En los
acontecimientos históricos, lo más evidente es la prohibición de comer el fruto
del árbol del conocimiento.Solo la actividad inconsciente da fruto, y quien
participa en un acontecimiento histórico jamás comprende su significado. Si
intenta comprenderlo, se encuentra con lo yermo.
Una nación debería centrarse en librar -incluso desconociendo el arte militar- sus batallas "nacionales". Y de hecho todas las demás en las que participa "sin divisiones" en cuanto a civiles y militares son batallas "nacionales".
"Let us imagine two men who have come out to fight a duel with rapiers
according to all the rules of the art of fencing. The fencing has gone on
for some time; suddenly one of the combatants, feeling himself wounded and
understanding that the matter is no joke but concerns his life, throws
down his rapier, and seizing the first cudgel that comes to hand begins to
brandish it. Then let us imagine that the combatant who so sensibly
employed the best and simplest means to attain his end was at the same
time influenced by traditions of chivalry and, desiring to conceal the
facts of the case, insisted that he had gained his victory with the rapier
according to all the rules of art. One can imagine what confusion and
obscurity would result from such an account of the duel.
The fencer who demanded a contest according to the rules of fencing was
the French army; his opponent who threw away the rapier and snatched up
the cudgel was the Russian people; those who try to explain the matter
according to the rules of fencing are the historians who have described
the event.
After the burning of Smolénsk a war began which did not follow any
previous traditions of war. The burning of towns and villages, the
retreats after battles, the blow dealt at Borodinó and the renewed
retreat, the burning of Moscow, the capture of marauders, the seizure of
transports, and the guerrilla war were all departures from the rules.
Napoleon felt this, and from the time he took up the correct fencing
attitude in Moscow and instead of his opponent’s rapier saw a cudgel
raised above his head, he did not cease to complain to Kutúzov and to the
Emperor Alexander that the war was being carried on contrary to all the
rules—as if there were any rules for killing people. In spite of the
complaints of the French as to the nonobservance of the rules, in spite of
the fact that to some highly placed Russians it seemed rather disgraceful
to fight with a cudgel and they wanted to assume a pose en quarte or en
tierce according to all the rules, and to make an adroit thrust en prime,
and so on—the cudgel of the people’s war was lifted with all its
menacing and majestic strength, and without consulting anyone’s tastes or
rules and regardless of anything else, it rose and fell with stupid
simplicity, but consistently, and belabored the French till the whole
invasion had perished.
And it is well for a people who do not—as the French did in 1813—salute
according to all the rules of art, and, presenting the hilt of their
rapier gracefully and politely, hand it to their magnanimous conqueror,
but at the moment of trial, without asking what rules others have adopted
in similar cases, simply and easily pick up the first cudgel that comes to
hand and strike with it till the feeling of resentment and revenge in
their soul yields to a feeling of contempt and compassion.
One of the most obvious and advantageous departures from the so-called
laws of war is the action of scattered groups against men pressed together
in a mass. Such action always occurs in wars that take on a national
character. In such actions, instead of two crowds opposing each other, the
men disperse, attack singly, run away when attacked by stronger forces,
but again attack when opportunity offers. This was done by the guerrillas
in Spain, by the mountain tribes in the Caucasus, and by the Russians in
1812.
People have called this kind of war “guerrilla warfare” and assume that by
so calling it they have explained its meaning. But such a war does not fit
in under any rule and is directly opposed to a well-known rule of tactics
which is accepted as infallible. That rule says that an attacker should
concentrate his forces in order to be stronger than his opponent at the
moment of conflict.
Guerrilla war (always successful, as history shows) directly infringes
that rule.
This contradiction arises from the fact that military science assumes the
strength of an army to be identical with its numbers. Military science
says that the more troops the greater the strength. Les gros bataillons
ont toujours raison. *
* Large battalions are always victorious.
For military science to say this is like defining momentum in mechanics by
reference to the mass only: stating that momenta are equal or unequal to
each other simply because the masses involved are equal or unequal.
Momentum (quantity of motion) is the product of mass and velocity.
In military affairs the strength of an army is the product of its mass and
some unknown x.
Military science, seeing in history innumerable instances of the fact that
the size of any army does not coincide with its strength and that small
detachments defeat larger ones, obscurely admits the existence of this
unknown factor and tries to discover it—now in a geometric
formation, now in the equipment employed, now, and most usually, in the
genius of the commanders. But the assignment of these various meanings to
the factor does not yield results which accord with the historic facts.
Yet it is only necessary to abandon the false view (adopted to gratify the
“heroes”) of the efficacy of the directions issued in wartime by
commanders, in order to find this unknown quantity.
That unknown quantity is the spirit of the army, that is to say, the
greater or lesser readiness to fight and face danger felt by all the men
composing an army, quite independently of whether they are, or are not,
fighting under the command of a genius, in two—or three-line
formation, with cudgels or with rifles that repeat thirty times a minute.
Men who want to fight will always put themselves in the most advantageous
conditions for fighting.
The spirit of an army is the factor which multiplied by the mass gives the
resulting force. To define and express the significance of this unknown
factor—the spirit of an army—is a problem for science.
This problem is only solvable if we cease arbitrarily to substitute for
the unknown x itself the conditions under which that force becomes
apparent—such as the commands of the general, the equipment
employed, and so on—mistaking these for the real significance of the
factor, and if we recognize this unknown quantity in its entirety as being
the greater or lesser desire to fight and to face danger. Only then,
expressing known historic facts by equations and comparing the relative
significance of this factor, can we hope to define the unknown.
Ten men, battalions, or divisions, fighting fifteen men, battalions, or
divisions, conquer—that is, kill or take captive—all the
others, while themselves losing four, so that on the one side four and on
the other fifteen were lost. Consequently the four were equal to the
fifteen, and therefore 4x = 15y. Consequently x/y = 15/4.
This equation does not give us the value of the unknown factor but gives us a ratio
between two unknowns. And by bringing variously selected historic units
(battles, campaigns, periods of war) into such equations, a series of
numbers could be obtained in which certain laws should exist and might be
discovered.
The tactical rule that an army should act in masses when attacking, and in
smaller groups in retreat, unconsciously confirms the truth that the
strength of an army depends on its spirit. To lead men forward under fire
more discipline (obtainable only by movement in masses) is needed than is
needed to resist attacks. But this rule which leaves out of account the
spirit of the army continually proves incorrect and is in particularly
striking contrast to the facts when some strong rise or fall in the spirit
of the troops occurs, as in all national wars.
The French, retreating in 1812—though according to tactics they
should have separated into detachments to defend themselves—congregated
into a mass because the spirit of the army had so fallen that only the
mass held the army together. The Russians, on the contrary, ought
according to tactics to have attacked in mass, but in fact they split up
into small units, because their spirit had so risen that separate
individuals, without orders, dealt blows at the French without needing any
compulsion to induce them to expose themselves to hardships and dangers.
El mundo en el que viven los dioses y los
hombres es el mismo. Hay acontecimientos igualmente aciagos tanto para
los hombres como para los dioses. Las fórmulas de Homero son muy
ciertas. Pero en los tiempos de Homero no existía el subterráneo mundo
del crimen, el mundo de los campos de concentración. El universo
subterráneo de Plutón parece el paraíso, el cielo, comparado con este
mundo. Pero también este mundo nuestro está tan solo un piso por debajo
del de Plutón; los hombres se elevan de allí a los cielos y los dioses
nunca descienden, nunca bajan por la escalera más abajo del infierno.
(Varlam Shalámov: Relatos de Kolimá. Volumen IV, págs 185-186)
