Fidel Castro - Military Genius or Just Lucky?

In either case, one must learn from the past.

(Photo: Fidel Castro and others in the Sierra Maestra Moutains, early 1958)

Fidel Castro ruled Cuba as tyrant from 1959 until ceeding power to his brother Raul in 2008. As the Tyrant of Cuba, Fidel was aweful. While almost every other Central American nation trippled their wealth (per capita) from 1960 to 2010, Cuba’s economy was essentially unchanged (per capita). Added to this was his constant political repression of all Cuban speach, and his sending Cuban soldiers into various wars as though he was leading a global super-power instead of a small island with a population of about 10 million (Cuba’s population is larger than Honduras, but smaller than Guatemala).

Despite his record as a bad tyrant, Fidel deserves to be famous, because Fidel accomplished one of the most remarkable feats in all of world history.

Fidel’s Conquest of Cuba is Incredible

In the history of the world, the Sage is not aware of any military campaign which compares to Fidel Castro’s conquest of Cuba.

In November 1956, about 80 men boarded a small boat, armed with some guns and some ammunition, and they sailed from Veracruz to the southern end of Cuba (about 160 miles due west of Guantanamo Bay, and 375 miles south of Havana). Batista, the former general and now dictator of Cuba, had spies who knew about the sailing of Castro’s yacht, and his best units had been sent to the area where Fidel was expected to land. Within hours after their arrival, the 80 revolutionaries came under heavy fire, and 75% of them were killed.

Fidel, his brother Raul, Che Guevara, Camilo Cienfuegos, and 16 other men survived by running and hiding. General Batista was wrongly informed that all of the men on the yacht Granma had been killed. This was the only shred of good news for Fidel - his enemies thought he was dead. On the bad side of the ledger, Fidel had no money, no supplies, no ammunition, and the 20 survivors were scattered.

By sheer luck and determination, the survivors of the Granma wandered into the mountains of the Sierra Maestra and eventually found one another. They still had little money and no equipment. By contrast, the armed forces of Cuba were more than 30,000 strong, and they had some tanks, armored cars, a few helicopters, military aircraft, and a navy. Even the police force of a modest town in Cuba could have defeated Fidel’s revolutionary band at this time.

At the beginning of 1958, Fidel’s chances of taking over Cuba were effectively nill. One year later, January 1st 1959, Batista fled Havana, one step ahead of Fidel’s victorious army. In one year, Fidel went from being the leader of 20 hungry, poorly armed men to the ruler of Cuba.

Why Did Fidel Win?

The Sage won’t retell the history of the Cuban revolution, the Wikipedia article (as of 10/2022) is pretty good. The single best military history of the revolution was writen by Major Larry Bockman, a US Marine Corp officer, for his master’s thesis titled: The Spirit of Moncado (1984).

Key points:

• Fidel was good as a small-unit military leader. He was great at getting the local people - very poor pesants - to support his men. Fidel’s key aides were very skilled and he obtained extremely useful assistence from a CIA agent/gun runner named Frank Sturgis who supplied boatloads and later planeloads of guns and ammo to Fidel starting in February of 1958. {Where did the money come from? Why was the CIA helping Fidel Castro at this time? No one seems to know.}

• General Batista made many unforced errors. He alienated the Eisenhower administration so completely that the US ended all shipments of weapons, parts, and supplies to Cuba starting in March of 1958. The US State Department never expected that a Communist tyrant like Fidel would soon seize control of Cuba as a direct result of their public condemnation of Batista. The so-called Cuba experts in the State department assumed that they could force Batista to leave and someone like Edwardo Chibas would replace him - in other words: a pro-US centerist technocrat.

• There were several other anti-Batista groups active in Cuba in 1957 and 1958. These groups were based in Havana or close by and they attracted nearly all of Batista’s attention. Even when Fidel’s band started broadcasting their propaganda on a weak radio transmitter - Radio Rebelde - in February of 1958, Batista’s advisors paid little attention to what was happening in the Siera Maestra.

Operation Verano - The Classic Example of How NOT to Conduct a Military Offensive

When Batista decided Fidel Castro was actually a threat, he ordered a major attack to destroy Fidel’s revolutionary army - by then about 200 men - in June of 1958. This operation should have worked. 12,000 soliders were committed to the attack, nearly 50% of the Cuban army. However, since Batista didn’t trust his officers, he divided the command between two generals, and he allocated the weakest and most incapable units to the offensive. The history of the Verano Operation should be studied by every military historian because even though Fidel was outnumbered 15 to 1, his soliders made good decisions, they fought bravely, and they defeated the Cuban army piecemeal.

The Cuban military was disorganized, it had terrible intelligence, and they allowed themselves to be panicked by a vastly inferior force. The Cuban army needed slightly better leadership and they would have won. For example, if Batista had commanded the army personally, or if he sent his best units into the battle, he could have won a decisive vistory. Instead he stayed in Havana, and he kept his best troops around the capital city.

The key break point occured on August 1st, 1958 - when Fidel Castro sent a message to one of the two commanders of the Verano offensive, General Cantillo, asking for a cease-fire. General Cantillo foolishly agreed and for eight days, Fidel’s forces were able to rest, regroup, and pull back from exposed positions. This decision, to halt the attack, spelled the end for Batista. After all, as any idiot could tell, Fidel was asking for a casefire because he was losing!

When Fidel’s tiny band of soldiers forced the Cuban army to retreat back to their bases for rest and resupply, Fidel correctly guessed that Batista was a gutless coward and almost no one would be willing to die for him. Consequently, in late August, Fidel ordered his modest army to divide into three groups, and he began his own offensive into the main part of the island. This was an incredibly bold act and it should not have worked. Two of Fidel’s columns, one under Che Guevara, the other under Cienfuegos, were just 200 armed men each, on the road in a few trucks and some stolen cars.

With Che and Cienfuegos on the march, Fidel launched his own offensive with the bulk of his army (by now some 2,000 men).

Again, because Batista didn’t go to the front himself, he had no idea that Fidel’s forces were so tiny. His generals reported Fidel’s army being the same size as the Cuban army, with well equiped and well trained soldiers. Batista’s generals exaggerated the size of Fidel’s army to justify their own failures.

Conclusion

Only a few die-hard Communists still admire Fidel Castro - the Sage is not among them. What is required is to learn and understand how Fidel managed to take over Cuba in one year, starting with 20 nearly unarmed men in the very poor and remote mountains of southern Cuba. The fact that Fidel was an implacable foe of the USA should not prevent us from understanding what he accomplished.

• Courage matters.

• Leadership matters.

• Your enemies will likely make mistakes.

• Napoleon’s statement, Moral is to the physical as three is to one - remains true.

Trivia:

• Batista held Castro in prison starting in October of 1953. Castro was sentenced to 15 years in jail for attempting to take over the barracks of Santiago de Cuba. Castro’s attack failed and he was arrested and jailed. Displaying astonishingly poor judgment, Batista ordered Castro’s release on the 15th of May, 1955. Castro left Cuba for Mexico a few months later.

• One small revolutionary unit helped Fidel Castro at the end of his campaign in December of 1958. This unit was largely under the command of a former American soldier, William Morgan. Morgan helped Fidel again in 1959 by exposing a plot by the Dictator of the Dominican Republic, Trujillo. For his efforts, a year later Morgan was arrested and shot dead by a Cuban firing squad at Castro’s order.

• The charasmatic and successful Cuban revolutionary leader, Camilo Cienfuegos was almost certainly murdered by Castro in October of 1959, as Cienfuegos was begining to have doubts about Fidel’s dictatorship.