The Momentum of Mobilization

Can a military mobilization take place on a hurried, grand scale without its own momentum carrying it into an attack? I have three examples that would indicate a “no” answer to that question.

I just finished reading Ernest Hemingway’s For Whom the Bell Tolls, a novel set in the 1936-39 Spanish Civil War between the Republicans (supported by the story’s protagonists) and the Nationalists. One part of the story has someone rushing to deliver a note that recommended forestalling a planned grand-scale attack involving an entire division. As the messenger passes the mobilized forces to deliver the letter, it becomes increasingly apparent that the sheer force of the mobilization had reached a point where that attack would be launched anyway, regardless of any late-breaking information warning against it.

I read a while back a book about World War I (and stupidly forgot the title and author). During the days building up to this horrendous conflict, following the assassination of Austria/Hungary’s Archduke Francis Ferdinand in Sarajevo by Serb nationalists, nations lined up against nations, threatening and preparing for war against each other. In Germany, a war front on its western borders had long been anticipated and planned for, ever since the Franco-Prussian War of 1870. So Germany developed an intricate and comprehensive plan of mobilization that emphasized the use of its extensive railway system. The result was that, very quickly, German troops were amassed at its borders in very large numbers, ready for attack. There were serious “last-minute” diplomatic efforts made to prevent the war from breaking out. But by that time, the German military had become so strong within its government that it essentially called the shots. And shots it did call, resulting in the brutal invasion of neutral Belgium and drawing Great Britain into the conflict.

And now we jump ahead in time to early 2003, when U.S. forces were mobilized and poised to strike at Saddam Hussein’s Iraq. The expressed rationale for the buildup and threatened attack was that Iraq had weapons of mass destruction as well as a tenuous connection to Al-Qaeda. The United Nations, along with those who understood the gravity of war, tried to prevent the invasion. The UN had weapons inspectors on the ground in Iraq and were systematically searching for those supposed WMDs. But the U.S. decided to invade anyway, one reason being given that, if delayed too long, it would involve fighting during the excruciatingly hot months of summer there. Well, how many summers have we been there now? I count six, with another on the way.

The above examples make me wonder whether there are other instances when the momentum of mobilization pushed those forces over the edge into combat, even when conditions seemed to mitigate against it. For example, I wondered about the German invasion of Russia on June 22, 1941 and the Chinese counterattack in late 1950 against the UN forces in Korea. Both involved heavy mobilization and sudden attacks. But the difference I see in these is that they had strong (albeit not necessarily benevolent) leaders over them who could themselves have canceled the invasions had conditions so dictated. And for the examples I had earlier given, the leadership was either too disorganized or ignorant to match up against the military momentum. But even with the German invasion of Russia in 1941 and the Chinese invasion of Korea in 1950, there may have been a point in the military buildup beyond which calling off the attack would have been interpreted as a humiliating political setback in itself. That doubtless was an important factor in the U.S. going through with its invasion of Iraq in 2003.