I mean, it didn't work, but "we'll take Moscow and winter there" is a pretty reasonable logistical plan, who thinks to make a contingency for "they burn their own capitol city to the fucking foundation and leave nothing but ashes and a note that says 'eat shit Frenchie we're still in this'"
I took a Russian history class in college and the Russians didn’t win by anything but geography. It’s a long way from Paris to Moscow and Napoleon thought his army would just live off the land as they marched. But the Russians just burned everything including Moscow. I think that was that campaign?
The thing about taking that class was that it was a completely pointless credit as far as my major was concerned but added so much to my understanding of the world as a person. Additionally, the TA took over teaching half way through because the professor had a heart attack.
What? No. You don't. They yielded. They yielded plenty. They had 6,000 miles to retreat into. They would have lost ww2 if Hitler hadn't vainly decided Stalingrad was more important than Baku. Bad decisions lose wars.
Unyielding in the way that they’d rather burn it all down and have nothing as opposed to letting Napoleon dine in Moscow. Or that they’d just burn move everything east as quick as they could with the Nazis behind.
But like you said, bad decisions lose wars, and Hitler had an ego.
less than you might think when you consider that Russia was founded as a vassal state of the Mongol empire. and a lot of the resisting invasions we know about was done by Ukrainians, Kazakhs, Siberians...
you can respect the russian people and hate putin. in fact it's probably better to do so because of what he does to the russian dissidents in his country
Most Russians hate that motherfucker and are strong, resilient people. You have to be to live under an autocracy— as we are unfortunately about to learn.
The only difference between the French and the Russians in WW2 is that it's about 600km from the frontier to the Atlantic Ocean and it's 1300km from Warsaw to Moscow.
Quite the opposite really, one of the historic strengths of Russia is that it has basically an entire continent’s worth of land to yield and still be in the fight.
it's a shit tactic that failed in WW1, would have failed in WW2 if the US didn't give them half a million vehicles, aircraft etc. and is failing in Ukraine
It was always a bad plan. The logistics simply didn't exist in 1812 to sustain a single campaign season that deep into Russia. Napoleon was always an improviser who left logistics to Berthier, but he was doomed as soon as he fought past Smolensk.
The Russian always let the invaders deep into their territories. Burning their own cities to curtail provisions and supplies was the norm.
It happened to Napoleon and Hitler.
One fights the
I think the distances were too much for the French logistical system even without the fire. But until that campaign, Napoleon's logistics were better than most.
This was the first mistake. Moscou was NOT the capital at the time. It was St. Petersburg. Napoleon probably directed his main push towards Moscow because following the coast of the Baltic would mean a British amphibious attack at his rear.
He was good at logistics *in the operational environment of central Europe* which was densely populated with an extensive road network and had lots of farmers to steal supplies from.
Russia supplied him with shitty roads, sparsely populated forests/grasslands, and sheer size; he had no answers.
I'm not a military history guy myself, but the thing that's stuck in my mind was that thermal processing of food for shelf stability - i.e., canning - was invented for Napoleon's armies
You've had a few replies to this extent but Napoleon, though bold and occasionally reckless, was a strategic genius and logistics was (usually) one of his strong suits when he didn't let his ego make decisions
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But like you said, bad decisions lose wars, and Hitler had an ego.
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Demographics_of_Russia
It happened to Napoleon and Hitler.
One fights the
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Order_No._227
Just like someone else.
Russia supplied him with shitty roads, sparsely populated forests/grasslands, and sheer size; he had no answers.