As he reliably does, Serge has structured a historically accurate explanation of Von Moltke's war and his angst about the way it evolved into Volkskrieg elucidated in his Reichstag summation. He is further solidly correct in his analysis of Putin's intent and purpose in finally acting in Ukraine. Where I take some issue with him is in his inference about Putin's intention with the SMO. Putin's strategy was sound and achievable against Ukraine; just not against a Ukraine funded and fully supported by The Empire and its clumsy toy, NATO. If Putin can be strategically faulted it has to be because he could not believe the U.S., in its vicious determination to do anything short of actual commitment to engage itself, would go all in and back the Ukronazis with endless arms and money. That is all that frustrated the kabinettkrieg Putin foresaw, and it has kept an insane Ukraine still fighting to the last Ukrainian for the gratification of doddering, impotent, old Aunt Sam.
Putin's strategy was also appropriate in terms of the reality at the time. They were (1) the extent of the military he had available at the time, including the need to not over commit but allow for other attacks by NATO; and (2) the biggest threat to Russia being the economic war begun against it by the US/EU/UK.
He had to win the second war first, as he and Russia did, including shoring up new/expanded trading partners and building industry to replace Western imports. That was necessary to ensure the ability to fully mobilize Russian resources to militarily defeat NATO in Ukraine.
It has, in fact, been a brilliant display of getting the order of response s right in full spectrum warfare.
I see Linds generations of war here. The counter to manuver warfare is insurgency. The answer to insurgency is to not occupy, but to attrite the nation along a front and a type of war that gives you the best loss ratio.
And the Russians chose to fight this attrition war where the locals would be loyal. I see the withdrawal from Chernigov as partly a response to the hostile natives, giving away Russian positions to NATO. It would have been a mess to have international media focusing on Russian reprisals against partisans and protesters in northeast Ukraine.
In what the late Saddam Hussein once dubbed “the great Satan,” roughly two-thirds of the United States enlisted military corps is white . . . The fat, bulbous, U.S. Secretary of Defense Lloyd Austin once confirmed in a 93-2 vote of the U.S. Senate, immediately embarked on a whirlwind media tour of duty, telling the pseudo-secular sycophants in the state-controlled tabloid press and state-controlled television talk show circuit about how the U.S. Army is full of bad racist white men.
And now the U.S. Army is doing ads begging for more young white males?
What happened?
Even with a full-on declaration of war from Congress, and even if Gavin Newsome could be cheated into the Oval Office by ZOG somehow, while Globohomo diversity brigades go door-to-door looking to impress American children into military service, they will be met with armed, well-trained opposition, the invasion at the Southern border is going full tilt, and the drugs are flowing in like never before . . .
With the borders of Europe and the USA wide open, civil warfare within the USA, Britain, and most of Europe is a certainty if foreign wars are initiated. Nobody is going to fight a war for Biden, he is dumber than Bush . . . Nobody is going to fight a war for that kikesucking Zionist ass-whore Nikki Haley, and I mean nobody.
Get ready for it . . . the fat old devil worshipping fags on Capitol Hill, on Wall Street, in Whitehall, and in Brussels are in no shape to fight a war themselves, and most Americans are armed to the teeth with their own guns . . . NATO hates heterosexual white men . . . they said so themselves . . .
A valuable footnote. I think this is the most intriguing aspect of the Russian thinking during this period. How many moves ahead did they anticipate? I would be prepared to accept that Putin and his planners in fact did give consideration to the scenario that has played out.
Perhaps a simplistic theory, but I keep returning to the fact that Putin is a black belt in judo. A fighting style which has as one of its primary philosophies "Seiryoku-Zenyo," literally "good use of energy." Being aware that the very moment Russian troops crossed the Ukrainian border the response from the US would be one of maximum pressure, at least in economic and information war terms, the Russians opted for realistic gains in securing the land bridge to Crimea and exerting leverage over Kiev to obtain a political settlement. The Americans were the wild card...
If they pursued total war, the Russian military could assume a defensive posture, build manpower and master new weapons of warfare. It would be in Russia's interest to remain in this posture while the bloodthirsty and radical elements in Kiev with maximalist dreams became a drag on US/EU capacities to supply a long war and maintain social stability within Ukraine.
All that the Russian military has to do is hold the line and grow in strength. The political and economic realities will eventually crater the Ukrainian state from within.
Now that's using your opponents momentum against them.
Well said, Ryan. Notice that I said "if" Putin could be faulted. I think, given that his aims were always limited and specific, I think your judo reference is sound. It is our own country that is insane and incompetent.
“Oh how fond they are of the book of Esther, which is so beautifully attuned to their bloodthirsty, vengeful, murderous yearning and hope.” — Martin Luther
❝Bolshevism and Jewry are two words for the same thing. Peace is Bolshevism’s worst enemy, which it must destroy in order to realize its plans for world domination. Thus, Bolshevism’s ever-repeated life and death declarations of battle against the whole of the world become all too understandable.❞
PROTOCOLS OF THE MEETINGS OF THE LEARNED ELDERS OF ZION . . . Protocol No. 7 – World-Wide Wars
❝We must be in a position to respond to every act of opposition by war with the neighbors of that country which dares to oppose us: but if these neighbors should also venture to stand collectively together against us, then we must offer resistance by a universal war.❞
Putin took the measure of his real opponent - the corrupt and senile JR Biden - and felt that the time was ripe. Just as he took the measure of Biden's boss for eight years - the callow and Western hating, and equally corrupt - B. Hussein Obama, as he took parts of the eastern provinces and severed the Crimea with nary a whimper of objection.
Sodom Hussein Obama's mentor Zbigniew Brzezinski (Mika’s father, next to Nasty Pelousy in the link below) was the monster in the Carter administration who armed and financed the Mujahedeen in Afghanistan to fight against the Soviets . . . after the Mujahedeen were armed with sophisticated weapons, the Soviets left, the result was the USA got 911, and women now can walk 3 paces behind the donkey, the Mujahedeen evolved into the Taliban, who evolved into Al-Qaeda, who evolved into ISIS/ISIL/Daesh . . . Brzezinski, for all practical purposes, can be called the ‘Grandfather of ISIS.’
Ilhan Omar (D-MN) and Rashida Tlaib (D-MI) have every right to say what they like about Israel and the genocide of Palestinians as elected members of the US House of Representatives; they never took an oath to serve Israel . . .
I voted for Ron Desantis (R-FL) to be governor of Florida, not ambassador to Israel.
The recently ousted Speaker of the US House of Representatives, Congressman Kevin McCarthy (R-CA), who took at least a dozen votes to get elected speaker, traveled to Israel immediately upon his election, declaring to the Israeli Knesset that the USA is steadfastly committed to supporting Ukraine in their war against Russia . . .
Was he running for speaker of the Israeli Knesset too?
Following his ouster . . . McCarthy (R-CA) traveled abroad again, this time to England, and expressed his open contempt for the white Republicans who make up the majority of the GOP and praised Democrats for their diversity during a debate at Oxford in the wake of his ouster as House Speaker . . .
Is he now running for the Prime Minister of the U.K.?
Nevertheless, he is free to go on media tours bashing white people and lobbying for Israel, because he has now resigned from the US House of Representatives . . . I can only conclude that the collective RINO butthurt over former Speaker McCarthy is all about the Israelis who have hijacked the American deep state war machine.
It has become so painfully obvious, especially where you have someone like Nikki Haley wagging her finger and shouting down Vivek Ramaswamy in a presidential debate on live national television when the questions of this Ukrainian war against Russia and any mention of Israel are concerned, that the United States government has become a wholly owned subsidiary of the American Israeli Political Action Committee.
❝The Frankfurt School adapted Marx’s theories on revolution to include Freud’s theory of the subconscious. The Cultural Marxists’ main focus was to reshape the subconscious of Western men and women and thus create new type of person: one who would react passively to provocations of all kinds.
Cultural Marxists encourage abortion, birth control, divorce, homosexuality, “carrier women,” drugs, miscegenation, the destruction of the traditional family, and unrestricted immigration of racial foreigners into white countries. This is a reflection of what the Cultural Marxists preach: white reproduction is evil, and that which prevents white reproduction is good.❞
“Oh how fond they are of the book of Esther, which is so beautifully attuned to their bloodthirsty, vengeful, murderous yearning and hope.” — Martin Luther
❝Bolshevism and Jewry are two words for the same thing. Peace is Bolshevism’s worst enemy, which it must destroy in order to realize its plans for world domination. Thus, Bolshevism’s ever-repeated life and death declarations of battle against the whole of the world become all too understandable.❞
PROTOCOLS OF THE MEETINGS OF THE LEARNED ELDERS OF ZION . . . Protocol No. 7 – World-Wide Wars
❝We must be in a position to respond to every act of opposition by war with the neighbors of that country which dares to oppose us: but if these neighbors should also venture to stand collectively together against us, then we must offer resistance by a universal war.❞
Is anyone surprised by the sober analysis and truth we get from the supposedly amateur "Big Serge" while our government, intel establishment and their media toadies feed us lies and fairy tales?
“Oh how fond they are of the book of Esther, which is so beautifully attuned to their bloodthirsty, vengeful, murderous yearning and hope.” — Martin Luther
Putin fino ad ora ha saputo gestire in modo corretto i passaggi. Si è vista la reazione avendo intrapreso una operazione speciale. Se avesse scatenato una guerra saremmo arrivati ad una guerra esplicita
El judeomessianisme fa gairebé dos mil anys que escampa entre nosaltres el seu missatge verinós. Els universalismes democràtics i comunistes són més recents, però només han reforçat la vella narrativa jueva. Són els mateixos ideals.
Els ideals transnacionals, transracials, transsexuals, transculturals que aquestes ideologies ens prediquen (més enllà dels pobles, races, cultures) i que són el sosteniment diari de les nostres escoles, als nostres mitjans de comunicació, a la nostra cultura popular, a les nostres universitats, i sobre al nostres els carrers han acabat reduint la nostra identitat biosimbòlica i el nostre orgull ètnic a la seva mínima expressió.
El judaisme, el cristianisme i l'islam són cultes a la mort originats a l'Orient Mitjà i totalment aliens a Europa i als seus pobles.
De vegades ens preguntem per què l'esquerra europea es porta tan bé amb els musulmans. Per què un moviment sovint obertament antireligiós es posa del costat d'una religiositat ferotge que sembla oposar-se a gairebé tot allò que l'esquerra sempre ha pretès defensar? Part de l'explicació rau en el fet que l'islam i el marxisme tenen una arrel ideològica comuna: el judaisme.
Don Rumsfeld tenia raó quan va dir: "Europa s'ha desplaçat en el seu eix", va ser el bàndol equivocat que va guanyar la Segona Guerra Mundial, i es fa més clar cada dia . . . Què ha fet l'OTAN per defensar Europa? Absolutament res . . . Els meus enemics no són a Moscou, Damasc, Teheran, Riad o algun eteri bogeyman teutónic, els meus enemics són a Washington, Brussel·les i Tel Aviv.
I have wondered since successively the Kiev, Kherson, & Kharkov, disasters - if these were blunders or intentional "Wounded Wolf" Strategy, to draw UKR & NATO deeper and deeper into the dark forest of total anihilation in the straightforward application of Moltke's understanding.
Note: "Russia began a Kabinettskriege in 2022"
It cannot be excluded that a conspiracy to "buy off" the war was not in play as plan A, as succeeded in 2003 USA/Irak2, that failed here.
Real war then would have become plan B: "Putin’s cabinet war - limited war for limited aims - exploded into a national war."
The IMF Jews are in bed with the Turks, Saudis, and NATO, they were worried about a Trump audit of the Federal Reserve and about Trump and Putin teaming up to destroy them once and for all . . . Trump was a vote for peace, and peace does not make money for the weapon industry. Trump wouldn’t give the deep state the shadow wars they wanted in Syria and Ukraine, so they rigged two US elections . . . and the first thing they did afterwards was send troops to Syria.
The pseudo secular media and their Zionist masters profit from destabilization. Retaining control of US foreign policy is what drives the neo-cons and Hillary’s flying monkeys . . . along with the millions Goldman Sachs and the Saudis have paid them.
The banksters need a war desperately right now. They’ve tried so hard in Syria, and it just hasn’t worked. Then they got crazy Trump actually saying we should stay out of the Middle East and focus on our own problems, and people were listening . . . What’s a self-respecting globalist financier to do?
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“The worst single mistake ever made in the history of our country: going into the Middle East, by President Bush.” — Donald Trump
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So, they sent their puppets like McCain, Kasich, Romney, Clinton, and Biden out to talk up the fight against “evil” and threaten Russia, hoping to fool those dumb white ‘Murkins one more time into sending their sons off to die for God and Country and Goldman Sachs.
A valuable commentary and description of the war Russia is now waging.
However, labeling this conflict as a "peoples' war" by Ukraine is a stretch. The Ukrainian people are certainly being exploited and destroyed but it is through control by the tribe in Kiev, Wall Street and its control over the US government and European governments, all of whose resources are being used to march the people to their deaths.
Volodymyr Zelensky is an Israeli operative . . . The Ukrainian parliament is full of Jewish apparatchiks . . .
Jewish U.S. Rep. Adam Schiff (D), great grandson of Jacob Schiff (who funded Bolshevism, Leon Trotsky, and the October Revolution from Wall Street) is following in his great grandfather’s footsteps by illegally trafficking weapons with Igor Pasternak (seated behind John Kerry in the link below), funding foreign conflicts abroad . . . and trying to get Syria for the oil pipelines by blaming the Russians for another false flag . . .
After the apocalypse of 1945, a number of global organizations have been formed with the aim of maintaining and expanding totalitarian liberalism. One of the earliest organizations formed for this purpose was the war alliance "North Atlantic Treaty Organization", or NATO, which can be seen as the military wing of globalism.
In addition to ensuring that Washington always has international support for its military campaigns, NATO as an institution is explicitly anti-white and explicitly dedicated to "racial justice" for racial aliens living in white countries. As early as 1999, NATO authored reports blaming nationalists for a number of modern problems and warning against the influence of nationalism.
In 2023, the war alliance held a summit at its headquarters in Brussels on race where the alliance's leaders pledged to fight "homogeneous attitudes" and to use NATO's "collective intelligence" for the purpose.
In fact, NATO is so dedicated to its anti-white agenda that it openly advocates that institutions must be reshaped to be "inclusive," in other words, restructured to be more anti-white, and consist of fewer white employees and executives.
I believe a Volkskrieg doesn’t necessarily mean the People are *willing* to participate; forced by the Empire or not, they are in it now. And this is different from a Kabinettskrieg
Der Juden-Messianismus verbreitet seit fast zweitausend Jahren seine giftige Botschaft unter uns. Demokratische und kommunistische Universalismen sind neueren Datums, aber sie haben das alte jüdische Narrativ nur gestärkt. Das sind der dieselben Ideale . . .
Die transnationalen, transrassischen, transkulturellen Ideale, die diese Ideologien uns predigen (jenseits von Völkern, Rassen, Kulturen) und die tägliche Diät in unseren Schulen, in unseren Medien, in unserer Popkultur, bei unseren Universitäten und auf unseren Straßen sind, haben unser biosymbolische Identität und unser ethnischer Stolz auf ihren minimalen Ausdruck reduziert.
Jüdische Bankiers überschwemmten Europa mit Muslimen und Amerika mit Müll aus der Dritten Welt . . . Judentum, Christentum und Islam sind Todeskulte, die ihren Ursprung im Nahen Osten haben und Europa und seinen Völkern völlig fremd sind.
Manchmal fragt man sich, warum die europäische Linke so gut mit Muslimen klarkommt. Warum stellt sich eine oft offen antireligiöse Bewegung auf die Seite einer erbitterten Religiosität, die sich scheinbar fast allem zu widersetzen scheint, wofür die Linke immer zu stehen behauptet? Ein Teil der Erklärung liegt in der Tatsache, dass Islam und Marxismus eine gemeinsame ideologische Wurzel haben: das Judentum.
Kein Land führt bei dieser Invasion sein eigenes Rennen, weil es alles eine politische Agenda ist, die von den Vereinten Nationen geführt und von den Juden und ihren Marionetten (Politikern) vorangetrieben wird. Die meisten Menschen wollen einfach nicht wissen oder verstehen, dass dies eine politische Agenda ist. Einige schaffen es jedoch zu verstehen, dass Politiker absichtlich daran arbeiten, Muslime zu importieren und die Menschen zu ersetzen, aber das war's auch schon, sie sind wie ein Computer, der nicht weitermachen kann, weil das Programm es nicht zulässt.
Don Rumsfeld hatte Recht mit der Bemerkung: “Europa hat sich um seine Achse verschoben,” die falsche Seite hat den Zweiten Weltkrieg gewonnen, und es wird von Tag zu Tag klarer . . . Was hat die NATO getan, um Europa zu verteidigen? Absolut gar nichts . . . Meine Feinde sind nicht in Moskau, Damaskus, Teheran, Riad oder irgendeinem ätherischen germanischen Schreckgespenst, sondern in Washington, Brüssel und Tel Aviv.
We are into semantics here. I believe it is a "people's war" because the Ukrainian people have decided to go along with, and continue to do so. It's irrelevant whether they did this voluntarily or not. They had to power to tell Z to go take a hike but didn't. That means that, for all practical purposes, they agree with what happened.
When a third of your population has fled the country, including huge numbers of military age men; when you are begging neighboring countries to repatriate your citizens to be conscripted; and when you have extensive "battier troops" to shoot anyone escaping your frontline meatgrinder, the "agreement" is pretty weak.
Volodymyr Zelensky is an Israeli operative . . . The Ukrainian parliament is full of Jewish apparatchiks . . . no more jews = no more war . . .
Jewish U.S. Rep. Adam Schiff (D), great grandson of Jacob Schiff (who funded Bolshevism, Leon Trotsky, and the October Revolution from Wall Street) is following in his great grandfather’s footsteps by illegally trafficking weapons with Igor Pasternak (seated behind John Kerry in the link below), funding foreign conflicts abroad . . . and trying to get Syria for the oil pipelines by blaming the Russians for another false flag . . .
This is a purely academic distinction. Organized minorities will always determine the fate of nations, and it will be the ruling elite that determines whether or not to mobilize the entirety of the nation's resources to wage war. Populist moralizing on whether the ruled masses are of one minded with their rulers is not relevant to this analysis.
❝Bolshevism and Jewry are two words for the same thing. Peace is Bolshevism’s worst enemy, which it must destroy in order to realize its plans for world domination. Thus, Bolshevism’s ever-repeated life and death declarations of battle against the whole of the world become all too understandable.❞
PROTOCOLS OF THE MEETINGS OF THE LEARNED ELDERS OF ZION . . . Protocol No. 7 – World-Wide Wars
❝We must be in a position to respond to every act of opposition by war with the neighbors of that country which dares to oppose us: but if these neighbors should also venture to stand collectively together against us, then we must offer resistance by a universal war.❞
Thanks for illuminating parallels between previous European wars and the current one. It could be argued that both France and Germany are now losing an extermination war against mass migration facilitated by the EU and GAE. Russia is the last bulwark on the continent and Ukraine a sacrificial lamb used to poke the bear, far more lopsided than the sides fighting the Prussian War.
Mass immigration is only one prong on the fork being used to destroy the West. The other is Woke ideology. Putin is fighting successfully against that too. Witness the decision to label as terrorists the LGBTQWERTY lunatics who hold such power in our society.
Russia has mass immigration going on right now too. You'd be shocked by numbers of Germans, French and Americans there and that was before Covid when i was last there. now they are building whole cities for them and what used to be a 2 month wait for residency permit is two years.
Wow, I never knew that, St. What kind of people are moving there? Conservatives sick of the dying West, or just carpet baggers in search of a quick profit?
Mainly conservatives. Sell everything and move type. You gotta have money Russia is not a welfare refugee state like Europe. And you can't work/earn money without residency permit. I'm not sure about profiting because salaries are much lower than West but cost of living is cheaper too.
❝The Frankfurt School adapted Marx’s theories on revolution to include Freud’s theory of the subconscious. The Cultural Marxists’ main focus was to reshape the subconscious of Western men and women and thus create new type of person: one who would react passively to provocations of all kinds.
Cultural Marxists encourage abortion, birth control, divorce, homosexuality, “carrier women,” drugs, miscegenation, the destruction of the traditional family, and unrestricted immigration of racial foreigners into white countries. This is a reflection of what the Cultural Marxists preach: white reproduction is evil, and that which prevents white reproduction is good.❞
As a French amateur of military history, I have been thinking for more than a year that the 1870 war was much more relevant to understanding this War of Ukraine than WW1, which most commenters love to bring up because of the trench/position war aspect, and probably also because of the scale of maiming of soldiers.
Your depiction of the German analysis of the French political and popular reaction to defeat is most interesting, I did not know about the debate among Prussian elites.
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That being said... I think the analysis (the Prussians' first and by extension yours as well) is lacking an understanding of the mechanisms behind the French nationalistic reaction in 1870. The refusal of defeat and the belief in Guerre à Outrance was less about a refusal of Prussia's defeating French military forces, than about a refusal of the complete failure of 20 years of authoritarian rule by Napoleon III. That's what the Gouvernement de Défense Nationale was all about.
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Napoleon III was a rather mediocre mind, but an expert in faking talent by buying it from others. He was in essence little more than a political manipulator. Once he held power, he exercised it through permanent abuse of it. His regime had sent more than 100.000 political opponents in jail and to penal colonies in Algeria, in Guyane and in New Caledonia. His government was one of arrogant upper class privileged people who had never proven much but who posed as equal to the greatest generations in French history, particularly the generation of military leaders that existed un Napoleon's Empire.
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The 1870 war was started by Napoleon III and his government out of arrogance. He wanted to humiliate the King of Prussia on a rather insignificant matter of accession to the throne of Spain, because he dreamt of securing an actual Bonaparte dynasty. By declaring war on Prussia, he also set the conditions for the pan-German mutual defense treaties to operate, so that instead of fighting Prussia, France fought almost every German state representing twice the forces France could gather in a short time. In order to justify declaring war, the government lied to the French Parliament about a supposed humiliation of the French ambassador by the King of Prussia, and by Bismarck in a communication to his network of diplomats. Parliament by then was made up of people who had been appointed by the government, and whose elections were all fake, due to the system of picking "official candidates" that oppositions could hardly ever hope to beat.
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When France suffered the first catastrophic defeats, in Wissembourg first, then in Woerth-Reichshoffen after only a few days of war, it soon became obvious that the government had lied about the levels of preparedness of the French army. They were supposed to have a most modern and superior Chassepot rifle, but in fact those had not been produced in large numbers and most of the troops still used early 19th century rifles. They lacked canons as well, especially the bigger ones, and means to move them around. They lacked ammo. They even lacked shoes... In Reichshoffen, the Prusso-German army actually suffered more losses than the French side, due to rather poor tactics of sending infantry lines through the field one after the other. But German artillery dominated the battle in every way. France lost in a single battle 4 of its 6 elite heavy cuirassé cavalry regiments, which were seen as the sign of its military superiority over Europe.
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Following the Reichshoffen defeat, the military command proved utterly incapable of taking any decisive action. Moltke did not even have to work hard to trap the main army in Metz: Maréchal Bazaine chose to hide inside the fortified city because he was scared to fight, and scared to be defeated and to have his fame diminished. He'd worked hard to become an Insta-hero of the days, he couldn't fathom the idea of facing public reckoning with reality... He had several opportunities to break through Prussian besieging lines but he did not even make a proper attempts. After the war, he was tried and sentenced for betrayal... In fact, he had hoped that the Imperial government would be replaced by his monarchist friends who would shield him from the consequences of his military failure.
In Paris, both the government and parliament, made up of courtiers and insignificant sycophants who owed their positions to the Emperor's arbitrary favours, proved incapable to decide anything as well. Armies were sent to one side, then recalled and sent in the opposite direction due to changes in who managed to convince the Empress, who was acting as a ruler was the Emperor was with the Northern Army. Logistics failed utterly because no one was able to give proper orders to the train companies.
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Once Napoleon III was defeated in Sedan and made prisoner, most of his sycophants fled Paris very quickly. And Parliament failed to make decisions to replace the government and the Emperor. So that a gathering of only 20 members of Parliament, who had been the Republican minority, had to take it upon themselves to create a new government to try and salvage the situation. Only one prominent conservative figure joined them, and promoted national unity in the face of disaster. That was Adolphe Thiers, who'd later become president and oversee the massacre of rebellious civilians in the Paris Commune.
As soon as they announced the formation of a new Republican government, these minor political figures drew huge crowds of Paris in support of their action. In the coming days, many official documents were published that showed everyone how the war had been decided based on lies, how unprepared the army had been, and how useless the political institutions had proven themselves to be.
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Basically, the new Gouvernement de la Défense Nationale had no other resource than to appeal to the people's patriotic feelings. Hence the formation of new armies in the West and Central provinces. But Paris was soon put under a siege, which the new rulers faced off rather well, to be honest: they held the place for 5 months, while the initial estimate of food stocks and other resources had concluded they could hope to hold for 2 weeks! And they managed to do so without facing a revolt from the people of Paris, who suffered much. Once the siege ended though, and the government was replaced again by a conservative one, it didn't take long to experience an actual Revolution in Paris...
During the 5 months of siege, Bismarck tried to favour monarchist political factions, only to be constantly outplayed by the Republican government in Bordeaux. And indeed, as you noted in your paper, there was massive desire by the population to continue the fight, despite further failure from the top military leaders (Bourbaki especially, who utterly failed to even look like a threat on the Eastern side of the front despite having the last well-trained and experienced army under his command).
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So, to put it shortly, the reason behind the French nationalistic reaction, was a mix of shock at discovering they had been lied to and played by incompetent political leaders; anger at discovering the scale of the Emperor's impotence; resent about the 2 decades of authoritarian repression; and serious disappointment at the lack of organisation and industrial support, while the Second Empire had advertised itself as a glorious regime of all-powerful enlightened industrialists. Very simply, the French people discovered they had been thoroughly cheated by their own leaders, while for 2 decades they had believed they had gone back to the glorious days of the mythical Napoleon... These factors are much more important, I believe, in explaining the French choice to keep fighting at all costs, than any decision made by Prussian military or political leaders.
So how does it compare to Ukraine? I'd say Ukrainians were also definitely played and abused for their leaders for a while. But most of them knew it very well, there never was much illusion. First, the Ukrainian elites never promoted national unity, they promoted civil war and the reject of 30% of Ukraine's population. Two, preparations for war in Ukraine were made under the pressure of a foreign power, namely the US, and against the will of the Ukrainian people, who repeatedly voted for politicians who promised peace and appeasement with Russia. Three, when the present war started, Ukrainians demonstrated their refusal of war, by fleeing abroad. This includes half of the political cast, most industry owners, and a good chunk of the civilians in age and condition to join the military.
While you may argue Ukraine's elites between 2014 and 2022 lied and cheated like France's imperial elites prior to the 1870 war, I don't think Ukrainians believed much in their lies. So that they did not experience the complete shock and disillusion experienced by French people towards the end of 1870. Instead, some revived the old West Ukrainian hatreds against Russians, but those had never really abandoned those feelings. And most simply faced powerlessness in the face of continued political and democratic failure that had plagued Ukraine for 30 years before.
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So that the idea of a Ukrainian Guerre à Outrance seems to me like just one more propaganda effort by a government and an elite who've never had the support of the majority of the masses. Unfortunately for Ukrainians, their corrupt elites did not collapse, and the cheats and manipulators who drew them into war did not retire to leave the place to a new generation of better intended leaders. They're still very much there, applying violence on their people to force them into continuing a pointless war effort. The reason is probably that they are puppets who are useful to more important external powers. Until they cease to be useful, they'll be kept in place.
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Thus, Putin is in a different position from Moltke or Bismarck. He can work to destroy the Ukrainian state not just to made it incapable to recover out of having no structures left, as you explained, but also he can bet that the Nationalistic factions that ruled Ukraine against the Ukrainian people will be too weak and too discredited to hope to revive an anti-Russian sentiment on the long run. He probably expects moral and emotional collapse, which will give an opportunity for a reset of Ukrainian minds.
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I've longed been convinced that Ukrainians will end up seeing what the US, the UK, the EU, and the Ukrainian nationalistic and corrupt factions that have led them into this war, actually did to them. And I'm convinced they will turn against all these at the end, and seek justice in any way they can. When this happens, Russia's long held discourse towards Ukrainians will be validated. And Putin's choice to not pound on Ukrainian civilians at the beginning of this war will have effects playing in his favour. Given that any surviving Ukrainian independent country will probably be 50% if not 30% of the original independent Ukraine, and given that most of those who are now refugees across Europe will not want to return to live in such a country if it is still led by the corrupt warmongering factions, I don't think Russia is likely to face the kind of long term threat that IIIrd Republic France was to Germany.
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Finally, it would take out-of-proportion effort from the EU and the US to keep supporting such an anti-Russia Ukrainian state in the long run. They can keep working on the propaganda message that Ukrainians are heroes, but they will have a hard time claiming Ukrainians are victorious heroes.
And European populations are massively against this project. They have their own problems to care about, they know trouble is brewing inside their societies, and they will vote for those who propose an end to foolish international aggression policies. The Ukrainian elites will end up migrating to the US if they want to save their lives, because they will no longer be provided with the means to force themselves on the Ukrainian population. Then, Putin will seek cooperation with more friendly European leaders, and he'll tell Ukrainians that if they want to find emotional closure by erasing the legacy of those who ruled them for 15 to 20 years, then Russia can offer them some form of return to the old "Sister Nations" situation.
I like that very much. The whole thing: both posts. You have your own Substack or site? Write other things?
I like what you say very much, believe it. Hope I'm not kidding myself; I know I am very prone to 'believing' that which I want to hear anyway.
Your concluding mention of 'European populations' - that's where I pin all my hopes. I think there's going to be a phase change in our populations because I believe they are now human aggregations such as have never existed before in the world.
For the first time 'the mass' can be aware of itself as a coherent entity with agency; communicate within itself instantly, know everything, find, calculate, absorb, manipulate new information.
It is/will be an entirely new thing on the planet.
This should, I'd think, play into what you mention: the feelings of the populations. They really will become of dominant significance.
Might be good. A caveat: they will perhaps cut you off without proper explanation. They are not real 'user friendly'.
I have/had a substack - responding to their urging as they tried to build their business - and they without notice stopped letting me make posts. Because, it said, I 'might have' transgressed their rules.
They explained no further.
They offered an avenue of response which I used and asked them what the problem was, could they be more specific.
They did not reply, did not explain but a few days or weeks later they cut off the blog from public view entirely. Which is where it is at now.
And I responded again asking for elucidation. And again and to this day got nothing.
I have no following and put no effort into trying to build one so I'm unmoved, unharmed by them entirely so I don't much care.
But you can see that I would not now invest time, energy, hope, future prospects in their platform. I'd view it as just asking for trouble.
We all should - I think - be removing our dependency on 'free' social media platforms. It is just asking for trouble. In the end we get nothing for free.
Better to have your own domain and get it hosted somewhere and put your own site up, perhaps your own Wordpress blog.
Yes, harder to put yourself before millions but nevertheless. Many have done it and have succeeded.
Perhaps use these media concurrent with your own. And with every post you make reference your own site attempting to drive traffic that way.
That's what I'd do. What I sort of do in a desultory sort of way. For instance: want to know about Covid? Well my contribution to that is not on Substack, thank god, but on my own site: covidhonesty.com which is more public minded than substack. :)
PROTOCOLS OF THE MEETINGS OF THE LEARNED ELDERS OF ZION . . . Protocol X – Preparing for Power . . . (((SARS-CoV2)))
❝. . . utterly exhaust humanity with dissention, hatred, struggle, envy and even by the use of torture, by starvation, by the inoculation of diseases. by want, so that the “Goyim” see no other issue than to take refuge in our complete sovereignty in money and in all else.❞
This is very informative, very well written, and the necessary complement to the post's focus on the Prussian side
Your conclusions and parallels to the current Ukraine Russia situation again are very informative, and a useful counter to those many who predict a terrible, lengthy and undefeatable 'insurgency' which gradually will degrade Russian arms and army and demoralise Russian society
This is a lucid approach to this war, one which is rare - so yes I encourage you to start your substack
As a Russian, I feel the need to add a dimension to this discussion, and in particular refute this incessant point of "IF X, then Ukraine would be allowed to re-arm itself and wage another war in the future".
No. This point has passed. It could've worked in March of 2022, but those days are no longer there. And it has to do with demographics, propaganda and Ukrainian mentality.
Let's talk demographics first. Ukraine is already 10-15 million people short (including the loss of people in the new Russian oblasts). Whether you buy the un-substantiated in 20+ years official initial population of 40 mil or the more realistic numbers of 32 mil, that's a loss of a third or quarter of the existing number of population, and specifically - younger, working class people and professionals.
That is a huge blow to the economy. What happens next, is that the noose would self-tighten due to this loss. Less people in the econony means less consumers and so, less business activity. Less business activity - worse economy, more incentive for people to move out of the country, accelerating the cycle of immigration.
People that have moved in and rooted themselves in the new country would seek to pull their relatives out. More bleeding.
This is expanded by the second component of Ukraine's future systemic failure - mentality. Ukrainians are 90s Russians, in effect. They have never evolved past the oligarchic tribal rule, and they never moved past worship of the West (and the idea that a person's goal is to eventually immigrate to said West), and corruption is Ukraine's lifeblood. All the fervent nationalism is a thin veneer on the ukro society, existing only thanks to the generous economic dotations from Western states.
What this means is, the moment a ceasefire is made and any sort of "peace agreement" is achieve and there's even a TIIIIIIINY breach on the closed borders... Even more Ukranians would leave for the greener pastures of the Sacred West.
Ukranians arent the French in the 1800s. They a) can leave the premises of their war-torn country and b) there's really no Volkskrieg, not truly. There's still a lot of sympathisers to the idea of a full Russian rule over Ukraine, and more than those - people that equally hate Zelensky and the ukro government and Russia/Russians. But the latter part doesn't mean they'll fight for the former. So a disappointing ceasfire would just re-ignite the habitual Ukranian oligarch and bandit infighting, not solidify the society further. If it hadn't really solidified by now - going further, without military victories, it can only fall apart more.
The blame game will begin. More maidans. More fear. More crackdowns. More immigration. Worse business. Worse economy... You get the drift by now.
But what of those who are staunch believers in the Ukro project, the good useful proxy-bots to the GAE? Well thanks to Ukrainians' own propaganda, anything short of getting all of Donbass and Crimea and ugh, Rostov, would be considered a failure of this project. Ukranians are even more than we Russians prone to fall into gloom and demoralized self-reflection, only unlike us, they'll be doing it amidst a country full of destroyed infrastructure, dysfunctional economy, hundreds of thousands of dead and dozens of thousands invalid veterans. And also - it would be forced to remain on a permanent war footing that would further drain the state despite any potential boons from military contracts it could get with the West.
All these aspects combined guarantee that an upheaval of Ukraine into this tight boisterous revanshist Israel, should Russia stop at 4 oblasts and work out an agreement, is impossible.
Instead, what it WOULD be, is a festering sore. Not an Israel, but a Somalia. Dangerous and unpleasant, but yet...
People have to understand that in general, the failed counteroffensive was the nail in the coffin. Ukraine will NEVER have better military chances than it did this past summer. And so, the best scenario for it is to turn into this belligerent "Larger Lithuania" - turtled up in a defensive posture, provocatory, but constantly depopulating, depressed and unable to rise up for a true "second round". Unless it wants a complete suicide.
And another gut punch to the "dreams of re-militarization" - Russia and Belarus bordering this failed state. Common language. You wouldn't be able to stop Ukranians in this post-war era from looking over the fence and seeing how much better it is in Russia, in DNR/LNR.
The hatred combined with anger... Yep, you guessed it, immigration again.
So, you can arm Ukraine all you want in the pos-war period, you can funnel any "reconstruction money" into it... But unless the West is planning to build Ukranianans their own Switzerland in the remaning territories and free of charge, it will simply slowly rot. It could rot very loudly and clank their weaponry, but...
Demographics, mentality, propaganda. The three Horsemen of Ukrocalypse.
Thanks for a succinct view from the Russia/Ukraine neighborhood.
From the perspective of someone who has known some Russians, Ukrainians and Poles who emigrated to North America over the past 30 or 40 years, your comments lay bare the mindset in many Eastern Europeans. An envy of the (old, dead for a generation) West, built on hard work and opportunity. A system that no longer exists as the Welfare States (the something for nothing, free lunch gang) have suffocated opportunity.
In the same Globalist encouraged slaughter of Ukrainians and Russians, jobs and families were slaughtered inside the U.S. and most Western Nations, as those that already had too much, decided to take more and destroy the middle/working class by getting wage slaves in China, Mexico and India (and elsewhere) to make stuff; therein losing knowhow, ingenuity, and the work ethic at home. Replaced by welfare, drugs and despair.
For Russia, under what appears to be a generally beneficial near dictator, you have Russia's national interests front and center, instead of the interests of the new Globalist Monarchy, with its attendant Princes and Princesses, preening themselves as they crap on the rest of humanity.
A little discussed injustice in Europe and North America is how crass Politics has marginalized people of Russian ancestry. Good people, disgusted how the U.S. criminals in Washington ginned up the war in Ukraine against Russia.
Very succinct and I believe, true: “those that already had too much, decided to take more and destroy the middle/working class by getting wage slaves in China, Mexico and India (and elsewhere) to make stuff; therein losing knowhow, ingenuity, and the work ethic at home”
This makes sense. My instinct is to want to see Russia "paint the map white, blue and red" but maybe in terms of cold strategy that isn't the best play. I say you still want to get all of Novorossiya in '24, and have a longer term plan to eventually annex at least as far as Zhytomer. Ideally you'd lure most of the recent emigrants back and add to Russian economic capacity but maybe that's unrealistic.
I believe that the government of Ukraine will not open the borders in the next 10 years or until this war is over.When the borders are opened, literally almost ALL people will leave Ukraine (and half of them will move to Russia) and 10-13 million old people will remain in Ukraine!Their government cannot allow them to leave, because after that Zelensky&Co look like complete retards.
Hidden History: Secret history of the origins of WW1 by Gerry Docherty is excellent at illuminating how elements of Cecil Rhodes's Round Table especially Milner engineered WW1. The use of satellite reconnaissance and drones has turned the Ukraine Russia war into a war more like ww1 than ww2, I doubt even Guderian, Rommel, or Patton would be able to engineer kettles in this war. I liked the elucidation of Serge to illuminate why Russia started out with the idea of a quick cabinet war with limited objectives but had to entirely change their strategy when the US and Britain stopped a negotiated settlement. It saddens me to see a whole generation of young Ukrainian men killed on the battlefield and now going on to the last Ukrainian - even women when they must know they will lose. I congratulate the Russian military for correctly reading the changed circumstances and limiting their casualties. I must admit that it took me a long time to see the reality that decided a snail's pace for the Russians was the correct way to go.
Yep. When the facts are considered I think the phrase 'snail's pace' much in use today is entirely wrong.
The allies have been moving at an extremely rapid pace I feel.
They've had to and I've had my heart in my mouth sometimes at the knowledge.
Just go back over the history and the revelations we've had.
It seems virtually the whole Russian State was in a mess at the beginning of this.
There was certainly much, much wrong with the Russian military machine.
Fixing all that is part of the 'pace of the war', surely?
There's entirely too much emphasis and focused attention on the battlefield in this thing. I'd submit the battlefield is virtually the least important part/indicator of progress.
Like immediately after the beginning we got the sudden influx of USA direction and 'help' in all possible ways except actual boots on the ground.
Meeting all that was part of 'pace'.
And the sanctions just went on and on and country after country fell before them.
All of that was met. At a 'pace'.
Politics was constantly in play, of course, and backstabbing and double dealing all had to be dealt with and was/is.
The Prigozhin thing was I am sure really indicative of real problems within the military machine, real problems. Even at that late stage. They were met then and are still being met now and the actual Prigozhin thing was met and surmounted.
Even today on Telegram you can find apparent first hand accounts from Allied soldiers saying that the allies are short on artillery, on fpv drones, on men and even equipment. Voennia Chronica (excuse my transliteration) constantly publishes lists of equipment they have donated to the armed forces which is apparently much appreciated and sorely needed. Sorely needed ! Esp. down in Kherson.
And so on.
I think they are performing brilliantly. It is not just a board game on the battlefield. That's merely what the masses see. It's more kinda many games of chess being played out simultaneously in board rooms and such across the globe.
And the allies are doing well. They're doing magnificently.
And their enemy is simply the USA. All else are dupes and fools and/or cynical opportunists.
And more and more this truth becomes apparent to everyone. Everyone.
The last to know, looks like, unfortunately, tragically, sadly, will be the 'poor bloody infantry' of Kiev Ukraine.
It seems to me that calling the US/EU/UK “the Allies” is somehow bestowing a morality upon these world-eaters akin to that which they carried in WW2. I haven’t a replacement for this misnomer but hope for a new label or title that reflects the evil of their intent and their actions.
'The Allies' in my lexicon are the Donbas Republics and Russia.
I use the term as often as I can in order to try to combat the lying propaganda 'new speak' of Kiev and Washington.
You give me an opportunity to attempt once again to spell it out.
It goes like this:
Calling this 'Ukraine v Russia' is entirely wrong and it has the terrible effect of causing those with little interest and less knowledge to believe the issue is all about Russia invading, attacking and occupying Ukraine.
Most people being innately on the side of 'good' and equating 'good' with the underdog, the attacked, the oppressed, the threatened, the people will jump to an immediate obvious conclusion: that they should support 'Ukraine'.
And so they do. Even if only by doing nothing. Tacit permission for their governments to continue using their tax monies to support Kiev and American arms manufacturers.
Do you see?
The lie, the deception, the brainwashing begins right there with the word 'Ukraine'. 'We must support Ukraine'. For they do not mean Ukraine. They mean the Kiev Regime. They mean at best the people of the Kiev Oblasts but actually they don't mean the people at all, the word
'Ukraine' in this context applies only to a regime: the Kiev regime.
There are 10 million Ukrainians: the Donbas and Crimean Ukrainians who're completely overlooked in this hasty, facile and inaccurate take on things.
They are simply assumed not to exist. All persons in the Donbas oblasts are now assumed to be Russians and the Russians there not by invitation but by invasion.
The warfare of '22 when the front lines were manned overwhelmingly by Donbas soldiers while the helping Russians stood back behind the lines with their artillery is in one breath assumed to have been a year of warfare with Russian soldiers in those trenches. An outright falsehood.
Those Donbas soldiers learned their soldiering in those trenches during the preceding eight years since the Kiev invasion of 2014. Eight years of constant fighting. This ignored, omitted entirely. It is assumed there was a Russian invasion in '22 of a peaceful country, homogeneous and happy.
Nothing could be further from the truth.
It was a country engaged in a civil war and a civil war of the most vile kind: one based on ethnic cleansing.
This is completely wiped from the consciousness.
That civil war that was and still is.
To return to human basics if that is ever possible in these Orwellian times a 'nation' IS its people. Those present day monsters the Israelis, the Jews, demonstrated this during all the years of the Diaspora. For a reference if any do not understand what I mean.
So 'Ukraine' IS the Ukrainian people. No people = no Ukraine.
A simple and true equation totally wiped from the blackboard of reality today. Today a nation is assumed to be its regime. So completely is this true that it is seriously proposed by heads of State that the nation might 'fight to the last man' in order to pursue an ethnic cleansing goal and that action: going to the last man - is assumed to be to the glory and enhancement of the nation!
What a wonderful nation we are ! See ? We all died !
So it is clear that to support 'Ukraine' just as to support the quarreling 'Smiths' in the house next door you would do all you could to bring peace, to stop the quarrel.
But so demented are the Americans and so successfully have they hoodwinked and brainwashed the people of the western world that in all seriousness they talk of 'supporting Ukraine' by helping kill them to the last man.
Virtually the whole Western world talks and thinks like this. It is utterly wrong.
See how pernicious it is?
Yourself taken in by it, incapable at first reading of comprehending what I was saying.
It could have been written more clearly but I support your effort to clarify roles. My point stands for those many others who use the term to describe the Western world-eating societies.
Yes. It would be counterproductive to lose men pushing the front line further ahead. Optimize the local shape of the front to maximize expected loss ratio. Test the capacity of NATO to maintain the front in the event of a breach by doing smaller assaults on manageable chunks (Avdeevka, Seversk). The war is won when the front can't be maintained, it will be obvious.
Yes I think so. I wait for signs of just that but don't really see them yet. I'm no military expert at all but it seems that an army needs a constant 'back up' behind the lines for a number of reasons.
And all the news we've had this whole year has been that Kiev's backup is reducing, reducing.
The effect of that should be real but needn't be immediately noticeable to any great extent.
Should it? Like I'm thinking that first it would prohibit advances because without that backup you can't exploit them, perhaps cannot even maintain them, every advance lengthening your front line, lengthening your supply lines, creating the vulnerability of 'flanks'.
But we wouldn't see that they can't make advances. We'd only see that they don't seem to be trying.
Do we see that with Kiev or not? Hard to tell sometimes. They seem to be very aggressive up and down the line.
Then later it should mean men cannot be rotated back for R&R. That, too, we might not see.
Stuff like that. Real but not immediately noticeable maybe.
But then a time should be reached where the front line is in fact tissue paper thin. Tired, exhausted troops, morale and munitions low. Command performance lacking initiative or purpose.
It should start to be possible to breach the line almost anywhere you wish and that should start to be noticeable.
I don't think it is, yet.
What I notice, I think, is the surprising amount of resilience the Kiev forces have and material resource. They've run an effective campaign of disinformation I think. They have more of everything and anything than our exuberantly denigratory 'alt media' have led us to believe.
While fakenews media have been telling us that UkroNazees are short on personal gear, I find that difficult to reconcile with the vast amounts of kit (uniforms, food, boots) which NATO has stockpiled for decades.
Losing thousands of pieces of heavy equipment monthly can't be easy to recover from, yet AFU seem to always have warfighting equipment.
Clearly Russia is aware that America's misinformation bots have been unleashed
Moscow isn't in a rush
The Kremlin will take its time and whittle away at the rapidly weakening West, while decimating Kiev's forced conscripts.
At the same time, it's quickly strengthening it's own forces and getting them bloodied in battles, preparing them for the upcoming move to retake Odessa & Kharkov and to run so the way to Transnistra..
I think it is more than a little early to be making comparisons.
Among the bigger issues: Russia has yet to deploy the massive newly mobilized troops in any kind of offensive or defensive effort.
What you term "WW1" fighting is actually Russian attrition strategy grinding down obliging Ukrainian attackers. Now that Ukraine's (and the West's) limitations with artillery shells, manpower, air defense are apparent - even largely unreinforced front line formations are making serious inroads against the teeth of Ukrainian defenses such as in Avdiivka.
What I have read is that in the 1871 war the casualty figures of the French and Prussians were about the same for the battles leading up to the surrounding of the French and they weren't small. The difference is the attacking Prussians gained their objectives. By a snail's pace I mean, take Avdivka. It has been shelling Donetsk almost 10 years and only now after a year and a half is Russia threatening to eliminate it. And the snail's pace also applies to how the casualty rate is around 10 to 1 in Russia's favor as you say the attrition strategy. It does seem to me that Russia made one strategic mistake in not making the mobilization much earlier when their offensive bogged down after taking Severodonestk and Lisychansk. Also I had read there were 50,000 Russian troops taking part in an exercise in the Far East when the Ukrainians launched their counteroffensives taking the north and the south. It can be said that with victories like that it wouldn't be long with many more the Ukrainians would not have an army.
The entire gist of Big Serge's article was that there is an enormous difference between KabinettKriege and VolksKriege, and he furthermore specifically stated that Russia started the SMO as a KabinettKriege - but has since transitioned into (more of) a Volkskriege
Let's look at Avdiivka in this light. At the start of the SMO: Artemovsk/Bakhmut and Avdiivka were the 2 most heavily fortified positions facing the LDPR because these were to be the kickoff point for the planned reconquest by Ukraine of those secessionist regions. At the start of the SMO through to the end of 2022 - the number of actual Russian Army/Navy/Air Force troops in active service in Ukraine was well under 200K and possibly under 100K. The remaining forces were LDPR militias, various Rosguardia units including Ossetians, Chechens, and PMCs like Wagner.
Since the winter of 2022 - Russia has taken in multiple hundreds of thousands of new and returning recruits into its armed forces. The thin veneer of warm bodies holding the 1300 km front line in summer 2022 was significantly bolstered, but the number of Russian Army/Navy/Air Force troops in active service in Ukraine is still well below 300K - the extra hundreds of thousands are either in reserve, in training or in the back of of rotations to the front.
In addition, the artillery shell, air defense, AFV/IFV/artillery/tank platform attrition plus hundreds of thousands of severely wounded/dead AFU mean that the overall capability of the AFU is degraded. Russian pressure all along the line of contact combined with the attrited state of the AFU is clearly manifesting as reduced defensive and reinforcement capability.
Russia doesn't have a burning need to finish this conflict quickly, but it is very possible Russia has the capability. But why get a long of troops killed and resources burned when it is unnecessary?
That's the real question IMO.
As for 1871 - similar casualties from the respective professional forces of France and Germany makes sense, but so what? Traditionally, the heaviest losses occur when one side breaks and the other side hunts the fleeing troops down and kills them from behind.
Since the very beginning Russia has had to bear in mind the possibility of NATO coming in at any time. in the beginning Russia got Kherson for free and Mariupol surrounded. Kharkov and Kiev held out and a few forward groups got ambushed due to US satellite surveillance. Otherwise the Ukrainian air force was eliminated but not the extensive Soviet era aerial defense. Early on there was apparently a disastrous but not too large river crossing debacle., Otherwise the war went well for the Russians. As mentioned the taking Popasayna was key to further gains. As Napoleon's famous aphorism, “in war the moral is to the physical as three is to one,” is why I thought not starting the mobilization earlier was a strategic mistake. The initial Kherson counteroffensive was going terrible for the Ukrainians. I had thought that with just 30,000 more battle worthy troops the Kharkhov and Kherson offensives of Ukraine could have been stopped and the moral of the Ukrainians would have plummeted. However the Russians did retreat in good order and inflicted terrible casualties on the Ukrainians. The territorial loss was not so important as the damage the Ukrainians inflicted on the people living there who had cooperated with the Russians.
In Russian operative tradition, territorial loss is inconsequential. There's always more territory to retreat to, and lost land can ultimately be regained. What matters is to defeat the enemy at the strategic level, either through attrition, as against Germany, or by cutting the enemy from their resources and making the war unsustainable to them, as with Napoleon's army. I believe that in the minds of Russian generals, retreating from either the Kharkov oblast or from Kherson, is not a very consequential move on the long term. They know that once the enemies forces are effectively beaten, these areas can be regained quickly and at low cost. They're probably projecting gains much firther West, actually.
Thank you, Serge. Wonderful article, I had not known of Moltke's dismay at the future prospect of "Total War". One thing I noted on your Mount Rushmore, all are true legends worthy of the rock. The final four can be disputed as a matter of opinioned debate, but no one can argue they don't belong in the ring with any contender. It's a very interesting topic, and I considered who I might put forward as alternates and the cases for and against when I suddenly realized: Hannibal, Napoleon, and Manstein all ended up losing their wars, and as pointed out, Moltke's success became Germany's tragic fate! Curious if you had considered that irony and how would you argue the case for your final four given no shortage of rivals for the Mountain who knew nothing but victories?
Interesting. But with the key decision makers on the other side of the table found in Washington rather than Kiev, it's hard to see how any amount of finesse could have avoided the outcome.
The initial gambit of the SMO is a year and a half behind us. The once feared US sanctions regime lays broken in the corner. EU's run at being a global power center has ended. Some cabinet-war.
A peace is unlikely until Ukraine exhausts itself. For that they would have to conscript the university population, burn thru those, and continue long enough that the educational system is reduced. Cruel fate for a country, really. Something about fate of proxies... can't remember... ask the late (way too late) Kissinger, perhaps. He was the expert.
One, volkskrieg depends on either massive logistics for the new "armies", or guerilla war as we saw in occupied portions of the Soviet Union, the Balkans, France, and numerous issues the US has faced since 1955. Ukraine touted the partisan form early on before the feint on Kiev faded. The SMO so far seems sensitive to mass territory grabs. While the NATO side likely cannot arm a volkskreig, if indigenous soldiers could be raised.
Second is an observation. Hitler discounted the chance for a volkeskreig in 1940. He also saw the weakness of the French military psyche. Sedan was the key to unleashing Guderian and Rommel to roll to the Channel, and the French had no unity to resist once Hitler put the Swaztika over the Arc de Triumph. If you have not you should read Strange Defeat by Marc Bloch, and Strange Victory by Earnest May. Bloch was a reserve staff officer in the French army of 1940. May a US Historian/professor.
Great article, but I feel a massive thing was left out at the end. It was & has never been a Russian /Ukrainian war. We only have to look at the lead up to the American sponsored & instigated maidan coup in 2014. Remember what Burns the then head of the CIA wrote in the 2,000's. He wrote Nyet means Nyet referring to the NATO alliance trying to get Ukraine into NATO. What it would result in. The Americans knew fine well what they were doing, they knew fine well what it would result in. We all should know of the statements made by Merkel, Hollande & Poroshenko. About the Minsk 1 & 2 agreements. They deceived the Russians for the reason to buy time so they could fully arm & train the Ukrainians to confront the Russians on their behalf. We now know Russia went to Kiev with only a force of 40 thousand to hopefully force the Ukrainians into peace talks. It 100% worked. There was no seige of Kiev. No Ukrainian military victory around Kiev. The Russians withdrew as a sign of goodwill. When the talks started in Turkey. We now know Boris Johnson went to Kiev & told them not to sign any peace deal with the Russians, he went on to promise the Ukrainians everything needed for victory. If that action right there doesn't confirm it was never a conflict between Russia/Ukraine I don't know what more proof to give. It was after this happened the wheels were put in motion inside of Russia to face up to who they were really fighting against. The arrogance of our western rulers was in the fact, they thought their extremist sanctions against Russia would have been enough to render the Russians unable to finance their SMO. Remember Queen Von De Leyen & her washing machine micro chips story, finishing that idiotic speach of hers with the mortal line of. The Russian Economy is in tatters, tatters I tell you. The more the Queen's sanctions failed the more she imposed. Regardless of the damage she was doing to the economy of the EU. The more strength Russia gained financially the more extreme the lies & propaganda became. It's so obvious now America & some of its policies. Like its anti inflation policy & its attack on its allies energy infrastructure. Where & are aimed at it's European allies as much as they are against Russia. The cowardly vassels in the EU are watching their own citizens struggle & suffer through their actions. But they've gone that far in, they can't get out. Von De Leyen & Borrel will gladly send EU troops into Ukraine rather than admit their massive mistakes. Germany the industrial power house that has single hand idly kept the EU afloat at times. Is being deindustrialised (who is the benefactor). But they can't stop they know the humiliation they'll have to face. They'd rather hundreds of thousands more die than face up to their disastrous actions. As the EU commits suicide, the Germans are suffering the most. But no other country has a leader as weak as Scholtz, no other country has a foreign minister lacking in intelligence as much as Germany has, since Liz Truss was sacked. At least the British realised very quickly they had to get rid of their idiot. Sadly the Germans are sleep walking & so are the rest of the EU. While Queen Von De Leyen & Lord Borrel of the Jungle are around. The leadership in Russia are light years away from the western leaders in intelligence & professionalism. They understand mitary matters much better also. Russia won't trust the west for any agreements. They're all in for it now & they're fully prepared to face NATO as they know how idiotic those making the decisions in the west are.
Russia has artillery and air overwhelming dominance led to a 10-1 butchery of Ukrainian soldiers across the 1000km battle line. The horrible cold winter and destroyed Ukrainian infrastructure results in mass migration. Primarily the US, a foreign power, pays for the Ukrainian resistance. A people's war? No, a proxy war, and a lost one at that.
I am very suspicious of this assumed much touted 'overwhelming' air dominance. We don't actually see much evidence of it at all. It is not true as presented.
Russia is dropping gigantic glide bombs onto the Ukrainian front line. Do you ever hear of Ukraine doing that? Seriously, Russia has overwhelming air (and artillery) superiority. Hear of the two dozen Ukrainian jets being dropped out of the sky without warning far from the front line? Ever hear Ukraine doing that?
Excluding drone attacks, there are virtually zero videos coming out showing Ukrainian air force based attacks on Russian forces. There are loads of videos coming out showing Russian attacks (especially by helicopters) on Ukrainian forces. I believe if there was still a balance in air power we would be seeing a lot more Ukrainian propaganda to that effect... but we are not.
Historically speaking the gung-ho Nationalists were not the Prussians but the other Germans. It was them that demanded Alsace Lorraine against Bismarck’s better judgement.
Another problem for Germany/Prussia was that their casualties were nearly as high as the French. A mistake Putin is at pains to avoid.
Historian Michael Howard wrote that the French could have concentrated guérilla type attacks on the long enemy lines of communications and that might have compelled a German withdrawal from Paris.
Prussia would have hesitated to extend the war for fear of a British intervention and maybe Austria.
I think that this war in many ways is more like the Spanish Civil War, with one side fighting a war to win and the other fighting a PR war to encourage foreign intervention.
The idea that guerrilla type attacks on Prussian lines would have lifted the siege of Paris seems unrealistic. One must read the accounts of the ministers of the Gouvernement de la Défense Nationale who moved in and out of Paris for a month or two to negotiate terms. They considered the Prussians to be extremely well entrenched. In fact, attempts made from Paris to breach the Prussian lines ended in thorough failure, despite being well planned and executed with much will.
Howard’s view was that if the French had concentrated their efforts on attacking the very long German rail l of c 450km all the way back to the frontier, they could have seriously embarrassed the Prussian army.
The assaults from within Paris failed rather as the Ukrainians have against the Russians.
Note the Prussians started the war as the more popular country and ended it unpopular especially in Britain where it mattered most. A guérilla war would not have favoured them.
I believe the train line used by the Germans to sustain the siege went through Bar-le-Duc, about 100 km full east of Paris, and then up to Metz.
In order to attack this railway, the French armies should have been able to reach deep within Prussian-controlled territory. The Loire Army took a long time to meet significant success, and it remained broadly South of Paris, never being able to move East. Then, there was the Bourbaki Army far on the Eastern border, around Belfort, who had to seek refuge in Switzerland to avoid being destroyed. Bourbaki should have attempted to rescue Metz, but he was a long way from the railway.
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The real failure was before Sedan. Instead of joining forces with Bazaine in the East, Mac-Mahon, after returning from Reichshoffen to Paris, was sent to reconstitute an army in Chalons, but this army was ordered to go North towards Sedan, where the Emperor was. It would have been more clever to let the Chalons army move East to rescue Metz, and to have the Sedan army move South to come closer to their reinforcement.
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But really, after Sedan, the new armies raised in the Western and Western-central regions of France were far from Prussian supply lines. Only the Franc-Tireurs resistance could hurt the Prussian between Metz and Paris, but I doubt they'd have been powerful enough to cut the supply line.
Interesting conclusion and it may come to that - if Russia has that strength. But I'm not sure. If Russia can gain two or three Bakhmut style victories this may convince Ukraine, NATO and the US that defeating and decolonizing the Russian Federation was a costly pipe dream. In 1875 France and Germany were not so far apart in terms of population and resources - Germany was the larger, and as time went on, grew much richer. (German industrial power grew greatly in the late 19th and early 20th century - it was far richer than in 1970.) But they were both great powers - and France was only one ally away from being a dangerous enemy. And while it is true that good relations between France and Germany were not possible because of the Lost Provinces, the two nations cooperated on a daily basis well enough and even collaborated on colonial matters on occasion. Even when the new Kaiser kicked out Bismarck and alienated Russia - and gained France its ally - it's really hard to see that France was eager for a war of revenge. It wasn't Paris writing a blank check for Moscow, but Berlin creating one for Vienna.
Now let's say - hypothetically - that Russia clears out Luhansk and Donetsk - and "demilitarizes" Ukraine and the West forces Ukraine to accept a peace. I do not see that a country with a population of say 20 million (it will be a neutral nation if there is peace) being eager to take on 145 million Russians possessing one of the world's most formidable military machines any time in the future. Nor do I see the West eager for a rematch with the world's strongest nuclear power. You quoted Clausewitz - I'd like to remind you that Clausewitz also argued that in every major war there is a "peace party" and the closer to peace the situation comes, the stronger it will be. Let's not forget that after 1871 the Lost Provinces were exactly that. (Alsace no doubt had German sympathizers - but Lorraine was French heartland.) The Russian Federation will incorporate several million people that have shown dramatically that they want no part of Kiev's rule. If anything Ukraine will blame the West for not coming to their aid - and unless Kiev ever believes that NATO and the US is willing to directly intervene in a new war to create a Greater Ukraine - and risk a nuclear showdown with Russia - Ukraine is not going to renew hostilities alone. The French economy was strong enough to pay a hefty reparations bill to Germany (France had more than a little bit of responsibility for that war) and was strong enough to rebuild its military. Ukraine has done everything wrong since 1991 and it's one of the poorest countries in Europe with the lowest rate of population reproduction - a whopping 1.2. So unless NATO members decide to militarize their economy and risk WWIII Ukraine will be on its own. And on its own, Ukraine is not going to march to Moscow.
As he reliably does, Serge has structured a historically accurate explanation of Von Moltke's war and his angst about the way it evolved into Volkskrieg elucidated in his Reichstag summation. He is further solidly correct in his analysis of Putin's intent and purpose in finally acting in Ukraine. Where I take some issue with him is in his inference about Putin's intention with the SMO. Putin's strategy was sound and achievable against Ukraine; just not against a Ukraine funded and fully supported by The Empire and its clumsy toy, NATO. If Putin can be strategically faulted it has to be because he could not believe the U.S., in its vicious determination to do anything short of actual commitment to engage itself, would go all in and back the Ukronazis with endless arms and money. That is all that frustrated the kabinettkrieg Putin foresaw, and it has kept an insane Ukraine still fighting to the last Ukrainian for the gratification of doddering, impotent, old Aunt Sam.
Putin's strategy was also appropriate in terms of the reality at the time. They were (1) the extent of the military he had available at the time, including the need to not over commit but allow for other attacks by NATO; and (2) the biggest threat to Russia being the economic war begun against it by the US/EU/UK.
He had to win the second war first, as he and Russia did, including shoring up new/expanded trading partners and building industry to replace Western imports. That was necessary to ensure the ability to fully mobilize Russian resources to militarily defeat NATO in Ukraine.
It has, in fact, been a brilliant display of getting the order of response s right in full spectrum warfare.
I see Linds generations of war here. The counter to manuver warfare is insurgency. The answer to insurgency is to not occupy, but to attrite the nation along a front and a type of war that gives you the best loss ratio.
And the Russians chose to fight this attrition war where the locals would be loyal. I see the withdrawal from Chernigov as partly a response to the hostile natives, giving away Russian positions to NATO. It would have been a mess to have international media focusing on Russian reprisals against partisans and protesters in northeast Ukraine.
In what the late Saddam Hussein once dubbed “the great Satan,” roughly two-thirds of the United States enlisted military corps is white . . . The fat, bulbous, U.S. Secretary of Defense Lloyd Austin once confirmed in a 93-2 vote of the U.S. Senate, immediately embarked on a whirlwind media tour of duty, telling the pseudo-secular sycophants in the state-controlled tabloid press and state-controlled television talk show circuit about how the U.S. Army is full of bad racist white men.
And now the U.S. Army is doing ads begging for more young white males?
What happened?
Even with a full-on declaration of war from Congress, and even if Gavin Newsome could be cheated into the Oval Office by ZOG somehow, while Globohomo diversity brigades go door-to-door looking to impress American children into military service, they will be met with armed, well-trained opposition, the invasion at the Southern border is going full tilt, and the drugs are flowing in like never before . . .
With the borders of Europe and the USA wide open, civil warfare within the USA, Britain, and most of Europe is a certainty if foreign wars are initiated. Nobody is going to fight a war for Biden, he is dumber than Bush . . . Nobody is going to fight a war for that kikesucking Zionist ass-whore Nikki Haley, and I mean nobody.
Get ready for it . . . the fat old devil worshipping fags on Capitol Hill, on Wall Street, in Whitehall, and in Brussels are in no shape to fight a war themselves, and most Americans are armed to the teeth with their own guns . . . NATO hates heterosexual white men . . . they said so themselves . . .
https://cwspangle.substack.com/i/138320669/nato-an-anti-white-and-anti-family-institution
A valuable footnote. I think this is the most intriguing aspect of the Russian thinking during this period. How many moves ahead did they anticipate? I would be prepared to accept that Putin and his planners in fact did give consideration to the scenario that has played out.
Perhaps a simplistic theory, but I keep returning to the fact that Putin is a black belt in judo. A fighting style which has as one of its primary philosophies "Seiryoku-Zenyo," literally "good use of energy." Being aware that the very moment Russian troops crossed the Ukrainian border the response from the US would be one of maximum pressure, at least in economic and information war terms, the Russians opted for realistic gains in securing the land bridge to Crimea and exerting leverage over Kiev to obtain a political settlement. The Americans were the wild card...
If they pursued total war, the Russian military could assume a defensive posture, build manpower and master new weapons of warfare. It would be in Russia's interest to remain in this posture while the bloodthirsty and radical elements in Kiev with maximalist dreams became a drag on US/EU capacities to supply a long war and maintain social stability within Ukraine.
All that the Russian military has to do is hold the line and grow in strength. The political and economic realities will eventually crater the Ukrainian state from within.
Now that's using your opponents momentum against them.
Well said, Ryan. Notice that I said "if" Putin could be faulted. I think, given that his aims were always limited and specific, I think your judo reference is sound. It is our own country that is insane and incompetent.
__________________________________________________________________________________________
“Oh how fond they are of the book of Esther, which is so beautifully attuned to their bloodthirsty, vengeful, murderous yearning and hope.” — Martin Luther
https://cwspangle.substack.com/p/oh-how-fond-they-are-of-the-book
__________________________________________________________________________________________
❝Bolshevism and Jewry are two words for the same thing. Peace is Bolshevism’s worst enemy, which it must destroy in order to realize its plans for world domination. Thus, Bolshevism’s ever-repeated life and death declarations of battle against the whole of the world become all too understandable.❞
http://www.renegadetribune.com/jewish-bolshevism-throughout-the-world/
__________________________________________________________________________________________
PROTOCOLS OF THE MEETINGS OF THE LEARNED ELDERS OF ZION . . . Protocol No. 7 – World-Wide Wars
❝We must be in a position to respond to every act of opposition by war with the neighbors of that country which dares to oppose us: but if these neighbors should also venture to stand collectively together against us, then we must offer resistance by a universal war.❞
https://cwspangle.substack.com/p/protocol-no-7-world-wide-wars
Putin took the measure of his real opponent - the corrupt and senile JR Biden - and felt that the time was ripe. Just as he took the measure of Biden's boss for eight years - the callow and Western hating, and equally corrupt - B. Hussein Obama, as he took parts of the eastern provinces and severed the Crimea with nary a whimper of objection.
Sodom Hussein Obama's mentor Zbigniew Brzezinski (Mika’s father, next to Nasty Pelousy in the link below) was the monster in the Carter administration who armed and financed the Mujahedeen in Afghanistan to fight against the Soviets . . . after the Mujahedeen were armed with sophisticated weapons, the Soviets left, the result was the USA got 911, and women now can walk 3 paces behind the donkey, the Mujahedeen evolved into the Taliban, who evolved into Al-Qaeda, who evolved into ISIS/ISIL/Daesh . . . Brzezinski, for all practical purposes, can be called the ‘Grandfather of ISIS.’
ISIS = Khazar = Kiev junta = Zionist IMF
https://cwspangle.substack.com/i/85711501/sodom-hussein-obama
For all his astuteness, Putin completely underestimated the depths of psychopathy of the US neocons.
Ilhan Omar (D-MN) and Rashida Tlaib (D-MI) have every right to say what they like about Israel and the genocide of Palestinians as elected members of the US House of Representatives; they never took an oath to serve Israel . . .
I voted for Ron Desantis (R-FL) to be governor of Florida, not ambassador to Israel.
The recently ousted Speaker of the US House of Representatives, Congressman Kevin McCarthy (R-CA), who took at least a dozen votes to get elected speaker, traveled to Israel immediately upon his election, declaring to the Israeli Knesset that the USA is steadfastly committed to supporting Ukraine in their war against Russia . . .
Was he running for speaker of the Israeli Knesset too?
Following his ouster . . . McCarthy (R-CA) traveled abroad again, this time to England, and expressed his open contempt for the white Republicans who make up the majority of the GOP and praised Democrats for their diversity during a debate at Oxford in the wake of his ouster as House Speaker . . .
Is he now running for the Prime Minister of the U.K.?
Nevertheless, he is free to go on media tours bashing white people and lobbying for Israel, because he has now resigned from the US House of Representatives . . . I can only conclude that the collective RINO butthurt over former Speaker McCarthy is all about the Israelis who have hijacked the American deep state war machine.
It has become so painfully obvious, especially where you have someone like Nikki Haley wagging her finger and shouting down Vivek Ramaswamy in a presidential debate on live national television when the questions of this Ukrainian war against Russia and any mention of Israel are concerned, that the United States government has become a wholly owned subsidiary of the American Israeli Political Action Committee.
https://cwspangle.substack.com/i/138320669/fight-your-own-wars-you-kikesucking-zionist-ass-whores
GTFO here. What a disconnected retard. In my neck of the woods we’d call you Billy. But you’re retarded so I get it
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Putin: Woke Culture in U.S. is Just Like Bolsheviks, 'Dogmatism Bordering on Absurdity' . . .
https://valdaiclub.com/events/posts/articles/vladimir-putin-meets-with-members-of-the-valdai-discussion-club-transcript-of-the-18th-plenary-session/
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“Woke,” “wokeism,” “wokeness,” etc., are weasel words used to hide the truth about the Jews and the Frankfurt School.
https://cwspangle.substack.com/p/how-the-grift-right-gimps-for-the
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❝The Frankfurt School adapted Marx’s theories on revolution to include Freud’s theory of the subconscious. The Cultural Marxists’ main focus was to reshape the subconscious of Western men and women and thus create new type of person: one who would react passively to provocations of all kinds.
Cultural Marxists encourage abortion, birth control, divorce, homosexuality, “carrier women,” drugs, miscegenation, the destruction of the traditional family, and unrestricted immigration of racial foreigners into white countries. This is a reflection of what the Cultural Marxists preach: white reproduction is evil, and that which prevents white reproduction is good.❞
https://nordicresistancemovement.org/what-is-cultural-marxism/
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Ah, the cut and thrust of reasoned debate! What weapons will you use against me next? Hyperbole? Pathos? Iambic Pentameter?
For all his depth of cunning does he know
that neocons could not even retreat
if in their thinktanks they would puzzle out
that there's no way to win this conflict now?
_______________________________________________________________________________
“Oh how fond they are of the book of Esther, which is so beautifully attuned to their bloodthirsty, vengeful, murderous yearning and hope.” — Martin Luther
https://cwspangle.substack.com/p/oh-how-fond-they-are-of-the-book
_______________________________________________________________________________
❝Bolshevism and Jewry are two words for the same thing. Peace is Bolshevism’s worst enemy, which it must destroy in order to realize its plans for world domination. Thus, Bolshevism’s ever-repeated life and death declarations of battle against the whole of the world become all too understandable.❞
http://www.renegadetribune.com/jewish-bolshevism-throughout-the-world/
_______________________________________________________________________________
PROTOCOLS OF THE MEETINGS OF THE LEARNED ELDERS OF ZION . . . Protocol No. 7 – World-Wide Wars
❝We must be in a position to respond to every act of opposition by war with the neighbors of that country which dares to oppose us: but if these neighbors should also venture to stand collectively together against us, then we must offer resistance by a universal war.❞
https://cwspangle.substack.com/p/protocol-no-7-world-wide-wars
Is anyone surprised by the sober analysis and truth we get from the supposedly amateur "Big Serge" while our government, intel establishment and their media toadies feed us lies and fairy tales?
“Oh how fond they are of the book of Esther, which is so beautifully attuned to their bloodthirsty, vengeful, murderous yearning and hope.” — Martin Luther
https://cwspangle.substack.com/p/oh-how-fond-they-are-of-the-book
Putin fino ad ora ha saputo gestire in modo corretto i passaggi. Si è vista la reazione avendo intrapreso una operazione speciale. Se avesse scatenato una guerra saremmo arrivati ad una guerra esplicita
El judeomessianisme fa gairebé dos mil anys que escampa entre nosaltres el seu missatge verinós. Els universalismes democràtics i comunistes són més recents, però només han reforçat la vella narrativa jueva. Són els mateixos ideals.
Els ideals transnacionals, transracials, transsexuals, transculturals que aquestes ideologies ens prediquen (més enllà dels pobles, races, cultures) i que són el sosteniment diari de les nostres escoles, als nostres mitjans de comunicació, a la nostra cultura popular, a les nostres universitats, i sobre al nostres els carrers han acabat reduint la nostra identitat biosimbòlica i el nostre orgull ètnic a la seva mínima expressió.
El judaisme, el cristianisme i l'islam són cultes a la mort originats a l'Orient Mitjà i totalment aliens a Europa i als seus pobles.
De vegades ens preguntem per què l'esquerra europea es porta tan bé amb els musulmans. Per què un moviment sovint obertament antireligiós es posa del costat d'una religiositat ferotge que sembla oposar-se a gairebé tot allò que l'esquerra sempre ha pretès defensar? Part de l'explicació rau en el fet que l'islam i el marxisme tenen una arrel ideològica comuna: el judaisme.
Don Rumsfeld tenia raó quan va dir: "Europa s'ha desplaçat en el seu eix", va ser el bàndol equivocat que va guanyar la Segona Guerra Mundial, i es fa més clar cada dia . . . Què ha fet l'OTAN per defensar Europa? Absolutament res . . . Els meus enemics no són a Moscou, Damasc, Teheran, Riad o algun eteri bogeyman teutónic, els meus enemics són a Washington, Brussel·les i Tel Aviv.
https://cwspangle.substack.com/p/pardonne-mon-francais-va-te-faire
Good piece Serge.
I have wondered since successively the Kiev, Kherson, & Kharkov, disasters - if these were blunders or intentional "Wounded Wolf" Strategy, to draw UKR & NATO deeper and deeper into the dark forest of total anihilation in the straightforward application of Moltke's understanding.
Note: "Russia began a Kabinettskriege in 2022"
It cannot be excluded that a conspiracy to "buy off" the war was not in play as plan A, as succeeded in 2003 USA/Irak2, that failed here.
Real war then would have become plan B: "Putin’s cabinet war - limited war for limited aims - exploded into a national war."
The IMF Jews are in bed with the Turks, Saudis, and NATO, they were worried about a Trump audit of the Federal Reserve and about Trump and Putin teaming up to destroy them once and for all . . . Trump was a vote for peace, and peace does not make money for the weapon industry. Trump wouldn’t give the deep state the shadow wars they wanted in Syria and Ukraine, so they rigged two US elections . . . and the first thing they did afterwards was send troops to Syria.
The pseudo secular media and their Zionist masters profit from destabilization. Retaining control of US foreign policy is what drives the neo-cons and Hillary’s flying monkeys . . . along with the millions Goldman Sachs and the Saudis have paid them.
The banksters need a war desperately right now. They’ve tried so hard in Syria, and it just hasn’t worked. Then they got crazy Trump actually saying we should stay out of the Middle East and focus on our own problems, and people were listening . . . What’s a self-respecting globalist financier to do?
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“The worst single mistake ever made in the history of our country: going into the Middle East, by President Bush.” — Donald Trump
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So, they sent their puppets like McCain, Kasich, Romney, Clinton, and Biden out to talk up the fight against “evil” and threaten Russia, hoping to fool those dumb white ‘Murkins one more time into sending their sons off to die for God and Country and Goldman Sachs.
https://cwspangle.substack.com/p/zelensky-biden-satanism-war-greed
A valuable commentary and description of the war Russia is now waging.
However, labeling this conflict as a "peoples' war" by Ukraine is a stretch. The Ukrainian people are certainly being exploited and destroyed but it is through control by the tribe in Kiev, Wall Street and its control over the US government and European governments, all of whose resources are being used to march the people to their deaths.
'people power' is a myth.
In pretty much every country the number of people with actual power is far fewer than the number of people who think themselves in power.
As long as the ruling minority can conscript its entire population and resources to fight, it is a people's war.
Exactly. "[A]ll men aged 21 to 40 were to be called to arms". Now it's what in Ukraine, 17 to 70?
Volodymyr Zelensky is an Israeli operative . . . The Ukrainian parliament is full of Jewish apparatchiks . . .
Jewish U.S. Rep. Adam Schiff (D), great grandson of Jacob Schiff (who funded Bolshevism, Leon Trotsky, and the October Revolution from Wall Street) is following in his great grandfather’s footsteps by illegally trafficking weapons with Igor Pasternak (seated behind John Kerry in the link below), funding foreign conflicts abroad . . . and trying to get Syria for the oil pipelines by blaming the Russians for another false flag . . .
ISIS = Khazar = Kiev junta = Zionist IMF
https://cwspangle.substack.com/i/85711501/schiffty-schitty-kike-adam-schiffs-collusion-with-oligarch-ukrainian-arms-dealer-exposed
Which means that such wars will continue until people learn the power of "No".
NATO – an anti-white and anti-family institution.
After the apocalypse of 1945, a number of global organizations have been formed with the aim of maintaining and expanding totalitarian liberalism. One of the earliest organizations formed for this purpose was the war alliance "North Atlantic Treaty Organization", or NATO, which can be seen as the military wing of globalism.
In addition to ensuring that Washington always has international support for its military campaigns, NATO as an institution is explicitly anti-white and explicitly dedicated to "racial justice" for racial aliens living in white countries. As early as 1999, NATO authored reports blaming nationalists for a number of modern problems and warning against the influence of nationalism.
In 2023, the war alliance held a summit at its headquarters in Brussels on race where the alliance's leaders pledged to fight "homogeneous attitudes" and to use NATO's "collective intelligence" for the purpose.
In fact, NATO is so dedicated to its anti-white agenda that it openly advocates that institutions must be reshaped to be "inclusive," in other words, restructured to be more anti-white, and consist of fewer white employees and executives.
https://cwspangle.substack.com/i/138320669/nato-an-anti-white-and-anti-family-institution
I believe a Volkskrieg doesn’t necessarily mean the People are *willing* to participate; forced by the Empire or not, they are in it now. And this is different from a Kabinettskrieg
Der Juden-Messianismus verbreitet seit fast zweitausend Jahren seine giftige Botschaft unter uns. Demokratische und kommunistische Universalismen sind neueren Datums, aber sie haben das alte jüdische Narrativ nur gestärkt. Das sind der dieselben Ideale . . .
Die transnationalen, transrassischen, transkulturellen Ideale, die diese Ideologien uns predigen (jenseits von Völkern, Rassen, Kulturen) und die tägliche Diät in unseren Schulen, in unseren Medien, in unserer Popkultur, bei unseren Universitäten und auf unseren Straßen sind, haben unser biosymbolische Identität und unser ethnischer Stolz auf ihren minimalen Ausdruck reduziert.
Jüdische Bankiers überschwemmten Europa mit Muslimen und Amerika mit Müll aus der Dritten Welt . . . Judentum, Christentum und Islam sind Todeskulte, die ihren Ursprung im Nahen Osten haben und Europa und seinen Völkern völlig fremd sind.
Manchmal fragt man sich, warum die europäische Linke so gut mit Muslimen klarkommt. Warum stellt sich eine oft offen antireligiöse Bewegung auf die Seite einer erbitterten Religiosität, die sich scheinbar fast allem zu widersetzen scheint, wofür die Linke immer zu stehen behauptet? Ein Teil der Erklärung liegt in der Tatsache, dass Islam und Marxismus eine gemeinsame ideologische Wurzel haben: das Judentum.
Kein Land führt bei dieser Invasion sein eigenes Rennen, weil es alles eine politische Agenda ist, die von den Vereinten Nationen geführt und von den Juden und ihren Marionetten (Politikern) vorangetrieben wird. Die meisten Menschen wollen einfach nicht wissen oder verstehen, dass dies eine politische Agenda ist. Einige schaffen es jedoch zu verstehen, dass Politiker absichtlich daran arbeiten, Muslime zu importieren und die Menschen zu ersetzen, aber das war's auch schon, sie sind wie ein Computer, der nicht weitermachen kann, weil das Programm es nicht zulässt.
Don Rumsfeld hatte Recht mit der Bemerkung: “Europa hat sich um seine Achse verschoben,” die falsche Seite hat den Zweiten Weltkrieg gewonnen, und es wird von Tag zu Tag klarer . . . Was hat die NATO getan, um Europa zu verteidigen? Absolut gar nichts . . . Meine Feinde sind nicht in Moskau, Damaskus, Teheran, Riad oder irgendeinem ätherischen germanischen Schreckgespenst, sondern in Washington, Brüssel und Tel Aviv.
https://cwspangle.substack.com/p/pardonne-mon-francais-va-te-faire
We are into semantics here. I believe it is a "people's war" because the Ukrainian people have decided to go along with, and continue to do so. It's irrelevant whether they did this voluntarily or not. They had to power to tell Z to go take a hike but didn't. That means that, for all practical purposes, they agree with what happened.
When a third of your population has fled the country, including huge numbers of military age men; when you are begging neighboring countries to repatriate your citizens to be conscripted; and when you have extensive "battier troops" to shoot anyone escaping your frontline meatgrinder, the "agreement" is pretty weak.
True. But there are, for the moment, still enough cannon fodder to put up some resistance.
Volodymyr Zelensky is an Israeli operative . . . The Ukrainian parliament is full of Jewish apparatchiks . . . no more jews = no more war . . .
Jewish U.S. Rep. Adam Schiff (D), great grandson of Jacob Schiff (who funded Bolshevism, Leon Trotsky, and the October Revolution from Wall Street) is following in his great grandfather’s footsteps by illegally trafficking weapons with Igor Pasternak (seated behind John Kerry in the link below), funding foreign conflicts abroad . . . and trying to get Syria for the oil pipelines by blaming the Russians for another false flag . . .
ISIS = Khazar = Kiev junta = Zionist IMF
https://cwspangle.substack.com/i/85711501/schiffty-schitty-kike-adam-schiffs-collusion-with-oligarch-ukrainian-arms-dealer-exposed
This is a purely academic distinction. Organized minorities will always determine the fate of nations, and it will be the ruling elite that determines whether or not to mobilize the entirety of the nation's resources to wage war. Populist moralizing on whether the ruled masses are of one minded with their rulers is not relevant to this analysis.
________________________________________________________________________________________________
❝Bolshevism and Jewry are two words for the same thing. Peace is Bolshevism’s worst enemy, which it must destroy in order to realize its plans for world domination. Thus, Bolshevism’s ever-repeated life and death declarations of battle against the whole of the world become all too understandable.❞
http://www.renegadetribune.com/jewish-bolshevism-throughout-the-world/
________________________________________________________________________________________________
PROTOCOLS OF THE MEETINGS OF THE LEARNED ELDERS OF ZION . . . Protocol No. 7 – World-Wide Wars
❝We must be in a position to respond to every act of opposition by war with the neighbors of that country which dares to oppose us: but if these neighbors should also venture to stand collectively together against us, then we must offer resistance by a universal war.❞
https://cwspangle.substack.com/p/protocol-no-7-world-wide-wars
Thanks for illuminating parallels between previous European wars and the current one. It could be argued that both France and Germany are now losing an extermination war against mass migration facilitated by the EU and GAE. Russia is the last bulwark on the continent and Ukraine a sacrificial lamb used to poke the bear, far more lopsided than the sides fighting the Prussian War.
Mass immigration is only one prong on the fork being used to destroy the West. The other is Woke ideology. Putin is fighting successfully against that too. Witness the decision to label as terrorists the LGBTQWERTY lunatics who hold such power in our society.
Russia has mass immigration going on right now too. You'd be shocked by numbers of Germans, French and Americans there and that was before Covid when i was last there. now they are building whole cities for them and what used to be a 2 month wait for residency permit is two years.
Wow, I never knew that, St. What kind of people are moving there? Conservatives sick of the dying West, or just carpet baggers in search of a quick profit?
Mainly conservatives. Sell everything and move type. You gotta have money Russia is not a welfare refugee state like Europe. And you can't work/earn money without residency permit. I'm not sure about profiting because salaries are much lower than West but cost of living is cheaper too.
Sounds like a win for Russia.
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Putin: Woke Culture in U.S. is Just Like Bolsheviks, 'Dogmatism Bordering on Absurdity' . . .
https://valdaiclub.com/events/posts/articles/vladimir-putin-meets-with-members-of-the-valdai-discussion-club-transcript-of-the-18th-plenary-session/
__________________________________________________________________________
“Woke,” “wokeism,” “wokeness,” etc., are weasel words used to hide the truth about the Jews and the Frankfurt School.
https://cwspangle.substack.com/p/how-the-grift-right-gimps-for-the
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❝The Frankfurt School adapted Marx’s theories on revolution to include Freud’s theory of the subconscious. The Cultural Marxists’ main focus was to reshape the subconscious of Western men and women and thus create new type of person: one who would react passively to provocations of all kinds.
Cultural Marxists encourage abortion, birth control, divorce, homosexuality, “carrier women,” drugs, miscegenation, the destruction of the traditional family, and unrestricted immigration of racial foreigners into white countries. This is a reflection of what the Cultural Marxists preach: white reproduction is evil, and that which prevents white reproduction is good.❞
https://nordicresistancemovement.org/what-is-cultural-marxism/
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Wait.....isn't Ukraine fighting for "our democracy???" lol
We Can't Afford Healthcare for American Children Because We Need to Keep Bombing Everyone Else's for the Love of Jesus and Israel . . .
https://cwspangle.substack.com/p/we-cant-afford-healthcare-for-american
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We need to outlaw abortion because . . . Jesus needs more babies for his war machine . . .
https://cwspangle.substack.com/i/138167431/jesus-needs-more-babies-for-his-war-machine
An interesting analysis, thanks again, Serge.
As a French amateur of military history, I have been thinking for more than a year that the 1870 war was much more relevant to understanding this War of Ukraine than WW1, which most commenters love to bring up because of the trench/position war aspect, and probably also because of the scale of maiming of soldiers.
Your depiction of the German analysis of the French political and popular reaction to defeat is most interesting, I did not know about the debate among Prussian elites.
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That being said... I think the analysis (the Prussians' first and by extension yours as well) is lacking an understanding of the mechanisms behind the French nationalistic reaction in 1870. The refusal of defeat and the belief in Guerre à Outrance was less about a refusal of Prussia's defeating French military forces, than about a refusal of the complete failure of 20 years of authoritarian rule by Napoleon III. That's what the Gouvernement de Défense Nationale was all about.
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Napoleon III was a rather mediocre mind, but an expert in faking talent by buying it from others. He was in essence little more than a political manipulator. Once he held power, he exercised it through permanent abuse of it. His regime had sent more than 100.000 political opponents in jail and to penal colonies in Algeria, in Guyane and in New Caledonia. His government was one of arrogant upper class privileged people who had never proven much but who posed as equal to the greatest generations in French history, particularly the generation of military leaders that existed un Napoleon's Empire.
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The 1870 war was started by Napoleon III and his government out of arrogance. He wanted to humiliate the King of Prussia on a rather insignificant matter of accession to the throne of Spain, because he dreamt of securing an actual Bonaparte dynasty. By declaring war on Prussia, he also set the conditions for the pan-German mutual defense treaties to operate, so that instead of fighting Prussia, France fought almost every German state representing twice the forces France could gather in a short time. In order to justify declaring war, the government lied to the French Parliament about a supposed humiliation of the French ambassador by the King of Prussia, and by Bismarck in a communication to his network of diplomats. Parliament by then was made up of people who had been appointed by the government, and whose elections were all fake, due to the system of picking "official candidates" that oppositions could hardly ever hope to beat.
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When France suffered the first catastrophic defeats, in Wissembourg first, then in Woerth-Reichshoffen after only a few days of war, it soon became obvious that the government had lied about the levels of preparedness of the French army. They were supposed to have a most modern and superior Chassepot rifle, but in fact those had not been produced in large numbers and most of the troops still used early 19th century rifles. They lacked canons as well, especially the bigger ones, and means to move them around. They lacked ammo. They even lacked shoes... In Reichshoffen, the Prusso-German army actually suffered more losses than the French side, due to rather poor tactics of sending infantry lines through the field one after the other. But German artillery dominated the battle in every way. France lost in a single battle 4 of its 6 elite heavy cuirassé cavalry regiments, which were seen as the sign of its military superiority over Europe.
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Following the Reichshoffen defeat, the military command proved utterly incapable of taking any decisive action. Moltke did not even have to work hard to trap the main army in Metz: Maréchal Bazaine chose to hide inside the fortified city because he was scared to fight, and scared to be defeated and to have his fame diminished. He'd worked hard to become an Insta-hero of the days, he couldn't fathom the idea of facing public reckoning with reality... He had several opportunities to break through Prussian besieging lines but he did not even make a proper attempts. After the war, he was tried and sentenced for betrayal... In fact, he had hoped that the Imperial government would be replaced by his monarchist friends who would shield him from the consequences of his military failure.
In Paris, both the government and parliament, made up of courtiers and insignificant sycophants who owed their positions to the Emperor's arbitrary favours, proved incapable to decide anything as well. Armies were sent to one side, then recalled and sent in the opposite direction due to changes in who managed to convince the Empress, who was acting as a ruler was the Emperor was with the Northern Army. Logistics failed utterly because no one was able to give proper orders to the train companies.
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Once Napoleon III was defeated in Sedan and made prisoner, most of his sycophants fled Paris very quickly. And Parliament failed to make decisions to replace the government and the Emperor. So that a gathering of only 20 members of Parliament, who had been the Republican minority, had to take it upon themselves to create a new government to try and salvage the situation. Only one prominent conservative figure joined them, and promoted national unity in the face of disaster. That was Adolphe Thiers, who'd later become president and oversee the massacre of rebellious civilians in the Paris Commune.
As soon as they announced the formation of a new Republican government, these minor political figures drew huge crowds of Paris in support of their action. In the coming days, many official documents were published that showed everyone how the war had been decided based on lies, how unprepared the army had been, and how useless the political institutions had proven themselves to be.
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Basically, the new Gouvernement de la Défense Nationale had no other resource than to appeal to the people's patriotic feelings. Hence the formation of new armies in the West and Central provinces. But Paris was soon put under a siege, which the new rulers faced off rather well, to be honest: they held the place for 5 months, while the initial estimate of food stocks and other resources had concluded they could hope to hold for 2 weeks! And they managed to do so without facing a revolt from the people of Paris, who suffered much. Once the siege ended though, and the government was replaced again by a conservative one, it didn't take long to experience an actual Revolution in Paris...
During the 5 months of siege, Bismarck tried to favour monarchist political factions, only to be constantly outplayed by the Republican government in Bordeaux. And indeed, as you noted in your paper, there was massive desire by the population to continue the fight, despite further failure from the top military leaders (Bourbaki especially, who utterly failed to even look like a threat on the Eastern side of the front despite having the last well-trained and experienced army under his command).
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So, to put it shortly, the reason behind the French nationalistic reaction, was a mix of shock at discovering they had been lied to and played by incompetent political leaders; anger at discovering the scale of the Emperor's impotence; resent about the 2 decades of authoritarian repression; and serious disappointment at the lack of organisation and industrial support, while the Second Empire had advertised itself as a glorious regime of all-powerful enlightened industrialists. Very simply, the French people discovered they had been thoroughly cheated by their own leaders, while for 2 decades they had believed they had gone back to the glorious days of the mythical Napoleon... These factors are much more important, I believe, in explaining the French choice to keep fighting at all costs, than any decision made by Prussian military or political leaders.
[Continuation of the post above]
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So how does it compare to Ukraine? I'd say Ukrainians were also definitely played and abused for their leaders for a while. But most of them knew it very well, there never was much illusion. First, the Ukrainian elites never promoted national unity, they promoted civil war and the reject of 30% of Ukraine's population. Two, preparations for war in Ukraine were made under the pressure of a foreign power, namely the US, and against the will of the Ukrainian people, who repeatedly voted for politicians who promised peace and appeasement with Russia. Three, when the present war started, Ukrainians demonstrated their refusal of war, by fleeing abroad. This includes half of the political cast, most industry owners, and a good chunk of the civilians in age and condition to join the military.
While you may argue Ukraine's elites between 2014 and 2022 lied and cheated like France's imperial elites prior to the 1870 war, I don't think Ukrainians believed much in their lies. So that they did not experience the complete shock and disillusion experienced by French people towards the end of 1870. Instead, some revived the old West Ukrainian hatreds against Russians, but those had never really abandoned those feelings. And most simply faced powerlessness in the face of continued political and democratic failure that had plagued Ukraine for 30 years before.
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So that the idea of a Ukrainian Guerre à Outrance seems to me like just one more propaganda effort by a government and an elite who've never had the support of the majority of the masses. Unfortunately for Ukrainians, their corrupt elites did not collapse, and the cheats and manipulators who drew them into war did not retire to leave the place to a new generation of better intended leaders. They're still very much there, applying violence on their people to force them into continuing a pointless war effort. The reason is probably that they are puppets who are useful to more important external powers. Until they cease to be useful, they'll be kept in place.
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Thus, Putin is in a different position from Moltke or Bismarck. He can work to destroy the Ukrainian state not just to made it incapable to recover out of having no structures left, as you explained, but also he can bet that the Nationalistic factions that ruled Ukraine against the Ukrainian people will be too weak and too discredited to hope to revive an anti-Russian sentiment on the long run. He probably expects moral and emotional collapse, which will give an opportunity for a reset of Ukrainian minds.
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I've longed been convinced that Ukrainians will end up seeing what the US, the UK, the EU, and the Ukrainian nationalistic and corrupt factions that have led them into this war, actually did to them. And I'm convinced they will turn against all these at the end, and seek justice in any way they can. When this happens, Russia's long held discourse towards Ukrainians will be validated. And Putin's choice to not pound on Ukrainian civilians at the beginning of this war will have effects playing in his favour. Given that any surviving Ukrainian independent country will probably be 50% if not 30% of the original independent Ukraine, and given that most of those who are now refugees across Europe will not want to return to live in such a country if it is still led by the corrupt warmongering factions, I don't think Russia is likely to face the kind of long term threat that IIIrd Republic France was to Germany.
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Finally, it would take out-of-proportion effort from the EU and the US to keep supporting such an anti-Russia Ukrainian state in the long run. They can keep working on the propaganda message that Ukrainians are heroes, but they will have a hard time claiming Ukrainians are victorious heroes.
And European populations are massively against this project. They have their own problems to care about, they know trouble is brewing inside their societies, and they will vote for those who propose an end to foolish international aggression policies. The Ukrainian elites will end up migrating to the US if they want to save their lives, because they will no longer be provided with the means to force themselves on the Ukrainian population. Then, Putin will seek cooperation with more friendly European leaders, and he'll tell Ukrainians that if they want to find emotional closure by erasing the legacy of those who ruled them for 15 to 20 years, then Russia can offer them some form of return to the old "Sister Nations" situation.
I like that very much. The whole thing: both posts. You have your own Substack or site? Write other things?
I like what you say very much, believe it. Hope I'm not kidding myself; I know I am very prone to 'believing' that which I want to hear anyway.
Your concluding mention of 'European populations' - that's where I pin all my hopes. I think there's going to be a phase change in our populations because I believe they are now human aggregations such as have never existed before in the world.
For the first time 'the mass' can be aware of itself as a coherent entity with agency; communicate within itself instantly, know everything, find, calculate, absorb, manipulate new information.
It is/will be an entirely new thing on the planet.
This should, I'd think, play into what you mention: the feelings of the populations. They really will become of dominant significance.
I do not have my own Substack. But I've been thinking about it...
Might be good. A caveat: they will perhaps cut you off without proper explanation. They are not real 'user friendly'.
I have/had a substack - responding to their urging as they tried to build their business - and they without notice stopped letting me make posts. Because, it said, I 'might have' transgressed their rules.
They explained no further.
They offered an avenue of response which I used and asked them what the problem was, could they be more specific.
They did not reply, did not explain but a few days or weeks later they cut off the blog from public view entirely. Which is where it is at now.
And I responded again asking for elucidation. And again and to this day got nothing.
I have no following and put no effort into trying to build one so I'm unmoved, unharmed by them entirely so I don't much care.
But you can see that I would not now invest time, energy, hope, future prospects in their platform. I'd view it as just asking for trouble.
We all should - I think - be removing our dependency on 'free' social media platforms. It is just asking for trouble. In the end we get nothing for free.
Better to have your own domain and get it hosted somewhere and put your own site up, perhaps your own Wordpress blog.
Yes, harder to put yourself before millions but nevertheless. Many have done it and have succeeded.
Perhaps use these media concurrent with your own. And with every post you make reference your own site attempting to drive traffic that way.
That's what I'd do. What I sort of do in a desultory sort of way. For instance: want to know about Covid? Well my contribution to that is not on Substack, thank god, but on my own site: covidhonesty.com which is more public minded than substack. :)
PROTOCOLS OF THE MEETINGS OF THE LEARNED ELDERS OF ZION . . . Protocol X – Preparing for Power . . . (((SARS-CoV2)))
❝. . . utterly exhaust humanity with dissention, hatred, struggle, envy and even by the use of torture, by starvation, by the inoculation of diseases. by want, so that the “Goyim” see no other issue than to take refuge in our complete sovereignty in money and in all else.❞
https://cwspangle.substack.com/p/protocol-x-preparing-for-power-sars
You may have been targeted because of your views elsewhere.
Summary? The European Garden is over-run with weeds.
The U.S. ? A country run by the Citystate of Washington DC. The butt of it's own joke.
The United States government has become a wholly owned subsidiary of the American Israeli Political Action Committee.
https://cwspangle.substack.com/i/138320669/fight-your-own-wars-you-kikesucking-zionist-ass-whores
This is very informative, very well written, and the necessary complement to the post's focus on the Prussian side
Your conclusions and parallels to the current Ukraine Russia situation again are very informative, and a useful counter to those many who predict a terrible, lengthy and undefeatable 'insurgency' which gradually will degrade Russian arms and army and demoralise Russian society
This is a lucid approach to this war, one which is rare - so yes I encourage you to start your substack
This was an excellent clarification to Big Serges piece. Thanks !
France under Napoleon III.
An Empire of Lies snuggled and coddled by a few Elites.
The Blueprint for Washington DC. Today.
Thanks for a very informative comment Pierre.
As a Russian, I feel the need to add a dimension to this discussion, and in particular refute this incessant point of "IF X, then Ukraine would be allowed to re-arm itself and wage another war in the future".
No. This point has passed. It could've worked in March of 2022, but those days are no longer there. And it has to do with demographics, propaganda and Ukrainian mentality.
Let's talk demographics first. Ukraine is already 10-15 million people short (including the loss of people in the new Russian oblasts). Whether you buy the un-substantiated in 20+ years official initial population of 40 mil or the more realistic numbers of 32 mil, that's a loss of a third or quarter of the existing number of population, and specifically - younger, working class people and professionals.
That is a huge blow to the economy. What happens next, is that the noose would self-tighten due to this loss. Less people in the econony means less consumers and so, less business activity. Less business activity - worse economy, more incentive for people to move out of the country, accelerating the cycle of immigration.
People that have moved in and rooted themselves in the new country would seek to pull their relatives out. More bleeding.
This is expanded by the second component of Ukraine's future systemic failure - mentality. Ukrainians are 90s Russians, in effect. They have never evolved past the oligarchic tribal rule, and they never moved past worship of the West (and the idea that a person's goal is to eventually immigrate to said West), and corruption is Ukraine's lifeblood. All the fervent nationalism is a thin veneer on the ukro society, existing only thanks to the generous economic dotations from Western states.
What this means is, the moment a ceasefire is made and any sort of "peace agreement" is achieve and there's even a TIIIIIIINY breach on the closed borders... Even more Ukranians would leave for the greener pastures of the Sacred West.
Ukranians arent the French in the 1800s. They a) can leave the premises of their war-torn country and b) there's really no Volkskrieg, not truly. There's still a lot of sympathisers to the idea of a full Russian rule over Ukraine, and more than those - people that equally hate Zelensky and the ukro government and Russia/Russians. But the latter part doesn't mean they'll fight for the former. So a disappointing ceasfire would just re-ignite the habitual Ukranian oligarch and bandit infighting, not solidify the society further. If it hadn't really solidified by now - going further, without military victories, it can only fall apart more.
The blame game will begin. More maidans. More fear. More crackdowns. More immigration. Worse business. Worse economy... You get the drift by now.
But what of those who are staunch believers in the Ukro project, the good useful proxy-bots to the GAE? Well thanks to Ukrainians' own propaganda, anything short of getting all of Donbass and Crimea and ugh, Rostov, would be considered a failure of this project. Ukranians are even more than we Russians prone to fall into gloom and demoralized self-reflection, only unlike us, they'll be doing it amidst a country full of destroyed infrastructure, dysfunctional economy, hundreds of thousands of dead and dozens of thousands invalid veterans. And also - it would be forced to remain on a permanent war footing that would further drain the state despite any potential boons from military contracts it could get with the West.
All these aspects combined guarantee that an upheaval of Ukraine into this tight boisterous revanshist Israel, should Russia stop at 4 oblasts and work out an agreement, is impossible.
Instead, what it WOULD be, is a festering sore. Not an Israel, but a Somalia. Dangerous and unpleasant, but yet...
People have to understand that in general, the failed counteroffensive was the nail in the coffin. Ukraine will NEVER have better military chances than it did this past summer. And so, the best scenario for it is to turn into this belligerent "Larger Lithuania" - turtled up in a defensive posture, provocatory, but constantly depopulating, depressed and unable to rise up for a true "second round". Unless it wants a complete suicide.
And another gut punch to the "dreams of re-militarization" - Russia and Belarus bordering this failed state. Common language. You wouldn't be able to stop Ukranians in this post-war era from looking over the fence and seeing how much better it is in Russia, in DNR/LNR.
The hatred combined with anger... Yep, you guessed it, immigration again.
So, you can arm Ukraine all you want in the pos-war period, you can funnel any "reconstruction money" into it... But unless the West is planning to build Ukranianans their own Switzerland in the remaning territories and free of charge, it will simply slowly rot. It could rot very loudly and clank their weaponry, but...
Demographics, mentality, propaganda. The three Horsemen of Ukrocalypse.
Blackomega:
Thanks for a succinct view from the Russia/Ukraine neighborhood.
From the perspective of someone who has known some Russians, Ukrainians and Poles who emigrated to North America over the past 30 or 40 years, your comments lay bare the mindset in many Eastern Europeans. An envy of the (old, dead for a generation) West, built on hard work and opportunity. A system that no longer exists as the Welfare States (the something for nothing, free lunch gang) have suffocated opportunity.
In the same Globalist encouraged slaughter of Ukrainians and Russians, jobs and families were slaughtered inside the U.S. and most Western Nations, as those that already had too much, decided to take more and destroy the middle/working class by getting wage slaves in China, Mexico and India (and elsewhere) to make stuff; therein losing knowhow, ingenuity, and the work ethic at home. Replaced by welfare, drugs and despair.
For Russia, under what appears to be a generally beneficial near dictator, you have Russia's national interests front and center, instead of the interests of the new Globalist Monarchy, with its attendant Princes and Princesses, preening themselves as they crap on the rest of humanity.
A little discussed injustice in Europe and North America is how crass Politics has marginalized people of Russian ancestry. Good people, disgusted how the U.S. criminals in Washington ginned up the war in Ukraine against Russia.
Very succinct and I believe, true: “those that already had too much, decided to take more and destroy the middle/working class by getting wage slaves in China, Mexico and India (and elsewhere) to make stuff; therein losing knowhow, ingenuity, and the work ethic at home”
This makes sense. My instinct is to want to see Russia "paint the map white, blue and red" but maybe in terms of cold strategy that isn't the best play. I say you still want to get all of Novorossiya in '24, and have a longer term plan to eventually annex at least as far as Zhytomer. Ideally you'd lure most of the recent emigrants back and add to Russian economic capacity but maybe that's unrealistic.
I believe that the government of Ukraine will not open the borders in the next 10 years or until this war is over.When the borders are opened, literally almost ALL people will leave Ukraine (and half of them will move to Russia) and 10-13 million old people will remain in Ukraine!Their government cannot allow them to leave, because after that Zelensky&Co look like complete retards.
Good for Putin. Smash the Hegemon's proxy.
Right.
Death to the Hegemon!
Long live the new one...
Hidden History: Secret history of the origins of WW1 by Gerry Docherty is excellent at illuminating how elements of Cecil Rhodes's Round Table especially Milner engineered WW1. The use of satellite reconnaissance and drones has turned the Ukraine Russia war into a war more like ww1 than ww2, I doubt even Guderian, Rommel, or Patton would be able to engineer kettles in this war. I liked the elucidation of Serge to illuminate why Russia started out with the idea of a quick cabinet war with limited objectives but had to entirely change their strategy when the US and Britain stopped a negotiated settlement. It saddens me to see a whole generation of young Ukrainian men killed on the battlefield and now going on to the last Ukrainian - even women when they must know they will lose. I congratulate the Russian military for correctly reading the changed circumstances and limiting their casualties. I must admit that it took me a long time to see the reality that decided a snail's pace for the Russians was the correct way to go.
Yep. When the facts are considered I think the phrase 'snail's pace' much in use today is entirely wrong.
The allies have been moving at an extremely rapid pace I feel.
They've had to and I've had my heart in my mouth sometimes at the knowledge.
Just go back over the history and the revelations we've had.
It seems virtually the whole Russian State was in a mess at the beginning of this.
There was certainly much, much wrong with the Russian military machine.
Fixing all that is part of the 'pace of the war', surely?
There's entirely too much emphasis and focused attention on the battlefield in this thing. I'd submit the battlefield is virtually the least important part/indicator of progress.
Like immediately after the beginning we got the sudden influx of USA direction and 'help' in all possible ways except actual boots on the ground.
Meeting all that was part of 'pace'.
And the sanctions just went on and on and country after country fell before them.
All of that was met. At a 'pace'.
Politics was constantly in play, of course, and backstabbing and double dealing all had to be dealt with and was/is.
The Prigozhin thing was I am sure really indicative of real problems within the military machine, real problems. Even at that late stage. They were met then and are still being met now and the actual Prigozhin thing was met and surmounted.
Even today on Telegram you can find apparent first hand accounts from Allied soldiers saying that the allies are short on artillery, on fpv drones, on men and even equipment. Voennia Chronica (excuse my transliteration) constantly publishes lists of equipment they have donated to the armed forces which is apparently much appreciated and sorely needed. Sorely needed ! Esp. down in Kherson.
And so on.
I think they are performing brilliantly. It is not just a board game on the battlefield. That's merely what the masses see. It's more kinda many games of chess being played out simultaneously in board rooms and such across the globe.
And the allies are doing well. They're doing magnificently.
And their enemy is simply the USA. All else are dupes and fools and/or cynical opportunists.
And more and more this truth becomes apparent to everyone. Everyone.
The last to know, looks like, unfortunately, tragically, sadly, will be the 'poor bloody infantry' of Kiev Ukraine.
It seems to me that calling the US/EU/UK “the Allies” is somehow bestowing a morality upon these world-eaters akin to that which they carried in WW2. I haven’t a replacement for this misnomer but hope for a new label or title that reflects the evil of their intent and their actions.
You have misread. Please re-read.
'The Allies' in my lexicon are the Donbas Republics and Russia.
I use the term as often as I can in order to try to combat the lying propaganda 'new speak' of Kiev and Washington.
You give me an opportunity to attempt once again to spell it out.
It goes like this:
Calling this 'Ukraine v Russia' is entirely wrong and it has the terrible effect of causing those with little interest and less knowledge to believe the issue is all about Russia invading, attacking and occupying Ukraine.
Most people being innately on the side of 'good' and equating 'good' with the underdog, the attacked, the oppressed, the threatened, the people will jump to an immediate obvious conclusion: that they should support 'Ukraine'.
And so they do. Even if only by doing nothing. Tacit permission for their governments to continue using their tax monies to support Kiev and American arms manufacturers.
Do you see?
The lie, the deception, the brainwashing begins right there with the word 'Ukraine'. 'We must support Ukraine'. For they do not mean Ukraine. They mean the Kiev Regime. They mean at best the people of the Kiev Oblasts but actually they don't mean the people at all, the word
'Ukraine' in this context applies only to a regime: the Kiev regime.
There are 10 million Ukrainians: the Donbas and Crimean Ukrainians who're completely overlooked in this hasty, facile and inaccurate take on things.
They are simply assumed not to exist. All persons in the Donbas oblasts are now assumed to be Russians and the Russians there not by invitation but by invasion.
The warfare of '22 when the front lines were manned overwhelmingly by Donbas soldiers while the helping Russians stood back behind the lines with their artillery is in one breath assumed to have been a year of warfare with Russian soldiers in those trenches. An outright falsehood.
Those Donbas soldiers learned their soldiering in those trenches during the preceding eight years since the Kiev invasion of 2014. Eight years of constant fighting. This ignored, omitted entirely. It is assumed there was a Russian invasion in '22 of a peaceful country, homogeneous and happy.
Nothing could be further from the truth.
It was a country engaged in a civil war and a civil war of the most vile kind: one based on ethnic cleansing.
This is completely wiped from the consciousness.
That civil war that was and still is.
To return to human basics if that is ever possible in these Orwellian times a 'nation' IS its people. Those present day monsters the Israelis, the Jews, demonstrated this during all the years of the Diaspora. For a reference if any do not understand what I mean.
So 'Ukraine' IS the Ukrainian people. No people = no Ukraine.
A simple and true equation totally wiped from the blackboard of reality today. Today a nation is assumed to be its regime. So completely is this true that it is seriously proposed by heads of State that the nation might 'fight to the last man' in order to pursue an ethnic cleansing goal and that action: going to the last man - is assumed to be to the glory and enhancement of the nation!
What a wonderful nation we are ! See ? We all died !
So it is clear that to support 'Ukraine' just as to support the quarreling 'Smiths' in the house next door you would do all you could to bring peace, to stop the quarrel.
But so demented are the Americans and so successfully have they hoodwinked and brainwashed the people of the western world that in all seriousness they talk of 'supporting Ukraine' by helping kill them to the last man.
Virtually the whole Western world talks and thinks like this. It is utterly wrong.
See how pernicious it is?
Yourself taken in by it, incapable at first reading of comprehending what I was saying.
At least.
This is why my response to “we must support the Ukrainians!” is, “WHICH Ukrainians?”
My query is rarely understood, but then again my interlocutors use of “we” is its own sort of arrogant and un-self-aware error.
Bravo! Brilliantly stated.
It could have been written more clearly but I support your effort to clarify roles. My point stands for those many others who use the term to describe the Western world-eating societies.
Worth saying thanks
The Allies. Close.
The All Lies. Better.
Nice!
Yes. It would be counterproductive to lose men pushing the front line further ahead. Optimize the local shape of the front to maximize expected loss ratio. Test the capacity of NATO to maintain the front in the event of a breach by doing smaller assaults on manageable chunks (Avdeevka, Seversk). The war is won when the front can't be maintained, it will be obvious.
Yes I think so. I wait for signs of just that but don't really see them yet. I'm no military expert at all but it seems that an army needs a constant 'back up' behind the lines for a number of reasons.
And all the news we've had this whole year has been that Kiev's backup is reducing, reducing.
The effect of that should be real but needn't be immediately noticeable to any great extent.
Should it? Like I'm thinking that first it would prohibit advances because without that backup you can't exploit them, perhaps cannot even maintain them, every advance lengthening your front line, lengthening your supply lines, creating the vulnerability of 'flanks'.
But we wouldn't see that they can't make advances. We'd only see that they don't seem to be trying.
Do we see that with Kiev or not? Hard to tell sometimes. They seem to be very aggressive up and down the line.
Then later it should mean men cannot be rotated back for R&R. That, too, we might not see.
Stuff like that. Real but not immediately noticeable maybe.
But then a time should be reached where the front line is in fact tissue paper thin. Tired, exhausted troops, morale and munitions low. Command performance lacking initiative or purpose.
It should start to be possible to breach the line almost anywhere you wish and that should start to be noticeable.
I don't think it is, yet.
What I notice, I think, is the surprising amount of resilience the Kiev forces have and material resource. They've run an effective campaign of disinformation I think. They have more of everything and anything than our exuberantly denigratory 'alt media' have led us to believe.
Arthur,
Your point here is well taken.
US logistics train is long, but deep.
While fakenews media have been telling us that UkroNazees are short on personal gear, I find that difficult to reconcile with the vast amounts of kit (uniforms, food, boots) which NATO has stockpiled for decades.
Losing thousands of pieces of heavy equipment monthly can't be easy to recover from, yet AFU seem to always have warfighting equipment.
Clearly Russia is aware that America's misinformation bots have been unleashed
Moscow isn't in a rush
The Kremlin will take its time and whittle away at the rapidly weakening West, while decimating Kiev's forced conscripts.
At the same time, it's quickly strengthening it's own forces and getting them bloodied in battles, preparing them for the upcoming move to retake Odessa & Kharkov and to run so the way to Transnistra..
I think it is more than a little early to be making comparisons.
Among the bigger issues: Russia has yet to deploy the massive newly mobilized troops in any kind of offensive or defensive effort.
What you term "WW1" fighting is actually Russian attrition strategy grinding down obliging Ukrainian attackers. Now that Ukraine's (and the West's) limitations with artillery shells, manpower, air defense are apparent - even largely unreinforced front line formations are making serious inroads against the teeth of Ukrainian defenses such as in Avdiivka.
What I have read is that in the 1871 war the casualty figures of the French and Prussians were about the same for the battles leading up to the surrounding of the French and they weren't small. The difference is the attacking Prussians gained their objectives. By a snail's pace I mean, take Avdivka. It has been shelling Donetsk almost 10 years and only now after a year and a half is Russia threatening to eliminate it. And the snail's pace also applies to how the casualty rate is around 10 to 1 in Russia's favor as you say the attrition strategy. It does seem to me that Russia made one strategic mistake in not making the mobilization much earlier when their offensive bogged down after taking Severodonestk and Lisychansk. Also I had read there were 50,000 Russian troops taking part in an exercise in the Far East when the Ukrainians launched their counteroffensives taking the north and the south. It can be said that with victories like that it wouldn't be long with many more the Ukrainians would not have an army.
The entire gist of Big Serge's article was that there is an enormous difference between KabinettKriege and VolksKriege, and he furthermore specifically stated that Russia started the SMO as a KabinettKriege - but has since transitioned into (more of) a Volkskriege
Let's look at Avdiivka in this light. At the start of the SMO: Artemovsk/Bakhmut and Avdiivka were the 2 most heavily fortified positions facing the LDPR because these were to be the kickoff point for the planned reconquest by Ukraine of those secessionist regions. At the start of the SMO through to the end of 2022 - the number of actual Russian Army/Navy/Air Force troops in active service in Ukraine was well under 200K and possibly under 100K. The remaining forces were LDPR militias, various Rosguardia units including Ossetians, Chechens, and PMCs like Wagner.
Since the winter of 2022 - Russia has taken in multiple hundreds of thousands of new and returning recruits into its armed forces. The thin veneer of warm bodies holding the 1300 km front line in summer 2022 was significantly bolstered, but the number of Russian Army/Navy/Air Force troops in active service in Ukraine is still well below 300K - the extra hundreds of thousands are either in reserve, in training or in the back of of rotations to the front.
In addition, the artillery shell, air defense, AFV/IFV/artillery/tank platform attrition plus hundreds of thousands of severely wounded/dead AFU mean that the overall capability of the AFU is degraded. Russian pressure all along the line of contact combined with the attrited state of the AFU is clearly manifesting as reduced defensive and reinforcement capability.
Russia doesn't have a burning need to finish this conflict quickly, but it is very possible Russia has the capability. But why get a long of troops killed and resources burned when it is unnecessary?
That's the real question IMO.
As for 1871 - similar casualties from the respective professional forces of France and Germany makes sense, but so what? Traditionally, the heaviest losses occur when one side breaks and the other side hunts the fleeing troops down and kills them from behind.
I don't personally think the risk is that great anymore, but Putin also has to have a strong reserve in case the fools in Nato try anything.
Since the very beginning Russia has had to bear in mind the possibility of NATO coming in at any time. in the beginning Russia got Kherson for free and Mariupol surrounded. Kharkov and Kiev held out and a few forward groups got ambushed due to US satellite surveillance. Otherwise the Ukrainian air force was eliminated but not the extensive Soviet era aerial defense. Early on there was apparently a disastrous but not too large river crossing debacle., Otherwise the war went well for the Russians. As mentioned the taking Popasayna was key to further gains. As Napoleon's famous aphorism, “in war the moral is to the physical as three is to one,” is why I thought not starting the mobilization earlier was a strategic mistake. The initial Kherson counteroffensive was going terrible for the Ukrainians. I had thought that with just 30,000 more battle worthy troops the Kharkhov and Kherson offensives of Ukraine could have been stopped and the moral of the Ukrainians would have plummeted. However the Russians did retreat in good order and inflicted terrible casualties on the Ukrainians. The territorial loss was not so important as the damage the Ukrainians inflicted on the people living there who had cooperated with the Russians.
In Russian operative tradition, territorial loss is inconsequential. There's always more territory to retreat to, and lost land can ultimately be regained. What matters is to defeat the enemy at the strategic level, either through attrition, as against Germany, or by cutting the enemy from their resources and making the war unsustainable to them, as with Napoleon's army. I believe that in the minds of Russian generals, retreating from either the Kharkov oblast or from Kherson, is not a very consequential move on the long term. They know that once the enemies forces are effectively beaten, these areas can be regained quickly and at low cost. They're probably projecting gains much firther West, actually.
What a great essay! Thank you so much for this. A clear mind is a rare thing.
Thank you, Serge. Wonderful article, I had not known of Moltke's dismay at the future prospect of "Total War". One thing I noted on your Mount Rushmore, all are true legends worthy of the rock. The final four can be disputed as a matter of opinioned debate, but no one can argue they don't belong in the ring with any contender. It's a very interesting topic, and I considered who I might put forward as alternates and the cases for and against when I suddenly realized: Hannibal, Napoleon, and Manstein all ended up losing their wars, and as pointed out, Moltke's success became Germany's tragic fate! Curious if you had considered that irony and how would you argue the case for your final four given no shortage of rivals for the Mountain who knew nothing but victories?
Interesting. But with the key decision makers on the other side of the table found in Washington rather than Kiev, it's hard to see how any amount of finesse could have avoided the outcome.
The initial gambit of the SMO is a year and a half behind us. The once feared US sanctions regime lays broken in the corner. EU's run at being a global power center has ended. Some cabinet-war.
A peace is unlikely until Ukraine exhausts itself. For that they would have to conscript the university population, burn thru those, and continue long enough that the educational system is reduced. Cruel fate for a country, really. Something about fate of proxies... can't remember... ask the late (way too late) Kissinger, perhaps. He was the expert.
Two points:
One, volkskrieg depends on either massive logistics for the new "armies", or guerilla war as we saw in occupied portions of the Soviet Union, the Balkans, France, and numerous issues the US has faced since 1955. Ukraine touted the partisan form early on before the feint on Kiev faded. The SMO so far seems sensitive to mass territory grabs. While the NATO side likely cannot arm a volkskreig, if indigenous soldiers could be raised.
Second is an observation. Hitler discounted the chance for a volkeskreig in 1940. He also saw the weakness of the French military psyche. Sedan was the key to unleashing Guderian and Rommel to roll to the Channel, and the French had no unity to resist once Hitler put the Swaztika over the Arc de Triumph. If you have not you should read Strange Defeat by Marc Bloch, and Strange Victory by Earnest May. Bloch was a reserve staff officer in the French army of 1940. May a US Historian/professor.
Interesting article, Thanks.
What a magisterial summary of the conflict - hoping to see this accomplished to the fullest
Great article, but I feel a massive thing was left out at the end. It was & has never been a Russian /Ukrainian war. We only have to look at the lead up to the American sponsored & instigated maidan coup in 2014. Remember what Burns the then head of the CIA wrote in the 2,000's. He wrote Nyet means Nyet referring to the NATO alliance trying to get Ukraine into NATO. What it would result in. The Americans knew fine well what they were doing, they knew fine well what it would result in. We all should know of the statements made by Merkel, Hollande & Poroshenko. About the Minsk 1 & 2 agreements. They deceived the Russians for the reason to buy time so they could fully arm & train the Ukrainians to confront the Russians on their behalf. We now know Russia went to Kiev with only a force of 40 thousand to hopefully force the Ukrainians into peace talks. It 100% worked. There was no seige of Kiev. No Ukrainian military victory around Kiev. The Russians withdrew as a sign of goodwill. When the talks started in Turkey. We now know Boris Johnson went to Kiev & told them not to sign any peace deal with the Russians, he went on to promise the Ukrainians everything needed for victory. If that action right there doesn't confirm it was never a conflict between Russia/Ukraine I don't know what more proof to give. It was after this happened the wheels were put in motion inside of Russia to face up to who they were really fighting against. The arrogance of our western rulers was in the fact, they thought their extremist sanctions against Russia would have been enough to render the Russians unable to finance their SMO. Remember Queen Von De Leyen & her washing machine micro chips story, finishing that idiotic speach of hers with the mortal line of. The Russian Economy is in tatters, tatters I tell you. The more the Queen's sanctions failed the more she imposed. Regardless of the damage she was doing to the economy of the EU. The more strength Russia gained financially the more extreme the lies & propaganda became. It's so obvious now America & some of its policies. Like its anti inflation policy & its attack on its allies energy infrastructure. Where & are aimed at it's European allies as much as they are against Russia. The cowardly vassels in the EU are watching their own citizens struggle & suffer through their actions. But they've gone that far in, they can't get out. Von De Leyen & Borrel will gladly send EU troops into Ukraine rather than admit their massive mistakes. Germany the industrial power house that has single hand idly kept the EU afloat at times. Is being deindustrialised (who is the benefactor). But they can't stop they know the humiliation they'll have to face. They'd rather hundreds of thousands more die than face up to their disastrous actions. As the EU commits suicide, the Germans are suffering the most. But no other country has a leader as weak as Scholtz, no other country has a foreign minister lacking in intelligence as much as Germany has, since Liz Truss was sacked. At least the British realised very quickly they had to get rid of their idiot. Sadly the Germans are sleep walking & so are the rest of the EU. While Queen Von De Leyen & Lord Borrel of the Jungle are around. The leadership in Russia are light years away from the western leaders in intelligence & professionalism. They understand mitary matters much better also. Russia won't trust the west for any agreements. They're all in for it now & they're fully prepared to face NATO as they know how idiotic those making the decisions in the west are.
Russia has artillery and air overwhelming dominance led to a 10-1 butchery of Ukrainian soldiers across the 1000km battle line. The horrible cold winter and destroyed Ukrainian infrastructure results in mass migration. Primarily the US, a foreign power, pays for the Ukrainian resistance. A people's war? No, a proxy war, and a lost one at that.
I am very suspicious of this assumed much touted 'overwhelming' air dominance. We don't actually see much evidence of it at all. It is not true as presented.
Russia is dropping gigantic glide bombs onto the Ukrainian front line. Do you ever hear of Ukraine doing that? Seriously, Russia has overwhelming air (and artillery) superiority. Hear of the two dozen Ukrainian jets being dropped out of the sky without warning far from the front line? Ever hear Ukraine doing that?
Excluding drone attacks, there are virtually zero videos coming out showing Ukrainian air force based attacks on Russian forces. There are loads of videos coming out showing Russian attacks (especially by helicopters) on Ukrainian forces. I believe if there was still a balance in air power we would be seeing a lot more Ukrainian propaganda to that effect... but we are not.
Historically speaking the gung-ho Nationalists were not the Prussians but the other Germans. It was them that demanded Alsace Lorraine against Bismarck’s better judgement.
Another problem for Germany/Prussia was that their casualties were nearly as high as the French. A mistake Putin is at pains to avoid.
Historian Michael Howard wrote that the French could have concentrated guérilla type attacks on the long enemy lines of communications and that might have compelled a German withdrawal from Paris.
Prussia would have hesitated to extend the war for fear of a British intervention and maybe Austria.
I think that this war in many ways is more like the Spanish Civil War, with one side fighting a war to win and the other fighting a PR war to encourage foreign intervention.
The idea that guerrilla type attacks on Prussian lines would have lifted the siege of Paris seems unrealistic. One must read the accounts of the ministers of the Gouvernement de la Défense Nationale who moved in and out of Paris for a month or two to negotiate terms. They considered the Prussians to be extremely well entrenched. In fact, attempts made from Paris to breach the Prussian lines ended in thorough failure, despite being well planned and executed with much will.
Howard’s view was that if the French had concentrated their efforts on attacking the very long German rail l of c 450km all the way back to the frontier, they could have seriously embarrassed the Prussian army.
The assaults from within Paris failed rather as the Ukrainians have against the Russians.
Note the Prussians started the war as the more popular country and ended it unpopular especially in Britain where it mattered most. A guérilla war would not have favoured them.
I believe the train line used by the Germans to sustain the siege went through Bar-le-Duc, about 100 km full east of Paris, and then up to Metz.
In order to attack this railway, the French armies should have been able to reach deep within Prussian-controlled territory. The Loire Army took a long time to meet significant success, and it remained broadly South of Paris, never being able to move East. Then, there was the Bourbaki Army far on the Eastern border, around Belfort, who had to seek refuge in Switzerland to avoid being destroyed. Bourbaki should have attempted to rescue Metz, but he was a long way from the railway.
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The real failure was before Sedan. Instead of joining forces with Bazaine in the East, Mac-Mahon, after returning from Reichshoffen to Paris, was sent to reconstitute an army in Chalons, but this army was ordered to go North towards Sedan, where the Emperor was. It would have been more clever to let the Chalons army move East to rescue Metz, and to have the Sedan army move South to come closer to their reinforcement.
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But really, after Sedan, the new armies raised in the Western and Western-central regions of France were far from Prussian supply lines. Only the Franc-Tireurs resistance could hurt the Prussian between Metz and Paris, but I doubt they'd have been powerful enough to cut the supply line.
Interesting conclusion and it may come to that - if Russia has that strength. But I'm not sure. If Russia can gain two or three Bakhmut style victories this may convince Ukraine, NATO and the US that defeating and decolonizing the Russian Federation was a costly pipe dream. In 1875 France and Germany were not so far apart in terms of population and resources - Germany was the larger, and as time went on, grew much richer. (German industrial power grew greatly in the late 19th and early 20th century - it was far richer than in 1970.) But they were both great powers - and France was only one ally away from being a dangerous enemy. And while it is true that good relations between France and Germany were not possible because of the Lost Provinces, the two nations cooperated on a daily basis well enough and even collaborated on colonial matters on occasion. Even when the new Kaiser kicked out Bismarck and alienated Russia - and gained France its ally - it's really hard to see that France was eager for a war of revenge. It wasn't Paris writing a blank check for Moscow, but Berlin creating one for Vienna.
Now let's say - hypothetically - that Russia clears out Luhansk and Donetsk - and "demilitarizes" Ukraine and the West forces Ukraine to accept a peace. I do not see that a country with a population of say 20 million (it will be a neutral nation if there is peace) being eager to take on 145 million Russians possessing one of the world's most formidable military machines any time in the future. Nor do I see the West eager for a rematch with the world's strongest nuclear power. You quoted Clausewitz - I'd like to remind you that Clausewitz also argued that in every major war there is a "peace party" and the closer to peace the situation comes, the stronger it will be. Let's not forget that after 1871 the Lost Provinces were exactly that. (Alsace no doubt had German sympathizers - but Lorraine was French heartland.) The Russian Federation will incorporate several million people that have shown dramatically that they want no part of Kiev's rule. If anything Ukraine will blame the West for not coming to their aid - and unless Kiev ever believes that NATO and the US is willing to directly intervene in a new war to create a Greater Ukraine - and risk a nuclear showdown with Russia - Ukraine is not going to renew hostilities alone. The French economy was strong enough to pay a hefty reparations bill to Germany (France had more than a little bit of responsibility for that war) and was strong enough to rebuild its military. Ukraine has done everything wrong since 1991 and it's one of the poorest countries in Europe with the lowest rate of population reproduction - a whopping 1.2. So unless NATO members decide to militarize their economy and risk WWIII Ukraine will be on its own. And on its own, Ukraine is not going to march to Moscow.
Reading Big Serge is great but the comments provide icing on the cake for the most part.