Okay, so the original question was whether or not and to what extent a militia would able to sustain itself against an established military power. Is this correct? If so, read on.
I understand the importance of calling upon past conflicts as a benchmark for hypothetical battlespace scenarios, but past conflicts can only have so much relevance. There are a variety of contemporary issues that would heavily impact a conflict between a militia and an official military body, issues that can't be reflected upon by World War II or the Civil War, for example.
The technological, cultural and geopolitical infrastructure of the world has changed since the 1940s, so using WWII as an example of how it would be or could be done comes off as trite and, quite frankly, of limited use in this discussion.
This is the way I see it. We have a generation of young people who have had very little exposure to adverse weather conditions. They do not hunt for or grow their own food. I'm talking about a generation of people who have been raised on Sponge Bob Square Pants, chicken nuggets and Xbox. These people are not what one would presume to be potential freedom fighters/terrorists/whatever you want to call them. The economy is more globalized than it was before, and international communications will undoubtedly impact even the most minor bushfire wars, as such can be seen in parts of Central Asia, Eastern Europe and Central Africa.
These very same people, whether impoverished or wealthy, developing or industrialized, more or less have access to information that can be electronically transferred in seconds to various networking hubs throughout the world. Part of the reason why the Vietnam War ended the way it did was because it was one of the first wars to be televised. We could actually see the Viet Cong on our TV sets, which consequently altered our perception of them as insurgents or rebels. The Internet and cellular phones vastly influences the Arab Spring, and like Barkey said, that revolution was catapulted by a breakdown of stable information processing by state-installed forces.
In short, a group of armed citizens could not only survive but overwhelm a presumably superior force via electronic warfare and information warfare. Body count is somewhat important, but its importance in terms of winning a conflict is secondary to how information is spread. Most people scoff at the romanticized idea of an underground network of hackers that we've all seen in countless movies, but it's very much a reality at this time. The tactics used in Red Dawn are still relevant, but those kids didn't have the Internet and cell phones that they could use to organize and network with other groups. What Barkey is saying is correct.
Not necessarily. They'll be slower definitely (you try marching 500 miles quickly carrying a rifle, ammunition and depending on your roles stuff like a radio or mortar equipment, etc) but they won't be useless. A full-spectrum mechanized force does not need roads or trains. (Especially since you can make roads real easy like in war.) It's a little bit harder to support from a logistical standpoint but doable.
EDIT: Nevermind, you covered logistics.
edited 3rd Jan '12 6:34:12 PM by GameChainsaw
The term "Great Man" is disturbingly interchangeable with "mass murderer" in history books.That's why I said it'll be harder to do but doable. (Alternatively you can do what Napoleon did really effectively and what both Union and Confederate forces did decades later. Chiefly have your men on the march live off the locals you're advancing on. Bonus points and advantage yours if it is enemy territory to pillage from. Not very moral but hey since when does the moral high ground always win wars?)
There is also the matter that if you take out all the roads and trains going into a warzone, you can't take them out of a warzone; take out the defenders logistics to prevent them from knocking out your beachhead, and advancing becomes a heck of a lot more difficult too. Goes both ways.
Goes for supplies too; no enemy fuel means no fuel to capture; ergo, you have to bring everything from home.
The term "Great Man" is disturbingly interchangeable with "mass murderer" in history books.That's why you can plan ahead for some things like making rifles fire the same ammunition as the enemy and have marching orders that infantry are permitted to take food from civilian fields and shops/storehouses. (The Soviet Union in the 1980s considered using NATO cartridges so that they could take NATO ammunition and use it on themselves and their magazines containing the same ammunition wouldn't work in a STANAG weapon.)
Either extreme from a logistical standpoint: Pure living off the enemy's land vs pure bringing everything with you can lead to defeat. A well-built medium can minimize the downsides of either extreme. (It's why US vehicles will run on regular gasoline and diesel as well as their own JP-8. You can capture enemy fuel supplies and use those instead.)
@nonbody
How about doing ANYTHING but just sit their? Theres a reason the German's called the first year of the war "der Sitzkrieg" (the sitting war). almost nothing happened. Oh, wait, the britts dropped some pamphlets in Germany. That was about it. They out numbered the Germans nearly 5 to 1 and they did NOTHING.
Now please ignore my derail, this disscussion is quite interesting.
Of course, if there's a resistance, fuel would be a very easy thing for them to get rid of. A handful of them could easily destroy gas stations and such.
edited 3rd Jan '12 7:27:35 PM by Joesolo
I'm baaaaaaackWell if the French had done anything except SIT THERE and we'd actually known how to use tanks!
Are you suggesting that the RAF get itself blown out of the air above German skies? We'd have lost the battle of Britain if we'd done what you suggest. We lost in the skies above France for Petes sake!
A French ground offensive, now that might have swung it.
The term "Great Man" is disturbingly interchangeable with "mass murderer" in history books.@Joesolo: Like Game Chainsaw previously said (if indirectly), attack with what? Lend-Lease had been going before Poland (which actually kicked off the war), and native rebuilding the UK military started even before that, but the Brits didn't really have all that much with which to attack, nor the shipping to move what they did have even across the English Channel to friendly ports in France, never mind amphibious assaults* somewhere other than the expected places.
And it's military-related, so it's not really a derail.
edited 3rd Jan '12 8:24:31 PM by Nohbody
All your safe space are belong to TrumpAbout the only real thing the French and Brits could've done was to amass forces and attack Germany during the Polish campaign, but that would have required some very fancy footwork—getting everyone off from a standing start. And Poland would've been screwed anyway via the Molotov-Ribbentrop Pact.
Charlie Stross's cheerful, optimistic predictions for 2017, part one of three.
And to add to it, nobody was ready for war in 1939 — Neither the British, French or the Germans (war was meant to start about 1944, not in 1939). The British forces, even though mechanised, was supplemented by requsitioned civillan kit (trucks, cars, aircraft etc...), and kit from earlier in the 30's.
Keep Rolling OnIt depends what Hitler had done by then. If he'd already taken Czechoslovakia we would almost certainly have been gearing up with Germany, meaning that Germany would have faced a prepared France and Britain. If he'd refrained from doing any more than the Anschluss, or even just the Sudetenland, Britain and France might have assumed the storm was over until it was too late. Regardless, if Hitler had waited until 1944, he would have faced a fully-industrialised USSR. Either way, waiting until 1944 does not seem like a high-percentile move for the Germans.
edited 4th Jan '12 5:48:03 AM by GameChainsaw
The term "Great Man" is disturbingly interchangeable with "mass murderer" in history books.@ Tom:
Would it have been a World War, even if things kicked off in Europe?
Could it have been a Pacific War against Japan, and a war in Europe in which the US is somehow involved (inevitably)? Would it have been titled as one war, or two?
Keep Rolling OnYeah, would the Japanese have launched their asssautl against us if Germany waited? Germany and Japan were on friendly terms, it's possible that they would've notified each other their long-range schedule and Japan may have adjusted their timetable accordingly.
So we would've had a Cold War between the Axis and Allies until 1944.
Or maybe not even then. Imagine how life would've turned out if Hitler and Hirohito looked at the Allies arming up playing Cold War and 'nothing happened.
I don't think that that version of the Cold War would've lasted indefinitely, though. But the resulting war would've been quite different.
edited 4th Jan '12 10:07:21 AM by pvtnum11
Happiness is zero-gee with a sinus cold.It might have turned into both Axis and Allies turning on Soviets. And then turning on one another, or playing a rousing round of Cold War.
The term "Great Man" is disturbingly interchangeable with "mass murderer" in history books.Not entirely accurate. The Soviets was not in a good position to aid the uprising after clearing much of eastern Poland in the Lublin-Brest Offensive as part of Bagration - Bagration itself being an operation of enormous and exhausting scale to carry out. It made better strategic sense for the Red Army to consolidate its positions rather than immediately move in on Warsaw and directly aid the Warsaw Uprising. The lack of indirect support (artillery etc.) that the Soviets could have given was probably because Stalin wanted the rising to burn itself out against the Germans.
With cannon shot and gun blast smash the alien. With laser beam and searing plasma scatter the alien to the stars.Bagration was exhausting, yes, but I think the main reason that the Soviets didn't enter Warsaw to aid the partisans was political—the more they were seen as Poland's liberators, the more legitimacy they'd have postwar. The subject's rather controversial, but it's a given fact that the Soviets didn't do as much to aid the partisans as could have done, even going so far as to hinder the Anglo-American airdrops of supplies.
In any case, they didn't enter the city under January, well after the Uprising ended and the Germans had burned it to the ground.
Charlie Stross's cheerful, optimistic predictions for 2017, part one of three.The political element is certainly there, but I do believe it's tied to strategic sense too. From the Soviet perspective, why expend exhausted military resources on a risky operation in support of an actively antagonistic Armia Krajowa?
With cannon shot and gun blast smash the alien. With laser beam and searing plasma scatter the alien to the stars.A Japanese started World War Two would have happened. The war in the Pacific would have drawn in the British Empire either way. They were the third strongest naval power in the Pacific behind the US and the Imperial Japanese. Japan's long term territorial goals required the decisive elimination or defeat of its naval rivals in the region. It really didn't matter if the Soviets could field 50 million soldiers, their naval power was so weak they couldn't challenge the Japanese and win. (Same thing would have happened to us had Japan knocked out the Pacific Fleet to the last man and hit the West Coast.)
True only if the Japanese expanded purely southward. If the Sovs had gotten involved, the Japanese foothold on Manchuria, Korea, and much of Mainland China would have been threatened, and no number of super-battleships or elite carriers could stop that. The "Greater Asian Co-Prosperity Sphere" did expand northeast too, after all, and the Japanese had a lot of divisions in that area—mostly light infantry, non-mechanized, that were bait for the Soviets in real-life August Storm.
edited 5th Jan '12 12:17:16 AM by SabresEdge
Charlie Stross's cheerful, optimistic predictions for 2017, part one of three.

The problem is that manpower losses cut both ways. The Warsaw resistance was wiped out by the Uprising, after all; if the Sovs weren't right across the river the Germans could have reconstituted their losses. Whereas, if the French had tried for an independent, general uprising, they would've suffered badly, and the losses they might have inflicted on the Germans would not have been enough. In the intel-sabotage role, they minimize their own manpower losses while maximizing "soft" casualties on the Germans—i.e., troops tied down away from the front lines. And they could sustain it as long as they need to until Allied troops arrive.
Charlie Stross's cheerful, optimistic predictions for 2017, part one of three.