Discussion of Soviet Offensive Tactics

[MikeyD]

But the propaganda picture of a mighty Germany and the weak Western Alliies is just crazy.

This tendency goes aaaaaall the way back in history. The Persians at Marathon, the Helvetii versus Caesar. Instead of the winner belittling the loser, winners tend to double, or triple, or even (in the case of Caesar) expand the loser's capability by a factor of 10! Makes the victory seem all that much more impressive.

[AttorneyAtWar]

My sig is oddly appropriate right now

[HistoryLover]

Didn't help that Germany was pushing that same propaganda

I never had come across any German propaganda, where the power of the new Wehrmacht was not emphasized.

Do you have any infos about your claim?

One episode I remember was the parade after the liberation from French occupation of the Rheinland. Hitler ordered the Luftwaffe to fly by several times and the Heer to march several times, to present the foreign countries a much stronger picture of the Wehrmacht than it really was.

Steiner14, paging Steiner14...

Steiner, that you?

Sure. And besides me is standing the Fuhrer and dictating me what I should write. Btw, he was just shaking his head about the stupidity of ordinary humans. He says they are acting like sheeple fearing that the fence could be opened. He just admitted, he hasn't seen "The Matrix" yet.

[sburke]

I never had come across any German propaganda, where the power of the new Wehrmacht was not emphasized.

Do you have any infos about your claim?

One episode I remember was the parade after the liberation from French occupation of the Rheinland. Hitler ordered the Luftwaffe to fly by several times and the Heer to march several times, to present the foreign countries a much stronger picture of the Wehrmacht than it really was.

? no I was quoting you saying exactly the same - Germany definitely emphasized itself as being more powerful. If Hitler had told the German people what his Generals were saying in 1939 he might have had a difficult PR problem.

The Wehrmacht was absolutely 180 degrees from Hitler on the question of force ratios. Probably the worst thing that could have happened for Germany in 1940 was to cream the French. Now all Germany believed Hitler's BS.

[HistoryLover]

Let me show you where the excuses grow. Sorry, family and friends lost too many members fighting the 'misunderstood' Germans to buy into that revisionist line. Ever thought Hitler and the Nazis were just evil, just a thought.

Do you really want to "discuss" on that level?

[sburke]

Do you really want to "discuss" on that level?

Well umm yeah Hitler and the Nazi party really were just a bunch of fanatic, brutal thugs.

[womble]

...given how desperate the situation was for them, a tank with below specs armor was preferable to no tank at all. This is not a position the Germans refused to adopt until very late in the war.

Wouldn't the proliferation of unarmoured, turretless tanks (like the Marder, Nashorn) argue that they always thought that any tank (gun) was preferable to no tank at all, regardless of their desperation or otherwise?

This is true. Nevertheless people do not recognize that either the anti-German propaganda of a planned war and world domination is correct, or Germany was not at all prepared, but was, despite all mistakes Hitler made, more or less forced into war.

Or the biggest mistake Hitler made was going to war without being properly prepared, even though he'd been planning to do so for years. His nationalistic narcissism blinded him to the fact that the "inherent superiority of the Aryan race" wouldn't (due to its non-existence) be enough to carry him through against the "Untermensch" (as he thought of them) of the east.

[Lethaface]

Well umm yeah Hitler and the Nazi party really were just a bunch of fanatic, brutal thugs.

100% agreed, however it isn't like the rest of the world was (or is) that adorable. Anyway this thread is about Sovjet Offensive Tactics and not about politics.

[HistoryLover]

Well umm yeah Hitler and the Nazi party really were just a bunch of fanatic, brutal thugs.

True they were brutal and fanatic. But tell me: which revolutionaries are not? How could have Hitler achieved his impossible mission without being a fanatic and accumulating other fanatics? How less brutal or fanatic are politicians that drop atomic bombs? Or wage wars "to defend" their values?

How intolerant are politicians that do not accept that there are different forms of government in this world?

Isn't fanaticism and brutality a prerequisite to even accept a suitcase with the codes for a nuclear war?

What about the extintion of the Incas by the Christians or Spaniards? Or the native Americans? Or slavery? Not fanaticism and brutality?

Are politicians not brutal and fanatic if they sponsor terrorists to destabilize and gain control over a country?

And that, despite the fact, that the whole ideology of Nationalscialism is not about claiming to be pacifistic, or bring peace to the world, while most of the other ideologies do exactly that.

As an ideology it very much reminds me of what Braveheart says, when his wife is threatened: I don't care about your right about primae noctis, I take my right as husband.

IMO any discussion about moral values should have no place in a discussion about understanding history. In most cases the moral arguments are only used to cover rationale intentions.

To me it seems, the more a rulership is built on lies, the more TPTB will use the moral "arguments" (often with the help of "black propaganda"), because the honest facts just do not support their political position.

If someone wants to make me believe any government or politician was acting because of being simply evil, and I do NOT need to go back in time!, then I almost always find profound economic and pecuniary interests behind the story.

When one thinks about it, it's very logical: people everywhere in the world do not support wars of their politicians for the enrichement of the rich or for usurpation of unjustified power. Therefore it is always important for these forces, to make people believe the intervention was for other noble moral reasons. People must be kept away from becoming interested at looking at the facts. And what works better than turning the other side into criminal and evil? Who is interested to be the laywer of a murderer or a sadist? I believe that's how it works.

[akd]

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[kensal]

True they were brutal and fanatic. But tell me: which revolutionaries are not? How could have Hitler achieved his impossible mission without being a fanatic and accumulating other fanatics? How less brutal or fanatic are politicians that drop atomic bombs? Or wage wars "to defend" their values?

How intolerant are politicians that do not accept that there are different forms of government in this world?

Isn't fanaticism and brutality a prerequisite to even accept a suitcase with the codes for a nuclear war?

What about the extintion of the Incas by the Christians or Spaniards? Or the native Americans? Or slavery? Not fanaticism and brutality?

Are politicians not brutal and fanatic if they sponsor terrorists to destabilize and gain control over a country?

And that, despite the fact, that the whole ideology of Nationalscialism is not about claiming to be pacifistic, or bring peace to the world, while most of the other ideologies do exactly that.

As an ideology it very much reminds me of what Braveheart says, when his wife is threatened: I don't care about your right about primae noctis, I take my right as husband.

IMO any discussion about moral values should have no place in a discussion where it's about to understand history. In most cases the moral arguments are only used to cover rationale intentions.

To me it seems, the more a rulership is built on lies, the more TPTB will use the moral "arguments" (often with the help of "black propaganda"), because the honest facts just do not support their political position.

If someone wants to make me believe any government or politician was acting because of being simply evil, and I do NOT need to go back in time!, then I almost always find profound economic and pecuniary interests behind the story.

When one thinks about it, it's very logical: people everywhere in the world do not support wars of their politicians for the enrichement of the rich or for usurpation of unjustified power. Therefore it is always important for these forces, to make people believe the intervention was for other noble moral reasons. People must be kept aways from looking at the hard facts. And what works better than turning the other side into criminal and evil? Who is interested to be the laywer of a murderer, a sadist? I believe that's how it works.

Hitler's and the Nazi party's policies as to aggressive war, genocide and the subjugation of other countries and peoples were deliberate and planned. He and they deliberately planned and carried out a policy to destroy Jews, Roma, and people they defined as degenerate or mentally deficient. He and they planned and attempted to carry out a war in Russia the ultimate and accepted by-product of which was to be the death by starvation of the majority of the urban population of the European Soviet Union.

None of the purported comparisons you provide, however wrong or immoral they were, are in fact adequate comparators.

The effect of the expansion of white immigrants on Native North Americans was, however casually brutal, neither planned nor systematic nor deliberately genocidal. The same can be said about the Spanish and Portuguese exploitation of Central and South America or, on fact, any other colonial situation except possibly King Leopold's governance of Congo or certain aspects of British treatment of aboriginal peoples in Australia and Tasmania. But even in those places there was no planned element comparable to the Nazis' efforts in Central and Eastern Europe in the first half of the 1940s.

The only real comparables are the other dictatorships which you presumably would equate with these examples - such as Stalin, Mao and Pol Pot.

None of what you say stands up to even limited scrutiny.

[Vark]

Back to Soviet tactics, how hard will it be for CM players to adopt the brutal logic of Soviet warfare? I always found myself in CMBB defaulting back to force preservation, so designed a series of forest scenarios, most of my lead platoons ended up down 60% and to win I had to keep on pushing. Time and time again, just when I thought the Germans would hold, the battered Soviets broke through.

Perhaps fortifying the spirit with spirits (vodka natch), or getting my wife to threaten me with making a flatpack from Ikea if I loose, might help. Suggestions on preparing for commanding the Rodina's best, as they need to be led?

As for debating, HL, perhaps you and your ilk are suffering from a classic case of projection, perhaps it is your perspective that has been swayed by an insidious narrative, perpetrated by expert propagandists. Your argument is rather like the ridiculous piece in the Atlantic, trying to draw moral equivalencies between Communist and capitalist governance, but dressed up as an exercise in pseudo-intellectual superiority. Germans bad guys, Allies good guys (with the exception of Soviet Russia) is fine with me, baring in mind historical precedent and issues of ethical relativism.

[sburke]

Back to Soviet tactics, how hard will it be for CM players to adopt the brutal logic of Soviet warfare? I always found myself in CMBB defaulting back to force preservation, so designed a series of forest scenarios, most of my lead platoons ended up down 60% and to win I had to keep on pushing. Time and time again, just when I thought the Germans would hold, the battered Soviets broke through.

Perhaps fortifying the spirit with spirits (vodka natch), or getting my wife to threaten me with making a flatpack from Ikea if I loose, might help. Suggestions on preparing for commanding the Rodina's best, as they need to be led?

Good idea, the distraction is not worth our time. (though the tom cruise pic is a hoot)

I suspect how well we adopt and play those tactics is also an element of scenario design. If it is just kind of crafted with a particular situation in mind, it may not necessarily reflect on Soviet tactical methodology in which case many of us will fight the way we normally do with a force not intended to be used that way...and it could end up quite frustrating. However I suspect designers are just as curious to compare the different concepts of tactical deployment and will craft with that in mind. Gonna be real interesting when we all have it in our hands to toy around with.

[Battlefront.com]

Do you really want to "discuss" on that level?

Actually, no.

Now that you've confirmed the small doubt I had that you're Steiner14, and therefore ducking your banishment, I have now re-banned you. We've been waiting for you to confirm what we suspected since you showed up, and now you have. That and some other evidence that's been accumulated.

Pity. You were doing so well keeping your neo-nazi sympathies to yourself. But obviously you just can't help yourself. Still.

Steve

[Vark]

Fess up Steve, the launch of CMRT and the forum page was simply a device to unmask Steiner14, you knew he could not resist the lure of the Eastern Front. The DAR between Bil and Elvis is just a sham, and now you have the neo-Nazi, you will claim major coding errors have delayed the game.

[Battlefront.com]

Tooze is good on the effects of Allied bombing on industrial production. He says (as you might expect if you had not read the strange versions of history based on Speer's apologetics) the bombing caused major problems right away.

Yup. And some of the damage that Allied air attacks did would have been keenly felt in later 1945 and 1946 if the war had continued on that long. This is a fact that is not generally discussed.

It's kinda like someone with advanced stage of terminal cancer being hit by a bus on his way to a chemo treatment. Saying that the cancer wasn't an important part in the man's death maybe technically true, but when you find out the guy didn't look both ways before crossing the street because of "chemo brain" one might find it isn't totally true. And in any event, if the guy wasn't run over by the bus the cancer would have killed him sooner rather than later.

I look at the bombing campaign in the same way. Germany was able to squeeze out enough industrial might to survive into 1945, but it was just barely doing so.

One must remember that when the war was over the Allies found enormous stockpiles of manufactured war material sitting in warehouses. IIRC 1/4 of all MG42 and 1/2? of all StG44 produced were in crates never used. The primary reason cited for this was a collapse of logistics due to wrecked rail systems and shortages of motorized transport, not to mention the fuel to move them.

Speer's version was adopted very quickly by some Western historians and politicians who wanted to diminish the role of strategic bombing. Bomber Command only got an official memorial in 2012, which is a disgrace, given nearly 56,000 CW aircrew died, but a testament to how effectively its role was both demonised, politicised and belittled.

I think the majority of the dispute over the bombing campaign comes down to the air wings over promising and under delivering while consuming a significant amount of resources. The ground forces savaged them after the war for this. The US Airforce would have been in big trouble if there were not for the atomic bomb.

Steve, they had US factories as well, The Stalingrad Tractor Factory was based on a Ford plant I believe.

Yup. After the Revolution a bunch of factories were nationalized without compensation to foreign companies.

Back to Soviet tactics, how hard will it be for CM players to adopt the brutal logic of Soviet warfare? I always found myself in CMBB defaulting back to force preservation, so designed a series of forest scenarios, most of my lead platoons ended up down 60% and to win I had to keep on pushing. Time and time again, just when I thought the Germans would hold, the battered Soviets broke through.

I am sure you'll see a lot of that again One of the really cool differences between CMBB and CMRT is the Objectives. In CMBB it was just flags and points, in CMRT there's a lot more. A scenario can have the Germans whacked for losses and the Soviets not, or an objective for the Soviets worth a ton of points so that no amount of losses will matter if they get it, etc.

Steve

[AttorneyAtWar]

Yup. And some of the damage that Allied air attacks did would have been keenly felt in later 1945 and 1946 if the war had continued on that long. This is a fact that is not generally discussed.

It's kinda like someone with advanced stage of terminal cancer being hit by a bus on his way to a chemo treatment. Saying that the cancer wasn't an important part in the man's death maybe technically true, but when you find out the guy didn't look both ways before crossing the street because of "chemo brain" one might find it isn't totally true. And in any event, if the guy wasn't run over by the bus the cancer would have killed him sooner rather than later.

I look at the bombing campaign in the same way. Germany was able to squeeze out enough industrial might to survive into 1945, but it was just barely doing so.

One must remember that when the war was over the Allies found enormous stockpiles of manufactured war material sitting in warehouses. IIRC 1/4 of all MG42 and 1/2? of all StG44 produced were in crates never used. The primary reason cited for this was a collapse of logistics due to wrecked rail systems and shortages of motorized transport, not to mention the fuel to move them.

I think the majority of the dispute over the bombing campaign comes down to the air wings over promising and under delivering while consuming a significant amount of resources. The ground forces savaged them after the war for this. The US Airforce would have been in big trouble if there were not for the atomic bomb.

Yup. After the Revolution a bunch of factories were nationalized without compensation to foreign companies.

I am sure you'll see a lot of that again One of the really cool differences between CMBB and CMRT is the Objectives. In CMBB it was just flags and points, in CMRT there's a lot more. A scenario can have the Germans whacked for losses and the Soviets not, or an objective for the Soviets worth a ton of points so that no amount of losses will matter if they get it, etc.

Steve

I can see it now in the briefing screen...

"99% losses acceptable, no points will be deducted!"

[BLSTK]

Too funny, Vark.

And now can we get back to the Conspiracy Theory that is IKEA? I still bear the scars of my last attempt at building a bookcase.

[Freyberg]

Back to Soviet tactics, how hard will it be for CM players to adopt the brutal logic of Soviet warfare? ...

When playing British/NZ/Commonwealth, I find myself trying hard to minimise casualties. When Americans, slightly less so, playing Germans, hardly at all... Instinctively historical??

[Battlefront.com]

In a few books I have read (None specifically detailing German industry) they have said that German industry steadily increased up until the end of the war and that bombing never severely hampered production. Is that entirely wrong?

No, it's not wrong, but it's also not complete. The German war economy prior to 1943 was running so far behind theoretical capacity that there was a LOT of room for improvement. What some people miss when they look at the steady increases in various sectors is that there were signifiant decreases and problems in specific sectors. Namely shortages of key metals and petroleum products. Kinda like a factory producing more packages and having more trucks, but not enough food to put into the packages. In the business world that is considered a problem

The other thing that is often not taken into account is if the Germans increased production by x% in a given year, despite bombing, for sure it would have been x+y% if there had been no bombing. Meaning, though some aspects of the German wartime economy did increase, the increase would have been significantly better if bombing hadn't taken a toll.

And let's not forget what the bombing did to military resource allocation, in particular fighter aircraft. It is no coincidence that Germany lost battlefield air superiority in 1943, then even air parity by 1944. Imagine what Luftwaffe operations would have looked like in Normandy, Eastern Front, and Italy if there were no air war over Germany itself.

Wouldn't the proliferation of unarmoured, turretless tanks (like the Marder, Nashorn) argue that they always thought that any tank (gun) was preferable to no tank at all, regardless of their desperation or otherwise.

To some extent yes, to some extent no. No in the sense that the primary reason for these vehicles was to replace towed ATGs and their trucks with a more effective alternative. And they were absolutely on the right track, but again did not standardize. Instead they took pretty much any tank chassis they could find and converted it. Which is why it's also to some extent a "yes". They used French, Czech, Soviet, and outdated German components were used for the plethora of different tank destroyers. So they had a sensible military definition for a class of weapons, but then went about their usual hodgepodge attempt to fulfill the need by throwing as much stuff together as they possibly could in the shortest period of time.

The Soviets, on the other hand, standardized to a far greater extent.

Steve

[Andrew H.]

No, it's not wrong, but it's also not complete. The German war economy prior to 1943 was running so far behind theoretical capacity that there was a LOT of room for improvement.

It's always striking to read US accounts of the buildup to war to see how differently they approached resource allocation, and how really amateurish it makes the Germans look.

I.e., in May 1940, when France is falling, Roosevelt sets in motion plans to produce 50,000 airplanes per year and asks Congress for $100,000,000 (in 1940 money). In early 1942, Roosevelt focuses on trying to build 120,000 tanks.

Roosevelt isn't able to quite meet these plans because of other needs, most notably for warships, which took up a lot of steel. But the point is that he understood *immediately* that the US needed to focus on producing a lot of war materiel. He was also able to put extremely competent, experienced people in important administrative roles (in part, ironically, because of his experience with setting up various 3 letter programs as part of the New Deal).

None of this was new or required a lot of foresight - WWI, only 25 years in the past, had very much been a battle of the factories, and then a battle of transport, and only then a battle of men. Germany knew this as well as anyone.

By German standards, Speer did an amazing job of rationalizing the German armaments industry. But compared to the quality of the administrators doing the job in the US, he was really just - like Emma Peel - a talented amateur. Who moreover, was playing catch up with countries who had started their full industrialization programs years before (even before the war, in the case of the US).

And let's not forget what the bombing did to military resource allocation, in particular fighter aircraft. It is no coincidence that Germany lost battlefield air superiority in 1943, then even air parity by 1944. Imagine what Luftwaffe operations would have looked like in Normandy, Eastern Front, and Italy if there were no air war over Germany itself.

At the time of Kursk, Germany had more fighters over Germany defending against allied bombers than they did at Kursk. You do have to wonder what 500+ more aircraft at Kursk might have done.

[Vark]

Not much, they'd have probably got them conduction CAS, instead of interdiction strikes. Another mistake the Germans made, although tactically spectacular, using dual purpose air assets fro CAS is a waste. The Germans didn't need to destroy the Russian fortifications, they needed to stop the reserves from moving up to the front.

By 43, the writing was on the wall anyway, Germany's defeat was assured, they just could not keep pace industrially and were rapidly running out of their most precious resource, their veterans.

[lurrp]

Sorry to drag this thread back around, but who/what is Steiner14? I see many references to him here.

[Battlefront.com]

Andrew,

So right. Hitler DELIBERATELY put flunkies and hacks into senior positions, then created parallel positions with other flunkies and hacks. They spent more time on political infighting and jockeying than the probably did on their jobs. And Hitler was there in the middle, capable of deciding people's fates with a stroke of his pen.

He did the same thing with the military, elevating the SS to be a near equal to the Heer, and just to make sure the SS didn't get too big he tried to elevate the LW to rival the SS. Within these organizations he had flunkies and hacks in key positions more and more as the war went on. The list of brilliant and successful leaders that were retired, marginalized, or even murdered is a long one. Not to mention the poor bastards that were ordered to their deaths or capture, like so many Generals were during Bagration.

I've said this for a long time... it's not amazing that Germany lost the war, it's amazing they didn't lose it sooner.

Vark,

The Germans also had no long reach capability, vis a vis bombers. It was pointed out that much of the Soviet war industry was being powered by only a few power plants. The turbines and other material needed to run them was not sitting around "in stock" for replacements. A few strikes on those plants could have significantly harmed production as it would have taken months, if not years, to get them back into production. But the Germans had zero ability to threaten them, unlike the Allies.

Steve

[Battlefront.com]

Sorry to drag this thread back around, but who/what is Steiner14? I see many references to him here.

Depending on how you wish to define him, he's either a neo-Nazi or a Nazi apologist. He had been on this Forum for many years and would only occasionally remind us we're overly gracious hosts. But he went on a tirade once too many times and, after repeated warnings (stretching back for years), he was finally banned.

Then HistoryLover came aboard. Many of us suspected he was Steiner14 from the start because, but I decided to let it play out. Took a little longer than expected, however it was inevitable.

Steve