Yap

I hope Putin has taken adequate protections. Now that he is a Russian journalist his life may be in grave danger!
Gary Kasparov on Putin's NYT op-ed

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.

NSA Scandal: The Bolivian Plane Incident

Welcome to Vienna Mr. President!

Photo: Heinz-Peter Bader/Reuters

The shenanigans surrounding the blocking and subsequent search of Bolivian President Evo Morales' plane last week will probably never be publicly explained.  That is the way of these things.  Fear not, I have an expansive conspiracy theory that reveals everything.  Like most good conspiracy theories, this one hasn't a shred of proof.  100% unadulterated speculation. 

For those not following the story breathlessly, here is a write up from The Guardian.  The brief version is that Morales was flying home to Bolivia after meetings in Moscow.  France, Italy, Spain and Portugal denied passage to the plane which ended up in Vienna.  There it was searched by the Austrians to determine if Edward Snowden was on board.  He was not.  These airspace closures were, as has been admitted, requested by the Americans who were apparently convinced Snowden was on the plane.  Just about everyone in South America is up in arms over the incident. The European governments in question are running for cover.  So what happened?

Here is my guess.  The Americans got information that Snowden was on the plane, and they panicked.  Remember that they are still extremely freaked out over Snowden's ongoing leaks.  They don't simply want to get him for what he has done, but for what he might do yet.  So they asked these five European governments to act (France, Italy, Spain, Portugal and Austria). But Snowden wasn't on the plane.  And all five governments, plus the Americans, are now humiliated. 

Why were the Americans so certain he was on the plane?  The information must have come, one way or another, from Moscow.  American agents could not have seen Snowden get on the plane.  He is at a different airport, and was nowhere near the Bolivian plane.  So the information must have come from from sources in Moscow, or from an intercept.  So that brings us to the crux of the conspiracy theory.  I think the Russians deliberately gave the information to the Americans as a nice "Fuck You", anticipating the panic and embarrassment that would ensue.  Further, to get the Americans to bite on the bait, it must have come from a source the Americans believed in.  Like an intercept.  An intercept like the ones Snowden is in trouble for revealing.  Wouldn't it be delightful if the Russians communicated the false story among themselves through a channel they knew the Americans were listening to?  One that the Americans thought the Russians did not know was compromised?  

If they did pass false information, the payoff was immense.  The incident might be forgotten soon among the general public and media, but institutions have a longer memory.  Trust has been broken.  Politicians are embarrassed.  Careers could be derailed.  And Snowden is still in Moscow.  So it was all for nothing.  Somehow I think the next urgent request from Washington will get a frosty reception in Europe.  Whether they are behind this or not, the Russians must be delighted. 

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. 

Russia

Stalingrad Map Project

Here is another map of the Battle of Stalingrad.  It shows dispositions on a divisional basis on November 18, 1942, the day before Operation Uranus.

I can't find a definitive document showing the Orders of Battle or unit locations.  This map is interpretive, synthesizing  information from the sources below. A spreadsheet with my complete Order of Battle is here.  SVG version of the file is available here.

Sources:

Books and Articles

Author	Title	Notes
Alexei V. Isaev	Stalingrad The Volga no land for us	Soviet forces and tanks
Antony Beevor	Stalingrad, The Fateful Siege	Most widely cited Order   of Battle
Wikipedia	Red Army order of battle at the Battle of Stalingrad	Useful
Wikipedia	Axis order of battle at the Battle of Stalingrad	Not particularly useful
Staldata	Staldata.com	Axis and Soviet Orders of Battle & force strength
Wolf Höpper	Against the Flood - Operation Uranus (I)	German tank numbers
Joel S. A. Hayward	Stopped At Stalingrad: The Luftwaffe And Hitler's Defeat In The East 1942-1943	Bases used for Airlift
Akhil Kadidal	Stalingrad Pocket	Really good maps and annotated photographs

Maps

Title	Source	Notes
OKH Situation Map Nov 18 42	WW2 Photos Maps	Axis forces locations   Fantastic Site! Jpg is here.
OKH Situation Map Nov 18 42 2	WW2 Photos Maps	Axis forces locations   Fantastic Site! Jpg is here.
S4231 Summary of combat operations in Stalingrad	Armchair General/RIIAWW2	Red Army locations  Excellent map
S4239 Operations in Stalingrad area	Armchair General/RIIAWW2	Red Army locations
S4251 Combat operations of the South-Western, Don and Stalingrad Fronts	Armchair General/RIIAWW2	Red Army locations

Notes:

• There are more units listed in the Order of Battle than appear on the map.  I didn't place any unit on the map unless I could find it in one of the source maps.
• In conflicts between locations on the OKH map and the Soviet maps, I used the Soviet map.   The Germans had not picked up the Uranus build-up, so the Soviets had much better intelligence at this time.
• I could find no information on the strength of the 8th Italian Army, or Soviet 6th and 3rd Guards Armies.
• Unit lines are thicker or thinner based on strength and density.  These are characterizations, not precise measurements. 
• Unit strengths are shown in the layers in the SVG version of the map.  These are based on the Order of Battle spreadsheet linked above.  The spreadsheet includes notes on the units shown on the map.
• The base map is derived from the OKH maps.  I do not know the map projection.
• Please feel free to comment on any inaccuracies!  You can help to make the map better.  I'm particularly interested in proper place-names.
• The license is Creative Commons, share alike, attribution, non-commercial.  You can do anything you like with the image except use it to make money, claim property rights over your derivative images, or not provide attribution.  I encourage anyone to use or change the map.  I do not consider classroom use commercial.  Like all my images, anyone who would like to use the image for commercial purposes should contact me and I can give you a custom license at a reasonable rate.

WW2

 
Stalin and Ribbentrop shake hands after the signing of the Molotov - Ribbentrop Pact with the scary looking Shaposhnikov laughing it up in the background, Moscow, August 23, 1939.

Stalin died 60 years ago today.  He had a stroke in the night, and lay in a pool of urine on the cold floor of his dacha for hours until he was dead.  Beria made sure nobody went in to help him until it was too late.  Not that I'm expressing sympathy.  The world became a better place when he died.  My thoughts about Stalin in a previous article.

This is a revealing photograph, a rare instance of Stalin letting his guard down.  It shows a greedy wolf contemplating a huge meal.   In this case, the meal was Stalin's favorite: Poland.  Significantly, the photo exists because it was taken by a German photographer brought along to the signing by Ribbentrop.  A Soviet photographer would have destroyed the negative rather than risk showing the great leader in an unflattering light.

There is a continuing debate in Russia about what to think of Stalin.  Some praise him for his wartime leadership.  Others condemn him because of his ruthless terror.  Both are right, though I think his crimes far outweigh his achievements. He was, however, the essential man in World War II.  Had he lost his nerve in the summer and fall of 1941, the Germans would have won the war.

Edits for clarity. 

Update:
Stalin did actually lose his nerve in July.  As the enormity of his errors became clear to him, he left the Kremlin and hid out at his dacha for two weeks.  When a delegation came to ask him to return, he thought they had come to arrest him.  But he did go back to work, and by the end of July or early August, his nerve returned.  It never wavered again.

Also, looking at the photo, it occurs to me that Stalin is looking at Poland, and Ribbentrop is thinking, "You took the bait.  We will destroy you."

WW2

    Photo by Georgi Velma T-34, Stalingrad February 1943.  That's the Univermag on the left.

The battle of Stalingrad ended 70 years ago today.  70ish years before that was the Paris Commune.  70ish years before that, Nelson was famously disobedient at Copenhagen.

Stalingrad Map

      click image for big

Here is a data visualization showing Soviet and Axis deployments on November 18, 1942.  It illustrates the German Sixth Army's focus on the the city of Stalingrad, and the Soviet build-up on the more weakly held flanks south and west of the city.  The next day, the Soviets attacked with complete surprise.  From that day, it was downhill almost all the way to Berlin.  Thus November 18, 1942 was the high water mark for the Third Reich.

UGH!  The way the image is saved here makes it unreadable.  For a better version, I've uploaded it to Flickr.  Click on the image to go there.

WW2

 A German assault team advancing in the factory district of Stalingrad, early November 1942.

These men seem to have been resting in the slight draw on the left.  They are now getting up to move forward.  To my eye, they look like they are in an area where they can expect enemy fire, but haven't got any yet.  Its usually easy to tell staged pictures from real pictures by the men themselves.  These guys aren't posing.  They are paying attention to what they are doing rather than the photographer and are spaced out for fighting, not bunched for a photo.

At full size you can see these men are dirty and tired.  The Sixth Army had been fighting in Stalingrad for 2 1/2 months and were hopeful that one final push against the factory district would do the job.  It didn't.  Things were bad at this point, but they were about to become far worse.  Few if any in this picture would see Germany again.

Note the man running on the right is holding an MG 36.  The two on the left are carrying the tripod and ammo.  The guy in the center is carrying a Mauser 98. In the background you can see more Mausers and no automatic weapons are evident.

Syria in October

      Results of an air strike near Damascus October 30, 2012 REUTERS/Maawia Al-Naser/Shaam News Network/Handout

After a very tense summer, the outside parties to Syria's civil war have stepped back from the brink.  The war goes on, but the rebels at least are being starved of weapons by their sponsors.  The Americans are worried about weapons falling into the hands of jihadis.  The Turks, Qataris and Saudis seem to be heeding American doubts.  I have no information on how the Government is doing for supplies, but I wouldn't be surprised to hear the Russians are quietly starving them as well.

In any case, the Syrian military has been notably ineffective in suppressing the rebels despite huge advantages in equipment and manpower.  I'd give a win on points to the rebels so-far for simply surviving. 

So it seems like there will be a cold, miserable winter in Syria with no resolution.  Nevertheless, Syria remains a powder keg.  By far the most important issue in the Middle East today.  That's because (as I've said before) all the regional fault lines run through it.  Syria may end up like Afghanistan where all the regional players would rather have instability than a solid government favouring a different player.  In Syria, its the Iranians against the Saudis.  Neither will accept a government beholden to the other.  So continued war is the safest bet.  As long as nobody wins it.  The Syrian people don't enter into the calculation, unfortunately. 

The Syrian Powder Keg

     Aleppo is starting to look like someone's Stalingrad.  Photo by: Niklas Meltio

Things are not going well for Bashar Assad.  His army had pushed the rebels out of Damascus and seemed to be forcing a decisive battle in Aleppo on their terms.  Given the Army's heavy weapons and air assets, it should have been a walkover. But more than a month later, the battle for Aleppo continues.  In addition, after having been driven out of Damascus last month, the rebels are not only back, but seem to have shot down a helicopter.  The Syrian Armed Forces are clearly unable to win this war.  The rebels, on the other hand, have taken everything the government has thrown at them and keep advancing.

The usual scenario in these circumstances is a grinding war until the rebels get the upper hand and the government disintegrates as the players rush for the exits.  Without foreign intervention, that's what will happen here.  Unfortunately, the regional players have upped the stakes in this conflict. And the chemical weapons are a wild card inviting intervention from the US, France, Britain and possibly Russia. 

While we have all been paying attention to Israeli threats against Iran and the Egyptian revolution, a regional war has been brewing to the East.  The US invasion of Iraq upset the regional status quo by shoving Iraq (majority Shia) into Iran's outstretched arms.  Iran gained a straight line of allies all the way to the Mediterranean (Iraq, Syria, Hezbollah).

The Saudis thus feel out-flanked by Iran and threatened by Iranian nukes.  They also felt threatened by Shia demonstrations in the North of the Kingdom, the oil part, and were forced (by their reckoning) to stifle a Shia revolution in Bahrain.  So the emerging power blocks are sectarian; Sunni vs. Shia.  Russia, Iran, Iraq, Syria and Iran's clients on one side, the USA, Turkey, Jordan and the Gulf Arabs on the other. Egypt is a wild card and Israel irrelevant.

The war in Syria is acting like a magnifying glass to focus all these issues in one place.  Iran and the Saudis both lack the military for a direct conflict. One invading and/or conquering the other is not possible.  So the temptation to fight by proxy in Syria is attractive.  But very, very dangerous.  Expect an international crisis at some point this fall.

Syria Primer

Currently, Syria is run by an Alawite regime headed by Bashar al-Assad. The Alawite are a group of tribes from western Syria and make up between 10% and 20% of the population depending on who you ask. These tribes practice a form of Shia Islam, in contrast to the majority of the population who are Sunni.

The Alawite have been in control since the sixties when Bashar's father, Hafez al-Assad took over in a coup. Hafez was a master politician, though a brutal and repressive dictator. Bashar is not in the same league and many feel he is first among a group that lead the regime, but not a real force on his own.

Last year, public demonstrations against the regime began, like elsewhere in the Arab world. As the government brutally and ineffectually sought to crush the demonstrations, they gradually became a rebellion.  The rebellion itself is divided and includes groups with many different agendas. The only thing they seem to agree on is that the regime has to go (and that they don't like Israel, but that's mom and apple pie in the Arab world).

This year, the rebellion became strong enough to compete with the government in rural areas, and has taken over large swaths of the country. Lately, they have been contesting urban areas, with less success.  However, they have survived a month of combat in Damascus, and three weeks of heavy combat in Aleppo.

Several factors, including the attack on Damascus, and the spectacular assasination of Bashar's top security officials have made it clear that the regime is probably doomed. When the trickle of defections becomes a flood, the end will be at hand.

But nothing is simple in the Middle East. Russia, Saudi Arabia, Iran, Iraq Turkey, Qatar and the United States are intervening directly or indirectly. The Russians don't want to lose their last significant Arab client state. The Iranians don't want to see a Shiite regime overthrown, plus Syria is a key strategic ally, helping them get stuff to Hezbollah in Lebanon. The Saudis want very much to have a Shiite regime replaced with a Sunni, and they are funneling guns to the rebels, as is the US (presumably via Qatar). Israel is on red alert, but can't do anything to influence events. So they make concerned noises, but will do nothing unless the chemical weapons come into play. 

The chemical weapons are a new factor. The regime moved some out of rebel held areas recently. This was viewed as a good thing by both the US and the Russians. Both remain concerned (as does Israel) that the weapons could fall into the hands of "terrorists". The Russians are said to have warned Assad in very direct language that these weapons must be secured and cannot be used, period.

At the moment, with all the confusion on the ground and the mad spinning by all sides, it is impossible to tell for sure what is going on.

In any case, the most likely outcome is the fall of the regime and the death of many Alawites. Who will replace them and on what terms is unknowable at this point. Just don't believe everything you read.

June 24, 1812

On this day in 1812, Napoleon crossed the Neimen and invaded Russia with 480,000 troops.  Things went well for the French, until winter.  The retreat was a horror and by the time Napoleon returned to the Neimen in early December, he had less than 25,000 troops left.  At least 300,000 died of cold, hunger or battle (the difference being mainly deserters).

50 Years in Space

    Yuri Gagarin in the capsule before launch.

On April 12, 1961, Yuri Gagarin became the 1st human to orbit the earth.  It was a stunning achievement that took the world by surprise.  As the tides of history flow and our own age is forgotten, they will still remember Yuri Gagarin.  Nobody else can ever be the 1st man in space.

Pix

Oh. Oh.  Cold War nostalgia looms.  Nice plane though.  Its just a jet engine with stubby wings and a seat on top. 

Like many Russian weapons of the era, it was cheap, simple, reliable and very good.  Anyone who could mount the infrastructure to maintain the plane could afford one. 

WW2

Counter-attack, Russia 1941.  Unless he lost a limb, its unlikely that this non-com could have possibly survived the war.

Pix

Cathedral of St. Nicholas, Mozhaisk, 1911
Sergei Mikhailovich Prokudin-Gorskii

This is the eternal Russia. 

Pix

Moscow Subway map.  Not very useful, but very nice looking.  Seems to have been created by Alexi Nikolaeynko.

NOTE:  I seem to have accidentally deleted the original post, so this is a re-post.

WW2

This photo is titled "German tanks cross the Don".  I'm not sure, the Don is wider than this river.  That said, its not far off.  This appears to be SW Russia near the Don bend in the summer of 1942.  At that point, it looked like the German gamble to attack in the South was paying off.  The idea was to smash the Red Army in the South and take the Russian oil fields in the Caucasus.  Hitler had insisted on an offensive aimed at the oil supply, both because Germany was desperate for oil, and to deny it to the Russians.

By mid-August, the Wehrmacht was advancing up to 20 miles per day with the Red Army in disarray.  The overall commander of the operation, von Manstein, sensed an opportunity to deal a knock-out blow to the Red Army.  When the Russian defense stiffened on the West bank of the Volga, von Manstein saw his chance.  He set the German 6th Army to finish the job by taking an industrial city on the Volga called Stalingrad. 

Like Lee at Gettysburg, von Manstein had lost respect for his opponents and thought they would collapse if he could just hit them hard enough.