The Deity wrote:You believe it would be conventional? When Germany first came west, much of what it was met with was guerrilla warfare.
I suppose your talking about the French Resistance. Yea, they have quite a rep, but in the end half the country would have still been under German control, the other half under a French puppet government if the Americans hadn't added enough soldiers and supplies to the Allied forces to open the option of a Western Front.
However, it's interesting you bring up the fact that most of the resistance to the Germans was guerilla warfare. That wouldn't have anything to do with the decimation and dissolving of the French army under the German advance? This leads to the conclusion that in order to have successful guerilla operations, an organization will likely be run by military personnel whose conventional army has become nonexistent.
In that case, I wish the EU a top notch guerilla force. Like Jack said, the US that goes to war with the EU would be very different and anyone conducting such operations would most likely be met with even more draconian reactions than the German
Werewolfs were. Most likely, it will be a world similar to
Farhenheit 451, where Americans view war as a common thing and have very little restraint in their actions.
What makes you think when faced with an American invasion, that the countries of the EU will place all their pieces on an open chessboard? Strike and retreat tactics work and they work well. And there is a lot of varied terrain all over the attack zones so I'd expected to see a lot of assaulting and then merging into the background.
Ok, lets start with the basics, as it seems you have confused regular/conventional/professional soldiers and irregulars/militia/guerillas (at least, it seemed implied with your complete post, which I have broken up to address the historical part first). First, the tactics you describe are in no way only restricted to guerilla tactics. Conventional armies are just as adept to raids and hit-and-run tactics as their irregular counterparts. The real differences between guerillas and regular/conventional soldiers are:
1) Uniforms. Pretty basic, but fighters with uniforms are granted priviledges that those without will never receive. They also can't hide in crowds after trying to gun down occupying forces. They also are fairly certain they can trust other people in the same uniform. Guerillas have no such luxury.
2) C3 (command, control, communication). Conventional forces have much greater coordination because of these. Coordination leads to greater effects with attacks and such. Guerilla attacks have less effect partly because multiple groups don't work together to achieve a common goal (ie, Iraqi insurgents).
3) Heavy weapons. Much easier to find with conventional forces, as a tank is pretty hard to hide.
4) Training. Not everybody who picks up a gun is the next Rambo, though Texans sure do try.
Okay, now that we've differentiated between regular and irregular soldiers, on to the tactics. Strike and retreat tactics are really not all that original. Do you think that doing so, in Europe, would really catch anybody by suprise? Their is no comparison between a war against the armies of Europe and against the insurgencies of Iraq and Afghanistan. The US military is trained for conventional wars such as the former, improvising for the latter's irregular occupations, so which do you think it might be more successful in?
Oh, and our allies in both contries (coalition in Iraq, NATO in Afghanistan) haven't done so great either. Yeah, you can blame us for being in the area, but we aren't the only ones who have dropped the ball.
