What does it take to win at war?  That’s the question asked repeatedly throughout the vast span of human existence, isn’t it?  The very question posed by Babylonian King Nabonidas in 539 BC, Persian King of Kings Darius in 333, Gaul’s Vercingetorix in 51, Normandy’s William the Conqueror in 1050 AD, the Confederacy’s Jefferson Davis in 1860, Churchill in 1939, and Kim Il Sung in 1949.  The question is ubiquitous because war is ubiquitous.

So what is the magic ingredient that separates winners from losers?  Is it better weaponry?  The U.S. had that in Vietnam and still lost.  Perhaps a stronger will to win?  Could any have been stronger than that evidenced by the Japanese in WWII, and yet they were defeated.  Maybe it’s the most effective use of terrain?  Though Greece fell to Rome and the Germans despite inhabiting some of the most defensible terrain on the planet.  Could it be the development and application of better doctrine?  Imperial Germany had that in 1914 and yet couldn’t force its way past an enemy that simply dug into the ground.

So, what is it that, more often than not, separates those in the winner and loser columns?  I’d humbly suggest to you it’s an understanding of and ability to organize a strong logistical foundation.  Okay, okay, blasphemy, I know.  I’ll probably have my crossed cannons revoked for even saying such a thing, as we all know that artillery is “King of the Battlefield”.  Yet pick the battlefield and find one where those intrepid Redlegs cast their own ammunition, mixed their own gunpowder, distilled their own fuel, and grew their own food.  You have to go pretty far back in time—likely Medieval times, frankly—to find a point where artilleryman were remotely self-contained in any logistical sense.  All the more so for my armor brethren, even given their previous reliance upon horses.  These still, generally, required a significant logistical tail in order to be effective on the actual battlefield.  And without that support … horses didn’t always make it to that battlefield.

We’ve all heard the military axiom “Amateurs talk tactics, professionals study logistics”.  Look closely at the most mind-blowing military operations in history, and you’ll generally find a logistical underpinning that made it all possible.  On the other hand, study those historical military campaigns that “should have” been successful and note the logistical failings that generally seem to undercut even the most probable of victories.  Logistics, and an army or navy’s handling of it, weigh in more heavily, probably, than any single factor throughout history.

Let’s take a quick survey to illustrate the point.  In 479 BC, near the razed city of Platea, the Achaemenid Persian army faced an ad hoc army manned by the few remaining Greek city states from the south.  The Persians had already burned Athens—twice, in fact—and were sitting pretty in central Greece, on flat ground that strongly favored their irresistible and professional cavalry.  The Greeks held position in the hills, unable to do much of anything to interfere with Persian depredations of northern Greek states, most of which now contributed to the Persian army.  Why on earth would the Persians cross the stream and march up into terrain that didn’t suit them in order to engage the Greeks?  They could have waited forever on the plain had their army not been running low on supplies.  It turns out burning cities makes them somewhat less productive, and the troops and animals were beginning to suffer.  So, Mardonius rolled the dice, hoping to end the campaign once and for all, but lost on the unsuitable battlefield, rendering the invasion a colossal waste of time, resources, and soldiers.

In June of 1812, Napoleon, the greatest conqueror Europe had known since Alexander the Great, made the classic blunder of invading Russia.  Victorious in battle after battle, he and his men weren’t quite ready to face an enemy that could always retreat further.  There seemed no end to Russia but Napoleon found his dreams fulfilled when he triumphantly marched into Moscow in September.  Almost, that is.  The Russians burned their capital rather than allow the French sanctuary and, lacking the logistical means to remain there due to over-extended supply lines, Napoleon began one of the world’s most memorable and terrible retreats.  Napoleon lost 500,000 men in Russia, the vast majority of whom fell during that awful winter retrograde.

In 1592 Hideyoshi launched an invasion of Joseon Korea, with over 158,000 veteran troops who’d grown up during the period of endemic Japanese warfare known as the Sengoku Jidai, or “Warring States Period”.  Joseon maintained a standing army only a fraction of that size, and most of that was arrayed in defense against Jurchen tribes to the north.  To make things worse, the Japanese brought with them a Portuguese style matchlock musket for which neither the Koreans, nor the Ming Chinese who came to help, could hope to counter.  The subsequent Japanese romp up the peninsula was never significantly checked, but at Pyeongyang, the invaders reached the end of their logistical tether.  A combination of failing to secure sea lanes of communication past the venerable Korean Admiral Yi and failing to halt the activities of innumerable guerrillas operating in their rear, led to Japanese troops at the front lines starving, low on gun powder, bullets, and medicine.  Inevitably, these forward troops were left with no option but to retreat to the southern coast, where they remained until 1598 when they withdrew from the peninsula.

Lest we fool ourselves into thinking these are things of the distant past, modern warfare is far more reliant upon a robust logistical framework than ever before.  The Japanese in WWII won nearly every battle against the Chinese throughout their eight-year war, yet never succeeded in capturing even half of the country.  More to the point, the utter lack of a logistics plan to keep troops on far away New Guinea supplied, forced many Japanese soldiers to resort to cannibalism in order to survive that hellish experience.  And this problem repeated itself again and again on the many islands across the Pacific wherein Japanese forces were simply deposited with limited supplies and ordered to fight to the last.

For that matter, consider the German invasion of Russia in 1941, one in which the vaunted panzers quite literally ran out of gas as they outran their supply lines—many of which were still serviced by horse-drawn wagons.  And forget about the lack of winter gear supplied to the Wehrmacht on that failed operation.  How might Hitler’s Russian gambit have gone if logistics had held center stage?

And its not just limited to armies.  Navies seem just as capable of suffering the effects of disastrous logistics preparation.  Case in point, following the Japanese destruction of the Russian Far East Fleet at Port Arthur in 1904, Tsar Nicholas II dispatched a second Pacific Fleet … from the Baltic Sea.  With few sites at which to replenish and rest crews exhausted by the seven-month cruise around Africa, the Russian battleships boldly steamed into the Tsushima Strait, only to be absolutely destroyed by smaller Japanese vessels waiting in ambush.

Yet one has to look no further than successes such as Saladin’s victory over the crusaders at Hattin in 1187, the Mongol invasion of Russia in 1237, Grant’s seizure of Vicksburg in 1863, and the U.S. landings at Normandy in 1944 to see just how mastery of military logistics renders even the impossible possible.  In fact, the massive U.S. logistics apparatus supporting its widespread contributions to World War II were likely the largest such effort the world has ever seen.  Appropriate considering that organization kept an amazing 16 million troops in uniform!

So what does it all mean?  If logistics is the key to projecting power, to successfully invading another nation, why doesn’t everyone just bring more stuff?  More rations, more bullets, more bombs, more tobacco and, most important of all, more coffee.  Well, there’s an economy to warfare, isn’t there?  It all comes at a cost, and, of course, you have to secure it all since the enemy get’s a vote, as the old saying goes.  But politicians and bureaucrats from time immemorial have always liked to spend money on sexy things.  The newest weapons, the most exotic equipment, most of them just never understood the importance of military logistics, the river of goods that flows to the front, keeping the dangerous men stationed there in the fight and … well … still dangerous.

When we read military history its always a good thing to set the book down and ask ourselves how logistics fit into the picture.  It’s not the sexiest of subjects, I’ll admit, but a logistics plan—good or bad—underlies every bit of military history you’ve ever read.  It just doesn’t always get the press it deserves.  But it should, right?  Something that important?  Something so likely to determine who will be the winners and losers in armed conflict. 

War is a dangerous, unforgiving business.  Forget what the amateurs are saying … find out what the professionals are studying.

M. G. Haynes