Pockets of resistance

Pockets of resistance is a term made popular by the media, referring to widespread but separated resistance in Post occupied Iraq following the 2003 invasion of Iraq by the United States.

The term had been in use for about a century before that. Its first use in the Oxford English Dictionary was in 1899, and corresponded to the development of land warfare strategies using a continuous front. The static trench warfare of the Western Front during World War I did not produce many pockets of resistance; but as continuous front warfare became more mobile, pockets of resistance became more common as small groups of soldiers were bypassed by mobile offensives.

A pocket of resistance may be very large, containing hundreds of thousands of soldiers, large supply and munitions depots, communications equipment, tanks, artillery and airfields. Or it may be very small, consisting of a few soldiers armed with rifles and improvised explosive devices. The defining characteristics are that they have become surrounded by enemy forces against their will, and they are continuing to fight back.

World War II

In World War II, the German Panzer divisions were deliberately used to create pockets of resistance that were encircled, then reduced and collapsed by infantry units. This strategy, a variation of the classical military strategy defeat in detail, was described as Kesselschlacht ("cauldron battle") and was employed with great success in the invasions of Poland (1939) and France, Belgium and the Netherlands (1940). Another interpretation of encirclement strategy is that mass modern warfare as developed from the First World War means that defensive firepower is superior to offensive firepower. By encircling an opponent and thereby cutting them off from their supply lines the enemy is in effect forced to breakout of the encirclement. Thus forcing the enemy to attack and be destroyed by the encircling defensive firepower.

In France (1940) and in Yugoslavia and Greece (April 1941), pockets of resistance eventually developed into resistance movements. In both cases, small groups of regular army soldiers with their weapons became the nucleus of national resistance movements.

Invasion of the Soviet Union

The same Kesselschlacht strategy was used by the Germans against the Soviet army in 1941 and initially produced even greater success, first at Smolensk where over 250,000 Soviet soldiers were killed or captured, and then in the great encirclement at Kiev which produced over 600,000 Soviet soldiers killed, missing or captured. Four Soviet armies, comprising 43 divisions, had ceased to exist; but again, small groups of Soviet soldiers with their weapons had escaped to form the nucleus of a resistance movement.

The Red Army learned quickly, counterattacking at Stalingrad in 1942 and creating an encirclement that trapped and destroyed the German Sixth Army, along with two Romanian divisions. Other attempts to encircle the German army on the Eastern Front led to climactic battles at Velikiye Luki and the Korsun-Cherkassy Pocket. At both Velikiye Luki and Korsun, significant numbers of encircled German soldiers were able to infiltrate through the Soviet lines to reach safety. The Soviet encirclement strategy eventually culminated in the destruction of Germany's Army Group Center by dividing it into several small pockets of resistance in the summer of 1944. Over 350,000 German soldiers were killed or captured.

The Western Front

The Western Allies had invaded occupied France at Normandy on June 6, 1944. This led to another attempt to encircle the German army in the Falaise Gap. Eventually the American forces became overextended, allowing German Panzer divisions one final Kesselschlacht in the Battle of Bastogne, where the 101st Airborne Division was encircled. This time the encirclement was not a success, as General George S. Patton's Third Army broke the encirclement.

Island hopping in the Pacific

In the Pacific War, the highly mobile amphibious strategy developed by the Americans, known as island hopping, also produced pockets of resistance as many Japanese island garrisons were isolated, particularly at the great naval bases of Truk and Rabaul. The Americans frequently bypassed the larger, more heavily defended bases, preferring to capture more weakly defended islands that could provide airfields and naval bases to continue their advance toward Japan.

External links

CNN transcript describing "pockets of resistance"