On Winter Warfare

1992 manual from the United States Marine Corps. One of the great recurring failures in modern European warfare has been unpreparedness for winter warfare. Men, horses, and machine all have special needs if they are to operate effectively in conditions of cold, snow, and ice yet, particularly after the heyday of the warrior kings of Sweden, army commanders and political leaders seemed gradually to abandon the idea that a specific type of war needs to be waged. Napoleon, World War I generals, Stalin, and Hitler all paid a grim price for this strategic amnesia. In "On Winter Warfare", the U.S. Marine Corps Cold Regions Research and Engineering Laboratory provides both a brief history of war in winter and an analysis of the art of warfare in cold climates. It makes the key point that, rather than the Russian winter defeating Napoleon, it was his generally ill-conceived campaign, probably generated by a series of successes under predictable conditions. Similarly, Hitler's overweening reliance on his own will and intuition simply brushed aside the practical difficulties of a winter campaign in Russia under the assumption that the initial German assault would cause a total collapse of Russian resistance. When this failed to occur, the Wehrmacht's lack of preparedness for a winter campaign rapidly became manifest. In dealing with the general principles of cold weather war, "On Winter Warfare" highlights the importance of wintertime obstacle construction, the many variables presented by the military properties of snow - including grain size, density, hardness, crusts, and temperature - and the technical problems surrounding cold weather ballistics. It also provides an in-depth discussion of the key strategic principles in winter war - mobility, initiative, flexibility, superiority, and surprise - and the requirements that must be met to achieve them. Military professionals, historians of modern warfare, and anyone interested in the uniquely stressful conditions of cold weather war will find this book both a key reference work and compelling reading.