The War Room IV: Tugela to Yalu
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- čas přidán 6. 09. 2024
- How first the Boer War and then the Russo-Japanese War influenced tactical development in Europe between 1899 and 1914, focusing on the battles of the Tugela Heights (1899) and the Yalu (1904). Or, why did the British Army reform its tactics in the run up to WW1 but the French and Germans didn't?
Worth bearing in mind that the Russo-Japanese War is even harder to get good material for than the Boer War, so don't be surprised if you read around it and find different information.
This is part of the War Room series looking at the tactical developments leading up to the creation of modern warfare in World War One.
#tactics #militaryhistory
The subject of the Russo-Japanese war is under-served and deserves much more coverage. No doubt it is the language barrier, combined with the fact that no English speaking combatant was involved which accounts for its Cinderella status. The scale and political consequences of this conflict, I would argue in setting the world on a trajectory to the "Great War", means it is one of the very most important wars of the period 1815-1914.
This series is criminally underrated. I do suggest you change your title to your alternate one, “Why did the British Army reform its tactics in the run up to WW1 but the French and Germans didn't?“ as that is a common question for a board audience to have. I don’t think many people know where Tangela or Yalu are.
Cheers man! Titles are... a pain. CZcams only shows the first 50 characters in the suggestions, leaving: "Why did the British Army reform its tactics in th..." which is... not great. It's also good to have something short and snappy on the thumbnail... it's not straightforward, but honestly, it's not something I've really put a lot of conscious thought into and I probably should.
Tangela and the Boer Wars are commonly encontered if you start to read some literature on tactics, but the Yalu river has almost never made to the "official" research on the matters. Yet, it's possibly as significant as the other one. Hapless did really strike a point on _how_ different militaries could have taken wildly different lessons from this facts.
An interesting period. You see a similar delema during the battle of the San Juan Heights during the Spanish-American War. The American V Corps sustained over 800 casualties in frontal assaults on prepared Spanish positions, U.S artillery found itself in range of enemy rifle fire, It was only won due to sheer weight of manpower. I’m simplifying the tactical picture of course, but the video was nagging me at how similar these actions were to the fighting in July of 1898.
*Edit * No idea where got 800 KIA from, at San Juan and Kettle Hill, and the flanking action at El Caney, the U.S Army lost 1,384 men wounded, and 225 men killed in both engagements. My apologies for the mistake.
You're exactly right, good example. I love this pre-WW1 period: like you say, the same similarities in experience keep cropping up and everyone knows that things have changed, but they can't agree on how to adapt.
Best series!, Watching all the older ones and waiting for the next! Can't wait for the next one to learn about WWI, maybe WWII, and any other conflict that strikes your fancy in the future.
This is educational, and has allowed me to link time periods and actions that I wouldn't have otherwise seen a connection between. I hope you continue to make The War Room, because I'll continue to watch it.
Oh, we're barely getting started ;)
This series underrated, but i think its because it does not related to the era of most CM games are in (WW2 onward)
Still i don't think you should stop with it, its really interesting and fun to watch.
We're getting to WW2... just slowly ;) Though I've been messing around and you can almost get WW1 infantry in CMFI- there are a few rifle-lmg only formations around.
@@usuallyhapless9481 The US rearly rifle squad consists of Bolt action springfields and BARs, wich were in WW1 (I'm not sure if the BAR make it to the Trenches though)
Yeah, I've looked at the early 43 Americans. The Italians are obviously in the running and I think there are some German security troops who are Kar 98 only. Everyone else seems to have some damn SMGs mixed in.
@@usuallyhapless9481 thats not that there were no SMGs in WW1, maybe the italians have some SMG with sideways mag to similiar it to the MP-18, or the brits have a Sten-Lee Enfield squad without the Bren somwhere.
Superb series. Especially useful for those of us who have a few of the dots but don't know how history connected them. Your narrative is well informed and consequently informative. The point about the different kinds of wars that the British versus the continentals cared about is most helpful--as is the related point about the practicalities of changing the doctrine and training of a 250K-man professional army versus 4+ million reservists. My only slightly sense of doubt is about one issue: I am not sure you have so much as mentioned machine guns yet, apart from maybe a passing reference to a Maxim here or there in SA. My very limited reading on this period has encountered a lot of focus on the way the combatants used their Maxim guns in SA, and has left me with the sense that the continental powers got busy building their own machine guns tout de suite. Perhaps we'll get to this. And don't get me wrong--your focus on the muskets and then rifles throughout the series is brilliant! And the arty has been getting a fair bit of coverage. Certainly a big part of the story. I'm just curious how it all fits in with the simultaneous developments in machine-gun land.
I am kinda holding back on the MGs for now :P
10:55 the mad minute has come under a lot of strain rsontly, considering its never metioned in as particularly useful in german accounts of the first few months of the war (and was rarely confused with machine gun fire)
An interesting look into what the german army actually wient through (and what they thought about british army tactics) i would recommend mons myth.
Nice video. Although I might disagree on some aspects, you got the gist of the problem: several different lessons could have been learned by different observers and in any case for most of the european armies there was little to no room to change the training for the reservist. Active units and some part of the officer corp did try new tactics but almost nothing "percolated" down to the older part of the reserve corps.
If I could suggest you a book that looks quite in depth at the lessons Germany took from the boer wars, and might even be useful for your next video, I strongly reccomand you find a copy of Stormtroop Tactics - Innovation in the German Army 1914-1918, by Major Bruce Gudmundsson. It depicts fairly well how and, more so, why at the start of the war massively outdated tactics were used - and how the change in tactic begun and took place at first in selected units, and later among the general line infantry.
And I must add: I never read much about the Yalu river in academic literature on the subjects of tactics. Yet you strike an interesting point in how it had an impact and how different military doctrines could have taken different lessons from the two wars in question. Keep up the good work like this!
@@HaydnHaendel I have read Stormtroop Tactics- definitely an interesting one.
@@usuallyhapless9481 Good. I read it last january, it was republished not long ago here in Italy by a small but very active library-editor. Another book for later videos, in the very remote chance you haven't read it already: James Corum's The roots of Blitzkrieg - Hans von Seeckt and the German Military Reform.
@@HaydnHaendel Now that one, I haven't read. Yet.
@@usuallyhapless9481 You're in for a real treat then. The spoiler is "local man spends 3 years detailing every nook and cranny of the previous happening, then learns how to tear this enemy in half"
Of course Blitzkrieg is a much more complex issue than one is used to belive. But that book looks at it from a different perspective: how to learn form what has happened and how to keep an army up to its maximum tactical edge while you're not allowed to have an army at all.
Now that I think of it, it's almost as if between ww1 and ww2 the germans turned upside down their ideas: one could argue that they did brush aside (most) of the strategical level and embrace the full development of tactics. It's stretching the facts a fare bit, but it might have a kernel of thruth.
Great series. I would like to humbly suggest a video about modern US Brigade combat teams and divisions.
Once the officers know what to do they can train the men they command as and when necessary. A battalion has a training & operations officer to organise such activities when real combat is not taking place.
Brillant Hapless
“For the lack of a better word……it’s doctrine”
Welcome to implicit doctrine gang!
Interesting vid as always! I take it the "sand" dream is dead? ;(
The sand dream lives! It's just probably going to be later than anticipated. Things are going to get snowy first.
@@usuallyhapless9481 Praise the sand!!!
Are you going to talk about experience from Balkan Wars?
At the moment at least, I know next to nothing about the Balkan Wars, unfortunately. Some of what I've read has hinted that it would likely have swung European tactical fashion back towards the Boer War experience if WW1 hadn't kicked off, but I haven't looked into it in any depth.
@@usuallyhapless9481 It would for sure. I mean, we are talking about "blitz" like operation combined whit siege warfare that made Balkan armies probably modt experienced armies at start of WW1, togheter whit British.
1866? or 1868?
Sorry, I thought I click into the Steven K Bannon's War room ...
But I realize that's not I want while I heard the sound of Hapless...
It is interesting that even modern western historians always try to portray Czar Nicholas II as a peace-loving, passive, 'pacifist'. This flies in the face of the facts of the Romanov Empire under him continuing to be aggressively expansionist. HIs proto-Nazi politics through the "Black Hundreds" and role in encouraging pogroms of Jews have also been swept under the carpet. This is of course a clear case of politics influencing history, which is much more commonplace than western academics would admit to. The British and French sought to put the blame for WWI solely on Germany's shoulders. Part of this is to white-wash the activities of Russia and France in the run up to the war.
its also because germany was the convieniant target. Austria-hungary was broken up and wasn't particuarly rich to begin with, france was a victorious power and russia was in a civil war (and was an ally beforehand). you can't get extra war reparations from an ally that started the war, but an enemy that started it?