Does it really change the outcome of the war? Does a country fall when the capital city is captured?
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It will heavily depend on the country in question that needs to be captured.
Generally it would be symbolic, but it can very well be strategic as well. If the government is in that city, then you now control the shot callers who were stopping you. Which is effectively the win over most every country.
However, if they are not in the capitol it could still mean access to strategic information that was left behind. Things such as attack/defense maps or plans. Could also be equipment they couldn’t move with them. This can very well give you access to the stock piles of equipment in other places as well. Just getting information on what gear is held where.
Other than those reasons it is pure symbolism. It signifies to the people of that country that they have lost and usually hurts moral greatly.
An example of a country this wouldn’t work on though is the U.S. Even should DC be captured (which is already unlikely) each state has their own government and the military doesn’t need the government to command it to make strategic moves. All of that comes from the commanders of each division and unit. All of our secrets are held at different places and our equipment is also in different places. But adding onto that fact, the people fight hard here. So really you just remove the obstacles to getting the full force of the US military and the people of the US who would defend it. Rednecks picking off invaders at well over 500 meters, just for the fun of it.
Capital cities usually are also important centers of transportation and logistical infrastructure. This fact is not only important to the government, but often to the supply chains feeding an economy and the war effort. As such, the loss of a capital city can have an outsized effect on the ability to continue the war, even if the government itself is still intact.
The capital tends to be the largest city, which means its generally the largest driver of the enemies ability to fight, it’s generally on a major road/water/rail network which can make logistics easier for the invader, it’s the seat of political power which is important to take over/remove if you intend to win by controlling the land or replacing the government. Military command and other important people are also often based in the capital or atleast spend a lot of time there so killing/capturing them can be another important objective. Capital almost always has power, medical facilities, large airports, nearby military bases and other useful stuff for an invading army to capture.
Becasue capital cities tend to contain the administrative districts of a nation. While it’s nice to say that nations are more the people than the government, in teh end major cities only survive due to administrative benefits that originate at the top.
By capturing the capital where the origins of all that tend to lie, the ability for a nation to administratively survive is almost nill.
If you’re looking at the war from a purely logical standpoint, then the capital city has no more significance than any other city. All cities hold both strategic and tactical significance. Strategically, cities represent significant portions of a countries economy and logistics. Taking a city from an enemy can cripple both their ability to buy/make more good and equipment needed to carry on the war as well as make it much more difficult to distribute the goods (including food) and equipment that they do have. Cities are also where large population centers are held, so capturing them can deprive a country of many recruits, as well as damage morale significantly.
On the tactical level, cities are immensely important because actually *taking* a city from an enemy is incredibly difficult. You’ve probably heard of guerilla warfare, and how it’s hard to fight against enemies that know the land and make surprise attacks from random directions before retreating away. Often, people picture this as being bad in environments like jungles, but in actuality, cities are about the most *perfect* environment for unconventional guerilla based warfare. There are so many roads, alleys, buildings, windows, sewers, etc. that the defending forces know extremely well that they will use to defend the city that taking a city becomes a nightmare. The most famous example of this is probably the battle of Stalingrad in WW2. Before Stalingrad, the Germans had steadily pushed back the Russians with no sign of being slowed down, but once they reached the large city of Stalingrad, the German army was effectively swallowed by the city and for more than 5 months they tried, and failed, to take the city from the Russians. Eventually, they were pushed out altogether and it became the turning point in the eastern theater of WW2. This was made possible in no small part because of the fact they were fighting in a large city that the Russians knew well and the Germans did not. The significance of cities in warfare is actually supremely interesting (at least to me). I would recommend reading about it. [Here’s](https://www.google.com/url?sa=t&source=web&rct=j&opi=89978449&url=https://scholarship.law.columbia.edu/cgi/viewcontent.cgi%3Farticle%3D1722%26context%3Dfaculty_scholarship&ved=2ahUKEwjK5Z33vY6AAxUcOTQIHfdDAcYQFnoECAwQAQ&usg=AOvVaw0ilf-B5i4oBBWNTEMNERar) a great article to get you started if you’d like (the link is to a download able article, so don’t be surprised if a download message pops up).
All of the above said, capital cities have the same significance as any other city, both strategic and tactical, with the added significance of being symbolic. From a purely logical standpoint, the loss of a capital city would have no more impact on a war effort than the loss of any other major city. In fact, quite often, it would have less impact since capital cities aren’t usually the largest cities in terms of population, production, economy, or logistics. The true loss is in morale. Regardless of how the loss of a capital city may or may not impact the war effort in a practical sense, many people lose hope in victory if a capital city is lost since it represents the “heart” of the country, as the seat of government. When in reality, so long as the government officials escape before the city is captured (along with any important intelligence) the government can be run from practically anywhere. But people are rarely logical about things, and when the morale plummets, the will to continue fighting is lost and surrender often follows quickly.
It’s war time. You have a capital city, and in that city is a massive amount of infrastructure. Factories alone, in war time many have been converted to manufacture supplies and weapons for the military.
The ones that are still making consumer goods are driving the economy.
If your enemy occupies that city, all of those factories are now at best shut down, or at worst work for the enemy. Highways and roads are blockaded, none of the economic powerhouse of the capital gets to support the rest of the nation anymore. That alone is a massive blow to the nation.
Capital cities also tend to be very well connected. They will have air strips, roads, highways, trains, etc. that are all unable to be used anymore, and may become useful for the enemy.
Anyone saying the government can just relocate hence in modern times its just symbolic has zero idea what tehy re talking about. its in the sentence, ur forcing the main head of the opposition to be pushed out, out and away. thats kind of hte whole point when invading a country…
When Russia invaded Ukraine, their goal was to assassinate the leaders and establish themselves as the government. If the government is dead and you have the means to impose your will over the people, you are the government.
First and foremost, morale, its a pretty big blow to armed forces if their capital is captured.
Second, a country in war is still a country, if you capture the capital, you basically decapitated every department, all decisions for civil things will be delayed/mishandled which then reduces war support.
Third, Chaos and uncertainty, same with 2nd claus, when you capture a city in modern day, it will produce a massive flow of civilian escaping to other cities. This isn’t just people, but businesses and manufactures which results in disrupting the supply chain. Fighting a war isn’t just supplying guns and ammo, its a upward fight if your troops don’t have access to food/toilet paper/electricity.
A lot of important info in this thread, but just to nerd out a second, recently capturing the capital has led to transferring the country’s web domains (for example Yemen in 2015: [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/.ye](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/.ye) )
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