Ukraine War Update 5/15/2024 - The Ghost Of Ludendorff

The Kharkiv Rerun

When it comes to decision making, I often tell people history is not that important. “Oh?” “Hitman what are you talking about?” “How could you say that?”. I say that because history beyond the last 10 years or so, give or take, is not very actionable. For one, circumstances never repeat in the same exact way, there’s always something a bit different. There further back you go into history the more different those things start to look. So if you’re looking at what happened in the battle of Waterloo to decide what action to take on a war in 2024 you will for sure die. If history was that important historians would be gods amongst men. But one thing history is very good for is study of human nature. Humans are the only constant in history, hence the saying “history never repeats itself, but it does often rhyme”.

WTF?

During World War One, Erich Ludendorff was the head of the German military. Germany probably had the most powerful military at the time. Before the war started Germany miscalculated and believed they could defeat France very quickly. It turned out the French were some incredibly tough people and they weren’t in the business of giving up. Halfway through the war Ludendorff would also realize every time he would start a new offensive it eventually ends up in a quagmire and freeze up. WW1 mostly consisted huge armies of infantry and not enough mechanized forces. So even if you created an opportunity for yourself on the battlefield, it was hard to exploit it because you move too slow. Plus, they were dealing with such huge numbers of people back then it was very difficult to get the logistics right.