.


Though vastly different in time, place and circumstance, the battles of Gettysburg and Stalingrad share some interesting similarities.

Both were the culmination of invasions gone wrong.  Both marked the strategic high water mark for their respective nations.  Both were attacks by smaller, more powerful forces against larger armies, more poorly organized and led.

Although neither battle was decisive, in the sense of deciding the war, both represented a change in momentum that lasted the duration of the contest.

The preceding campaigns had ended in disaster for the battle's defenders, Case Blue in summer 1942 had cleared Southern Russia and cleared the way to the Caucasus, Chancellorsville in May 1863 was the Army of the Potomac's worst defeat.

These previous defeats set the psychological tone for the battles, leading to fatal overconfidence in the invaders.  Lee had come to feel (IMHO), that his boys could defeat the North on any field at any time.  The German high command, from Hitler on down, were certain the Red Army was on their last legs.  Both were looking for a chance to pin the enemy in order to crush them.  As a result, neither battle was planned in advance by either side.

The other notable psychological issue was that the attacker's overconfidence led them to discount the ability of the defending soldiers to withstand their assaults. They became contests between the high commands of one side, and the regular soldiers of the other.  In both cases, the soldiers stood their ground and won.

On a tactical level, both attacking armies gave up inherent tactical advantages to press the assaults.  This changed the nature of the combat, allowing the defenders to at least partially offset the attacker's superior mobility and firepower.  The assaults themselves were numerous, and the failure of each to finish off the defenders was taken by commanders to indicate the defenders were weakened enough for the next assault to work.  In neither case did the attacking commanders take a step back and contemplate alternative approaches despite the stated objections of their colleagues (most notably Longstreet,  and von Richthofen).

But these parallels only go so far. Gettysburg was all Lee, Stalingrad was all Hitler.  At Stalingrad, the German side had better equipment and an air force.  At Gettysburg, the Army of the Potomac was better equipped, and had a cavalry.  Lee's object was to capture Washington destroy the Army of the Potomac and force a political collapse, ending the war.  Hitler's object was to acquire the Soviet Union's main oil reserves to prolong the war.

Meade was unsuited and unable to deliver a strategic counter-stroke.  Had I Lee's army on the run, I would have been careful too.  The Soviets, on the other hand, delivered a devastating counter-stroke, led by Vasilievsky.  The Army of Northern Virginia got away.  The German Sixth Army was destroyed. 

Gettysburbg

Some photos of the battlefield at Gettysburg, 1996.

Chancellorsville

Confederate dead at the stonewall outside Fredricksburg, May 1863. This was the same stonewall so bitterly contested in December 1982 during the battle of Fredricksburg.

In the first week of May, 1863, Robert E. Lee disregarded some basic rules of warfare to inflict a stunning defeat on the Army of the Potomac at Chancellorsville.  While the win was triumphant, it led to several bad things for Lee.  First was the loss of Stonewall Jackson, who died 150 years ago today on May 10, 1863.  Second was the confirmation to Lee that the Army of the Potomac was so inept that he could defeat them on any field at any time.  This attitude led to Pickett's charge at Gettysburg in July. 

Fredricksburg

    The view south from Fredricksburg, in the spring of 1864.

On December 13, 1862, a bitterly cold day,  about 40,000 Union soldiers marched down the road on the right and tried to take the ridge in the background.  There were 3,000 Confederates behind a stone wall along a road running right across the center of the image.  And another 3,000 with artillery on top of the hill.  They held off the Union all day.  The two white houses in the center left are on this side of the road.  So is the white building in the dead center distance.  Wave after wave of Union Infantry formed up beyond the stream on the left and tried to cross the open ground towards the road.  None made it.  Later in the afternoon, they tried it against the hill on the right of the road.  No luck there either.  It became a disaster that still haunts the US Army.

And who was responsible?  My favourite idiot, General Ambrose E. Burnside.  Recently promoted to commander of the Army of the Potomac, the general spent the day on the other side of the Rappahannock, having not actually laid eyes on the field itself.  All afternoon he sent more and then bigger units to accomplish the impossible. The ridge could not be taken, and the Confederates knew it.  His generals pleaded with him to stop, but he insisted.  Things finally ground to a halt when darkness came.   This was his trademark, focusing on one small tactical objective to the exclusion of everything else, like winning the battle.  He used idiotic piecemeal tactics to boot, resulting in terrible casualties.  Exactly the same mistake he made at Sharpsburg three months earlier.  Except then he wasn't in charge of the whole army.  Burnside may not have been the worst general of all time, but he was in there pitching.

That evening, when the scale of the disaster became apparent, Burnside tried to blame those same generals that had pleaded with him a few hours earlier.  Lincoln wasn't buying it and fired him shortly afterwards. Unfortunately, that was not the end of his military career.  It took another year and a half before Lincoln finally got rid of him.  Burnside went on to become a successful politician, serving a term in the Senate.

Update Dec 21:
Thinking about it some more, what Burnside did at Sharpsburg, Fredricksburg and the Crater was to focus not on some random tactical objective, but on the one tactical objective he couldn't solve.  Then he threw everything he had at that objective.  And still didn't solve it.   At Sharpsburg it was the bridge.  At Fredricksburg the stone wall, and at the Crater, the crater.

The other thing worth mentioning is that this is photograph is almost unique.  There are few other contemporary photographs that show the key part of a battlefield.  In this case, it shows about 20% of the entire field, but this is where all the action was. 

Here is another view from across the Rappahannock, behind and to the left of the camera position in the photo above.

In this photo, you can see the stone wall.  It runs along the base of the hill on the right hand side, and can be clearly seen as a light line through the center and left at the base of the hill.

Many thanks to Blogger John Hennessy.  His site is what excellent amateur history looks like. 

Sharpsburg

The battle of Sharpsburg took place 150 years ago today. This photo by Alexander Gardner, taken that afternoon, is probably the first photo of a battle while it was in progress. 

Fort Sumter

Fort Sumpter, April 14, 1861

The other anniversary this week. The photo was taken 150 years ago today and shows the Confederate flag flying over the newly won fort.