Enlightenment of Normandy Landing on Modern War

It has been 60 years since Apocalypse Now landed in Normandy. Today, 60 years later, the French suddenly became very interested in this landing, and an unprecedented celebration was staged. We don't know what the French are thinking. Maybe the French are born romantic and like whimsy. After all, the protagonists of this landing are Americans and Britons, and the role played by the French in this landing is very limited. But in any case, the Landing War left many things for the French and the people of the world, which can serve our realistic struggle against Taiwan independence and promote reunification more directly and provide us with useful enlightenment and reference. A revelation: the probability of successful landing is much greater than the probability of resisting landing. Not only in Normandy, but also in the 100 landings during the whole World War II, the success rate of landings was very high, and the number of landings failed was few. Although the anti-landing party occupied a favorable geographical position and could make maximum use of various favorable conditions such as topography, ocean and waiting for work, it did not succeed in the end. The most fundamental reason is that the landing party has the greatest initiative and can comprehensively use various means to realize the suddenness of campaign tactics and battlefield advantages; We can concentrate superior forces and weapons in carefully selected areas, weaken and isolate the defenders to the maximum extent, and win the battle. The anti-landing party is generally influenced by various subjective and objective factors, so it is difficult to find out the real intention and combat mode of the other party, and it is often at a disadvantage and passive when landing occurs. The second revelation: firm determination and strong will are the most important factors to ensure the success of landing. It took more than a year before and after the planning and implementation of the Normandy landing, and its battle plan was changed several times. When planning the campaign, the United States and Britain made detailed assumptions about various possible bad situations and made as complete a plan as possible. Especially in terms of combat effectiveness, the United States and Britain can clearly see that although the Germans have certain advantages in comprehensive combat capabilities such as geographical location, combat experience, tactical quality, command ability and contingency ability, they are also tenacious in fighting will. But after all, the Germans fought on two fronts, and the allies greatly surpassed the Germans in resources and battlefield material conditions. At the same time, the victories of American and British troops in North Africa and Italy also proved that the German army was not invincible. And your own determination and will are more important objective factors than material and terrain. Without strong will and determination, no amount of advantages can guarantee the victory of the war. The United States and Britain especially guided the troops to recognize their own advantages and understand the dialectical relationship between cruelty and firmness of war, which greatly mobilized and enhanced the confidence of the troops, ensured their tenacious persistence in the first few days of the most difficult landing operations, and finally developed their advantages into victory. On the contrary, if Eisenhower and Churchill were swayed by considerations of gain and loss from the beginning, they only looked at the difficulties and failed to see their own strengths, did not take effective measures to foster strengths and avoid weaknesses, and adopted a step-by-step attitude, no war could be won. Revelation 3: Comprehensive use of various means to realize the suddenness of the campaign If we look at the whole Normandy campaign from a military perspective, the most successful experience is neither the various special equipment and weapons developed by the US military, nor the tactics and three-dimensional landing campaign style of the United States and Britain, because if we only look at the campaign effect, the results of the US and British troops will not be worth the candle. Not only did the war materials consumed far exceed those of the Germans by dozens or even hundreds of times, but the casualties were also obviously greater than those of the Germans. But the most successful thing is that the United States and Britain successfully deceived the Germans, landed in the most unexpected places of the Germans, and used deception to contain 23 divisions (including 4 armored divisions) of the German Army Group B to Calais, which does not exist. But even so, just the German Seventh Army 14 Division located on the Normandy coast, with only one armored division, made the Allies suffer a lot. Without the biggest deception in the world military history, it would be difficult to predict the course and outcome of the war if the German army moved its elite troops in Calais to the Normandy coast. Sun Tzu's Art of War says that soldiers are cunning! One sentence tells the essence of military struggle. This is also the greatest experience that the successful landing in Normandy has given us. Landing operations must have certain terrain conditions, that is, there must be a beachhead for landing troops to seize the beachhead and establish a landing site. It is always difficult to take care of all the forces on the anti-landing side. Generally speaking, it is based on geographical, economic and political conditions to judge the possible landing areas of the enemy. For those areas where the conditions are not good enough and the terrain is not ideal, they are often abandoned. This creates conditions for the landing party to cheat and pretend to attack. Those areas that are considered to be the least likely to land can not only land, but also maximize the surprise through efforts. In the Taiwan Province Strait, the most suitable place to land is mainly the west coast of Taiwan Province Province, with endless beaches and good landing conditions from Taoyuan to Kaohsiung. For a long time, the Taiwan military has built a large number of anti-landing fortifications and obstacles on the west coast facing the mainland. However, for the northern and eastern coasts, the Taiwan military believes that its back to the mainland faces the Pacific Ocean, and the terrain is rocky, which is not conducive to landing and its defense is relatively weak. At the same time, the Taiwan military, like the German army, believes that under the condition of limited forces, it mainly relies on mobile forces to carry out mobile operations, so that when determining the main landing direction of the PLA, it can carry out "last stand" with mobile forces. All these provide a very direct contrast and application condition for our military struggle against Taiwan independence today. Revelation 4: By constantly pretending to create "alert fatigue", the suddenness of deception was achieved. Before D-Day, the US military fully estimated the readiness and reaction ability of the Germans, and thought that it was impossible to achieve suddenness by deception alone, because after all, the signs of real landing were different in peacetime. So, the United States and Britain thought of another method-feint. For more than half a year, the United States and Britain have been conducting large-scale exercises and air strikes. On the one hand, they completed the mobilization, deployment and landing drills of the troops through exercises, on the other hand, they used this uninterrupted simulated landing situation to constantly create false alarms for the Germans. As a result, this feint really made the Germans alert and tired. On the day before D-Day, the intelligence agencies of the German army, navy and air force did not issue a war warning in the face of the signs of a large-scale allied landing. Moreover, the judgment of meteorological conditions is not accurate enough, and the favorable weather that may occur after the storm is not foreseen. Although everyone at all times, at home and abroad is familiar with the story of "wolf coming", whether from the historical or practical point of view, the use of this means is still tried and tested. Why is this? It is because it is difficult for people to avoid the deception of "sensory stimulation fatigue". Under modern conditions, with the continuous development of reconnaissance means such as aviation, aerospace and electronics, it is almost impossible to hide traces and attempts when landing in the army on a large scale. But feint can provide the greatest effect for this kind of deception. A clever archer, in order to deceive his opponent, keeps pulling without firing, and the opponent will think that he is not good at shooting or bluffing, thus letting his guard down, thus laying the foundation for a fatal blow. Enlightenment 5: Strengthen technical support, develop technical weapons in a targeted manner, and realize technical surprise. In order to overcome the anti-landing and anti-airborne obstacles set by the Germans, the US military put forward more than 100 technical problems to be solved before landing in Normandy, including many specific difficulties from overcoming beach obstacles to building artificial docks. To this end, the United States and Britain specially allocated funds and organized experts and factories to overcome technical difficulties and developed some technical weapons and means that Germans had never seen or understood. These weapons and means not only ensured the smooth implementation of the allied landing campaign, but also made the Germans unprepared for emergencies. This shows that general combat readiness cannot replace emergency combat readiness. Only when the troops enter the state of war and practice in actual combat can they find more difficulties and problems. Organizing special forces to overcome difficulties can not only overcome many difficult problems that are difficult to solve in a short time, but also greatly create many new technical conditions and means to kill the enemy. Revelation 6: foster strengths and avoid weaknesses, hit the key points and achieve the suddenness of campaign tactics. Before the Normandy landing, the U.S. military believed that the Germans had rich combat experience, high combat quality of individual soldiers and detachments, and were good at mobile operations of armored mechanized corps. In order to foster strengths and avoid weaknesses, the US military has set the establishment of a landing site as the main goal of victory in the campaign. The troops are not required to develop rapidly in depth after landing, and the airborne troops are not required to perform the task of campaign blockade. Instead, they are given direct cooperation and support to seize the landing site task. Therefore, a few days before the landing, the US military moved forward with the regiment, and its development was very slow. It was less than a kilometer every day, but it never gave Germany a chance to maneuver and annihilate, which ensured the success of the landing. An army, however weak, has its own advantages. In modern warfare, an excellent military commander is often a master who exploits strengths and avoids weaknesses. Although our army has made great progress and development on the road of joint operations of various services and arms since its establishment, it is undeniable that it is impossible for our army to change the situation that the air and sea forces are at a disadvantage in a short time. However, the greatest advantage of our army lies in its strong fighting capacity, excellent tradition and style, high-quality training level and good military quality, and its glorious tradition of defeating powerful enemies and accomplishing arduous tasks without air and sea advantages and extreme difficulties. As far as the combat effectiveness of the army is concerned, our army has a comparative advantage in the world, which is also recognized by the world. Therefore, we should give full play to this advantage as much as possible in the future war to defend national unity. From the very beginning, we decided to put the main battlefield on the land battlefield, rely on a strong army to achieve a quick and decisive attack, and establish and seize the overall advantage and battlefield initiative from the land, thus making it difficult for our opponents to give full play to their sea and air advantages. Of course, giving full play to the advantages of the army does not mean excluding the role of other arms and services and technical means, nor does it require changing the strategic goal of focusing on building these technical arms. Instead, based on the principle of effectiveness of war and fostering strengths and avoiding weaknesses, these technical means and services are required to give full play to their own advantages and specialties, strike targets with different strategic functions, and fully ensure that the main force of the army can carry out rapid and decisive strikes. It can be said that once our army's powerful armored mechanized troops and main corps are deployed and enter the battlefield, the enemy's failure is in sight and waiting.