Mechanization of War in 3 20th Century Campaigns

Battle of France; Tet Offensive; Persian Gulf War

The mechanization of war, which began tentatively in the 19th century, has been its dominant feature in the 20th. This mechanization is most obvious, and most often thought of, in terms of weapons: machine-gun, aircraft, missiles. Looking back at the experience of turn-of-the-century colonial wars, the intellectual Hilaire Belloc offered a mordant witticism in rhyme:

Certainly armies with primitive weapons had no chance against armies with modern ones. But in wars between armies that were even remotely matched, the decisive feature of mechanization has often been speed. The application of superior mobility in war is at least as old as the chariot, and as often gained by superior doctrine as by superior instruments. In the War of 1870, at the dawn of industrial warfare, the Germans used the railroad and telegraph to accelerate and coordinate the launching of their offensive, but once their advance moved past the railheads they could go only on foot, at the same speed as Napoleon's armies or Alexander's.

Indeed, by the First World War, industrialization seemed to have so accelerated movement behind the combat zone as to negate mobility within or beyond it: the German plan for a swift, decisive offensive on the lines of 1870 stalled instead into four years of trench warfare. A breach in the li

. . .
veness of American forces in offense highlighted the defensive component of the firebases. The VC/NVA had already learned, long before Tet, that they could not achieve decisive results against American forces in the field. American casualties could be exacted in the ensuing firefights, but only on isolated occasions were small American patrols defeated outright. While it was true that the VC/NVA could also slip away from firefights -- often with heavy casualties, but without being overwhelmed outright -- the sum result was a stalemate that in a military sense was favorable to the Americans. To achieve decisive results, "another Dien Bien Phu," the VC/NVA would have to take the war directly to the support bases, overwhelming at least some of them and compelling the rest to revert to a purely defensive strategy, after which they could in turn be overwhelmed one by one. Accomplishing this on a nationwide scale was the objective of the Tet Offensive. In the words of a North Vietnamese general, In the spring of 1967 Westmoreland began his second campaign. It was very fierce. Certain of our people were very discouraged ... but by the middle of 1967 we concluded that you had not reversed the balance of forces on the battl
. . .

Some common words found in the essay are:
Gulf War, World War, South Vietnam, South Vietnamese, Hill Jones, Tet Offensive, War PGMs, Maginot Line, French Command, Republican Guard, tet offensive, gulf war, south vietnamese, south vietnam, bin hill jones, air attack, world war, bin hill, hill jones, persian gulf, american forces, persian gulf war, dien bien phu, offensive 1968 vietnam, cruise missiles strategic,
Approximate Word count = 5509
Approximate Pages = 22 (250 words per page)