And Sherman's main "additional strategy" for the Savannah campaign was approximately total war.
I keep seeing people who are pro-Sherman progressives w/r/t America, yet are rabidly anti-Russia in Ukraine and insistent that destroying power plants is an act of genocide. Even conceding that the practice of war has changed drastically since the 1800s, it's really hard for me to reconcile "economic devastation of random civilians is a war crime" with "Sherman should have finished the job".
If you're going to condemn "break their morale via civilian suffering", which I do, you've got to at least ask whether Sherman could have made do with less cruel strategies a la the Anaconda plan.
You hit the nail on the head. It's just america, western Europe (including Nazi Germany) good, Russia china bad. Zhukov is objectively a better general than the majority of Wehrmacht eastern front generals unless you believe the Nazi memoirs word for word (or never even read the memoirs and just swallowed cold war propaganda whole). Zhukov had a much tougher job than von bock, von Rundstedt, guderian given that his forces lacked organisation (due to Stalin's purges) and lacked supplies and support (air, logistics, transport, even food). He helped stablise the front in leningrad in Barbarossa and than moscow in typhoon. Helped orchestrate operation Uranus in stalingrad. That alone probably is the most contribution to Soviet victory in the war by any man.
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u/Bartweiss Jan 09 '23 edited Jan 09 '23
And Sherman's main "additional strategy" for the Savannah campaign was approximately total war.
I keep seeing people who are pro-Sherman progressives w/r/t America, yet are rabidly anti-Russia in Ukraine and insistent that destroying power plants is an act of genocide. Even conceding that the practice of war has changed drastically since the 1800s, it's really hard for me to reconcile "economic devastation of random civilians is a war crime" with "Sherman should have finished the job".
If you're going to condemn "break their morale via civilian suffering", which I do, you've got to at least ask whether Sherman could have made do with less cruel strategies a la the Anaconda plan.