by Ravi Rikhye
23
25, 26; + 2 divs corps reserves
24
[a] Pakistan re-raised its 9, 14, and 16 Divisions after their loss in East Pakistan.
Please note there is no implication that divisions were raised in each year. For example, India 33A, 28, 29, were raised in 1981, 1984, and 1985. Pakistan 9, 16, 18 were raised in 1966-68, and 23 in 1971. Also, I don’t have the precise raising years of some divisions listed.
What’s wrong with having the same number of divisions as the threat? Nothing – provided India boldly strikes first with all divisions, is prepared to thin out sectors to get superiority in priority sectors, remains steady when the adversary takes land in the secondary sectors, has an advantage in tactical and operational skill, keeps advancing even at the risk of exposing flanks, has the benefit of war winners, for example, a larger number of armored and mechanized formations, area air superiority, and sustainability, ignores setbacks by reformulating plans and continuing the advance, never gives the adversary the opportunity to gain the initiative, ignores Chinese and global pressures to pull back, refuses to be intimidated by Chinese counteraction such as reinforcing Pakistan with air, ground, and sea units. Other conditions also needed to be met.
After all, didn’t Israel defeat the Arabs despite being outnumbered in 1948. 1956, and 1967? Didn’t the Germans overrun France with a half-trained army which had fewer tanks and fighters than the defenders? Didn’t the Japanese defeat the British Indian Army against 1:3 odds in Malaya? Didn’t the Germans consistently defeat the Red Army at odds of up to 1: 5? Didn’t Babur defeat the Lodhi armies that outnumbered his by at least five times? And what about Tannenberg, where the German commanding general and his deputy met for the first time as they travelled by train to the front on August 22, 1914, and then between the 26th to the 30th defeated the Russians – while holding off another Russian Army to the north – inflicting 65% casualties on an army of 230,000 troops with half as many German troops while suffering just 12,000 casualties including a minuscule 1,700 dead? Not to mention the next year, when at 2nd Masurian Lakes, the same German commanders, outnumbered more than 1:2, inflicted almost 90% casualties on a Russian force of 230,000, at the cost of 16% casualties for their own 100,000 men, in a 15-day battle? The month was February, incidentally, northeast of Warsaw, in the middle of winter.
If several armies won their battles despite the inferiority of numbers, why cannot India defeat Pakistan with equal numbers? To properly answer this question would take a book by itself. Let us, however, visualize the following. The Indian COAS plans to gain overwhelming superiority by concentrating 12 divisions against Pakistan forces between Ft. Abbas and Suliemanke. To do that, he will use I, II, XXI Strike Corps and X Corps for a decisive blow against Pakistan XXI and II Corps with five divisions, destroying the center of the Pakistan line and then turning north to outflank Pakistan IV, XXX, and I Strike Corps from the real, then advance further north to take Rawalpindi and trap Pakistan forces in Kashmir. What is the Government going to say?
4.2 A hypothetical winning plan with Indian and Pakistan equal in divisions
Sector
India
Pakistan
North Kashmir
1
1 [Equivalent]
West Kashmir
4 (XV, XVI Corps)
5 (X, XI Corps)
Pathankot-Jammu
3 (IX Corps, 2 divisions) + 39 Div
5 (I, XXX Corps)
Lahore
3 (XI Corps)
3 (IV Corps)
Multan
12 (I, II, X, XXI Corps)
5 (II, XXXI Corps)
Desert
2 (XII Corps)
5 (V, XII Corps)
1 (Reserve)
25
25
It will say something like this. You are leaving the Pathankot-Jammu corridor vulnerable to Pakistan I Strike Corps and most of Rajasthan vulnerable to Pakistan XII and V Corps. We could lose, easily, 100,000-km2 of territory including our lifeline to Kashmir, where Pakistan will attack with its X and XI Corps, costing us a big chunk of Kashmir. Your plan is insane.
To which the COAS says: it is quite likely we will initially lose territory. But Pakistan’s center of gravity lies in Punjab. Once we take Bahawalpur, Multan, Lahore, and Islamabad/Rawalpindi, Pakistan is finished and will collapse. We’ll get back all lost territory plus end the Pakistan threat for 50-years. Moreover, even if we’re outnumbered in some of the sectors, I plan to attack here too, to throw the adversary off his stride, gain some ground, and minimize what we lose. To which the GOI will reply: it is too risky. And that will end any hopes of a decisive victory.
Is the situation, then, hopeless? Not really. Suppose we had 29 divisions instead of 25. (I had earlier estimated we immediately require eight more divisions, of which 4 are for the China front and 4 for the Pakistan front.)
The plan modified by giving India 4 more divisions
Sector
India
Pakistan
North Kashmir
1
1
West Kashmir
5
5
Pathankot-Jammu
4
5
Lahore
3
3
Multan
12
5
South Punjab - Desert
4
5
1 (Reserve)
29
25
Pakistan will obviously raise more divisions to match our new raisings. How many more requires a deeper study than this one; the above is solely illustrative.
This should satisfy everyone. Will not 8 more divisions be expensive? No. It means expanding the army by 20%. Since the army gets 57% of the budget, that means adding another $4-billion to the Army budget.[60] Making up shortfalls will bring our defense to 2% of GDP. That still doesn’t answer the question of naval and air modernization, but let’s limit the analysis to simplify matters. Two percent is what the US wants its NATO partners to spend. Not only is India on its own, but it is also unique among large countries in having actual and potential hostile borders in all directions. Normally, such a situation requires 5% of GDP for defense. But because we have an almost 30-year reequipment backlog, in an estimate I did for Ajai Shukla, one of our foremost military analysts, we require a minimum of 6% of GDP for ten years, after which we can revert to 5%. That’s three times our current 1.6%.
4.3 India’s 2-front war plan: A look back at the Schlieffen Plan
Since GOI has expressed complete disinterest in providing needed financial resources for defense, the Army has developed its own solution to conduct a 2-front war. Cold Start will win a quick victory over Pakistan, and then we will send several infantry divisions and armored brigades to reinforce the north to defeat China. Presumably, this allows the temporary use of northern front formations to gain a decisive edge over Pakistan, before sending the northern divisions back, along with now-freed-up Pakistan front forces.
This must count as the most absurd plan India has ever developed. Presently, I am unsure if the Army is serious, or exerting psychological pressure on Pakistan, a way of saying ‘Don’t think you can get away consequence- free in Kashmir forever.’ A problem here is that we’ve allowed Pakistan to get away with it for 30-years. Plain common sense says that Pakistan will not be overly impressed at our threat that ‘This time we really mean it’. In fairness, it must be acknowledged that two of my very well-informed colleagues do not agree with me. Mandeep Singh Bajwa and Ajai Shukla both insist that Pakistan is in a panic about Cold Start. First, I will make their case based on public evidence. Then I will explain my disagreement. Consider Pakistan’s frequent and loud threats to use N-weapons if India attacks. These include hysterical statements such as N-release if a single Indian soldier crosses the border. This is discussed further in the section on nuclear doctrine. If your adversary says: cross my border and I’ll hurt you, even if that means I’m committing s
uicide, the threat is empty. To me, this is a clear signal that we should expeditiously cross the border. Equally, we have been going on about Cold Start for 24-years, showing our threats have had no effect. If infiltration is down it is because we finally fenced the border, something we should have done starting in 1987; and because we finally mastered intelligence fusion, allowing us to kill more efficiently those who do get through the border. Pakistan is not deterred a bit. It may be that Pakistan genuinely has not understood it can defeat Cold Start without nuclear weapons. This is discussed in the section on Cold Start. If GHQ has not understood, I’m happy to explain it – in return for some orbat details and access to historical records.
Before examining the Indian Army’s 2-front plan, let’s see how the most famous 2-front plan of the 20th Century came out.
The Schlieffen Plan
Before starting this point, readers should know that an American historian, Terence Zuber,[61] has conclusively proved Germany did not use the Schlieffen Plan. He has used recovered/rediscovered German Army archives. That plan was for 96 divisions and a one front-war against France. By the time the latter part of the first decade of the 20th Century came around, it had become clear Germany would face a 2-front situation in the next war because Russia and France had become allies. Likely then a minimum of 12 extra divisions for the eastern front was required. It was German Army practice to update its war plans every April. What Germany used was the Schlieffen plan heavily modified into a 2-front plan by Schlieffen’s successor, Moltke the Younger, who became German chief-of-staff in 1906 and led the plan at the outbreak of the war. So, it is correct to call the plan the Moltke Plan. Moreover, Zuber argues, the evidences show even the Schlieffen Plan was a myth, there was no such thing. Schlieffen wanted more divisions for the army, requiring an expansion of conscription. The Kaiser, however, wanted a powerful Navy. And the powerful socialist bloc in Parliament, being anti-militaristic but patriotic, blocked funds for a bigger army. Schlieffen made his theoretical plan to show the German government that without a 96-division army, Germany could not defeat France and its western allies. Schlieffen’s exercises called for the German right wing to swing 90-degrees and not 180-degrees and defeat the main body of the French Army before shifting to the East to destroy the Russians. If necessary, troops would again shift westward to finish off the French. If at all we are to talk about Schlieffen, the German Army should have halted on the Meuse River and then attended to the Russians before returning west in case the French had not sued for peace. Schlieffan made no assumption that the war would be a short one. He correctly feared a longer war, believing it would destroy western Europe.
This said, for almost one hundred years the histories have referred to the German 1914 war plan as the Schlieffen Plan. As a minor point, this was the subject of my first paper n strategy, in 11th Grade. So, I will continue to invoke Schlieffen because using its correct name runs the risk of confusing everyone.
A quick recapitulation of the plan is a useful start. Germany had the geographical advantage of its Central European location and a highly efficient rail system. Its interior lines of communication made it possible to defeat one adversary first, then switch forces to the other front. This was the modified Schlieffen Plan. Roughly, Germany had 82 infantry divisions after mobilization, plus 10 cavalry divisions. The cavalry can be omitted; thanks to the proliferation of machine guns, it was effectively limited to reconnaissance and counter-reconnaissance (blinding the enemy’s cavalry). Thus, it was 26 divisions short. Germany’s weak ally Austria-Hungary had 55 divisions. These were of no help to Germany in protecting Austria-Hungary’s borders with Russia and its allied states, and even this they did badly.
The allies in the west could, on mobilization, deploy about 100 divisions; in the East, Russia could deploy 120. A simultaneous squeeze meant Germany’s defeat. Moltke assessed that Russia, the greater threat, would mobilize slowly. So, the plan called for a rapid defeat of France, while holding the east with minimal forces, and then a massive transfer of troops to defeat Russia. This meant accepting a Russian invasion of eastern Germany if necessary, something only a leadership with iron nerve could countenance.
The German plan was for 70 divisions in the west, and just 12 in the east, versus the needed 96 and 12. France was to be defeated in 6-weeks, and then troops were to shift east, to defeat Russia. The western divisions were deployed in three parts, north to south, the right wing with 34 divisions, the center with 20, and the left with sixteen. Additionally, ten cavalry divisions were assigned to the western armies. The left wing was to form a pivot around which the center and right were to turn. The left would stage a fighting retreat against superior French forces, pulling them into Germany and past their fixed defenses. The 54 divisions of the center and right would attack in a giant wheel, taking them 90-degrees into France, with the extreme right taking Paris, and then rotating another 90-degrees to slam the French, now arrayed west-east, into the left wing, and finishing the war. The target to reach Paris was six weeks, by which time the Russians would have mobilized, and while the Germans were finishing off the French, German corps would start shifting east. This plan was bold and imaginative, requiring an exquisite precision of execution.
Now it is time to visit Captain Murphy and his Law. Ares/Mars is the Greco-Roman god of war, but Murphy is the god of the conduct of war. The rule’s basic iteration is seven words: “If it can go wrong, it will.” There are many corollaries of this rule. One collector of Murphy’s Law claims “More than 1250 Laws, Postulates, Axioms, and Corollaries”.[62] By the way, there really was a USAF officer named Captain Murphy. Slightly changing the aphorism “Man proposes, God disposes,” we get “Man proposes, Murphy disposes.” Five things went wrong with the German plan.
The summary presented is simplistic in the extreme. Our purpose, however, is only to make a simple point about the difficulty of a 2-front war that requires shifting of forces.
First: because the French south was fortified, Germany had to attack in the north. This meant going through the Low Countries. Belgium, which lay squarely in the German advance’s path, was neutral and had twenty divisions but just 100 fighters and a handful of tanks. The Germans asked for free passage and could not imagine Belgium would refuse. [Schlieffen planned to avoid Belgium if it eefused passage.] But refuse it did, knowing it would be destroyed, yet determined to uphold its honor. The Germans attacked through Belgium anyway, bringing Great Britain into the war as a guarantor of the little country’s neutrality. Germany expected Belgium to be only a speed bump. Yet they not only held their formidable siege forts until overrun, as they retreated they blew up bridges, destroyed other infrastructure, and succeeded in delaying the Germans, throwing the plan off from the start.
Second: Moltke fatally changed Schlieffen’s plan. Schlieffen provided just 4 corps for the left wing. The left wing was to retreat slowly, pulling the French into Germany. Moltke became apprehensive about the proposed loss of territory and pulled four corps from the right to strengthen the left. The plan was for the corps to shift north once the defensive line was stabilized. Instead of withdrawing, the two German armies counterattacked, with the hope of making a double envelopment, destroying the French Army, and replicating Cannae.[63] This prevented the return of the four reinforcing corps to the right (northern) wing, leaving it weakened.
Third: the Russians, gallantly wishing to aid the French, declined to wait six weeks for a proper mobilization and struck East Prussia on the tenth day of the war. Moltke panicked and sent two corps from the right wing to the east; despite his 8th Army saying the reinforcements were not required. The corps came from the 1st and 2nd Armies which had the greatest ground to cover.Now the striking wing was short of 12 divisions, reducing its strength from 58 to 46 divisions, half as many as Schlieffen’s plan required for the west alone.
Fourth: due to lack of cooperation between the 1st, 2nd, and 3rd Armies by their commanding officers, and the refusal of 1st Army to follow orders, they did not ke
ep abreast as planned but advanced at different rates. They refused to stop because their commanders chased the chimera of destroying the French in toto. This opened gaps between the three armies. In those days, a gap of 15-km sufficed to push a whole army of 8-10 divisions through. The French, bolstered by the small British contingent of six infantry and one cavalry divisions, attacked through the gap like madmen, heedless of lives, and forced the German right wing to fall back on the Aisne River. The Germans tried to regain the offensive, but in a time-bound plan laid out by days, failed. Both sides dug in. Germany had lost the war, and only the sheer callous, cold-blooded, and rigid minds of top commanders of all the armies led to four ghastly years in which the prime of German, French, and British youth perished. Historians love to differ, and many have argued that despite the unanticipated withdrawal of four divisions to the east, and four to the south, could still have won through had the gap not been permitted.Yes, there would been no gap if the 12 divisions had not been withdrawn from the right wing.
Last: the commander of the German First Army, the outermost of the five right-wing armies, was to envelope Paris from the west. Convinced the French were on the run, he decided to leave Paris uncovered, passing to its east as he chased after the French. Unfortunately for him, the French were not on the run. Badly battered, losing hope, they nonetheless retained cohesion and were retreating until they had the opportunity to go on the counteroffensive. By exposing his German Army’s right flank to a counteroffensive from Paris, he gave the French a chance they boldly seized. The Germans, completely exhausted from a non-stop, four-week fighting advance where at times the men were force-marching 40-km/day in the blazing late summer heat, without proper rations and short even of water, were forced to retreat, losing the First Battle of the Marne. The Germans retreated to the first place they could set up a solid defense, the Anise River.
