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Annihilation is a military strategy in which an attacking army seeks to entirely destroy the military capacity of the opposing army. This strategy can be executed in a single planned pivotal battle, called a "battle of annihilation". A successful battle of annihilation is accomplished through the use of tactical surprise, application of overwhelming force at a key point, or other tactics performed immediately before or during the battle.
The end goal of a battle of annihilation is to cause the leaders of the opposing army to sue for peace due to the complete annihilation of its army and thus inability to further engage in offensive or defensive military action. It is not necessary to kill or capture all, or even most, of an opposing army's forces to annihilate it in the sense used here. Rather, the destruction of the enemy army as a cohesive military force able to offer further meaningful military offense or defense, even if temporarily, is the objective.
In ancient and classical times, many battles ended with the annihilation of one of the opposing forces, the Battles of Cannae, Zama and Adrianople being famous examples. From the Renaissance onward, however, the battle of annihilation strategy fell into disuse, at least in Europe. The greatest exception is seen in the battles of Napoleon Bonaparte, with whom the battle of annihilation in the modern sense is most closely associated, and term "Napoleonic battle of annihilation" is sometimes used. The Battle of Austerlitz is often cited as the paragon of the modern battle of annihilation.
Napoleon's victories at Austerlitz (1805) and Jena (1806) are often cited as the classic battles of annihilation. Napoleon himself was unable to again achieve such decisive results, partly because his enemies then adjusted to his tactics. For example, the Battle of Borodino was a victory but did not result in the desired destruction of the Russian army.
Nevertheless, strategists, influenced by those of the Napoleonic era, most notably Antoine-Henri Jomini, held the Napoleonic battle of annihilation to be the proper objective of modern military campaigns. That interpretation was later accredited to the more renowned Carl von Clausewitz, initially by Helmuth von Moltke the Elder, who supported arguments for strategies of annihilation with quotes from Clausewitz. However, Clausewitz disliked Jomini personally and his concepts and may have instead emphasized the primacy of the political in warfare, and remained indifferent to theories arguing for any absolute solutions via the application of military force. Nevertheless, that set the stage for mass confusion down the line of strategic thinkers. [1] Clausewitz's trilogies (albeit used out of context) are contested by Liddell Hart, who claims in Strategy that a poor choice of words by Clausewitz led his interpreters to overestimate the value of battles of annihilation. [2] Consequently, at the beginning of the American Civil War, many top military commanders mistakenly expected that a battle of annihilation would quickly end the war. However, the size and firepower of armies were making the battle of annihilation more difficult to achieve.
A contrast may be seen between Confederate General Robert E. Lee and Union General Ulysses S. Grant. Lee, when on the offensive, usually maneuvered with the intent of forcing a battle of annihilation. His archetypal attempt was at the Battle of Chancellorsville in which a classic Napoleonic flanking maneuver defeated but was not able to destroy the Union Army under Joseph Hooker. Lee may be faulted for attempting to achieve a battle of annihilation, particularly at the Battle of Gettysburg. In contrast, Grant was noted for waging campaigns of maneuver. During the Battle of Vicksburg, he forced John C. Pemberton's army into a siege position in which it was forced to surrender without a battle. In the Virginia campaign of 1864 against Lee, he continually maneuvered around Lee and forced him to withdraw further and further south until he had to choose between abandoning the Confederate capital, Richmond, or withdrawing into siege lines. William Tecumseh Sherman may also be cited. Rather than pursuing the chimera of destroying John Bell Hood's army, Sherman chose to operate directly against the Confederate economy. His famous march through Georgia, directly away from Hood, was basically the opposite of a Napoleonic strategy.
During the Franco-Prussian War, the Prussians (and later the Germans) made their own version of the battle of annihilation by destroying entire armies relatively quickly by means of rapid troop movement and rapid encirclement of the enemy. Those tactics came into fruition during the decisive battles of Metz and Sedan in which two main French armies were completely annihilated at the same time and relatively quickly, rendering France almost completely defenseless against the German invasion.
The Napoleonic ideal was still alive at the beginning of World War I. In fact, the Germans were able to execute a battle of annihilation against the Russian 2nd Army at the Battle of Tannenberg during the war's opening weeks. However, attempts to create such a result on the Western Front resulted in great slaughter to no effect. Armies were now too large to have flanks to turn and had too much firepower and too much defensive depth to be broken by assault.
Since World War I, the paradigm of armies maneuvering in the empty countryside for weeks and then meeting in a battle lasting usually a single day no longer applies (at least to wars between major powers). Instead, armies are deployed in more-or-less continuous lines that stretch perhaps hundreds of miles. Thus, the battle of annihilation may be considered to be mainly of historical interest, except for secondary campaigns.
The tactics executed by the Prussians during the Franco-Prussian War later served to inspire the blitzkrieg during World War II, with highly-mobile formations executing a battle of annihilation by charging straight into the enemy's weak point and attempt to encircle and destroy separate enemy pockets. The tactics became spectacularly successful during the German invasions of Poland, France and the Soviet Union until they themselves became annihilated by the Soviets in battles such as Stalingrad, [3] Belorussia and Berlin.
During the Pacific War, the Imperial Japanese Navy's strategy was fixated on the goal of luring the numerically-superior United States Pacific Fleet into a single decisive battle of annihilation, which would force the United States to sue for peace. That was at least partially the motivation behind the surprise attack on Pearl Harbor and the Battle of Midway but was loosely followed for as long as the IJN was capable of offensive operations. The goal was never achieved for several reasons. First, the US Navy was wary of committing all of its forces to one major battle. Further, the IJN concentrated so much of its efforts on preparing for a single massive showdown, which never truly occurred, that it neglected devoting resources towards protecting its naval supply lines, which soon fell prey to a Fabian strategy when they were extensively targeted by US submarines. Even Japanese victories such as the Battle of the Santa Cruz Islands failed to annihilate their opponents utterly. The hoped-for "decisive battle" against the US Navy never came, and the IJN was gradually ground down through attrition.
Initially, it might seem that annihilation of the opposing army is the obvious object of any military campaign. However, many battles have been fought to cause an enemy army simply to retreat or to suffer attrition, and many campaigns have been waged to avoid, rather than seek, such a battle. Reasons for not seeking a battle of annihilation include the following:
A battle is an occurrence of combat in warfare between opposing military units of any number or size. A war usually consists of multiple battles. In general, a battle is a military engagement that is well defined in duration, area, and force commitment. An engagement with only limited commitment between the forces and without decisive results is sometimes called a skirmish.
Blitzkrieg is a word used to describe a combined arms surprise attack using a rapid, overwhelming force concentration that may consist of armored and motorized or mechanized infantry formations; together with artillery, air assault, and close air support; with intent to break through the opponent's lines of defense, dislocate the defenders, unbalance the enemies by making it difficult to respond to the continuously changing front, and defeat them in a decisive Vernichtungsschlacht: a battle of annihilation.
Carl Philipp Gottfriedvon Clausewitz was a Prussian general and military theorist who stressed the "moral" and political aspects of waging war. His most notable work, Vom Kriege, though unfinished at his death, is considered a seminal treatise on military strategy and science.
Vom Kriege is a book on war and military strategy by Prussian general Carl von Clausewitz (1780–1831), written mostly after the Napoleonic wars, between 1816 and 1830, and published posthumously by his wife Marie von Brühl in 1832. It is one of the most important treatises on political-military analysis and strategy ever written, and remains both controversial and influential on strategic thinking.
Military strategy is a set of ideas implemented by military organizations to pursue desired strategic goals. Derived from the Greek word strategos, the term strategy, when first used during the 18th century, was seen in its narrow sense as the "art of the general", or "the art of arrangement" of troops. and deals with the planning and conduct of campaigns, the movement and disposition of forces, and the deception of the enemy.
In modern use, the order of battle of an armed force participating in a military operation or campaign shows the hierarchical organization, command structure, strength, disposition of personnel, and equipment of units and formations of the armed force. Various abbreviations are in use, including OOB, O/B, or OB, while ORBAT remains the most common in the United Kingdom. An order of battle is distinct from a table of organisation, which is the intended composition of a given unit or formation according to the military doctrine of its armed force. Historically, an order of battle was the order in which troops were positioned relative to the position of the army commander or the chronological order in which ships were deployed in naval situations.
Vernichtungsgedanke, literally meaning "concept of annihilation" in German and generally taken to mean "the concept of fast annihilation of enemy forces", is a tactical doctrine dating back to Frederick the Great. It emphasizes rapid, fluid movement to unbalance an enemy, allowing the attacker to impose its will upon the defender and to avoid stalemate. It relies on uncommonly rigorous training and discipline and thoroughly-professional leadership. Much of Vernichtungsgedanke can be seen in Carl von Clausewitz's classic treatise Vom Kriege.
Attrition warfare is a military strategy consisting of belligerent attempts to win a war by wearing down the enemy to the point of collapse through continuous losses in personnel, materiel and morale. The word attrition comes from the Latin root atterere, meaning "to rub against", similar to the "grinding down" of the opponent's forces in attrition warfare.
Antoine-Henri Jomini was a Swiss military officer who served as a general in French and later in Russian service, and one of the most celebrated writers on the Napoleonic art of war. Jomini was largely self-taught in military strategy, and his ideas are a staple at military academies, the United States Military Academy at West Point being a prominent example; his theories were thought to have affected many officers who later served in the American Civil War. He may have coined the term logistics in his Summary of the Art of War (1838).
Maneuver warfare, or manoeuvre warfare, is a military strategy which emphasizes movement, initiative and surprise to achieve a position of advantage. Maneuver seeks to inflict losses indirectly by envelopment, encirclement and disruption, while minimizing the need to engage in frontal combat. In contrast to attrition warfare where strength tends to be applied against strength, maneuver warfare attempts to apply strength against weakness in order to accomplish the mission.
Interior lines is a military term, derived from the generic term line of operation or line of movement. The term "interior lines" is commonly used to illustrate, describe, and analyze the various possible routes (lines) of logistics, supply, recon, approach, attack, evasion, maneuver, or retreat of armed forces. Interior line strategies are based on the fact that lines of movement and communication within an enclosed area are shorter and safer than those on the outside. As the area held by a defensive force shrinks, the interior line advantage held by the defensive force increases.
Mission-type tactics is a method of command and delegation where the military commander gives subordinate leaders a clearly-defined objective, high-level details such as a timeframe, and the forces needed to accomplish that objective. The subordinate leaders are given the planning initiative and freedom of execution: they decide on the methods to achieve the objective independently. This allows a high degree of flexibility at the operational and tactical levels of command, which allows for faster decision-making on the ground and frees the higher leadership from managing the tactical details to concentrate on the strategic picture. This may be contrasted with "Befehlstaktik" or command-type tactics.
Principles of war are rules and guidelines that represent truths in the practice of war and military operations.
The following outline is provided as an overview of and topical guide to military science:
The strategy of the Roman military contains its grand strategy, operational strategy and, on a small scale, its military tactics. If a fourth rung of "engagement" is added, then the whole can be seen as a ladder, with each level from the foot upwards representing a decreasing concentration on military engagement. Whereas the purest form of tactics or engagement are those free of political imperative, the purest form of political policy does not involve military engagement. Strategy as a whole is the connection between political policy and the use of force to achieve it.
The Royal Prussian Army served as the army of the Kingdom of Prussia. It became vital to the development of Prussia as a European power.
Napoleon I, Emperor of the French, is recognized as the greatest early modern warfare commander in military history. His main strategy was focusing on one part of the enemy, quickly defeating them, and continuing onward. His success was made possible not only by his ambition, but also through the dynamic composition of his army. Napoleon would see his equipment being gained through provisional control of the armories of France, thus allowing the weapons direct control by government.
Summary of the Art of War: the Principal Combinations of Strategy, Grand Tactics, and Military Politics(French: Précis de l’Art de la Guerre: Des Principales Cominaisons de la Stratégie, de la Grande Tactique et de la Politique) is a military treatise by Antoine-Henri Jomini, originally published as a complete work in 1838. The work, which lays out Jomini's theory of war, includes a series of maxims that were extensively taught and discussed at the United States Military Academy.
Stalingrad also represents one of the high points in the art of campaigning, clearly a decisive battle of annihilation with profound strategic implications.