Conquer Club

Dukasaur wrote:Ukraine is on the verge of making history. In the history of nations surviving a blitzkrieg-style combined-arms onslaught by a larger power, few have survived a month. The record so far is the 44 days that France survived after the German invasion of 1940. In six more days Ukraine will pass that record.

France and Allies vs Nazi Germany, May 10 to June 22, 1940 (44 days)
Iraq vs U.S. and allies, March 20 to May 1st, 2003 (43 days)
Ukraine vs Russia, February 24 to April 2, 2022 (so far) (39 days and counting)
Poland vs Germany and Russia, Sept 1 to Oct 6, 1939 (36 days)
India vs Pakistan, Sept 1 to Sept 22, 1965 (22 days)
Yugoslavia vs Nazi Germany, April 6 to April 17, 1941 (12 days)
Iraq vs U.S. and allied Coalition, Feb 17 to 28, 1991 (12 days)
Egypt vs IDF, June 5 to June 10, 1967 6 days

ConfederateSS wrote:To be fair to Poland DUK....36 days is wrong for German Blitzkrieg....Have you forgotten ...16 days later ...The Soviet Union invaded Poland from the East....Now Poland was fighting 2 super powers ...Held out for 6 weeks...That is Awesome...

Dukasaur wrote:

ConfederateSS wrote:To be fair to Poland DUK....36 days is wrong for German Blitzkrieg....Have you forgotten ...16 days later ...The Soviet Union invaded Poland from the East....Now Poland was fighting 2 super powers ...Held out for 6 weeks...That is Awesome...

I haven't forgotten. I listed "Germany and Russia" as the antagonists. Nor is 36 days wrong -- first attack was Sept 1st, last major element of the Polish army stood down on Oct 6th.

• US invasion of Grenada, 1983 (4 days)
• US attack on the Viet Cong in Cambodia, 1970 (61 days, no victory to the attacker)
• USSR invasion of Czechoslovakia, 1968 (2 days)
• US attack on North Korea*, 1950 (421 days, no victory to the attacker)

bigtoughralf wrote:The list is missing a few anyway:

• US invasion of Grenada, 1983 (4 days)
• US attack on the Viet Cong in Cambodia, 1970 (61 days, no victory to the attacker)
• USSR invasion of Czechoslovakia, 1968 (2 days)
• US attack on North Korea*, 1950 (421 days, no victory to the attacker)

So the record holders are actually the Koreans, or if you're only counting powers that resisted the blitzkreig unaided then it's the Vietnamese (although if we're only counting unaided resistances then you would have to erase several entries from the original list as France, Ukraine and Egypt all received significant support from third parties).

*China supplied troops to the North Korean side but the US offensive still outnumbered the North Koreans/Chinese and was using air support and armour against a foe made up predominately of infantry

• Granada was essentially a military-assisted political coup to overthrow the local government. It was not intended to conquer or hold the country.
• The attack on the Viet Cong in Cambodia was pretty much the exact opposite, an attempt to intervene to protect the local government against an ongoing coup.
• The invasion of Czechoslovakia in 1968 was, despite the name, another political coup. Although large numbers of Russian troops and their allies entered the nation, there almost no actual combat. The troops were there to facilitate the violent overthrow of the government if its political overthrow had failed, but it did not.
• Mischaracterizing the Korean War as a "US attack" reveals your political biases. I'm not going to get into it with you; anybody who cares can read the history and see that the U.S. forces were there within an internationally-recognized action in response to a Communist invasion of South Korea. Either way it doesn't matter, it was not an invasion in the classical sense.

bigtoughralf wrote:Your only stated criterion was 'a blitzkrieg-style combined-arms onslaught by a larger power'.

The only one of my four you could probably remove is the USSR one, as very little actual fighting ended up taking place.

After four days of fighting, the Russian military is bogged down in Ukraine. In part this is due to the valiant resistance of Ukraine’s army and civilian defense forces. But it’s also due to the fact that the Russian army just isn’t very good.

News reports, tweets, videos, and emails from the battlefields show Russia’s armored vehicles abandoned for lack of fuel, its soldiers foraging for food, its transport planes shot out of the sky, its various military elements—tanks, infantry, aircraft—unable to coordinate their aims.

Michael Kofman, a military analyst at CNA, an Arlington, Virginia–based think tank, who has been following the battle closely, tweeted late Sunday afternoon, “It’s taken me a while to figure out what [the Russian military is] trying to do, because it looks so ridiculous and incompetent.” B.A. Friedman, a military historian and tactician, went further: “This isn’t a good army executing a bad plan. It isn’t a good army executing outdated or out-of-context tactics. It’s a bad army!”

None of this should be overstated. Four days of fighting might seem an eternity when viewed through the prism of round-the-clock cable news, but, in retrospect, a month from now, it will seem like the blink of an eye. Even the best armies take a while to get going. That said, Russia’s invasion of Ukraine has been particularly sluggish and flawed.

In one sense, this was predictable. Over the past decade, the Russian armed forces have greatly improved, especially in the numbers of troops and quality of weapons. However, some of their age-old weaknesses haven’t been fixed at all.

The Russian army has always been bad at setting up and sustaining supply lines. Gen. Omar Bradley once said about different types of military officers, “Amateurs talk strategy, professionals talk logistics.”* In that sense, Russians are amateurs. This is well known. It is why Ukrainian soldiers explicitly attacked the Russian supply lines. It’s why so many tanks and other vehicles have been spotted stuck on the side of a road.

This weakness might not matter so much if an army makes rapid progress at the start of its offensive. Its troops could plunder the places they conquer for fuel, food, and other supplies. But the Russian army isn’t cut out for lightning strikes. Troops are trained in rote set pieces, with no time devoted to improvising if things don’t go as planned. One reason for this is that junior officers are not allowed to take initiative. This is deliberate; it’s part of the top-down command system dating back to Soviet times, if not earlier. In politics and in warfare, the small elite on top doesn’t want subordinates to get too creative—if they did, they might take over.

And so, as the Russian invaders met resistance, they didn’t quite know what to do. Military operations designed to take place sequentially—Step 1, then 2, then 3, etc.—fell apart, catastrophically. If Step 2 hit a big obstacle, the by-the-book soldiers moved on to Step 3 anyway. Therefore, large troop-transport planes tried to land, even though the airport hadn’t been completely secured and Ukrainian air defense systems hadn’t been destroyed. As a result, two Il-76 transport planes, each carrying 100 airborne troops, were shot down.

bigtoughralf wrote:Kinda like the US criticizing China for violating the UN Convention on the Law of the Sea, even though the US has continually refused to sign up to it.

Qwert wrote:Surviving blitzkrieg?Surviving blitzkrieg? First of all what are blitzkrieg, its these military attack who are surprised for defending side??? Second _ how the hell you survive blitzkrieg if outcome are unconditional surrender??? All what you listed are failed survive of blitzkrieg and only what are surviving blitzkrieg you dont want to put its Nazi Germany attack on USSR in 1941.
Nazi Germany Blitzkrieg on 1941 on USSR have goal to very fast take MOscow and USSR manage to beat these blitzkrieg and survive, put that on list if you dare.

And by the way you put France and Allies like some minor country and German superior forces, and actually they are equal in force. You definition dont make any sense

mookiemcgee wrote:

bigtoughralf wrote:Kinda like the US criticizing China for violating the UN Convention on the Law of the Sea, even though the US has continually refused to sign up to it.

160+ countries have signed/ratified it and plenty of them also openly criticize China for violating the agreement that they did voluntarily sign on to... I guess China's word is not bond, and is no better than America.

bigtoughralf wrote:

mookiemcgee wrote:

bigtoughralf wrote:Kinda like the US criticizing China for violating the UN Convention on the Law of the Sea, even though the US has continually refused to sign up to it.

160+ countries have signed/ratified it and plenty of them also openly criticize China for violating the agreement that they did voluntarily sign on to... I guess China's word is not bond, and is no better than America.

The difference being China recognizes the law, claims to adhere to it and demands that others do too, whereas the US refuses to recognise the ICJ, refuses to adhere to its rules and yet still demands others adhere to it.

blitz·krieg
/ˈblitsˌkrēɡ/

noun
an intense military campaign intended to bring about a swift victory.

Qwert wrote:First of all what are blitzkrieg, its these military attack who are surprised for defending side??? Second _ how the hell you survive blitzkrieg if outcome are unconditional surrender??? All what you listed are failed survive of blitzkrieg and only what are surviving blitzkrieg you dont want to put its Nazi Germany attack on USSR in 1941.
Nazi Germany Blitzkrieg on 1941 on USSR have goal to very fast take MOscow and USSR manage to beat these blitzkrieg and survive, put that on list if you dare.