The best phrases about logistics and war
Great characters in history, leaders who led their countries and their armies. Strategists and statesmen. Emperors and even infamous dictators. All of them have had to look closely at logistics when planning some of their great wars, as we saw in another blog post. We have compiled some of their most significant phrases so that you can see the importance they gave to their supply chains, as well as the parallels with the logistics needs of today’s companies and their commercial battles.
Here are some of the most famous quotes these leaders dedicated to wartime logistics.
Great Quotes on Logistics and War
Sir Winston S. Churchill
Prime Minister of the United Kingdom during World War II
“Victoria is a beautiful, bright and colorful flower. Transportation is the stem without which it could never have flourished.”
carl von clausewitz
Prussian military man and one of the most influential historians and theorists of modern military science
“There is nothing more common than to find supply considerations affecting the strategic lines of a campaign and a war.”
Sun Tzu
Chinese general, soldier and philosopher, author of “The Art of War” (6th century BC)
“The factors in the art of war are: first, the calculations; second, the quantities; third, logistics; fourth, the balance of power; and fifth, the chances of victory are based on the balance of power.
“The line between order and disorder lies in logistics.”
Frederick the Great
King of Prussia between 1740 and 1786
“In order to make secure conquests, it is necessary to always proceed within the rules: advance, establish yourself solidly, advance and establish yourself again, and always prepare to have our resources and requirements within the reach of our army.”
Alexander the Great
King of the Macedonian Empire (356 BC – 323 BC)
“My logisticians are a humorless bunch. They know that if my campaign fails, they will be the first ones I kill.”
Antoine Henri Jomini
Swiss general (1779 – 1869), belonged to the staff of Napoleon Bonaparte
“Logistics comprises the means and arrangements that make strategic and tactical plans work. The strategy decides where to act; the logistics get the troops to that point.”
WWII Special
Few battles have marked history and the public imagination as much as the Second World War. Filled with well-remembered characters, both for better and for worse, it also left a trail of appointments that revealed the growing importance of logistics for the success of any company, whether or not it was war.
Dwight D Eisenhower
General in the US Army during World War II and later President
“You will not find it difficult to prove that battles, campaigns, and even wars have been won or lost, primarily because of logistics.”
“Throughout the fighting, the enemy’s fatal weakness was his lack of logistical ability to keep his armies on the battlefield. His forces had all the courage possible, but the courage was not enough. Reinforcements were not arriving, weapons, ammunition and food were also lacking, and fuel shortages reduced their capacity for tactical mobility to nothing. In the latter stages of the campaign, he could do little more than wait until the Allied advance swept them away.
Robert B. Carney
US Navy Vice Admiral
“From my experience in times of war, I am insistent that logistics know-how must be preserved, that there is nothing more important in war than logistics.”
General Douglas MacArthur
Commander of the Allied Forces in the Pacific during World War II
“The history of warfare shows that nine times out of ten, an army is defeated because its supply lines have been cut off.”
Adolph Hitler
German dictator during World War II
“To fight, we must have oil for our machinery.”
Joseph Stalin
USSR dictator during World War II
“The war was decided by engines and octane.”
Ernest. J.King
Commander in Chief of the US Army during World War II
“I don’t know what the hell that ‘logistics’ thing Marshall is always talking about is, but I want some of it.”
George S Patton
General of the United States during World War II
“Gentlemen, the officer who doesn’t know his communications and supplies as well as his tactics is totally useless.”
It is evident that the strategy, in order to be carried out, must take logistics very much into account, both inside and outside the war. A company without the logistics to fight on the battlefield will be as helpless as an army without fuel or supplies.
Finally, a last quote that is sometimes attributed to Napoléon, although its origin has not been proven with certainty: “Amateurs talk about tactics, professionals study logistics.”
