In my post, I talked about the Winter War fought between Finland and the Soviets roughly a year before the Nazis invaded. In the war, the vastly undertrained, undersupplied, and outnumbered Finnish Army was able to not only hold off, but kick the butts of the Red Army for the first month or two of the war. I believe their ability to outperform the Soviets has a lot to do with Biddle’s theory. The Red Army simply did not employ their forces according to Biddle’s theory. They used combined arms, (tanks, airplanes, artillery, infantry, etc.) but they used them poorly with little thought given to much of what Biddle mentions i.e. concealment, dispersion, suppression, maneuverability, etc. The Finns on the other hand were able to use what they did have incredibly effectively because they employed their forces tactically with special attention paid to maneuverability and concealment. It was not until the Soviets reorganized in the 3rd month of the war and altered their tank and artillery tactics that they achieved success. I just thought it was interesting how well the Soviet’s initial failure is explained by Biddle’s theory.
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