Sequestration like The Schlieffen Plan - No Plan B?
Monday, March 11, 2013 at 12:24PM What is Obama's Plan while sequestration, rhymes with castration, is done to reduce our country's active troop levels and defense armament throughout the world? Do we have a Plan B to even put on the table along side the cuts?
Robert Burns, the scot poet opined, "The best-laid plans of mice and men oft(en) go astray." It basically means no matter how well you plan, do expect the unexpected, always have a Plan B. It turns out someone did not tell Hitler about a Plan B.
Plans for the next war was seen by many as inevitable after given the conflicting ambitions of the major powers following World War I. This idea was not lost on Hitler who enbraced General Alfred Von Schlieffen's Plan for World War I. The vulnerable point, however, in the German's 1914 operation was not manpower, it was logistics. The Germans had failed to make realistic plans for supplying their advance at the pace it needed to move to succeed and were defeated.
Hitler doing a jig upon hearing Paris defeated.Hitler reimplemented the Schlieffen Plan as his tactical blueprint for Germany's invasion of both France and Russia in World War II. His strategy was to knock France out of the war first to eliminate it as an ally of Russia and once France had been dealt with the armies in the west would be redeployed to the east to face the Russian menace. The weakness of the plan laid less in the rigidity of the time scale for the German army nearly succeeded by capturing Paris and then marching on Moscow within the time allotted. Hitler's major error was the underestimation of the difficulties of supply and communication in forces so far advanced from command and supply lines.
A sobering sight, German soldiers frozen to death in Russia.More importantly though, Hitler did not make realistic provisions for the onset of the cold, harsh Russian winter months. The Germans were then beginning to understand the great harm the unforgiving Russian winter was doing.
Without a Plan B contigency his troops were freezing, starving, dieing or dead. It was one of the major factors for the defeat in Russia as they capitulated a humiliating surrender to the Russian army.
