>be french military/government >get utterly BTFO so hard in WW2 you desperately try to hold and beat up on colonial 3rd worlders like algeria and indochina as much as humanly possible to compensate >get BTFO in those 3rd world shitholes too
the absolute asshurt the French in the second half of the 20th century must have gone through is delicious
Kind of sad considering the so far successful military record of France up to that point to lose all prestige in a few wars, wouldn't be as bad if there was nothing to compare it to but they just have to look in a military history book
Excluding Dien Bien Phu and the occasional ambush, the French had actually developed pretty good counterinsurgency tactics. Before De Lattre died he had actually broken the Viet Minh on his fortified positions in the North.
Despite the disaster at Dien Bien Phu, they went on to win the Algerian war on the ground using not only their own tactics but interrogation methods learned from the Viet Minh, proving they still had it.
>they went on to win the Algerian war on the ground using not only their own tactics but interrogation methods learned from the Viet Minh, proving they still had it
but the Algerians won politically. That's still a total victory from Mao's standpoint although i doubt communist writings played much influence in Muslim Algeria
De Gaulle feared that if Algeria remained part of France, millions of Algerians would move to mainland France and shit up the country
Ironically, it happened anyway because the guys who came after it decided to import millions of Algerians
2 years ago
Anonymous
Guess he was right after all imagine if he could see what his country has become and all because of der yankee
>be french military/government >get utterly BTFO so hard in WW2 because you trusted a forest >you desperately try to hold and beat up on colonial 3rd worlders like algeria and indochina as much as humanly possible to compensate >get BTFO in those 3rd world shitholes too because you trusted a forest again
>in second world war, we lose. In dien bien phu, we lose. In Nigeria, we lose. In Indochina, we lose. But here, we don’t lose! This piece of earth, we keep it!
Bruh, lookadis dood
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Battle_of_Dien_Bien_Phu >Much to French disbelief, the Viet Minh had employed direct artillery fire, in which each gun crew does its own artillery spotting (as opposed to indirect fire, in which guns are massed further away from the target, out of direct line of sight, and rely on a forward artillery spotter). Indirect artillery, generally held as being far superior to direct fire, requires experienced, well-trained crews and good communications, which the Viet Minh lacked.
Oh ho ho. Wait till you see the... oh ho ho >Navarre wrote that, "Under the influence of Chinese advisers, the Viet Minh commanders had used processes quite different from the classic methods. The artillery had been dug in by single pieces...They were installed in shellproof dugouts, and fire point-blank from portholes... This way of using artillery and AA guns was possible only with the expansive ant holes at the disposal of the Vietminh and was to make shambles of all the estimates of our own artillerymen."
Oh no no no, oh ho ho, ooooohhh awww >Two days later, the French artillery commander, Colonel Charles Piroth, distraught at his inability to silence the well-camouflaged Viet Minh batteries, went into his dugout and committed suicide with a hand grenade. He was buried there in secret to prevent loss of morale among the French troops.
AH HA HA HA HAAA
Mao was unironically the worst nightmare of every European imperialist. For an exploitative government, There is genuinely no feasible way to defeat the methods of prolonged grassroots snowballing guerilla warfare that he perfected short of entirely genociding the entire native population. in terms of tactics and methods used by the North Vietnamese, the Indochina wars can be seen as a direct sequel to how the Reds won the civil war in China.
Mao was neither grassroots nor did he win because he was some sort of tactical genius. He won due to soviet backing and watching the nationalists bleed out from the sidelines due to actually fighting the japanese.
2 years ago
Anonymous
both copes. Mao had escaped every single attempt by Chiang to wipe him out prior to WW2 and had no shortage of pissed off miserably poor peasants to endlessly recruit from. There's no way that some sort of huge fundamental revolution doesn't sweep away the Kuomintang, seeing as the Kuomintang largely represented the status quo, but the status quo was shit for 99% of people.
as for Stalin's arms deliveries to Mao, the Communists suddenly getting more rifles en masse might have sped up their victory by a moderate margin but it wasn't the decisive factor, not at all.
2 years ago
Anonymous
>Arming a huge population with weapons wasn't a decisive factor
Jannies, close off IQfy from clueless morons, PLEASE!
2 years ago
Anonymous
After a world war and 30 straight years of civil war China didn’t have any shortage of small arms scattered fricking everywhere.
Mao’s army would have been able to obtain those rifles some way or another, moron. I repeat, Stalin gifting them some sped things up, but it wasn’t the deciding factor. Like, at all.
Thinking that short-sighted control and supply of something as plentiful as weapons can defeat an idea in the long term is exactly the kind of ignorant meathead thinking that caused Chiang to lose.
Cope harder.
2 years ago
Anonymous
>suddenly getting more rifles
700,000 rifles, 12,000-14,000 machine guns, 4,000 artillery pieces, 600 tanks, and 679 ammunition stockpiles were sent by the Soviet Union to supply the Communist armed forces in Northeast China .
2 years ago
Anonymous
For the third time: useful to Mao, but not decisive.
These soviet supplied arms were delivered from the winter of 1945-46. Prior to this point the communists had already begun buck-breaking KMT armies on masse with campaigns in the north. The CCP was already fricking winning at a rapid rate by the time Stalin shipped them weapons. The entire Shandong peninsula had just been taken over by the reds. Chiang wasn’t winning in a million years by even 1944.
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Shangdang_Campaign
2 years ago
Anonymous
>He won due to soviet backing
It was little compared to Lend Lease that the Western Allies gave to the KMT. The Red got mostly captured Jap equipment from the Soviets, with some even in bad shape (the tanks especially). >watching the nationalists bleed out from the sidelines due to actually fighting the japanese.
If the CCP actually "did nothing," it would not have reemerged in 1946 with the support of Northern China which allowed the CCP to rebuild a conventional army and fight against the KMT on the open battlefield once again.
Except in actual history, they did, as the CCP's guerrilla antics in occupied Japanese territory and propaganda campaigns among the peasants won the support of Northern Chinese masses who felt abandoned by the KMT after the latter was forced to retreat Southwards.
2 years ago
Anonymous
>nor did he win because he was some sort of tactical genius
Mao is THE grandfather of modern guerilla warfare. There hasn’t been a single guerilla war after 1949 in which his tactics and writings were NOT followed closely, whether the guerillas knew it or not.
https://amp.abc.net.au/article/100386792
2 years ago
Anonymous
>whether the guerillas knew it or not
Because it's basic b***h shit that even the paddies managed to intuitively understand in 1920, or let me guess Collins was a disciple of Mao as well?
2 years ago
Anonymous
>Because it's basic b***h shit that even the paddies managed to intuitively understand in 1920
Yes, precisely, Mao was the first to compile the fundamentals of guerilla warfare into several volumes of writings in the same way that conventional tactics existed before Sun Tzu, but he was the dude that wrote a definitive book compiling all of them in one spot for easy reading.
Take a look at what mao wrote on guerilla war and he essentially perfectly predicts the reasons for why every future insurgency either wins or fails, in vivid detail.
Disagree with Mao’s economic policies all you want, I do too. Maoism is completely moronic in most aspects but Mao’s skill and wisdom at waging a war with penniless peasants against a state they hate is something to behold.
Mao was a blithering idiot for thinking that some nonsense like collectivized farms could ever work, but if he was made commander of a country like the US or Iran’s asymmetrical warfare division he would have been unbelievably OP.
Take a look at what mao wrote on guerilla war and he essentially perfectly predicts the reasons for why every future insurgency either wins or fails, in vivid detail.
Disagree with Mao’s economic policies all you want, I do too. Maoism is completely moronic in most aspects but Mao’s skill and wisdom at waging a war with penniless peasants against a state they hate is something to behold.
Mao was a blithering idiot for thinking that some nonsense like collectivized farms could ever work, but if he was made commander of a country like the US or Iran’s asymmetrical warfare division he would have been unbelievably OP.
Maoist rebels in Peru, Nepal, Malaya, India, you name it, haven’t won against those countries’ governments, but they’ve been a continuous major pain in the ass of these countries for decades now, far longer than any other communist school of thought. Maoism teaches bitter, impoverished masses how to wage total war, it’s incredibly potent and attractive to countries with a lot of poor rural peasants and always will be a problem for them. Like india.
Prolonged People’s War doesn’t always win, but the fact that some Maoist people’s war groups have been fighting nonstop for 50 god damn years without being wiped out is an achievement in and of itself. I would argue that the only ideology that’s been anywhere near as stubborn and successful as Maoism has been Islamic jihadism.
You're both idiots. Protracted People's War Doctrine guerrilla warfare is not "basic" guerilla warfare at all.
Traditionally & generally for the longest time, before PPW, guerrilla warfare went like this. >We will conduct asymmetric warfare against the enemy. >Our endgoals are we sure hope that via attrition the enemy fricks off or is weakened enough that a foreign allied army/our faction's military will come in and actually defeat them.
Protracted People's Warfare Doctrine goes like this. >We literally have no conventional army on our side nor can we rely on foreign allies too much (or we have none lol) >So we will conduct asymmetric warfare against the enemy AND we will also conduct political propaganda campaigns among the people whom we're trying to convince to side with our cause. >We consider the political propaganda campaign to be MORE IMPORTANT than the military struggle. >We will pander to what the people want and promise to give them that if they support us. >In areas that we have control we will act already as the impromptu government and pander/listen to local concerns even further. >In the meantime we shall participate in standard asymmetric warfare BUT IT IS SECONDARY IN OUR STRATEGY. >If we win, good, we actually scored a victory over our enemy that makes us look good to the people. >If we lose, irrelevant, all that is important is to continue fighting & show the people that "you fight on our side." >Our endgoals is not attritional victory nor to wait for a conventional army to save us. >Our endgoals are either to subvert enough people to our cause and lend us LEGITIMACY as a ruling power AND/OR subvert enough of the people to our cause to TRANSFORM OUR GUERRILLA ARMY INTO A CONVENTIONAL FORCE and decisively defeat the enemy on the field.
Maoist Guerrilla Tactics only look "obvious" because PPW has explicitly influenced other Postwar guerrilla groups.
>When the Japanese leader apologized for the invasion, Mao stopped him and said: “We must express our gratitude to Japan. If Japan had not invaded China, we could have never achieved the cooperation between the Kuomintang and the Communist Party. We could have never developed and eventually taken political power for ourselves. It is due to Japan’s help that we are able to meet here in Beijing.”
2 years ago
Anonymous
Now use your three brain cells to copy-paste the part in that Wikipedia article where it’s commonly accepted that Mao was spitballing dark humor at these jap diplomats. Nothing about the Kuomintang’s wartime practices were sustainable or competent.
2 years ago
Anonymous
>The communists suffered between 150000 and 170000 casualties and defections during the Long March. Of the 200000 men estimated to have participated in the Long March only 8000 made it to the final destination,
what was mao's strategy? forever running away? much tactics such military genius
2 years ago
Anonymous
I didn't realise the Chinese civil war was only between 1934-35
2 years ago
Anonymous
i didn't realise permaretreating was considered a new and exciting tactic that only mao ever thought of, he was assblasted and completely BTFO until chiang was forced into redirecting attention to the japs so i'm failing to see where mao's military genius lies?
2 years ago
Anonymous
because from that shitty remainder of 8,000 men he conquered China
2 years ago
Anonymous
mao won because the nationalist got BTFO by japs while commies were sitting around sipping tea like homosexuals and the peasant hatred of nationalists with mao being the only alternative
The Communist Chinese didn't develop those techniques, they learnt from the Japanese/German-trained Koumintang officers who utilize it it the bloody conventional war called WW2 which the Communists played minimal part
Mao himself sucked as a commander. He was good politician and strategist, but in this capacity he was still outclassed by other commie leaders such as Stalin or his own colleagues Zhou and Deng. If you read about him, the thing that made him stand out was his ruthlessness and balls, he was the biggest risk taker among the early chink commies
2 years ago
Anonymous
>Japanese/German-trained Koumintang officers who utilize it it the bloody conventional war called WW2 which the Communists played minimal part
The NRA was trained by the Soviets...
Also Germans have no idea how to conduct guerrilla war at all.
2 years ago
Anonymous
I'm talking about the artillery stuffs dummy. Japan use the same artillery scheme against america in the Pacific
It is relatively straightforward, you beat them at their own game. You learn to blend in with the foliage, you send out patrols, you find their trails and litter them with mines, you root out their supply caches.
>genociding the entire native population
What? You win hearts and minds. The Vietcong enjoyed raping Montagnard children and other such atrocities, to many the communists were the "imperialist oppressors" while Europeans were not quite on the same level, although I'm sure they disliked their lack of independence it was not as big as an issue for you as it was for them. If you are a villager, the communists feel you are hiding rice from them and slide bamboo splinters under your fingernails until you reveal where it is hidden, you will cooperate with whoever will protect you from them.
The problem with fortified villages in Vietnam was it was corruptly administered, they relied on the Republic to orchestrate it. When properly managed it works very well. The British had a long experience as colonial administrators, they knew how to moralize forces like the Ghurkas, something the Americans lacked.
okay, but consider this:
much of the same revolutionary thinking and jargon that was professed by the communist insurgents eventually triumphed. Malaysia is no longer a British colony and they couldn't afford to hold onto it. the Violent revolution failed but the Malays are independent.
Also Chin Peng's guerillas weren't willing to march literally thousands of miles in circles and suffer 99% casualties in order to win like Mao's army did. They signed a peace treaty twice, the pussies.
It also didn't help that the man in charge of running the Strategic Hamlet programme in South Vietnam was a North Vietnamese agent actively sabotaging the programme by encouraging the proliferation of "strategic hamlets" far beyond the regime's capability
It is just a matter of scaling up. Take over from the Republic of Vietnam, provide more oversight to fortified villages, extra resources so they don't have to move their village, train and employ guards from the village itself, invest in training police who can investigate VC activity honestly and rationally. The same applies to cutting guerrillas from resupply. The US could have recreated something on the scale of the demilitarized zone in Korea, they spent an enormous amount on the Vietnam war, they had the resources to do so along Vietnam's long land border, aided by technology like night vision and agent orange.
It was completely possible to win the Vietnam war. The problem is western democracies lack the vision to enact the necessary changes, most politicians don't want to win wars, the war is just another issue in the next election, they don't make any bold decisions since it will make them culpable, it is similar with the brass who are mostly careerists. They just muddle through and leave the mess for the next person unless they are pressed to deliver results as in the world wars.
In the future as the global economy collapses and rogue states begin habitually using nuclear and chemical weapons in their wars, against each other if not against us, and possibly new technology like swarms of AI controlled drones or genetically modified biological weapons. The US will likely have to seize control over the land surface area over this planet to maintain its security, colonialism and imperialism are dirty words but they will need to be revisited and we will also need a system more effective than democracy to manage it.
>It was completely possible to win the Vietnam war.
it was not you absolutely delusional amerifatso, 90% of vietnam hated the south viet regime and america >Then, at the age of 28, she walked with a limp. She had spent most of her youth in torture centres run by the South Vietnamese secret police, a terror organisation established, trained and run by teams from the CIA and Michigan State University. (According to Amnesty International, more than half the world's known political prisoners in the early 1960s were incarcerated by the South Vietnamese regime.) Tao was 17 when she was first arrested. She was cycling home from school and taken to a villa run by the secret police. She was accused of being a communist and a member of the National Liberation Front. "I was neither," she said. "Like most students I hated the regime, especially for bringing a foreign army to Vietnam. It is true I co-operated with the NLF and was prepared to fight for them. We all respected them.
2 years ago
Anonymous
>She was accused of being a communist and a member of the National Liberation Front. "I was neither," she said >It is true I co-operated with the NLF and was prepared to fight for them.
what did she mean by this?
There were a considerable number of differences between the insurgency in Malaya and the insurgency in South Vietnam that make any sort of comparison difficult, one of the main ones being the Malayan insurgency was mostly an issue with the ethnic Chinese minority who had little to no social/spiritiual connection to the lands they worked - while Vietnamese villagers resented being forced out of their ancestral lands to rebuild their villages in locations that were more secure. The Malaysian insurgency also didn't have a Malaysian communist state to the North that was a constant source of supplies and if needed manpower to that insurgency.
It also didn't help that the man in charge of running the Strategic Hamlet programme in South Vietnam was a North Vietnamese agent actively sabotaging the programme by encouraging the proliferation of "strategic hamlets" far beyond the regime's capability
Brits were able to use divide and conquer and concentration camps because support for the guerillas was coming largely from the Chinese minority. You couldn't use these sort of tactics to subjugate Vietnam.
>they knew how to moralize forces like the Ghurkas, something the Americans lacked.
Boy I guess those Native American scouts and radiomen don’t count know
The strategy has worked in other cases see: Khe Sanh
see: Nà Sản
It's known as a hedgehog defence, in which you entice an enemy to make expensive assaults.
France lacked the required air power in this case.
>Take a look at what mao wrote on guerilla war and he essentially perfectly predicts the reasons for why every future insurgency either wins or fails, in vivid detail.
Far more insurgencies tried following Mao and failed in the attempt than actually succeeded
inb4 >"They were just doing it wrong"
Take a look at what mao wrote on guerilla war and he essentially perfectly predicts the reasons for why every future insurgency either wins or fails, in vivid detail.
Disagree with Mao’s economic policies all you want, I do too. Maoism is completely moronic in most aspects but Mao’s skill and wisdom at waging a war with penniless peasants against a state they hate is something to behold.
Mao was a blithering idiot for thinking that some nonsense like collectivized farms could ever work, but if he was made commander of a country like the US or Iran’s asymmetrical warfare division he would have been unbelievably OP.
Obviously Maoist style guerilla war doesn’t always work but they’re often the most prolonged and successful even if they don’t eventually take over the government.
Maoist rebels in Peru, Nepal, Malaya, India, you name it, haven’t won against those countries’ governments, but they’ve been a continuous major pain in the ass of these countries for decades now, far longer than any other communist school of thought. Maoism teaches bitter, impoverished masses how to wage total war, it’s incredibly potent and attractive to countries with a lot of poor rural peasants and always will be a problem for them. Like india.
Prolonged People’s War doesn’t always win, but the fact that some Maoist people’s war groups have been fighting nonstop for 50 god damn years without being wiped out is an achievement in and of itself. I would argue that the only ideology that’s been anywhere near as stubborn and successful as Maoism has been Islamic jihadism.
Also they weren’t “doing it wrong.” They fought according to the book, it’s just that countries like Peru and India have been recently able to experience some economic growth and political stability, making Maoism less desirable to your average Joe.
The only way to kill a potent idea like Maoism is to offer a better idea. When farm peasants can finally make some decent money for themselves, they don’t feel the need to run into the jungle with a rifle and a copy of mao’s Little Red Book.
China was dirt fricking poor and seemed like it was going to remain so. That’s why people put their faith in Mao. Rich people don’t become communists.
france ruled over vietnam for a 100 years
they put the vietnamese chatholics in charge
the vietnamese catholics were a minority group who depended on the french for protection
the vietnamese catholics brutalized the buddhists who where 80% of the population
during the vietnam war, the catholics ruled the south while the buddhists ruled the north
>be french military/government
>get utterly BTFO so hard in WW2 you desperately try to hold and beat up on colonial 3rd worlders like algeria and indochina as much as humanly possible to compensate
>get BTFO in those 3rd world shitholes too
the absolute asshurt the French in the second half of the 20th century must have gone through is delicious
Kind of sad considering the so far successful military record of France up to that point to lose all prestige in a few wars, wouldn't be as bad if there was nothing to compare it to but they just have to look in a military history book
Excluding Dien Bien Phu and the occasional ambush, the French had actually developed pretty good counterinsurgency tactics. Before De Lattre died he had actually broken the Viet Minh on his fortified positions in the North.
Despite the disaster at Dien Bien Phu, they went on to win the Algerian war on the ground using not only their own tactics but interrogation methods learned from the Viet Minh, proving they still had it.
>they went on to win the Algerian war on the ground using not only their own tactics but interrogation methods learned from the Viet Minh, proving they still had it
but the Algerians won politically. That's still a total victory from Mao's standpoint although i doubt communist writings played much influence in Muslim Algeria
>win war in Algeria
>ditch it anyway for no reason
what did De Gaulle mean by this
De Gaulle feared that if Algeria remained part of France, millions of Algerians would move to mainland France and shit up the country
Ironically, it happened anyway because the guys who came after it decided to import millions of Algerians
Guess he was right after all imagine if he could see what his country has become and all because of der yankee
>be french military/government
>get utterly BTFO so hard in WW2 because you trusted a forest
>you desperately try to hold and beat up on colonial 3rd worlders like algeria and indochina as much as humanly possible to compensate
>get BTFO in those 3rd world shitholes too because you trusted a forest again
Fixed
>mfw they became Italy 2
>in second world war, we lose. In dien bien phu, we lose. In Nigeria, we lose. In Indochina, we lose. But here, we don’t lose! This piece of earth, we keep it!
French pride and hubris really fricked them over.
>pierre, there is no way they can drag artillery pieces up those jungle-covered mountains
Bruh, lookadis dood
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Battle_of_Dien_Bien_Phu
>Much to French disbelief, the Viet Minh had employed direct artillery fire, in which each gun crew does its own artillery spotting (as opposed to indirect fire, in which guns are massed further away from the target, out of direct line of sight, and rely on a forward artillery spotter). Indirect artillery, generally held as being far superior to direct fire, requires experienced, well-trained crews and good communications, which the Viet Minh lacked.
Oh ho ho. Wait till you see the... oh ho ho
>Navarre wrote that, "Under the influence of Chinese advisers, the Viet Minh commanders had used processes quite different from the classic methods. The artillery had been dug in by single pieces...They were installed in shellproof dugouts, and fire point-blank from portholes... This way of using artillery and AA guns was possible only with the expansive ant holes at the disposal of the Vietminh and was to make shambles of all the estimates of our own artillerymen."
Oh no no no, oh ho ho, ooooohhh awww
>Two days later, the French artillery commander, Colonel Charles Piroth, distraught at his inability to silence the well-camouflaged Viet Minh batteries, went into his dugout and committed suicide with a hand grenade. He was buried there in secret to prevent loss of morale among the French troops.
AH HA HA HA HAAA
Mao was unironically the worst nightmare of every European imperialist. For an exploitative government, There is genuinely no feasible way to defeat the methods of prolonged grassroots snowballing guerilla warfare that he perfected short of entirely genociding the entire native population. in terms of tactics and methods used by the North Vietnamese, the Indochina wars can be seen as a direct sequel to how the Reds won the civil war in China.
Mao was neither grassroots nor did he win because he was some sort of tactical genius. He won due to soviet backing and watching the nationalists bleed out from the sidelines due to actually fighting the japanese.
both copes. Mao had escaped every single attempt by Chiang to wipe him out prior to WW2 and had no shortage of pissed off miserably poor peasants to endlessly recruit from. There's no way that some sort of huge fundamental revolution doesn't sweep away the Kuomintang, seeing as the Kuomintang largely represented the status quo, but the status quo was shit for 99% of people.
as for Stalin's arms deliveries to Mao, the Communists suddenly getting more rifles en masse might have sped up their victory by a moderate margin but it wasn't the decisive factor, not at all.
>Arming a huge population with weapons wasn't a decisive factor
Jannies, close off IQfy from clueless morons, PLEASE!
After a world war and 30 straight years of civil war China didn’t have any shortage of small arms scattered fricking everywhere.
Mao’s army would have been able to obtain those rifles some way or another, moron. I repeat, Stalin gifting them some sped things up, but it wasn’t the deciding factor. Like, at all.
Thinking that short-sighted control and supply of something as plentiful as weapons can defeat an idea in the long term is exactly the kind of ignorant meathead thinking that caused Chiang to lose.
Cope harder.
>suddenly getting more rifles
700,000 rifles, 12,000-14,000 machine guns, 4,000 artillery pieces, 600 tanks, and 679 ammunition stockpiles were sent by the Soviet Union to supply the Communist armed forces in Northeast China .
For the third time: useful to Mao, but not decisive.
These soviet supplied arms were delivered from the winter of 1945-46. Prior to this point the communists had already begun buck-breaking KMT armies on masse with campaigns in the north. The CCP was already fricking winning at a rapid rate by the time Stalin shipped them weapons. The entire Shandong peninsula had just been taken over by the reds. Chiang wasn’t winning in a million years by even 1944.
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Shangdang_Campaign
>He won due to soviet backing
It was little compared to Lend Lease that the Western Allies gave to the KMT. The Red got mostly captured Jap equipment from the Soviets, with some even in bad shape (the tanks especially).
>watching the nationalists bleed out from the sidelines due to actually fighting the japanese.
If the CCP actually "did nothing," it would not have reemerged in 1946 with the support of Northern China which allowed the CCP to rebuild a conventional army and fight against the KMT on the open battlefield once again.
Except in actual history, they did, as the CCP's guerrilla antics in occupied Japanese territory and propaganda campaigns among the peasants won the support of Northern Chinese masses who felt abandoned by the KMT after the latter was forced to retreat Southwards.
>nor did he win because he was some sort of tactical genius
Mao is THE grandfather of modern guerilla warfare. There hasn’t been a single guerilla war after 1949 in which his tactics and writings were NOT followed closely, whether the guerillas knew it or not.
https://amp.abc.net.au/article/100386792
>whether the guerillas knew it or not
Because it's basic b***h shit that even the paddies managed to intuitively understand in 1920, or let me guess Collins was a disciple of Mao as well?
>Because it's basic b***h shit that even the paddies managed to intuitively understand in 1920
Yes, precisely, Mao was the first to compile the fundamentals of guerilla warfare into several volumes of writings in the same way that conventional tactics existed before Sun Tzu, but he was the dude that wrote a definitive book compiling all of them in one spot for easy reading.
Take a look at what mao wrote on guerilla war and he essentially perfectly predicts the reasons for why every future insurgency either wins or fails, in vivid detail.
Disagree with Mao’s economic policies all you want, I do too. Maoism is completely moronic in most aspects but Mao’s skill and wisdom at waging a war with penniless peasants against a state they hate is something to behold.
Mao was a blithering idiot for thinking that some nonsense like collectivized farms could ever work, but if he was made commander of a country like the US or Iran’s asymmetrical warfare division he would have been unbelievably OP.
You're both idiots. Protracted People's War Doctrine guerrilla warfare is not "basic" guerilla warfare at all.
Traditionally & generally for the longest time, before PPW, guerrilla warfare went like this.
>We will conduct asymmetric warfare against the enemy.
>Our endgoals are we sure hope that via attrition the enemy fricks off or is weakened enough that a foreign allied army/our faction's military will come in and actually defeat them.
Protracted People's Warfare Doctrine goes like this.
>We literally have no conventional army on our side nor can we rely on foreign allies too much (or we have none lol)
>So we will conduct asymmetric warfare against the enemy AND we will also conduct political propaganda campaigns among the people whom we're trying to convince to side with our cause.
>We consider the political propaganda campaign to be MORE IMPORTANT than the military struggle.
>We will pander to what the people want and promise to give them that if they support us.
>In areas that we have control we will act already as the impromptu government and pander/listen to local concerns even further.
>In the meantime we shall participate in standard asymmetric warfare BUT IT IS SECONDARY IN OUR STRATEGY.
>If we win, good, we actually scored a victory over our enemy that makes us look good to the people.
>If we lose, irrelevant, all that is important is to continue fighting & show the people that "you fight on our side."
>Our endgoals is not attritional victory nor to wait for a conventional army to save us.
>Our endgoals are either to subvert enough people to our cause and lend us LEGITIMACY as a ruling power AND/OR subvert enough of the people to our cause to TRANSFORM OUR GUERRILLA ARMY INTO A CONVENTIONAL FORCE and decisively defeat the enemy on the field.
Maoist Guerrilla Tactics only look "obvious" because PPW has explicitly influenced other Postwar guerrilla groups.
>When the Japanese leader apologized for the invasion, Mao stopped him and said: “We must express our gratitude to Japan. If Japan had not invaded China, we could have never achieved the cooperation between the Kuomintang and the Communist Party. We could have never developed and eventually taken political power for ourselves. It is due to Japan’s help that we are able to meet here in Beijing.”
Now use your three brain cells to copy-paste the part in that Wikipedia article where it’s commonly accepted that Mao was spitballing dark humor at these jap diplomats. Nothing about the Kuomintang’s wartime practices were sustainable or competent.
>The communists suffered between 150000 and 170000 casualties and defections during the Long March. Of the 200000 men estimated to have participated in the Long March only 8000 made it to the final destination,
what was mao's strategy? forever running away? much tactics such military genius
I didn't realise the Chinese civil war was only between 1934-35
i didn't realise permaretreating was considered a new and exciting tactic that only mao ever thought of, he was assblasted and completely BTFO until chiang was forced into redirecting attention to the japs so i'm failing to see where mao's military genius lies?
because from that shitty remainder of 8,000 men he conquered China
mao won because the nationalist got BTFO by japs while commies were sitting around sipping tea like homosexuals and the peasant hatred of nationalists with mao being the only alternative
The Communist Chinese didn't develop those techniques, they learnt from the Japanese/German-trained Koumintang officers who utilize it it the bloody conventional war called WW2 which the Communists played minimal part
Mao himself sucked as a commander. He was good politician and strategist, but in this capacity he was still outclassed by other commie leaders such as Stalin or his own colleagues Zhou and Deng. If you read about him, the thing that made him stand out was his ruthlessness and balls, he was the biggest risk taker among the early chink commies
>Japanese/German-trained Koumintang officers who utilize it it the bloody conventional war called WW2 which the Communists played minimal part
The NRA was trained by the Soviets...
Also Germans have no idea how to conduct guerrilla war at all.
I'm talking about the artillery stuffs dummy. Japan use the same artillery scheme against america in the Pacific
Did anyone mention artillery at any time?
lmao Jesus christ
>God fights on the side with the best artillery
>communists don't believe in God
wtf some1 explain
God still loves you
most of Viet Cong were Buddhist peasants. Buddhists have idea of divinity last time i checked.
The second communists drop the atheism the whole world will go red.
Frenchbros... not like this...
> LIBERTE, EGALIT-ACK
Mao was one of the most based humans who ever lived.
*defeats the malay insurgency*
It is relatively straightforward, you beat them at their own game. You learn to blend in with the foliage, you send out patrols, you find their trails and litter them with mines, you root out their supply caches.
>genociding the entire native population
What? You win hearts and minds. The Vietcong enjoyed raping Montagnard children and other such atrocities, to many the communists were the "imperialist oppressors" while Europeans were not quite on the same level, although I'm sure they disliked their lack of independence it was not as big as an issue for you as it was for them. If you are a villager, the communists feel you are hiding rice from them and slide bamboo splinters under your fingernails until you reveal where it is hidden, you will cooperate with whoever will protect you from them.
The problem with fortified villages in Vietnam was it was corruptly administered, they relied on the Republic to orchestrate it. When properly managed it works very well. The British had a long experience as colonial administrators, they knew how to moralize forces like the Ghurkas, something the Americans lacked.
okay, but consider this:
much of the same revolutionary thinking and jargon that was professed by the communist insurgents eventually triumphed. Malaysia is no longer a British colony and they couldn't afford to hold onto it. the Violent revolution failed but the Malays are independent.
Also Chin Peng's guerillas weren't willing to march literally thousands of miles in circles and suffer 99% casualties in order to win like Mao's army did. They signed a peace treaty twice, the pussies.
This was more because Britain became a universal democracy, was tired of war, elected socialists and considered its "civilizing mission" complete.
It is just a matter of scaling up. Take over from the Republic of Vietnam, provide more oversight to fortified villages, extra resources so they don't have to move their village, train and employ guards from the village itself, invest in training police who can investigate VC activity honestly and rationally. The same applies to cutting guerrillas from resupply. The US could have recreated something on the scale of the demilitarized zone in Korea, they spent an enormous amount on the Vietnam war, they had the resources to do so along Vietnam's long land border, aided by technology like night vision and agent orange.
It was completely possible to win the Vietnam war. The problem is western democracies lack the vision to enact the necessary changes, most politicians don't want to win wars, the war is just another issue in the next election, they don't make any bold decisions since it will make them culpable, it is similar with the brass who are mostly careerists. They just muddle through and leave the mess for the next person unless they are pressed to deliver results as in the world wars.
In the future as the global economy collapses and rogue states begin habitually using nuclear and chemical weapons in their wars, against each other if not against us, and possibly new technology like swarms of AI controlled drones or genetically modified biological weapons. The US will likely have to seize control over the land surface area over this planet to maintain its security, colonialism and imperialism are dirty words but they will need to be revisited and we will also need a system more effective than democracy to manage it.
shouldn't you be posting "hard times create strong men" memes on /misc/?
>It was completely possible to win the Vietnam war.
it was not you absolutely delusional amerifatso, 90% of vietnam hated the south viet regime and america
>Then, at the age of 28, she walked with a limp. She had spent most of her youth in torture centres run by the South Vietnamese secret police, a terror organisation established, trained and run by teams from the CIA and Michigan State University. (According to Amnesty International, more than half the world's known political prisoners in the early 1960s were incarcerated by the South Vietnamese regime.) Tao was 17 when she was first arrested. She was cycling home from school and taken to a villa run by the secret police. She was accused of being a communist and a member of the National Liberation Front. "I was neither," she said. "Like most students I hated the regime, especially for bringing a foreign army to Vietnam. It is true I co-operated with the NLF and was prepared to fight for them. We all respected them.
>She was accused of being a communist and a member of the National Liberation Front. "I was neither," she said
>It is true I co-operated with the NLF and was prepared to fight for them.
what did she mean by this?
There were a considerable number of differences between the insurgency in Malaya and the insurgency in South Vietnam that make any sort of comparison difficult, one of the main ones being the Malayan insurgency was mostly an issue with the ethnic Chinese minority who had little to no social/spiritiual connection to the lands they worked - while Vietnamese villagers resented being forced out of their ancestral lands to rebuild their villages in locations that were more secure. The Malaysian insurgency also didn't have a Malaysian communist state to the North that was a constant source of supplies and if needed manpower to that insurgency.
It also didn't help that the man in charge of running the Strategic Hamlet programme in South Vietnam was a North Vietnamese agent actively sabotaging the programme by encouraging the proliferation of "strategic hamlets" far beyond the regime's capability
Brits were able to use divide and conquer and concentration camps because support for the guerillas was coming largely from the Chinese minority. You couldn't use these sort of tactics to subjugate Vietnam.
>they knew how to moralize forces like the Ghurkas, something the Americans lacked.
Boy I guess those Native American scouts and radiomen don’t count know
The strategy has worked in other cases see: Khe Sanh
see: Nà Sản
It's known as a hedgehog defence, in which you entice an enemy to make expensive assaults.
France lacked the required air power in this case.
>Take a look at what mao wrote on guerilla war and he essentially perfectly predicts the reasons for why every future insurgency either wins or fails, in vivid detail.
Far more insurgencies tried following Mao and failed in the attempt than actually succeeded
inb4
>"They were just doing it wrong"
Obviously Maoist style guerilla war doesn’t always work but they’re often the most prolonged and successful even if they don’t eventually take over the government.
Maoist rebels in Peru, Nepal, Malaya, India, you name it, haven’t won against those countries’ governments, but they’ve been a continuous major pain in the ass of these countries for decades now, far longer than any other communist school of thought. Maoism teaches bitter, impoverished masses how to wage total war, it’s incredibly potent and attractive to countries with a lot of poor rural peasants and always will be a problem for them. Like india.
Prolonged People’s War doesn’t always win, but the fact that some Maoist people’s war groups have been fighting nonstop for 50 god damn years without being wiped out is an achievement in and of itself. I would argue that the only ideology that’s been anywhere near as stubborn and successful as Maoism has been Islamic jihadism.
Also they weren’t “doing it wrong.” They fought according to the book, it’s just that countries like Peru and India have been recently able to experience some economic growth and political stability, making Maoism less desirable to your average Joe.
The only way to kill a potent idea like Maoism is to offer a better idea. When farm peasants can finally make some decent money for themselves, they don’t feel the need to run into the jungle with a rifle and a copy of mao’s Little Red Book.
China was dirt fricking poor and seemed like it was going to remain so. That’s why people put their faith in Mao. Rich people don’t become communists.
france ruled over vietnam for a 100 years
they put the vietnamese chatholics in charge
the vietnamese catholics were a minority group who depended on the french for protection
the vietnamese catholics brutalized the buddhists who where 80% of the population
during the vietnam war, the catholics ruled the south while the buddhists ruled the north
>“Let them fight”
Was he in the wrong?
mountains would be better for defense