Battle of annihilation

Last updated

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.

Contents

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.

Significance

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.

After Napoleon

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 fast 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. Those tactics 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, Belorussia and Berlin.

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.

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.

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.

Alternatives

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:

  • Avoidance of the risk and cost associated with such a battle
  • Lack of means to attempt such a battle
  • Ability to achieve desired objectives through other means
  • Accepted practice
  • Political concerns
  • Possibility for enemy to declare fight to the death
  • Fear of repercussions

See also

Related Research Articles

Archduke Charles, Duke of Teschen Austrian archduke, Duke of Teschen who led the Austrian army during the Coalition Wars

Archduke Charles Louis John Joseph Laurentius of Austria, Duke of Teschen was an Austrian field-marshal, the third son of Emperor Leopold II and his wife, Maria Luisa of Spain. He was also the younger brother of Francis II, Holy Roman Emperor. Despite being epileptic, Charles achieved respect both as a commander and as a reformer of the Austrian army. He was considered one of Napoleon's more formidable opponents and one of the greatest generals of the French Revolutionary Wars.

Battle Military engagement

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 German military doctrine in WWII

Blitzkrieg is a military doctrine in which a surprise attack using a rapid, overwhelming force concentration that may consist of armoured and motorised or mechanised infantry formations, together with close air support, has the intent to break through the opponent's lines of defense, then dislocate the defenders, unbalance the enemy by making it difficult to respond to the continuously changing front, and defeat them in a decisive Vernichtungsschlacht: battle of annihilation.

Carl von Clausewitz German-Prussian soldier and military theorist

Carl Philipp Gottfriedvon Clausewitz was a Prussian general and military theorist who stressed the "moral" and political aspects of war. His most notable work, Vom Kriege, was unfinished at his death.

<i>On War</i> 19th-century theoretical treatise on war by von Clausewitz

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 has been translated into English several times as On War. On War is an unfinished work. Clausewitz had set about revising his accumulated manuscripts in 1827, but did not live to finish the task. His wife edited his collected works and published them between 1832 and 1835.

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 it appeared in use during the 18th century, was seen in its narrow sense as the "art of the general", or "'the art of arrangement" of troops. Military strategy 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.

The military tactic of frontal assault is a direct, full-force attack on the front line of an enemy force, rather than to the flanks or rear of the enemy. It allows for a quick and decisive victory, but at the cost of subjecting the attackers to the maximum defensive power of the enemy; this can make frontal assaults costly even if successful, and often disastrously costly if unsuccessful. It may be used as a last resort when time, terrain, limited command control, or low troop quality do not allow for any battlefield flexibility. The risks of a frontal assault can be mitigated by the use of heavy supporting fire, diversionary attacks, the use of cover, or infiltration tactics.

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 and materiel. 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 French-Swiss general and writer on the art of war (1779–1869)

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's 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).

Battle of Ulm 1805 battle during the War of the Third Coalition

The Battle of Ulm on 16–19 October 1805 was a series of skirmishes, at the end of the Ulm Campaign, which allowed Napoleon I to trap an entire Austrian army under the command of Karl Freiherr Mack von Leiberich with minimal losses and to force its surrender near Ulm in the Electorate of Bavaria.

Counterattack Tactic employed in response to an attack

A counterattack is a tactic employed in response to an attack, with the term originating in "war games". The general objective is to negate or thwart the advantage gained by the enemy during attack, while the specific objectives typically seek to regain lost ground or destroy the attacking enemy.

Maneuver warfare, or manoeuvre warfare, is a military strategy which attempts to defeat the enemy by incapacitating their decision-making through shock and disruption.

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.

Principles of war are rules and guidelines that represent truths in the practice of war and military operations.

Defeat in detail, or divide and conquer, is a military tactic of bringing a large portion of one's own force to bear on small enemy units in sequence, rather than engaging the bulk of the enemy force all at once. This exposes one's own units to many small risks but allows for the eventual destruction of an entire enemy force.

Strategy of the Roman military

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.

Napoleon I, Emperor of the French, is recognized as one of the greatest commanders 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

References

  1. ↑ J. Nagl, (2005), p. 19.
  2. ↑ Hart, B. H. Liddell, (1991), p. 319.

Sources

This page is based on this Wikipedia article
Text is available under the CC BY-SA 4.0 license; additional terms may apply.
Images, videos and audio are available under their respective licenses.