Human Wave/Peasant Army attack discussion (Closed)

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Player 0

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Hi everyone,

As you guys probably know the general consensus among armchair generals is that Chinese militaries either are now or have always been human wave centric, that is to say mindless hoards charging into machine guy fire with poorly made or no weapons. Or alternatively that Chinese soldiers are peasants with no training sent to fight as cannon fodder.

This is a myth i think we are all tired of, i'd like to compile a quick list of articles and source to dispel this on both modern and pre-modern Chinese history.

Let's talk about things like the professionalism or ancient Chinese militaries, let's talk about the three man cell squad level tactics and infiltration in depth of the nature of Chinese militaries, its to the detriment of ourselves as scholars and military/history enthusiasts that we don't have a more coherent thread or resource just to dispel myths and stereotypes all too pervasive in popular history and military circles.
 
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Player 0

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Sadly most of the detailed info i can find on the internet are usually from forums such as these more interested in Chinese history and tactical history. Does anyone know any good books or academic sources, there're sparse sources in the english language i find.
 
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lightspeed

Junior Member
in the 1st half of the 20th century. whether it is the warlords' battles or the KMT vs the CCP or the Second Sino-Japanese war. the battles were always been human wave centric: using numerically superior strength to compensate for inadequate or inferior military equipment.

from what i understand. the typical Chinese soldier then received little training: 2 or 3 weeks of BMT, little indoctrination, shoot few bullets: they were too precious to be wasted in training. that's it, and they were ready for combat duty. those soldiers were really ill-trained and ill-equipped, and they were just there to be wasted in the battlefields.
 
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Lezt

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When talking early small squad tactics, who can forget the Mandarin Duck? -> which unlike other nations, is combined arms,
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The thing about human wave is easy to dispel, Just look at the logistics. Unless China had some miracle transportation and logistics capabilities that can withstand UN bombing and interdiction, even if a Chinese soldier uses 1/10th of the supplies of the UN forces, it is unlikely that China can field a force 10X that of the UN and bring enough supplies to sustain them especially we all know that they supplied by foot.

TBH, the last real human wave attack was made in WW1 over the trenches.
 
Blackstone

Blackstone

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This is great information guys, and certainly presents a different picture. Hope to see more discussions and links to historical sources.
 
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Player 0

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Lezt said:
When talking early small squad tactics, who can forget the Mandarin Duck? -> which unlike other nations, is combined arms,
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The thing about human wave is easy to dispel, Just look at the logistics. Unless China had some miracle transportation and logistics capabilities that can withstand UN bombing and interdiction, even if a Chinese soldier uses 1/10th of the supplies of the UN forces, it is unlikely that China can field a force 10X that of the UN and bring enough supplies to sustain them especially we all know that they supplied by foot.

TBH, the last real human wave attack was made in WW1 over the trenches.
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Its been stated again and again throughout the sources, human wave can be applied to any large scale infantry assaults where large numbers are brought against defensive positions, that is to say every offensive action involving infantry, one could easily argue D-Day was human wave centric to make up for superior German defenses. Peng Dehuai classified his tactics as short attacks which were based also on Russian style attacks, basically that since western firearms and heavy weapons are only useful at range, closing range negates fire support and turns this into a matter of numbers and physical strength. Ideas that the Chinese stayed committed was just as much due to poor communication as they lacked radios to relay information to platoons to break off the attack and relied on things like whistling to communicate commands.

Embracing the 'human wave' myth, which in itself is already a derogatory term for a more complex style of tactics, shows that the party using the phrase is more interested in public relations to paint a simplified image of war for public consumption and severely undersells the nature of fighting an organized war against a human enemy and thus also undersells the UN forces as well.
 
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Player 0

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Found this just earlier yesterday, its a pretty good primer to how Mao developed mobile warfare and guerilla warfare against Japan and eventually evolved into the anti-KMT campaigns that would happen after WWII.
 
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Lezt

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Player 0 said:
Its been stated again and again throughout the sources, human wave can be applied to any large scale infantry assaults where large numbers are brought against defensive positions, that is to say every offensive action involving infantry, one could easily argue D-Day was human wave centric to make up for superior German defenses. Peng Dehuai classified his tactics as short attacks which were based also on Russian style attacks, basically that since western firearms and heavy weapons are only useful at range, closing range negates fire support and turns this into a matter of numbers and physical strength. Ideas that the Chinese stayed committed was just as much due to poor communication as they lacked radios to relay information to platoons to break off the attack and relied on things like whistling to communicate commands.

Embracing the 'human wave' myth, which in itself is already a derogatory term for a more complex style of tactics, shows that the party using the phrase is more interested in public relations to paint a simplified image of war for public consumption and severely undersells the nature of fighting an organized war against a human enemy and thus also undersells the UN forces as well.
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Well, it depends on how one define what a human wave attack is. What I believe most people will romanticize about a human wave attack is like: Enemy at the Gates, where a mob of men armed or not rushes forward to absorb the enemy fire so that the wave behind can make more headway.

That we know the Chinese tactics were not.

The thing is, SMG / assault rifles / carbines made human waves obsolete; sure it is hard to call for a artillery strike or an air strike, but an entrenched enemy with automatic weapons is not an easy target to charge.

@popeye, BTW the USS George Washington is in Hong Kong today.
 
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Player 0

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Lezt said:
Well, it depends on how one define what a human wave attack is. What I believe most people will romanticize about a human wave attack is like: Enemy at the Gates, where a mob of men armed or not rushes forward to absorb the enemy fire so that the wave behind can make more headway.

That we know the Chinese tactics were not.

The thing is, SMG / assault rifles / carbines made human waves obsolete; sure it is hard to call for a artillery strike or an air strike, but an entrenched enemy with automatic weapons is not an easy target to charge.

@popeye, BTW the USS George Washington is in Hong Kong today.
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Is that something entirely accurate though? After all infiltration in depth proved there's a limit to how well those weapons work when the main advantage of range is negated once a certain distance is reached, the idea that shotguns and submachine guns can also negate the sudden change in battlefield conditions also works both ways and complements the human wave/short attack concept very well, as most Russian and Russian inspired tactics are based very much on submachine gun centric weapons like tank gun barrels and Assault Rifle barrels with heavier bullets or less accurate rifling meaning more effective at close distance.
 
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