History questions not worth their own thread IV

[Domen]

At what time did the United States become truly capable to field an army equal to the armies fielded by the nations of Europe at the same time?

Depends what you mean by the word "capable" and "equal" in what exactly?

If you mean capable of pitching tents at night and equal in ability to do so, then in 1920s they were already superior:

"During one night a method of camping at night was practiced. It was evident, that soldiers had no experience on this field. Pitching their tents, which consist of smaller fragments connected into bigger tents capable of seating half of a company, or even entire company - took them very long time. (...) Compared to American soldiers, they are total amateurs in this respect. (...) Their camps seemed to be a little bit messy and made an impression of being uncomfortable."

Excerpt from US military attache Edward Carpenter's report about the 1928 German military maneuvers of Reichswehr in East Prussia - as quoted by Robert Citino in his book "The Evolution of Blitzkrieg Tactics: Germany Defends Itself Against Poland, 1918 - 1933", page 308 of Polish edition.

 

[sophie]

I am an American and we kindly always sucked military wise. WW1 was nothing. WW2 we wasn't bad, but was more so due to our massive amounts of manpower and material. Korean War wasn't bad. We been down hill since Vietnam. We have the perseverance, just not the brains from a officer standpoint.

Dude, we have one of the largest countries in the world in terms of landmass. You don't get that way by sucking at war.

 

[GamezRule]

Of course now it seems we've sort of reached a lovely position where war between civilized industrial nations is a thing of the past. This is nice too.

 

[Domen]

Dude, we have one of the largest countries in the world in terms of landmass. You don't get that way by sucking at war.

Native Americans were not very demanding enemies to conquer.

They were good at war but few and using inferior weapons. And they were not united, first of all.

By the way the Great Sioux War of the 1876 was a complete failure of a US force twice the size of the Sioux force.

Of course you may explain that you were slightly outnumbered both at Rosebud and at Little Big Horn - but that was only due to lack of any basic coordination between Crook, Terry (Custer) and Gibbon. Their combined forces outnumbered all the Native warriors with a ratio 3000 to 1800.

But Crook came on 16 June - was beaten back, Custer attacked on 26th - and was defeated, Gibbon came on 28th - just to see the dead bodies.

Interesting story is how the number of Sioux and Cheyenne warriors started to grow in American accounts of that defeat.

On the next day morning just after the battle Major Benteen reported that there had been between 1,500 and 1,800 warriors facing US forces of Custer, Reno and his own. But already in the evening he inflated this number to 2,500 in an interview with one of journalists. Several weeks after the battle press was already writing about 3,000 warriors. 3 years after the battle (1879) historians and officers estimated enemy strength at between 8,000 and 9,000 warriors.

The first number given by Major Benteen in the morning after the battle (1,500 - 1,800) is the most reliable one.

Later Native forces grew proportionally to punctured American pride.

We know how many tipis were in the Indian camp and basing on this we can estimate the number of warriors.

The number of tipis with breakdown for each nation and tribe was as follows:

Lakota nation (Teton) was represented by several tribes:

Oglala Sioux - ca. 240 tipis
Hunkpapa Sioux - ca. 235 tipis
Miniconjou Sioux - ca. 150 tipis
Sans Arcs Sioux - ca. 110 tipis
Brule Sioux - ca. 70 tipis
Black Feet Sioux - ca. 35 tipis
Two Kettles Sioux - ca. 20 tipis

Nakota nation (Yankton) was represented only by the group under chief Inkpaduta:

Yanktonnais Sioux - ca. 25 tipis

Other nations / tribes were represented by:

Cheyennes - ca. 120 tipis
Arapahos - several tipis (let's say 10)

Inkpaduta's group included also some members of the Dakota nation (Santee) from tribes of Mdewakanton and Wahpekute. Chief himself was a Santee. But most of his group were Yanktonnais.

Basing on the above given number of tipis, most historians estimate as follows:

1 Sioux tipi = ca. 1.75 warriors, ca. 3 squaw and ca. 4 children
1 Cheyenne tipi = ca. 2 warriors, etc.
1 Arapaho tipi = ca. 2 warriors, etc.

Which means there could be 1810 Indian warriors in the great camp at Little Big Horn. However we should extract from this number casualties at Rosebud (16 June) and those who stayed inside the camp and didn't participate in the battle (especially old warriors were among them).

Compare this to 1316 soldiers & scouts that Crook had, 1200 soldiers & scouts that Custer had, some 500 soldiers & scouts that Gibbon had.

Siouxs and Cheyennes were outnumbered 3000 to 1800 in the campaign of 1876 - yet the US forces suffered major defeats.

 

[sophie]

Native Americans were not very demanding enemies to conquer.

They were good at war but few and using inferior weapons.

What about the Mexican-American War? The above mentioned Mexican campaign was nothing short of brilliant. That's not to ignore the Civil War, which was also a serious war against capable enemies. The Spanish in 1898 were by then a shadow of their former glory, but they were still a world-spanning empire and not complete pushovers. Oh yeah, and then there's the fact that we achieved independence by defeating one of the most capable armies in the world at the time, and again fought them to a standstill 30 years later.

I think you're understating the American military accomplishments just a tinge.

 

[Yui108]

. We been down hill since Vietnam. .

We been down hill since Vietnam

 

[Domen]

What about the Mexican-American War?

The Mexican Army was also nowhere near the quality of European armies of that time and it faced numerous problems.

That's not to ignore the Civil War, which was also a serious war against capable enemies.

The Civil War was a civil war - Americans vs Americans.

That said, the Confederate army in terms of quality of commanders & individual soldiers was indeed more capable than its enemies, at least in the first phase of the war but also later the Confederate army often performed suprisingly well against overwhelming enemy numbers.

But commanders of the American Civil War were mostly amateurs - compared to their European counterparts of the same period. There was some small, professional core of the Officer Corps on both sides. But on the other hand there were plenty of officers who learned about war already on the frontline, from textbooks - such as for example Colonel Joshua Lawrence Chamberlain (who was a teacher before the war), famous from the movie "Gettysburg".

Oh yeah, and then there's the fact that we achieved independence by defeating one of the most capable armies in the world at the time, and again fought them to a standstill 30 years later.

Ok - true. But you must remember that you achieved independence with considerable help of the French. Yorktown could not be taken if not the victory of the French Navy over British Navy at Cheasapeake. And in land warfare French forces were also supporting you (for example forces of Rochambeau and La Fayette). There were also French military advisors, who helped your army improve in quality and tactics.

and again fought them to a standstill 30 years later.

Yes - after mobilizing an army of 500,000 (including all irregular militias) vs a British force of 80,000 at the peak (including all irregulars & Native allies).

It was a standstill achieved by sheer numerical superiority, while British forces were - generally - of better quality.

 

[GamezRule]

Were all civil wars during the 19th century as organized as the American one?

 

[Domen]

First of all there were not so many civil wars in the 19th century outside the US.

The European Spring of Nations was not a series of civil wars but rather uprisings of people against state authorities.

The Polish November Uprising of 1830 quickly turned into a regular war between two regular armies (the Russian-Polish war of 1831), but only because the Kingdom of Poland had been allowed by Russia to maintain its own regular army in period 1815 - 1830. Then it was just strengthened by irregulars.

The next Polish Uprising against Russia - January Uprising of 1863 and 1864 - was already much less organized, as the Polish regular army was disbanded in 1832 after the end of the Polish-Russian war of 1831. But the war of 1831 (which technically can be called a "civil" war as Kingdom of Poland was part of the Russian Empire at that time - but of course it was more of a war for independence of Poland than a Russian civil war) was "as organized" as the ACW.

WW2 we wasn't bad, but was more so due to our massive amounts of manpower and material.

Well I think the US Army in WW2 was at least better than the British or the Soviet.

You had massive amounts of manpower and material but so did the Soviets and (to lesser extent) the British.

Yet I think the Americans generally did better than the British in 1943 - 1945 combats in Europe.

The British had more failures, at least. And Montgomery is overrated as a commander, IMO.

 

[Cutlass]

What about the Mexican-American War? The above mentioned Mexican campaign was nothing short of brilliant. That's not to ignore the Civil War, which was also a serious war against capable enemies. The Spanish in 1898 were by then a shadow of their former glory, but they were still a world-spanning empire and not complete pushovers. Oh yeah, and then there's the fact that we achieved independence by defeating one of the most capable armies in the world at the time, and again fought them to a standstill 30 years later.

I think you're understating the American military accomplishments just a tinge.

I have to question the 2 wars against Britain as particular examples of US strength. In the Revolution we got sizable French help, and largely won by avoiding battle as they gradually lost their taste for the war. In 1812 Britain really cared about fighting Napoleon far more than about us, so we were hardly facing their full strength. And still they burned Washington.

 

[Yui108]

I have to question the 2 wars against Britain as particular examples of US strength. In the Revolution we got sizable French help, and largely won by avoiding battle as they gradually lost their taste for the war. In 1812 Britain really cared about fighting Napoleon far more than about us, so we were hardly facing their full strength. And still they burned Washington.

Did you know that if you burn the enemy's capital the war is automatically over? Good thing no one ever told the Russians though

 

[Domen]

But the Russians don't claim (at least those realistic about WW2) that their army was superior to German in quality or that it performed very well in 1941. When someone burns your capital with 80,000 soldiers & irregulars while you have 500,000 soldiers & irregulars it means that not everything works perfectly.

The question here was when did the US army became equal in quality and performance to European armies.

The question was NOT since when was a huge US force able to fight a war to a standstill against a tiny European force, having their capital burned.

And that would be WW2 - in my opinion. During WW2 the US Army achieved the European level of fighting abilities. During WW1 they also gained some experience. Maybe actually in WW1 they achieved this - but then European warfare progressed once again, mainly in Germany and the USSR.

 

[Lord Baal]

For most of its history, notably during and after the Civil War, the US Army was far and away the best in the world. While it lacked compared to its European counterparts in several ways, the simple fact was that it didn't need the same things as European armies prior to the Civil War, so it didn't bother with them. It may well have been outmatched by the British in 1812, had they been able to bring their full might to bear, but that was the last time that the US was ever faced with an army that might have been better than theirs.

I would probably place the French Army in 2nd place these days, and they have nowhere near the experience or force projection capabilities that the US has. Maybe Israel could match it man-for-man, given their experience, but I doubt it, and most of their weapons are American-made anyway.

 

[bombshoo]

Other than economic links, how much contact have Chinese Muslims had with the Middle East over history? Was making the pilgrimage to Mecca common? Did many Chinese Muslim clerics and scholars study in the Middle East?

And by Middle East I specifically mean the Southwestern Asia and North Africa. The Arabian peninsula, Mesopotamia, the Levant, Egypt, etc.

 

[Louis XXIV]

I wasn't going to agree with Dachs (this question has to involve the unanswerable hypothetical scenario where both sides have to deal with the same issues of distance), but I'm sympathetic to an early date. In 1812, our army was disfunctional, but that has to do with many reasons (mostly a crappy officer corp and an over-reliance on militia). Also, budget cutbacks during the Jefferson administration prevented our navy from being first class (if we had several Ship of the Lines, our better equipped, better manned vessels could probably last very well one on one against any British vessel).

I think the date where the American military is clearly at least equal would be the Civil War (and that's leaving aside the best generals at the start of the war who were in the Confederacy). The capacity for mass mobilization, and logistical support as well as army size, and equipment quality could match anything in Europe at the time.

 

[TheLastOne36]

Other than economic links, how much contact have Chinese Muslims had with the Middle East over history? Was making the pilgrimage to Mecca common? Did many Chinese Muslim clerics and scholars study in the Middle East?

And by Middle East I specifically mean the Southwestern Asia. The Arabian peninsula, Mesopotamia, the Levant, Egypt, etc.

Well first of all, many modern Chinese Muslims live in an area called Moghulistan, which wasn't always a part of China.

 

[bombshoo]

Well first of all, many modern Chinese Muslims live in an area called Moghulistan, which wasn't always a part of China.

Yes, I suppose I should have been more specific. When I said "Chinese Muslims" I mostly meant the Hui people and some of the other smaller Muslim groups existing farther east. Not so much the nomadic peoples, such as the Kazakh minorities, that just happen to be within China's modern day borders.

 

[Domen]

For most of its history, notably during and after the Civil War, the US Army was far and away the best in the world.

1812 was the last time that the US was ever faced with an army that might have been better than theirs.

I would probably place the French Army in 2nd place these days, and they have nowhere near the experience or force projection capabilities that the US has. Maybe Israel could match it man-for-man, given their experience, but I doubt it, and most of their weapons are American-made anyway.

You can't prove that the US Army during the Civil War was the best in the world because they only confronted the Confederate Army (which was actually better when speaking about combat efficiency - but was outnumberred and outmaterialled by the Federal forces).

By the time of the 1930s and the Second World War, the best army in the world was undoubtedly the Germany army. Actually already during the 1920s the German Reichswehr became the best in terms of quality and being tactics-wise and strategy-wise. Reichswehr was also the most expensive army in the world when speaking about ratio of expenditures per soldier.

Man-for-man - as you call it - the German army was much better than the US army in WW2 and before it. I recommend the already mentioned book of Robert Citino, especially about the developments of the German army under Groener in years 1927 - 1933 (chapter 4).

 

[LightSpectra]

I have to question the 2 wars against Britain as particular examples of US strength. In the Revolution we got sizable French help, and largely won by avoiding battle as they gradually lost their taste for the war.

That is most definitely not an accurate characterization of the American Revolutionary War.

In 1812 Britain really cared about fighting Napoleon far more than about us, so we were hardly facing their full strength. And still they burned Washington.

That's because the Madison administration's policy was to focus on Canada and the natives, since whatever holdings the British expedition had were untenable and would be lost in the treaty negotiations anyway. Even though Washington was burned, it ended up not being a bad policy: Britain's native allies were totally smashed. And, Britain got nothing at Ghent.

 

[Bowsling]

Yet you still couldn't do much beyond occupy Niagara, and, as you said, smash our native allies. And according to some posters here, that's just a given.