Sun Tzu's Art of War #1 Estimates - Revisited 

Though it considers a lot of factors not often represented in video games. I would love to see more vieogames that account for all the facets represented in The Art of War. It would have to be something like Total War, because the advice extends to both macro decision making and micro decision making. Everything from how you discipline your soldiers, to what to look for in nature that indicates the enemy is coming, to what the state needs to focus on to win wars.

@@101jir That would be a bit tricky but yeah it is doable.

yeah and it is so short that nobody you didn't read it would notice it :D

Military History Visualized Which one is the "real" book, because there are many or all they more or less the same?

I have the one translated by Samuel B. Griffith and foreworded by B.H. Liddell Hart

I don't know, but I used the one that was "recently" translated by a Chinese general, I guess it is most suited, another translation had for the factors something like "sun" etc.

Yeah, I really like your translation better than mine - I have one of the old ones that prefers to err more to the poetic side than towards clarity. For now, I mostly got to the same conclusions, but in your translation the wording is completely obvious, whereas mine required a bit more interpretation and some re-reading.

Dave I'm just gonna say he wasn't half brilliant as Napoleon

Napoleon probably studied all military literature including Prussian doctrine. There is no Napoleon without Sun Tzu.

Napoleon committed all the cardinal sins Sun Tzu warned not to, not understanding terrain, weather, and not knowing his enemies.

Ab Abmed I totally agree. Early in Napoleon's career he concentrated on making a name for himself and adhered to Sun Tzu. By the time he fought at Borodino he was so arrogant and fat with victory he assumed his reputation would sweep all before him. Remind you of Hitler? By the end of his career Napoleon thought he was above the conditions of war and he paid dearly for it. Personally I believe Von Clausewitz was a better overall military theorist than Sun Tzu.

also should mention that all warfare is based on deception is a mistranslation should be soldiers should learn to be deceptive, sneaky underhanded etc

well, decisive battle didn't work in 20th century total war scenario anymore see Germany, see Japan.

Japan failed to achieve their strategic objective in the Pearl Harbor attack; namely the destruction of the American fleet, as the carriers were out on patrol when the attack was carried out. And the battle of Midway resulted in the destruction of Japan's own air carriers. I'm not sure which battles you are referring to in the case of Germany?

well, that was not their strategic objective, their targets were actually the battleships. In this case recent research showed that quite many assumptions were wrong. I discussed this briefly in my Pearl Harbor video. In short: Check Alan Zimm's book on Pearl Harbor there is also a free article from him linked in the video description. Germany also had a "decisive battle" approach or properly more commonly known "short war" policy like Japan. They both intended to defeat the enemy's forces, but mostly ignored all that goes beyond that, this is probably more understandable if you look at the various errors of Operation Barbarossa, which is one of my best videos in terms of information: ru-vid.com/video/%D0%B2%D0%B8%D0%B4%D0%B5%D0%BE-A_3R-Rkn_98.html

From the article linked in the Pearl Harbor video: "Genda, true to his philosophy, assigned twice as many torpedo bombers per carrier than per battleship, despite the fact that fewer hits would sink a carrier. In other words, he allocated more than enough firepower to sink the carriers, but sent only enough firepower to cripple the battleships. He wanted to guarantee the carriers would never be salvaged." Carriers were in fact a target, a primary target for operation’s main planner, Commander Minoru Genda. "Admiral Isoroku Yamamoto, commander in chief of Japan’s Combined Fleet, thought he saw a way to win an impossible war, beginning with a surprise attack against American battleships. He believed battleships possessed “intangible political effects internationally as a symbol of naval power.” Sinking them, in tandem with capturing the Philippines, would so shock and demoralize the American people that their will to continue the war would sink along with the shattered battlewagons. The Japanese Naval General Staff wanted to sink battleships, too, but for a different reason: they calculated (from some faulty initial assumptions) that crippling four of the eight battleships in port would prevent the Pacific Fleet from sailing to relieve the Philippines for six months, allowing the Japanese to secure the flank of their southern advance." "Overall, the Japanese attack fell far short of its potential. There were eight battleships and eight cruisers in port; four of each were accessible to torpedo attack. The Japanese had more than enough armor-piercing bombs to sink the ships inaccessible to torpedoes, along with two of the four battleships that were either double-berthed or in dry dock, and enough general-purpose bombs to sink all of the cruisers. But instead of destroying 14 of the 16 priority targets, they dropped killing ordnance on only three: Oklahoma, West Virginia, and Arizona. Two other battleships -California and Nevada-later sank because of flooding, damage control errors, and poor construction. This raised the score to 5 of the 16 priority targets, or only 31 percent-a poorly planned and executed attack, no matter how it is dissected." The attack was poorly executed and failed to cripple the American navy as a result. The resource nodes weren't properly secured and were lost in the subsequent counter-offensive. The failure to achieve a decisive victory doesn't say anything about the effectiveness of the short war doctrine.

In the Barbarossa video I got the feeling that Germans overestimated their capabilities and underestimated the Soviet capabilities... the opposite of what prudent generals should do XD

You'd need to be alive for a million years to do that

I must have told you at least a thousand times not to exaggerate.

Thank you. Sun Tzu one can read in a few hours, Clauswitz not so much, especially not the German version. I read it before university and it was probably the reason why most classes in History were pretty easy for me in terms of reading. I probably will do a similar series on Clausewitz AND then do a comparison/synthesis or whatever, but I can't afford doing both together from a time (aka money) perspective, especially not with the crazy view counts right now... I assumed this would be a popular video, but 11K views... ouch, luckily this was a video that took only around 10 hours to make. As always without logistics everything breaks down, good thing is books are not-consumables and I invested heavily in those reducing production time and also increasing the quality at the same time.

@Romano Coombs and the early christians burned it because it contained book that were heretical to christianty. What a loss to the whole world!

yes, probably 1 or 2 each month.

***** Un TRES bon livre !

I assume the same, after all crunching out 2 videos per week for 1 year should have an impact, at least I could get rid of "comparischon" but since I said it that way like 25 years, I am still conscious about it and when I say it the correct way, I get the feeling that I am missing out some important intonation :D

I guess it doesn't even matter that much , so don't be too self concious about it :)

Jasmine Ju everyone should, in all honestly but most won't

Ikr

Watch Extra Credit's series on politics called Extra Politics. ru-vid.com/video/%D0%B2%D0%B8%D0%B4%D0%B5%D0%BE-Xm-L9cIRdmY.html

Off the top of my hat: Clausewitz goes into a lot more detail, and explains his reasoning more. Thus, it's a much longer book (while you can easily read Sun Tzu in an afternoon). Sun Tzu focuses mostly on general principles (which is why he has aged a lot better than Clausewitz, IMHO), but you have to take his word on many things, and will sometimes wonder if you can still trust him. Also, Clausewitz has a subtle sense of humor, which can make him rather enjoyable to read once you pick it up.

Its not just the output that is interesting. Its also interesting know how high the GDP per capita (income per head is). Because that determines how much a country can mobilize its economy for war (most poor countries can't use 80% of their GDP for a war effort like Germany in World war 2). And it also determines how much manpower the industry can spare. If two countries are equal in everything, but one country got higher productivity and every worker can produce twice as much goods per workhour as the worker in the other country, then the country with more effective productive methods can send half of its workers in industry to the frontline instead, since the country can produce the same output as the other country with less amount of workers. This means that poor countries have it much harder to get both enough men to fight at the front, and men to produce weapons in the factories at the same time, because they need more workers to build a tank than a rich country does. The size of the country is also important for the industry, since a large country usally have more natural resources and therefore have a much more self-suffiecent economy. Large territories also give the option of sacrifice some terrain to the enemy without heavy economic costs for the decision, and a large landmass gives the ability to manouver. Another factor is of course how suited the industrial policies are to the needs of the military. The Russians handled world war II pretty nice. Tank engines was only built to last 8 months or so, and any effort in making the engine more durable by wasting more money, materials and workhours was forbidden because the Russian leadership correctly saw it as an unecessary useless sacrifice of Russias limited resources to build a good tank engine that could last for many years, when most t-34 tanks was destroyed by the Germans within 8 months. So a poor 2nd world country could outproduce the Germans with their smart industrial policy. Russian industry was smart in other ways as well. The moving of factories from the west to Siberia, plus all transports of civilians, and all troop transports and logistics made the railroad network overloaded in 1941 and 1942. So it became an highly prioritzed issue to take the burden off the railway system so it wouldn't collapse in midst of all the critical battles for the survival of the country. So Russia created new industrial cities, around mining areas. So iron could go directly to the steel works and then becoming a tank without having raw materials moved around back and fourth as much on the railway lines. So with the war Russias military production became heavily concentrated around a few cities, and decline with the civilian sector during the war and the expansion of the military complex would change the face of Soviet economy forever. It was an excellent system for the war, but not for the peace. Germanys industrial production was a bit of the opposite. Their tank designs war overly complex, and therefore expensive to build and demanding much workers and the monthly production output was low. The German Army put too high demands on minor unimportant details, that became costly and wasteful - I mean why build a component that can last for decades when German tank losses happens at the same phase as new tanks are being built?? And with all those complex designs, the German tanks often broke down because there was always some of the piece of the many components that wanted to mess things up. So impressive as the Panther tanks were, they were rarely on the battlefield but spent half of the time in repairshops. While Shermans and T-34 tanks were active for service for more than 80% of the time. Germany also choosed to build a twin engined jet fighter instead of a single engined.. which is just another example of bad priorities - especiall for a counrt lacking rare earth metals for building durable engines. The bad decisions are endless, and some of Speer's criticizm of Göring and SS was justified. The wasteful V-2 project should have been scrapped immiedtly for example, when Germanys needs were defensive weapons - like the surface to air missles project schmettelrng - and not militarily ineffective and uneconomic offensive weapons.

Cool information for most of that, but for the twin-engined jet part, a lot of that I suspect was just not knowing what the situation would become. They did eventually create the He-162, but this was only after the issues with the 262 became apparent. Development on the 262 started much earlier, when there was question whether it would be a bomber or a fighter, and when Germany was advancing quickly across everyone they had attacked thus far. Based on the projected resource availability, it would have seemed viable. Only mistake I would say there is being overly optimistic about what their resource situation would have been. They should have started on the He-162 (or something like it) as a backup plan.

Walter Johnson Great idea, but all 3 are inputs that economists choose to quantify and model explanations at the micro and macro levels. They remain, however, "just" ingredients. Far more can be understood if one thinks in terms of the actual use and development of ingredients, recipe and kitchen.

yes, on my list, likely 2017.

You could apply Sun Tzu's rules to that: Montgomery underestimated the enemy strength he was facing and over estimated his ability to overcome the opposition in a timely manner. What's surprising about Market Garden is that Montgomery was usually so conservative. This seems like the kind of mistake Patton was more likely to have made. You would have thought they would have learned from Anzio that the German Army didn't have a "soft underbelly" anywhere.

MakeMeThinkAgain Speaking about Montgomery, I would appricieate an epizode about him. Since I don't understand his phenomenon and consider him rather weak commannder compared to others in WWII.

JohnnyMaczeta I think you need to rub his caravan at the Imperial War Museum before you can really understand that.

Jeffrey Dijksra Did it truly fail? I know it is generaly called that, because the allied forces failed to secure a bridge over the Rhein, but I allways thought simply calling it a failure is at the very least an oversimplification. After all, several of the operation's goals were achieved. So, while it certainly wasn't a total success, it also wasn't a total failure.

thx, I kinda wonder how that happened cause it must be at least 300x300 pixels...

I bet your inner German is screaming in OCD induced torment =P

militaryhistoryvisualized.com/faq/

like? time range? So far I reached up to 1982: ru-vid.com/video/%D0%B2%D0%B8%D0%B4%D0%B5%D0%BE-z4VvED3m3b8.html

Oh! I've seen that one, but forgot about it! That's pretty close to the time range I was hoping to see, but I am always interested to see more information on twenty first century stuff. I find the early parts of the US presence in Afghanistan and Iraq fascinating, but material on operations isn't super easy to find. Like, it's all out there on wikipedia, but it's hard to get it all into context. I don't think it's really in the scope or style of your channel to do it, but I'd like some stuff on the wars in Afghanistan and Iraq with as much depth as we see WWI and II and Vietnam. It seems like information on the US war in Korea is sparse, too. Anyway, regardless, you have an awesome channel! Keep it up!

yeah, planned, main problem in that timeline is that I am completely unaware what a high quality source is and what not, around WW2 I am now pretty certain and also have finally a proper reference library. thank you!

btw. here you might find some stuff: www.reddit.com/r/CredibleDefense/

I read him first time in German, but since I don't have the book anymore and got the English copy I will stick to that, because well, translating from a German translation back into English is just weird :D thx! Not sure about Liddell Hart, seems to be a bit controversial / dated at least for the military history, I don't know about his theory stuff, but I guess in terms of theory I will go with Clausewitz after Sun Tzu, well, because I assume that many people can't wait here me quoting Clausewitz :D hopefully there is two language version out there, which would make it a bit easier.

Weird? Nicely put. Lost in translation gets a whole new meaning if you translate something three or more times.... :D :D :D I started with Sun Tzu over 20yrs ago with the Clavell edition, which I still like despite many inaccuracies and I´ve got four more german editions, the last one the von Senger edition, and one in english (what a pity the guy is buried now for two and half thousand years - he would be a pretty wealthy writer today) I´ve got a love/hate relationship with Clausewitz because On War was unfinished at time of publishing and I sometimes have the impression reading two different authors. He seemed to change his mind on some relevant topics. And then the different editions... many german ones are missing the chapter on the small war. Especially this part is highly of interest. Liddell Hart is different case. Don´t forget that he fell in disregard for promoting himself, the same thing nearly everyone does today. But his thoughts on indirect strategy are worth a look. And, as far as I know, the US Marine Corps still uses Liddell Hart as base for their strategy (as well as Sun Tzu by the way). And to make this post complete I´ve got to mention the "forgotten one", Antoine-Henri Jomini. This one is for me highly controversial. I like his scientific aproach to direct strategy in contrast to the more "romantic" Clausewitz but on the other hand his outlooks are sometimes purely focused on assault, without any finesse. He´simportant because the base strazgy of the US Army is still based on him (especially the scientific approach)

That's the guy. Remember that armies weren't filled with professional soldiers at the time. They weren't even filled with citizen draftees. They were filled with peasant levees who didn't give a crap about who won and just wanted to go home. If they could slip away and do just that, they would. And so they had to be put into situations where the only alternative to potential death in fighting was certain death via punishment or certain death via enemy massacre. Horrible to be sure, but it made good sense in ~500 BC China.

Its one thing to produce things, and it is another thing to get them to the troops. The military operations thus get restricted by the transport capacity. And the troops have to make their military operations in proximity to roads, and even if bunch of tanks got good cross country performance and could plow throw a hundred kilometres wide area with rough terrain it would be stupid to do so, because then they are stuck there since their supply trucks can't deal with the same hard terrain. Furthermore does supplies also restrict the speed of military operations, since even the best tanks can't move before supply trucks have refueled them. So it doesn't matter how fast the tanks is, since their speed will be retricted by the speed of the supply trucks. And since it would be foolish to try to move supply trucks forward with the enemies on the flanks.... the trucks can't usally get to supply the tanks before the infantry have moved up and protected the flanks. So the speed of the tanks gets limited to the speed of the footsoliders. And the German attack into Poland and Russia was also moving at roughly the same speed of a rifleman. Logistics is really the most important aspect of warfare. And you wanna attack the enemy when he have moved too fast to getting resupplied. Because even the toughest enemy tank is worthless without ammunition. And surrounding a huge army and stopping it from getting resupplied is the best way to win a war, you don't even have to fire on the enemy to kill him. You only have to let him starve to death or surrender to you.. and for every day the enemy is getting weaker, undernurished, demoralized and the getting vulnerable to diseases. And every bullet he fires can't be replaced, since the supply trucks with ammunition can't reach him.

that is exactly why I ask from at nation-state level and not army level. the supplies production often faces similar problems as those you described like transport bottlenecks, lack of adequate infrastructure or shortages of critical materials. it's just that happens on the "civilian side" of the war

*"why logistics would be different of industry?"* Well for me logistics is different for the military and the private sector since they got many different goals and act differently to certain situations. Soliders isn't robots, but human beings that can't be massproduced in a month, and stored on shelf for months without maintance. And while a car manufacturer wanna have as small inventory as possible to avoid unnessary production costs and avoid waste, a General rather wants as big inventory for a campaign.. just in case things doesn't go as planned. Running out of ammo at the start of a battle would just be the worst imaginable nightmare possible. And having a slimmed organization might be the optimal for a car factory, in order to produce a car with the fewest number of workers possible. But having a slimmed organization with the bare minimum of men for supplying and army would be a very bad idea, since even the tinyest problem could throw all timetables overboard for the entire organization since there are no extra manpower to fullfill the tasks that needs to be done in time. And meanwhile you are losing time, the enemy gets more time to make counter-moves. Dig himself down and laying mines if he is defending... or perhaps he gets some extra time to escape being catched in a pocket, or perhaps he gets a chance to encircle your entire army thanks to all logistical caos. Lean production/New public Management is a shitty way of organizing things in areas demanding well supplied inventories, a plenty of personel, and a good access to your supplies. Effectivisations such as "minimal waste" and getting rid of "unecessary workers", would just be counterproductive for the effectiveness of an Army.

what you say it's more the modern paradigm of each kind of logistics rather than a substancial distinction between them. meanwhile most of present day civilian logistics work around the idea of lean production (reducing waste, avoiding slack) the military logistics (according to you) focus instead in creation of slack or reserves to allow it to seize emergent opportunities and avoid unexpected shortages. beyond that, both still deal in different parts of the same "bigger" chain, how to keep well supplied the armed forces within the available resources of the government budget and the economic capacity of the nation.

Answer: War exhaustion.

"Attrition and blockade". It's somewhat more complicated than that, though - for example, while most historians would agree that British losses on the Somme were greater than those of the Germans, the British were losing second-rate citizen soldiers; the Germans were losing their finest. And the British Army was on an upward doctrinal learning curve, so eventually their quality improved and the Germans had little left to match it. When the March 1918 offensives failed, the last of the German elite was gone, the rest of it was outside its prepared defences, and with the arrival of the Americans the British and the French knew it was no longer possible for them to lose. After August 8, Ludendorff had to face the fact that his army was wrecked as an instrument of grand strategic policy.

Germany had fought against almost the entire world alone for 4 years. Its really nothing strange with them running out of manpower and exhausting every other resource. The Austrians sucked, and the Ottomans sucked as well. So Germany had to carry the team to victory alone, and it might actully have succeded with their great army, if they had not been stupid enough to getting USA involved.. and when America sent hundreds of thousands of troops each month the war got lost. Germany had no tanks, almost no trucks, no men, their traitorous allies was about leaving Germany... so the situation was bad despite all victories and having knocked out Serbia, Romania, Italy and Russia alone, and having signed a harsh peace treaty and getting promised food deliveries from conquered land in the east. If America didn't had joined the war things could have ended very differently. The British army wasn't feeling to happy either after Somme and all else, but it was still a force to be reckon with. But the Belgian army was almost knocked out in 1914. While the French army had suffered terribly in 1914 as the entire German army pushed on them in early 1914... and making mass charges with bayonettes in old colourful uniforms costed enormous amounts of french lives. The germans tried to crush France again later in the battle of Verdun which ended in a costly draw for both sides. And the battle might perhaps been the most awful battle in human history, and 80% of the french army fought there.. and collected traumas and terrible memories. And in 1917 was the Nivelle offensive launched... and the french once again lost huge numbers of men, and the soliders started a strike and refused to obey their officers when they wanted to make stupid attacks, but they promised to fight bravely to defend their country. However, the Germans strangely enough never heard about the strike... and if they had, it might very well have ended the war, as the Germans would just had launched an attack against the french and crushed everything that was left of France's will to fight. And in 1918, Germany might very well had crushed the French army as well. In 1918 the odds were even between the allies and the centralpowers. But Americas entry into the war tipped the balance so hard in favour for the allies that Germany was doomed to fail.

geromino97 they needed " more cowbell"

Random much? :-|