Naveh and In Pursuit of...something
Some thoughts on Shimon Naveh’s In Pursuit of Military Excellence that I thought I’d share with you. In many places in his turgid tome Naveh claims that the Soviet Army came up with something approximating what scientists would call a universal or general covering law (i.e, Hempel) regarding operational manoeuvre which formed the foundation of Deep Operations Theory. To prove this Naveh often approvingly cites or paraphrases from the Red Army Field Regulations of 1936;
“By employing the universal combination of the linear holding group and a columnar shock group and an appropriate organisation of troops and resource s for combat the Red Army managed to create both the right synergy and the proper conditions for executing a coherent manoeuvre” (my italics, p. 172-3 but cf. pp. 187-9, 190, 218-9, 224-26) .
Yet for all his “research” Naveh ignores or is ignorant of facts which upset his theoretical edifice. If the Soviet Army did indeed develop a theory of Deep Operations which, in terms of the relationship between a linear front and the operational depth, as the example above purports, came to represent something approaching the fundamental truths of operational art then why did the Red Army Field Regulations of 1944 (which is not cited by Naveh in the text or bibliography) state the following in no uncertain terms;
“The concept of “striking and holding forces” as a part of combat formations which existed in the previous Polevoy Ustav (the 1936 Regulations venerated by Naveh) confused command personnel and led to inaction of so-called “holding forces in combat [!]. This Polevoy Ustav abolishes the division of a combat formation into a striking and a holding force, but it requires the concentration of main effort on the axis of the main attack and a determined attack by lesser forces on the axis of secondary attack” (my italics, p. 5)
Thus, the theoretical tents expounded by Naveh were never actually adhered to by the Red Army and were promptly abandoned in 1943 during which time the 1944 regulations were being revised. For all of Naveh’s linguistic acrobatics it appears the supposedly pristine theory of Deep Operations (in the above respects at least) never existed outside Naveh’s own head. As D. M. Glantz explained in Soviet Military Operational Art, which Naveh cites but evidently never read, Deep Operations “theory” was actually a set of assumptions which were in constant evolution (p.12). The Red Army constantly went back and forth over their experiences in an attempt to ascertain which facets of the “theory” were applicable and which, like the above, could be jettisoned (at any given time). Relying on the 1936 Regulations to prove that the Red Army had discovered the timeless “laws “ of operational art is sheer nonsense given they themselves had the good sense to ditch much of what they had initially assumed correct. Funny that.
My next lot of reading ... (yes, I have a lot of free time on my hands)
On a different note I have recently downloaded a number of works which I shall soon be tackling with gusto. I got them free from www.archive.org.
J. H. Breasted, The Battle of Kadesh
C. E. Callwell, Military Operations and Maritime Preponderance
Moltke, Moltke’s Military Correspondence, 1870-71
C. von der Goltz, The Nation in Arms
F. A. Bayerlin, Jena or Sedan? (think Tolstoy’s War and Peace)
U.S . War Department, A Survey of German Tactics, 1918
Prince Kraft zu Hohenlohe Ingelfingen, Letters on Infantry (1889)
F. N. Maude, Military Letters and Essays
A.J. Tonybee, The Murderous Tyranny of the Turks
A.J. Tonybee, Turkey and the Western Question