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Grundvilk's avatar

From Peter Turchin's "End Times", 2023, chapter A1:

"Actually, Tolstoy did not get the calculation quite right. (He was a genius

at writing great books, not at doing math.) But the core idea of estimating

factor x by analyzing many, many battles is spot on. Much later, this

approach was used by the American military historian Trevor N. Dupuy. In

his 1987 book, Understanding War: History and Theory of Combat, Dupuy

equated the combat power of an army to the product of three quantities: force

strength (the number of troops modified by the quality and quantity of their

equipment), operational and environmental modifiers (terrain, weather,

posture—defensive versus offensive), and combat effectiveness. The last one

is Tolstoy’s factor x.

Dupuy then analyzed several wars for which he could obtain data on

multiple battles. As an example, his analysis of the eighty-one engagements

between the German and British or American forces in 1943 and 1944

showed that the combat efficiency of the Germans was 1.45 times greater

than that of the British. This means that if the British wanted to get an even

chance at winning a battle against the Germans, they had to bring 45 percent

more troops (or arm them more heavily in the same proportion). Americans

did better than the Brits, but not by much. They still had to amass a third as

many troops as the Germans in order to have a fifty-fifty chance of victory.

Turns out we can make a lot of progress in quantifying the fighting spirit.

More recently, my colleagues within the field of cultural evolution have been

probing the psychology of readiness for extreme sacrifice, using such

concepts as “devoted actors,” “sacred values,” and “identity fusion.”[14]

I live exactly in the heart of Minnesota German farm country (per your posted map), live in a house recently re-built by a member of a long-time German family, and there's no doubt in my mind about the existence of bred-in-the-bone German industry.

Happy New Years to you, too.

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The Obsolete Man's avatar

Excellent piece! Some things never change unfortunately.

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