So, I'm just going to throw this out there. Has anyone on here pondered the thought of what the world would look like if the Weberverse was the way reality actually worked? I mean, it'd be a game changer. For instance, the Germans and Italians would have won WW2.
Speaking of WW2, I was recently reading a book on the Blitzkrieg campaign in 1940 (aka the Fall of France and the Lowlands). The book is called The Blitzkrieg Legend and was commissioned and certified by the US Army, so bear that in mind. The book goes into many things you would all find very interesting which is why I recommend y'all check it out if you haven't already. There is a point made in this book that I find of particular use to the discussions about new tech and military doctrines both here and in the Honorverse. The thing I wish to talk about here is the growing pains an army and a doctrine go through.
The Germans had spent months formulating, adjusting, and modeling their breakthrough at the Meuse River and the double envelopment of allied armies in the Belgian pocket to the North along the Channel and the French divisions at the Maginot Line. The key things I want to point out in this campaign are these differences: communication, empowerment of lower echelon leaders, and competing doctrines.
One of the big reasons the Germans were so successful, and ironically that Dunkirk was allowed to happen, was that they had superior communication between their various elements (platoon to company; company to battalion/regiment, then up to division, etc.) including the other branches (the Heer and Luftwaffe). Communication was so advanced and integrated that every single tank had a modern and fully functional radio compared to the allies who had dated radios that were barely operational that were limited to whom they could talk to plus only certain tanks in their elements had radios at all. This meant that the commander with the radio, assuming it worked, had to get out of his tank to issue orders--in the midst of battle. I see a problem that somehow Murphy has yet to exploit in the EoC's various forces. Some of their forces have access to the advanced comms and intell reports of the SNARCs while others don't...because of religious reasons. This also forces redundant reports to be sent because this guy, a COMMANDING GENERAL who's name escapes me at the moment, doesn't even know this stuff exists. Thus wasting time and resources. Yet, should he get into a jam, I would assume that our beloved author would have a friendly army arrive in the proverbial nick of time (if only because he is not G.R.R.Martin) yet much faster than he could do. This to me seems very dangerous and I'd love to discuss it further.
The next point concerns empowering lower leaders. The Germans have long, even going back to the days of Bismarck (a time roughly in the era of Safehold, right?) the German military emphasized Auftragstatik (loosely translated to mean "mission orders"). This meant that the higher elements only issued an objective to their subordinate units and let the lower echelon units figure out how to best do it in a timely and efficient manner. We've seen the EoC do this a lot, but I tie in the argument I just made about communication that makes something that is supposed to be simple unduly cumbersome and complicated.
Finally, I tie both of the previous point into competing doctrines. In WW2 everyone knows that the Germans had a completely different, more modern, and about 1,000,000x more efficient than their adversaries. That much is clear by how fast their steamrolled Poland, France, Belgium, Denmark, and the English Expeditionary Forces in 1939-40. What people don't often realize is that there was a similar problem within the OKW (the German High Command). Those armchair generals, and even field army commanders, were too used to thinking in terms of old doctrines. Doctrines that conflicted greatly with the new.
The result of this is most notably demonstrated with the miracle of Dunkirk. They let the momentum slip from their grasp because they were concerned about phantom flank attacks and wanted the infantry to catch up to the panzer divisions before storming the ports. A conflict that made the German army stop for nearly a week for no reason and set up Dunkirk. My point is that militaries, like people, go through growing pains. I am greatly concerned by how quickly not only most, but ALL, the Charisian officers have adopted the new doctrines flawlessly. Only the bad guys seem to go through even some semblance of this, most notably the Earl of Thirsk. Those higher ranking officers had to have some habits and doctrines ingrained in them yet the discarded them quickly enough. Even the argument that they have access to the SNARCs and the Federation's repository of history doesn't completely sway me because they would still make mistakes even if only out of habit from competing old doctrine. Fully justifiable and logical mistakes, but mistakes nonetheless especially given how traditional and old fashioned that entire world is--even in Old Charis.
I don't know. I get that these stories are RFC's fantasies and that he gets away with things based on artistic licenses, but for someone who is so good at creating characters, nations, and addressing complex things like various forms of government and religious complexes for him to gloss over this critical aspect of human nature and the human condition in his story is puzzling to me. Let's face it, many of us here read it for the military part of sci fi over the science aspects, although that is very interesting and I love reading that and the info dumps too. I mean he obliviously does a lot of research before he even starts a series, and I'm almost just as sure he does even more while writing them, I just wish he would either spend a little more time explaining it or, preferably, demonstrating it in his characters.
Let's get this conversation started!
