Battles of history, Strategist Thinking, Agree or not Essay

Battles of history, Strategist Thinking, Agree or not - Essay Example One of Britain’s immediate aims was to prevent the French navy from being captured by the German. This gave rise to Operation Catapult on July 3, 1940. A British naval force based in Gibraltar went to Mers-el-Kebir, Algeria, to assist the remaining French navy that had fled. The French crews were offered a choice to sail to Britain at once, to join them in the battle against Germany, where the British would offer them the necessary supplies.2 This way, it would give them (the French) a chance to move their ships somewhere secure or scamper their fleet. All the choices were turned down by the French, hence the British had no alternative but to fire and destroy the French, thus killing over 1,200 of them. Thus, Sun Tzu advocated for creation of an illusion of choices while indirectly directing your opponent to your most preferred option where you lay in ambush.3 Anthony Adamthwaite, The Making of the Second World War (New York: Routledge, 1992), 30. Kenneth Brody, The Avoidable War: Pierre Laval and the Politics of Reality, 1935–1936 (New Brunswick, NJ: Transaction Publishers, 1999), 20. Donald Busky, Communism in History and Theory: Asia, Africa, and the Americas (Westport, CT: Praeger Publishers, 2002), 23. Another crucial battle faced by the British was the channel battle. During this operation, Sea lion was the German code name for its strategy in taking over the United Kingdom. This begun with a series of bomb attacks against British ships in the English Channel, in early July 1940, and the first attack was on July 10. This was despite Hitler making a speech on July 19 advocating for peace with Britain, which was a tactic to buy time. British ships in the Channel incurred heavy damage, but they were able to conserve pilots and planes since there was an oncoming battle. This strategy can be seen in Sun Tzu as art of deception which involves concealing your intentions while calculating your surprise attack. A good general never commits his whole arsenal in battle. Then, Hitler began large bombing raids on air bases and military command posts in southern England early in August 1940. This strategy was aimed at breaking Britain’s will. On August 13, nicknamed â€Å"Eagle Day† by the Germans, Germany deployed over 1,400 bombers and fighters across the English Channel. This whole effort only yielded a damage of thirteen British fighters while losing more than three times the number of theirs. The Germans tried to employ the tactic of ‘Attack at full force to completely destroy and demoralize your enemy†, but apparently, the British were ahead of them as they employed the tactic of ‘let your enemies exhaust their strength.’ Hitler directed the Luftwaffe to attack major British cities like London in early September 1940. The attacks which started on September 7 went on into May the following year. During this Second World War, there was a constant bombing of the United Kingdom by Germany, po pularly known as the â€Å"Blitz,† which took place Between 7 September 1940 and 16 May 1941. Major attacks which involved more than 100 tonnes of explosives were dropped targeting 16 British cities: the capital, London, being attacked 71 times. Others like Birmingham, Liverpool and Plymouth were attacked 8 times, Bristol 6, Glasgow 5, Southampton 4 and Portsmouth 3. There were also large raids targeting other smaller cities eight in number. Luftwaffe bombed London for 57 nights in a row. Over one million houses in London were destroyed