Custer and Sun Tzu

[Beth]

While I was looking up the origin of the 'know your enemy' and came across these page on Sun Tzu  Page 2

After reading them I suspect that Custer was either not familiar with Sun Tzu or went out of his way to flaunt his disregard.  

For example  

It is the rule in war, if ten times the enemy's strength, surround them; if five times, attack them; if double, be able to divide them; if equal, engage them; if fewer, defend against them; if weaker, be able to avoid them.

Custer's approach to encountering an enemy much larger than his force was to divide his own forces.

[mac]

We have commented before that all this stuff goes back to Sun Tzu. We should remember though that Custer was not the only one to think that odds of 5:1 against warriors was OK. Still I think few others would think it OK to treat those kinds of odds as Custer did.
Cheers

[quincannon]

Sunny was well known in Asia, and the Japanese had a couple of Sun Tzus of their own, The earliest translation to English that I know of was in the 1930's, so it is unlikely if not impossible that Custer or his contemporaries were familiar with him.

Still nothing he says is more than a common sense approach.

In studying the Korean War, especially after the CCF intervention, you can see Sunny writ large. The only part that the CCF did not understand is the factor of firepower played in thwarting some of his concepts.

[Beth]

(in reference to Mac's comment about the NA's fighting ability)

That goes to the "know your enemy" Custer had several people traveling with him who could have given him sound advice about the likelihood off a successful attack. I doubt he asked them for their opinion and if he did if he gave it sound consideration.

I wonder what Terry, Gibbon or Crook would have done if they were in the Crow's nest that morning-or if they would have even gotten themselves into the position of being too close to the enemy with no reliable information about their location and strength.

[Beth]

Nov 1, 2015 17:58:05 GMT quincannon said:

Sunny was well known in Asia, and the Japanese had a couple of Sun Tzus of their own, The earliest translation to English that I know of was in the 1930's, so it is unlikely if not impossible that Custer or his contemporaries were familiar with him.

Still nothing he says is more than a common sense approach.

In studying the Korean War, especially after the CCF intervention, you can see Sunny writ large. The only part that the CCF did not understand is the factor of firepower played in thwarting some of his concepts.

I checked--it was translated into French in 1772 which means the principles would have probably at least been familiar to European military officers.

I agree they are a lot of common sense things and that the best military minds probably just made use of them perhaps instinctively--I found that I thought of Wellington when I was reading through the points.

I may be wrong but Custer doesn't strike me as a battle tactician, he seems more of a "let's ride at them and give them a butt whomping they'll never foget' kind of guy.

[dave]

I find it fascinating that Custer, a West Point grad, failed to use common sense in battle as well as a poorly educated man named Forrest did. Forrest was not a trained soldier but an incredible leader and military strategist. 
Regards
Dave

[quincannon]

I don't think much of him as a tactician either Beth, nor do I think he was well read of any of the masters.

Custer was the kind of guy that everyone wants at the point of the spear, but never ask him to sharpen the spear or find something better than the spear.

I count him as intellectually lazy, and that might have been OK in previous conflicts, but the ACW, and those things going on in Europe at near the same time, made war a much more complicated business than it had ever been before.

Think of military knowledge as baking a cake. If you only know how to mix flour, eggs, and sugar together, then you will never progress into the variety of cakes you can bake. Custer was not even a particularly good flour, eggs, and sugar man, and showed no desire to progress, to adapt the recipes of the master bakers to the ingredients and kitchen at hand, then overcome.

[quincannon]

West Point Dave, was not a very good military school in Custer's day. It was a school for engineers. Even Grant complained about the poor military subject matter education found in WP grads of the ACW era.

One of the best corps commanders in the ETO was a banker from Oklahoma City.

[Beth]

Nov 1, 2015 18:42:38 GMT dave said:

I find it fascinating that Custer, a West Point grad, failed to use common sense in battle as well as a poorly educated man named Forrest did. Forrest was not a trained soldier but an incredible leader and military strategist. 
Regards
Dave

Dave, I may be wrong but the more I read about the 19th century history, the more I realize that the last thing taught at WP was military strategy.   I believe--and someone correct me if I am wrong, that West Point was about teaching young men to be civil engineers, artillery  and gentlemen (emphasis on honorable conduct which would be considered being a gentleman), but necessarily not military strategists.  "Gentlemanship" would be considered a skill when it comes to leading men but engineering was a skill for building both a nation and the backbone of the military.  --it does no good to have 100 pieces of artillery if no one knows how to build a bridge to get them to the other side of the river, pick the best location to place them and the weakest part of the fortification to target. 

[Beth]

How much of being good military strategist is taught and how much is just for a lack of a better word--instinct.

I was thinking about the game of chess, bridge or any other game of skill (vrs chance). One can learn the rules and play okay but there are people who just have a better aptitude towards the game and excel.

[yanmacca]

Both the American Civil War and the Franco-Prussian war showed how war had changed with men being killed on an industrial scale, but even when it was obvious that faster firing weapons were making it so dangerous and futile to attack over open ground the top brass from any nation still had no idea on how to win a battle without going through a whole generation of young men, tactics did change a little in the later part of WW1, soldiers used the ground and attacked in smaller groups, things like rolling barrages and light machine guns which the troops could carry with them in the assault, and the stupidity of simply walking across no-man’s land was done away with, in between the wars the process of fighting had become more reliant on mobility and the advent of the AFV (which was a British idea but not fully appreciated or used properly until after WW1).

Yan.

[dave]

QC
I agree you have a valid point regarding the quality of a West Point education. I meant to imply that Forrest had very little if any military training that all cadets back in the 1850's would receive and be exposed to during their matriculation.
Beth
Many successful military leaders during the War form 1861-1865 were instinctive and self taught. Chamberlain, Logan, Forrest and Mosby come to mind now.
Regards
Dave

[quincannon]

It is very much like Chess Beth. Most officers do not pass beyond the tactical and operational levels of conflict. Strategists like Chess Masters are few and far between. For every Marshall or King, there are hundreds perhaps thousands of operational and tactical practitioners, just as there are many beginner and intermediate level chess players.

The rapidity of rate of fire in both small arms and field guns, along with increased accuracy of those weapons was as Ian points out a game changer, and the U S Army did not have a clue what to do about it until 1918 at the earliest. They had taken modest steps after the Span-Am but were still mired in the role of a constabulary until facing some real opposition in France. The Army we have today is a product of the National Defense Act of 1921 which in many ways was one of the rare visionary accomplishments of Congress.

[quincannon]

I think it could be rightly said that those cadets at West Point in the 1850's for the most part were exposed to the wrong kind of training that ill prepared them for modern conflict. I believe that is what Grant was talking about.

The one advantage the men you listed Dave had, along with quite a few others, is they started off with a clean sheet of paper, not encumbered by the useless lessons of WP. They were all problem solvers and they approached the tactical and operational levels of war in just that way.

Mosby and Chamberlain of course are two of my favorites. Both had decent educations and adapted quickly to the environments they were cast into. Forrest was an out and out genius.

[Beth]

Nov 1, 2015 19:52:27 GMT yanmacca said:

Both the American Civil War and the Franco-Prussian war showed how war had changed with men being killed on an industrial scale, but even when it was obvious that faster firing weapons were making it so dangerous and futile to attack over open ground the top brass from any nation still had no idea on how to win a battle without going through a whole generation of young men, tactics did change a little in the later part of WW1, soldiers used the ground and attacked in smaller groups, things like rolling barrages and light machine guns which the troops could carry with them in the assault, and the stupidity of simply walking across no-man’s land was done away with, in between the wars the process of fighting had become more reliant on mobility and the advent of the AFV (which was a British idea but not fully appreciated or used properly until after WW1).

Yan.

The problem is that warfare changes quickly--especially during the war.  Almost every war starts with the tactics from the end of the 'last war' because those are the lessons that were learned.  By then end of a war quite a bit of those lessons are obsolete and a new generation of warfare exists.   Personally I find you can tell a lot about war by looking at the fortifications how they were modified with time or in the case of the Maginot Line became out of date technology before the war had even begun.