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How do you fight a war that you cannot win?
It’s an interesting question. Perhaps the question presupposes that the inevitability of defeat is obvious and well understood, but let us just presume - you know that victory is beyond reach, so how do you keep fighting? In our more level headed moments, we would say that the best thing to do would be to negotiate. After all, once the point of no return has been reached, continuing to fight only means wasting lives and probably angering the enemy more, bringing down more wrath on your head in the end.
Yet one of the quirks of history is that surrender is generally the object of shame, and is almost never applauded for its prudence. In the best examples, where a defeated state saw the handwriting on the wall and surrendered without dragging out the misery, the aura is one of cowardice, betrayal, and humiliation - think, for example, of France in 1940 or Germany in 1918. In the German case, it was plainly obvious that Germany could not win the war, and yet surrender plunged the country into decades of shame, resentment, and hysteria over the supposed “betrayal” of the army.
Perhaps the lesson is simply that defeat is defeat, and there is no good way out. Negotiation and surrender will risk allegations of cowardice and betrayal and will subject you to the whims of the enemy, but neither does fighting to the last man seem to be a good solution. Maybe this is simply what it means to lose.
But in any case, suppose that you have chosen to fight. How do you do it? When victory is gone, how do you even frame your operational objectives? Do you openly state that your goals are to die and take as many of the enemy with you as you can? Do you aim to achieve some sufficient battlefield success so that the enemy will give you better terms? Or do you blind yourself to the overall strategic situation and give yourself over to pure action - turning warmaking into a mechanical activity devoid of strategic meaning?
- Big Serge
「一場無法獲勝的戰爭如何打?」這個問題其實很難回答, 因為終戰本身就是一個政治性濃烈的軍事議題。
Big Serge 舉的二戰德軍背負的是1918年投降的屈辱,某種層面上讓當時已經開始逆風的德國軍人精神分裂。於是他們將東線挫敗後的行動總結為一種悲壯的「拖延、遲滯」紅軍綱領。
在這種綱領下,庫斯克會戰誕生。
沒有終戰指導,因為德軍再也承受不起另一個1918 年民族叛徒的屈辱。
那麼這樣的精神下,所謂的「拖延、遲滯」究竟意味著什麼? 在清清楚楚付出這麼大的生命代價之後,你最後還是會戰敗。
這是我今天一直在想的問題。 |
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