Heavy breathing on the line: Boyd and the hare
? 20 ?
Message (cont.)
Hannibal Barça put 50,000 or so Roman legionaries inside the box.
? 21 ?
Message (cont.)
Few Romans ever thought outside that box again.
? 22 ?
Problem
The physical kill box of Cannae became the mental kill box that military thinkers of the nineteenth century and early twentieth century kept their brains in.
? 23 ?
Problem (cont.)
This is your brain:
? 24 ?
Problem (cont.)
This is your brain on Cannae:
? 25 ?
Worse
Schlieffen, Chief of the Great General Staff of the Second Reich from 1893-1906, was obsessed with Cannae.
He even wrote a book on it.
? 26 ?
Worse (cont.)
Schlieffen used an exhaustive checklist when planning future military operations.
? 27 ?
Worse (cont.)
- Does my plan destroy the enemy army like Buonoparte?
? 28 ?
Worse (cont.)
Satisfying those stringent requirements led to the Schlieffen-Moltke Plan:
? 29 ?
Worse (cont.)
Its results were mixed.
? 30 ?
Critique
Schlieffen’s plan failed because it only aimed at physical annihilation of Franco-British forces.
? 31 ?
Critique (cont.)
It’s moral and mental isolation (or annihilation) components were few or vestigial.
This absence dominated the Western Front for the next three years.
? 32 ?
First Cut
Boyd suggested that the German development of infiltration techniques in the later half of the war countered this.
Instead of the long bombardments château generals thought would physically annihilate the enemy trench line, barbed wire, and fortifications…
? 33 ?
First Cut (cont.)
The artillery barrage that accompanied German infiltration attack was sudden and unexpected…
…providing suppression as much through sudden mental or moral disorientation as through physical destruction.
? 34 ?
First Cut (cont.)
Instead of the physical impact of large ranks of infantrymen trudging across No Man’s Land…
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