Summary: From a Brilliant Opening Move to a Planless End -
Hannibal and his Strategic Failure
Eberhard Birk
For the early stage of the Second Punic War two strategic centres arose for Hannibal’s general warfare: Spain and Upper Italy. With the surprise attack after crossing the Alps and the Pyrenees the Po-plain became Hannibal’s starting point, opening several options for further advance, which at first was exceedingly successful. Strategic surprise, unorthodox warfare with quick decisions, marching and tactical results caused a wave of success which had victory with a "strategic blitzkrieg” move considerably closer.
After the outstanding victory at Cannae the strategic centre shifted to Lower Italy, where - although some cities left the Roman ally system - Hannibal’s political-strategic hopes were not fulfilled. He thought of besieging the city of Rome, but lacking poliorcetic capabilities turned down this plan. The dwindling of political and military prospects left behind a helpless general who gradually had to accept his strategic limitations, accepted useless alliances, and had to bet on Carthadic and Iberic help. Thus, he lost the "law of action” to his Roman opponents learning from him.
So subsequently on the operational level Hannibal acted only on one out of several theatres of war. Hannibal’s "strategic gravitational centre” became an operational one. It was located where the general and his dwindling army were. His Roman opponents Fabius and Scipio succeeded with a fatigue strategy suggestive of modern guerrilla warfare, which finally lead to Hannibal’s defeat.
Hannibal failed because he made mistakes when estimating both his own and his opponents’ situation. His allies did not share his opinion concerning the object of the war, namely to replace the ally system dominated by the Romans with one dominated by Carthage. His instruments of power were too insignificant for permanently securing an enlarged system of government, which was supposed to include the Italian peninsula. Thus, Hannibal went down in history both as an excellent logistician, tactician, and leader, and as a dreadful strategist and politician, who was incapable of self-criticism and of detecting his opponent’s nature.
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