Sarah Paine: evaluation

Transcript context

…portant factors in this war bar none, certainly for Russia, is railways. I don't see an R in there or anything. By all means, this is better than only looking at military factors, but it's incomplete. So, I've talked about Japan's Westernization. I've talked about its mastery of grand strategy. Now here's my third reason for how they overturn the balance of power. It has to do with pegging the culminating point of victory in the Russo-Japanese war. Now for a commercial break, I'm going to give you some terminology: “culminating point of attack” and “culminating point of victory.” They're different. Culminating point of attack is an operational term. If you do not reach your culminating point of attack, it means you could have gone further. The culminating point of attack applies to a single battle or a set of battles, which would be called a campaign. If you don't go far enough in your battle, you could have taken more territory, whatever it was you were after. If you go too far… Imagine you're going deep into whatever territory it is. Your lines are ever more extended. Your enemy's lines are probably being shortened. Your supply problems are getting worse, theirs might be getting better. If you go way too far, your enemy will launch a counterattack that will send you much further backwards than if you'd been a little more cautious about how far you went. So that's an operational term. The strategic term is the “culminating point of victory” and it concerns the objective for which the war was fought. Japan is fighting this war in order to protect its sovereignty, and become a great power to do that. If you don't reach your culminating point, you could have gotten greater winnings. If you go too far, typically what will happen is you will trigger a third-party intervention. What may have been feasible before that third party joined the party may no longer be. So this is the point of the terminology. Commercial break is over and let's get going on the Russo-Japanese war. Here's a nice map of it. It starts out with a Japanese surprise attack on Port Arthur. Lüshun is the modern name, I'm using a traditional name. It's on the Liaodong Peninsula. This is the main Russian base. The Japanese have to get those ships in base and sink them, even better. Their supply lines are in danger if that navy's out and about. Simultaneously they land an army in Korea that's going to go northwest into Manchuria. If you look at the railway line, it goes Port Arthur all the way to Harbin up there. That's the east-west junction of the Trans-Siberian Railway. In those days that's the Chinese Eastern Railway. I've only listed a couple of the major battles, but basically it's going up the railway system from Port Arthur upward and you got the Battles of Liaoyang and Mukden. Japan has got only four armies until the very end of the war when it gets a fifth. As long as Port Arthur has ships in it, one army has to be stuck there besieging it. Japan's theory of victory in this thing is to have an annihilating battle. That's what Bismarck had done to the French in the Battle of Sedan. ships in it, one army has to be stuck there besieging it. Japan's theory of victory in this thing is to have an annihilating battle. That's what Bismarck had done to the French in the Battle of Sedan. So the Japanese really need to get that army out of Port Arthur so that it can concentrate on these other battles. What happens is Russia keeps losing the battles, but it has an orderly retreat moving ever further northward, extending Japanese lines. That's an overview of how the war goes so you can orient the rest of the conversation here. If you look at the invasion routes that Japan uses and in the First Sino-Japanese War and the Russo-Japanese War, they're remarkably similar because guess what, the geography hasn't changed. If you want to send an army into desired locations, it may well have to take similar routes. The British, the French, the Americans, and the Japanese had studied very carefully the First-Sino Japanese War. But apparently the Russians didn't waste their time on it because here's what's up. If the Russians had studied it carefully, they would have known the Yalu River is lethal, to send an army across that if there's an army waiting for it on the other side. The Russians also would have realized that this Fenshi Pass and Motien Pass—Motien means literally “scratch the skies”—that if you're prepared there, you're going to ruin an army coming through. Of course the Russians aren't prepared there. They also would have known that the Liaodong Peninsula—it has a very narrow neck. If you cut the narrow neck right where Dalny is, a big commercial port, you're going to get that port which is connected to the railway. You're going to be able to supply your armies going right up north. In addition, it means you're probably going to get Port Arthur, the big naval base as well, because it's basically been turned into an island and you'll probably get that. So the Russians should have figured out that but they didn't. The Japanese literally blast through these locations. Here is the key to reducing the fleet in Port Arthur. Since the Russians wouldn't sortie, they're just sticking in harbor, the Japanese have to figure out a way to do it. Here's how it works. They have to get a bunch of these 11-inch howitzers in place. Japan didn't own many of these. They're really heavy. It's really hard to transport them with horses and things. They've got to put them behind the hills in Port Arthur. Then they've got to take the high point. It takes them a while to figure out that they needed to do this. It’s a 203-meter hill. You put a spotter on 203 Meter Hill. This thing starts firing shots and the spotter starts radioing in how you have to adjust the line of fire in order to hit the ships in harbor. So that's what's going on here. Here you can see the narrow neck there above Dalny. You can see it's a big port. We've put a lot of ships, but it’s not a very protected port. The star is where Port Arthur is and that is a protected port where you want to put naval vessels. You can see it takes the Japanese two months to work their way down the Liaodong Peninsula to get themselves in position to blow away the ships in port. ected port where you want to put naval vessels. You can see it takes the Japanese two months to work their way down the Liaodong Peninsula to get themselves in position to blow away the ships in port. Meanwhile, the Japanese armies are having a hard time while this is going on. It could be argued that maybe they even reached their culminating point of attack in the Battle of Liaoyang. Who knows? Liaoyang takes place less than halfway through the war. It's in early September 1904. And Japanese munitions, numbers of officers, numbers of horses… It all goes critical. They don't have enough. They get away with it. They win the battle but the Russians have an organized retreat northward. At the Battle of Shaho, which happens next in October, the Japanese supply system almost collapses but they get away with it. So bad things are going on at land. Japan doesn't have an infinite supply of soldiers. They also don't have an infinite supply of artillery, howitzers and things. Here are their gun emplacements. Notice the green ones are army gun emplacements around Port Arthur. That makes sense. What's all the purple? They have so few guns, they're pulling them off ships in order to reduce Port Arthur. All these things they really need up in Manchuria. They need General Nogi who's running all of this, and his army, up in Manchuria. There you can see the circle is where 203 Meter Hill is that they need to take as well. General Nogi, who is commanding the 3rd Army which is in charge of the siege, is really desperate to reduce the fortress as soon as possible. He runs four different really costly infantry assaults on a fortress where you're killing lots of young Japanese men. The first two occur right prior to major battles, Liaoyang and Shaho respectively. Because he wants to win those battles, win Port Arthur, so then he can take his guns and troops to fight at Liaoyang and Shaho. Well, it's not to be because he loses both of them. The assaults are insufficient. It's only after the second one that he realizes the importance of 203 Meter Hill. The problem is Nogi gets 45,000 Japanese soldiers killed doing this. 45,000 soldiers in that day is an entire army. I've already pointed out that Japan only had four armies until the very end of the war when it tried to cobble together a fifth one. Here's what 203 Meter Hill looks like from down below. Here's what it looks like from up top, the kind of view you get. When there was a truce in early December 1904, and there was some talking between Japanese and Russian officers, Russian officers said, “You will never capture 203 Meter Hill.” To which the Japanese officer replied, “We'll purchase it in blood.” And they did. Their gamble paid off because all these ships, you'll notice they're listing. It's because they ain't sailing anywhere. You can see the 203 Meter Hill. They take it at the end of November and within the week, they are now sinking all of these battleships. They're gone within a few days. The Russians give up at Port Arthur and the 3rd Army is up and heading into Manchuria where it'll be there for the Battle of Mukden, which is a huge battle. It's got what, 500,000 troops?…

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