The Fog of War #5: Contingency Plans

Over the weekend Fellfrosch and I played Axis & Allies Minis. Since all the models are mine, I had made the two teams ahead of time, striving to get them as balanced as possible, and then he randomly selected which he would use. He ended up with Allies, and I got the Axis.

Our scenario was simple enough. There was an objective nestled deep in a series of hills that needed capturing. To the east was a wide valley and a large city, and to the west was a narrow valley and more hills.

I set up my infantry into two groups. The first would assault the objective: this group was made up of machine guns, riflemen, and some vicious Japanese hand-to-hand troops. (Because, as I've mentioned previously, A&A minis is wacky.) The second group, comprised of antitank guns and mortars, would enter the city, and take up firing positions overlooking the large valley. My thought was that Fellfrosch would send his tanks (of which he had many) into that valley before they entered the hills—his tanks are slow, and the rough terrain cuts their movement in half. Meanwhile, I placed my tanks—faster and with longer ranges, in positions to fly up the valleys (two in the big valley and one in the smaller) and flank the Allies.

Well, it didn't work. Much to my surprise, on his first turn Fellfrosch ran his tanks right into the foothills, taking up firing positions on both the city and my tanks. I had to reroute my tanks into the city, and try to sneak around the back.

And with none of his tanks in the large valley, my anti-tank guns and mortars had nothing to shoot at. They were forced, if they wanted to accomplish anything at all, to cross the deadly open space of the valley and head for the objective in the hills, harried at every turn by Fell's armored cars and long-range guns.

Further, I had to run my tanks much further into his territory (up through the city) before they could engage anything, which left them open to flanking attacks. All in all, the game went poorly for me. [Editor’s note: by “flanking attacks,” he means “deadly flamethrowers who waltzed right up and cooked him like a goose. ~Fell]

I was reminded of one of my favorite military theories: Friction, as described by Carl Von Clausewitz.

"Everything is very simple in war, but the simplest thing is difficult. These difficulties accumulate and produce a friction, which no man can imagine exactly who has not seen war. Suppose now a traveller, who, towards evening, expects to accomplish the two stages at the end of his day's journey, four or five leagues, with post horses, on the high road—it is nothing. He arrives now at the last station but one, finds no horses, or very bad ones; then a hilly country, bad roads; it is a dark night, and he is glad when, after a great deal of trouble, he reaches the next station, and finds there some miserable accommodation. So in war, through the influence of an infinity of petty circumstances, which cannot properly be described on paper, things disappoint us, and we fall short of the mark. A powerful iron will overcome this friction, it crushes the obstacles, but certainly the machine along with them."

In other words, nothing in war will go the way you've planned it, because countless obstacles wear down the Machine of War. And on top of that, while trying really hard might overcome this friction temporarily, the act of trying wears down the machine as well. As Clausewitz goes on to say, friction is the only thing that differentiates real war from war on paper.

In my A&A game, nothing went to plan, and I hadn't thought through the consequences if my strategy went sour. I lost, with my eastern flank fleeing and ineffective, and my western flank pinned down and under fire.

In 1812, Napolean invaded Russia specifically for the purpose of punishing the Tsar—he had no real military objective, other than sacking Moscow and getting revenge for Russia's economic policies. Six hundred thousand of Napolean's soldiers marched to the border, expecting a fight—but instead of meeting him in open battle, the Russians retreated and retreated, leading Napolean deeper and deeper into the country. Finally, Napolean marched, almost unopposed into Moscow. The Russians retreated, burning their own city as they went. Napolean's army sat in Moscow for a month, confused by the bizarre tactics of the Russians, before they decided to head back to France. Unfortunately, they waited too long: Russian winter set in and more than three hundred thousand French troops died—not from battle wounds, but from cold.

Napolean's fatal flaw was that he expected the Russian army to follow Napolean's tactics. He'd planned for his opponent to react exactly as he, Napolean, would have reacted: open battle. But they didn't, and he lost more than half his army without significantly hurting the Russians.

On the other hand Bobby Fisher, the eccentric Chess genius, would always think as many as fifteen to twenty moves ahead, calculating contingencies. It's a quality necessary to both game players and generals.

Clausewitz again: “It is, therefore, this friction, or what is so termed here, which makes that which appears easy in war difficult in reality. As we proceed, we shall often meet with this subject again, and it will hereafter become plain that, besides experience and a strong will, there are still many other rare qualities of the mind required to make a man a consummate general."

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Written by House_of_Mustard on November 15th, 2005