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The armoured fist vs. the combined arms breakthrough


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Doing a fair bit of reading on how the Wehrmacht and the Red Army went about the business of breaking through the enemy's frontline, to get to 'the green fields beyond', I am coming to the (fairly obvious) conclusions that both did things very differently, and that only one side really learned during the war, namely the Red Army. The Wehrmacht seems to have tried to use the same old same old when attacking in 1945 that they had used in 1941.

A (probably far too simplistic) way to look at the Wehrmacht attacking is that it used it's elite Panzer and motorised (later Panzergrenadier) divisions as the spearhead of the attack. It aimed to rip a hole into the enemy's frontline, and then pour through it creating mayhem in the enemy's rear. Infantry would follow on, but would be fundamentally not mobile enough to keep up. The attacking force is a very unbalanced, tank-heavy force that relies on the inital shock. If this shock does not occur, the attack is doomed to fail. Parallels to Keegan's analysis of the cavalry charge in 'The Face of Battle' are intentional. Later in the war, the Red Army understood that the immovable object beats the unrelenting force.

The Wehrmacht approach is fairly unsophisticated, and relies on concentration of force and an absence of a defense in depth, because the spearhead force and the exploitation force are identical. Therefore, if the defense is wearing your spearhead down, you will not have anything left to exploit with. See Kursk. Once you bog down in the defenses that Kip has described in this thread, there is little you can do, as the attackers at Stargard and Lake Balaton found out. The persistence of this approach could be connected to the failure of the Wehrmacht to keep its infantry divisions in a state that allowed their use as an attacking formation. It is also likely that the Wehrmacht was simply very bad at institutional learning.

Contrast this with the Red Army way of doing things, starting really post-Kursk in operation Polkovodets Rumyantsev. The initial breakthrough is achieved by an all-arms army, properly reinforced with heavy breakthrough tanks, SP guns, engineer, artillery and air assets, to achieve a balanced combined arms force. This was more infantry heavy than the German force would have been. More importantly, in the wings would wait a more unbalanced Tank Army, that was geared up for exploitation and rapid movement, once the all arms army had broken through the tactical defenses. This could deliver a speed of movement that would wreak havoc with the Wehrmacht defense operations, and (in an assessment by a German staff officer) from summer 1944 was operating inside the Wehrmacht decision-making cycle. I.e. the Wehrmacht reacted to the previous action of the Red Army, not the current one, at any given time.

The tank army in this approach was only to be committed once the breakthrough was secured, although some commanders (notably Konev) inserted it in the final stages of the breakthrough, when the all-arms army was ground up to a point that it had difficulties making headway. Interestingly, Konev feels the need to defend this handling in his memoirs, and ISTR Zhukov's memoirs criticise this approach.

We all know which approach was the more successful one, and the question to me is whether the Wehrmacht was either incapable of adapting to the changed battlefields of 1943/4, or whether it had simply deprived itself of the ability to do something about it by wasting and neglecting its infantry divisions to the point where they were incapable of the offense, and barely capable of defending if not backed up by armour?

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One great problem that the German army had that became glaringly obvious in 1941 if it had not been before was its lack of motorization. Because of that, there simply wasn't anything close to enough infantry able to keep up with the armor to allow it to be used at its maximum theoretical power. I have even speculated that the Wehrmacht might have been beter off to disband a score or two of its divisions if doing so could increase the productivity of the automotive industry to the point where the remaining divisions (or at least a large fraction of them) could have been completely motorized.

Of course, manpower was not the only limiting factor for the auto industry, so this is a pipe dream, but it makes an interesting what-if scenario for those of you who play strategic games. But one must stipulate that there are not only enough motor vehicles to motorize the field forces, there must also be the kind of logistical support to keep them in motion, something else that was probably also beyond Germany's grasp in 1941.

Michael

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An interesting read Andreas and pretty well on par with what i know on offensive tactics of the 2 forces (which is limited at best).

I read a senior thesis from a West Point graduate the other day entitled " THROUGH THE FURNACE OF WAR:

THE EVOLUTION OF SOVIET TANK AND MECHANIZED FORCES

IN THE SECOND WORLD WAR

It was a very interesting and went in to detail some of the things you mentioned above. How the Red Army slowly learn't from it's mistakes, how it organised and constantly re-organised it's armored forces.

It also went in to detail on the Soviet break through technique (For lack of better wording) consisting of a highly mobile force that was to be exploited through a gap in the lines, not create one itself.

With permission from the Author i'll forward it to you if you wish?

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Originally posted by Andreas:

We all know which approach was the more successful one, and the question to me is whether the Wehrmacht was either incapable of adapting to the changed battlefields of 1943/4, or whether it had simply deprived itself of the ability to do something about it by wasting and neglecting its infantry divisions to the point where they were incapable of the offense, and barely capable of defending if not backed up by armour?

To answer a question you alluded to in another thread, isn't this about the time that the Heer officially went from the 9 battalion to the 6 battalion division? By this point in the war the veteran German divisions of 1941 had been replaced by several waves of conscripts, yet still expected to pull off the successes of '41 with less manpower, less training, less experience, and less equipment.

Really, Operation Citadelle should have been called off and the forces used as a strategic reserve. Not that the Germans had enough mobile divisions to put into reserve anyway --- even with Guderian re-organizing the Panzergrenadier Divisions with more motor transport.

But yes, I think the Germans were incapable of adapting, at the operational level. The OKW expected the tactics of '41-'42 to work against the resurgent Red Army of '43-'44. I suppose it was a combination of arrogance, and a lack of experienced / trained troops to carry out the mission.

But after Kursk, the ability of the Wehrmacht to mount an offensive operation is relatively moot, as the initiative was taken by the Red Army, and they didn't let loose of it until they got to Berlin.

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Originally posted by Andreas:

snips ... It is also likely that the Wehrmacht was simply very bad at institutional learning ...

Andreas,

Nice post. Regarding the quote above, Doubler comments on the German approach to learning, though IIRC its all rather cardboard cutout stuff rather than heavy analysis. This thread from another forum has some interesting comments about German institutional learning hidden away amongst all the other stuff too, particularly towards the end of page 2.

Regards

JonS

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IMHO, it wasn´t Wehrmact ´doctrine´ to use the Panzer formations for both creating the breaktrough and for the later exploitation phase.

The difficulties of the late-war Wehrmacht on the offensive was caused more by the decline of the quality and manpower of the infantry divisions in the later stages of the war and the comparative lack of air/artillery support. No German offensive from Zitadelle onward looked good on paper even before they started.

During both of Germanys last offensives on the western front (Battle of the Bulge and Operation Nordwind), the task of creating the initial breakthrough was placed on the Volkgrenadier Divisions.

When the understrenght and badly trained infantry formations failed to achieve their tasks, the PzDiv reserves where either called upon to create the breaktrough themselves (12th SS hammering itself bloody on Elseborn ridge during the Bulge) or the offensive called off (Nordwind).

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I think your post is mostly true, but also slightly misleading and oversimplified.

First, the very weak infantry divisions were used to hold lines not related to any attack (own and hopefully enemy). The Germans maintained medium-quality infantry (not Panzergrenadier) divisions.

But more importantly, the Ardennes offensive is a clear counterexample. All the early fighting had been done with infantry (mostly Volksgrenadier) divisions of medium quality. The tanks were supposed to drive throught he gaps, not to participiate in the breakthrough fighting. And the infantry fighting went pretty deep into the American lines. Of course we all know that the American defenses were practially endlessly deep since but from a German approach standpoint this offensive clearly shows that the Germans did what you attribute to the Soviets only.

[ October 10, 2002, 10:44 AM: Message edited by: redwolf ]

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Okay, the Ardennes have come up twice now as a counter-example. There are two pieces of evidence that I would hold against the Ardennes showing that the German high command actually learned the lessons of warfare practiced on them by the Red Army.

1) Terrain - the Ardennes (and Nordwind) were areas where leading with tanks was at the least difficult, and in the southern sector of the Ardennes impossible, since bridging needed to be undertaken to get Lehr across (IIRC).

2) Later offensives, and those just before - Fruehlingserwachen (Lake Balaton) and Sonnenwende (Stargard) were again back to leading with armour. To me this would indicate one of two things - the Germans had either not learned anything, or they simply were too arrogant about the Red Army, so they used a different technique in the east from the west.

Having said that, the quite successful attack in the Overloon area in October/November 1944 just before the Ardennes again was undertaken by armoured forces. There was high-quality infantry around there, the Fallschirmjaeger who would cause so much trouble during the Rhineland battles.

It is of course equally possible that the Germans were so starved of supporting weapons (air and artillery) that by this time the infantry alone could not be expected to do anything, even if they were strong enough and reasonably well-trained.

Bottomline to me for this argument though is - the Ardennes do not indicate that the Wehrmacht ever learned the lesson. It was a special case due to terrain. The much too early commitment of the armoured forces behind the breakthrough armies indicates that, to me at least.

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I think that what Andreas says was proven generally true during the war as a whole. While certain circumstances and specific battles dictated conditions that caused the Germans to occasionally behave otherwise, it is clear that by and large their preference was to employ their combined arms (Panzer and Panzergrenadier) forces in the first echelon of a breakthrough.

There are, of course, advantages to such a course of action as well as disadvantages. On the one hand, this is a simpler way to enact a breakthrough than an echeloned, phased approach. It uses the best forces available for the toughest work, and ensures that they are as far as possible into the enemy depth when the lines have been cleared - obviously, because it was they that did the clearing. Panzer and panzergrenadier forces had infantry that was more experienced and effective in close infantry-tank coordination, and when combined with air and sometimes massed artillery support could be highly effective, particularly in the early years.

On the other hand, this approach guarantees that the highest casualties are sustained by the best troops in one's army. Additionally, those armored forces that were used in the breakthrough are also expected to participate in the pursuit, which limits their effectiveness at the operational level; it is very clearly a trade-off.

The Soviets themselves had their own problems with their method, as has been mentioned numerous times in most well known histories, I would think. Particularly in the second period of the war, there were simply not enough tanks in the breakthrough echelon to penetrate the Germans' tactical defensive zone quickly enough, and as a result the mobile groups had to be committed early, to help break through the German lines. Keep in mind that when that happens, you basically enjoy none of the advantages of either approach, hehe. Clearly a mobile group moving quickly through a clean breakthrough and deploying in combat formation well in the enemy rear is the optimum solution, but in practice it wasn't happening regularly until the third period of the war, basically from 1944 onward.

Finally, just to muddy the waters even further, the Soviets themselves have pointed out that in appropriate circumstances, it is entirely appropriate and desirable to employ the mobile group in the first echelon of a major attack - generally when the enemy is very weakly defending an area. This happened at least twice in the third period of the war - with significant success - as well as once against the Japanese in Manchuria. However, the Soviets also pointed out that this use of mobile groups is the exception, and it should be shown more as a tribute to front commanders' flexibility in planning for unique (and rare) situations.

I hope that makes everything a little less clear for everyone. ;)

Scott

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Originally posted by Andreas:

We all know which approach was the more successful one, and the question to me is whether the Wehrmacht was either incapable of adapting to the changed battlefields of 1943/4, or whether it had simply deprived itself of the ability to do something about it by wasting and neglecting its infantry divisions to the point where they were incapable of the offense, and barely capable of defending if not backed up by armour?

It was the former: the Wehrmacht was incapable of adapting. Even if it had full strength units after 1942 it would have suffered from the same problems.

-dale

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You seem to hold a bias view. What other major offensive was there besides the Bulge that late in the war? After Kusrk the german army was more or less spent. Not enough equipment and manpower to stop an overwhelming soviet army. I remember reading about the fall of the belorussia. German man power figures were staggering. Divisions at half strength. Sometimes at a 1/3rd.

So we need to look at the bulge as the last real offensive by the Germans. Anything else was just a delay action to try to somehow stop the Soviets in the east.

Now my opinion is moot. I dont really have one. But I dont really agree with you dismissing the bulge as a counter example because of the terrain.

LW

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Originally posted by LightningWar:

So we need to look at the bulge as the last real offensive by the Germans. Anything else was just a delay action to try to somehow stop the Soviets in the east.

The Bulge was not the last real offensive by the Germans. And even if it was, it's only one example, and you simply can't discount the effects of that terrain on that operation.

Scott

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I wouldn't say that the Germans were incapable of learning. They pretty much had the recipe for success down at the beginning of the war.

I would say it was more of a case of not having the wherewithal to do anything with the knowledge gained at the later stages (and a high command that hamstrung them every step of the way).

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I think that people overestimate the fact that the Germans were not practicing an "art of operational warfare" like the Soviets did.

OK, so they did not. There was no teaching of operational concepts in the Soviet sense.

But the Germans did do some decent to brillant operational warfare. However, it was not taught to the commanders in school (in fact the higher-position Germans refused to go to a teachning class because it was humiliating). But once in a high-level position many German commanders in many situations did "decent" planning on their own behalf.

The best example is probably Manstein how did know exactly what he did, and how fast with how many trucks and how much ammo, much like the Soviet planning, but implemented in his head and his staff. Note that I don't say Manstein is perfect or anything, but he could sustain exactly the kind of difficult offensive we talk about here. He could "feed" an attacking army to keep it going, and he could plan so that he didn't run out of resources to feed into the attack.

Also note that it was Manstein who insisted very early on the invention of the Sturmgeschütz. He saw exactly the same need we identify here: unless you are lucky or have a decisive strategic advantage you have to do the actual breakthrough by other forces than the fast-moving armor. He had foreseen that the infantry had to be strengthend to a point where they would not have to rely on the Panzers to help them while opening a gap. He knew only direct high-HE fire could do it and the infantry guns were not going to cut it with even slightly deep defenses. He was also aware of the fact (obvious to any Combat Mission gamer) that thin vehicles die fast. So he insisted on the Sturmgeschütz, although he very well knew that for every two StuGs you would have one Panzer less.

Other German generals were doing very deliberate planning on their own behalf was well, e.g. Model. In a way, I think this is like Auftragstaktik on a large scale: you trust the commander to do the right thing on his own behalf and (as the higher command) it is your business to select the right commander.

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Hi,

I agree absolutely with Andreas. His post illustrates two points, as well as others.

One is that the Germans did not understand operations as the Soviets did then, and NATO does now. As a doctrine. To the Germans, and Western allies of the time, operations were simply gathering together your most powerful combined arms units, and pointing them at a target. The fact that the Soviets in WWII understood that there was more to operations than combined arms, is one factor that set them apart.

The second point illustrated by Andreas’s post is the lack of any functioning “lessons learnt” analysis in the German High command. The best illustration of this second point, which has only came to light in the last couple of years, is the repeated tactical and operational blunders the Germans made in defending against breakthrough operations in 44. There was no perfect answer, but they could, and should have done better. At Korsun in January 44, over large sections of the front during Bagration in June 44, and over the entire front during the L’vov operation in July 44, the Germans used the same faulty tactics.

What the Germans did was to use very widely dispersed company positions, in great depth, so as to avoid giving a dense target for the Soviet artillery. However, it was part of Soviet SOP to send one battalion, from every attacking division, on fighting reconnaissance the afternoon/night before the operation. The aim was to fight through the outposts to the German Main Line of Resistance, so as to be sure to have identified it correctly. What happened was that the Soviet battalions sent forward simple fought through each widely dispersed company position in turn. Then suddenly discovered they were through to the “green fields beyond”, having suffered only light casualties. The artillery barrages being cancelled and the batteries moved forward without firing. Large pockets of Germans were then formed.

What the Germans were doing, by having such widely dispersed positions, in great depth, was to commit forces “piece-meal” to the defence. Hence they were destroyed “piece- meal” by just single Soviet infantry battalions.

What the Germans should have done,and did on some cases, is have outposts, but still have a Main Line of Resistance but be willing to withdraw the MLR as needed. Anyway, after the first mistake, the error should not have happened again and again.

Also interesting to note, that it is only with the opening of the Soviet archives that this sort of detail comes out. You will hear no mention of such errors in German accounts.

All good fun,

All the best,

Kip.

PS. One point where I differ from Andreas is, Panzer Divisions, with two Panzer battalions and four infantry battalions, were nicely balanced combined arms teams. In my view.

[ October 10, 2002, 12:56 PM: Message edited by: kipanderson ]

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Originally posted by kipanderson:

What the Germans were doing, by having such widely dispersed positions, in great depth, was to commit forces “piece-meal” to the defence. Hence they were destroyed “piece- meal” by just single Soviet infantry battalions.

What the Germans should have done,and did on some cases, is have outposts, but still have a Main Line of Resistance but be willing to withdraw the MLR as needed. Anyway, after the first mistake, the error should not have happened again and again.

You contradict yourself here. They obviously learned the lesson but either did not have the manpower to solve the problem or a high command that would let them withdraw to a defendable MLR.
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The early superiority of German Arms came from employment of new technology (mechanization, flight and communications) combined together and employed using new organizational principles. To summarize: 1) Concentration of mechanized units at the breakthrough (the schwerepunkt); 2) All-arms combination of new technologies and organization including tactical air, armor, motorized forces and communications to achieve a combined combat power greater than each technology alone could provide; 3) early german use of airborne forces was important to many of the early victories (norway, holland, crete). They weren't the first to use airborne forces, but they were the first in exploiting the potential. Anywho, all this adds up to 'Blitzkrieg'. What's the Russian word for 'Blitzkrieg'? No one knows, because they adopted the principle from their german antagonists.

As the war progressed Germany's enemies learned (the hard way) and adopted these technologies and methodologies. Germany failed to innovate further and the allies caught up and mastered the new techniques, resulting in a war of resource attrition which germany could not win. The model for mechanized all-arms operation created by Germany at the outset of WWII still stands today. I don't believe there have been any fundamental changes in military orthodoxy.

The 'Red Army way of doing things', before they learned the new methodology for employment of mechanized forces, was identical to the French or US or Commonwealth way of 'doing things'. That is, to missapply and waste the new technologies as if you are still fighting a WWI battle. The western allies had the technology, but had to learn a new methodology the hard way through the example of its successful early war application by the germans.

Ren

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Ren's comments make good sense. The German Blitzkrieg was designed to employ a combined arms force of armor & mechanized infantry with tactical airpower as mobile artillery to breach a static defense & drive a pincer as fast as possible and as deep as possible to disrupt the enemy's rear echelons. Foot infantry was employed to follow up & engage the enemy forces bypassed by the Spearhead. The use of Blitzkrieg at the outset of the war in the East resulted in the large encirclements (Kesselschlachts) in the early stages. Blitzkrieg became less effective for the Germans as their force quality degraded & as the Soviet quality improved. The Soviets also had their own doctrine for the offensive from the start but were hampered by the decimation of their officer corps by Stalin & by the lack of effective numbers of modern armored & mechanized units to prosecute their offensive doctrine & by the poor training of their hastily gathered conscript forces used in a last ditch defense of the empire against the facist invasion. IIRC, the Soviets relied on a combined arms doctrine from BEFORE the onset of the Great Patriotic War as Zukhov demonstrated against the Japanese. I think it would be fair to say they became masters of an evolved combined arms offensive doctrine by the end of the war. However, the Germans could, even with depleted & informally structured KampfGruppen give back in fair measure as my reading of von Manstein would suggest. I think we were dealing with two different offensive doctrines that evolved as cicumstances dictated, kind of an apples & oranges thing. Just general comments of mine in a non-grog fashion & always open to interpretation & correction.

Dale H

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Dale, I agree, and that is what I wanted to point out. I do not agree with Renaud that the Red Army was practicing Blitzkrieg. What they did was very different, and much more effective. It employed some elements of Blitzkrieg, but was more than that.

Stixx, I would be very interested in getting a hold of that thesis. Could you check if it is okay to send it on? email's in the profile.

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On a more general note, I am very sceptical about the view that the Soviets had this great doctrine on an operational level and the Germans were suffering heavily from not doing it as well.

There is to much of Soviet concepts that would not apply to the Germans, and there is too much that some German commanders did on their own and too much much other blunders the Germans committed.

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Very interesting reading and valid points by all.

Another simple fact was that Hitler, who planned and forced the execution of, most of Germany's late war offensives, seemed to be of the mindset that the Waffen SS Panzer and Panzergrenadier divisions, i.e. Totenkopf, HJ LAAH and so on, could singlehandedly overcome any defense. The battle of Kursk was a perfect example of how the Russians first began to realize how they could use defenses in depth to attrit German forces using the obiquitous "Armored Fist" Because the Germans never changed offensive tactics, IMHO because Hitler would not let them, the Russians just refined their defense in depth mode and bled the Panzer Divisions white. Also remember the terrain and ground conditions in both the Ardennes offensive and "Spring Awakening" bogged the tanks down before they even reached their start points, forcing infantry units to attack without armor support, and without any hope of the armor being able to exploit any openings.

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Renaud,

This comment of yours:

The 'Red Army way of doing things', before they learned the new methodology for employment of mechanized forces, was identical to the French or US or Commonwealth way of 'doing things'. That is, to missapply and waste the new technologies as if you are still fighting a WWI battle.
It is totally unsupported, and in fact it would be more believable if you placed it the other way around - whereby the Germans learn from the Soviet military theoretical works from the 1920s when they were cooperating a bit. What the Germans did was to be the first army to practically apply combined arms in an effective manner that would end positional warfare - but it wasn't the most effective method at either the tactical or operational level. Aren't you aware of Soviet development of deep battle and deep operations? These theories were outgrowths of the Russian Civil War experience in trying to find the solution for positional warfare.

[ October 10, 2002, 02:08 PM: Message edited by: Grisha ]

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Originally posted by redwolf:

On a more general note, I am very sceptical about the view that the Soviets had this great doctrine on an operational level and the Germans were suffering heavily from not doing it as well.

There is to much of Soviet concepts that would not apply to the Germans, and there is too much that some German commanders did on their own and too much much other blunders the Germans committed.

Redwolf - you are probably right on the offensive level. I would argue though that by not having this understanding, the Wehrmacht suffered heavily at the hands of the Red Army. They did not understand that the rules had fundamentally changed, and the Red Army was simply playing a different game than they were.
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Originally posted by Andreas:

</font><blockquote>quote:</font><hr />Originally posted by redwolf:

On a more general note, I am very sceptical about the view that the Soviets had this great doctrine on an operational level and the Germans were suffering heavily from not doing it as well.

There is to much of Soviet concepts that would not apply to the Germans, and there is too much that some German commanders did on their own and too much much other blunders the Germans committed.

Redwolf - you are probably right on the offensive level. I would argue though that by not having this understanding, the Wehrmacht suffered heavily at the hands of the Red Army. They did not understand that the rules had fundamentally changed, and the Red Army was simply playing a different game than they were.</font>
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I think operational styles need to be considered in context when you are attempting to compare them. I think it is too simplistic to simply beleive the Soviet doctrine was far superior than the German operational methods. I don't believe the Germans had any doctrine. It seems to be down to the commander on the ground, but I agree it was armour first more often that not. For instance at Kursk Model and Manstein used opposing methods, Model infatry first, Manstein armour first. Comparing those two assaults which would you say was the most effective?

I also would say that, for example Polkovodets Rumyantsev, was no more successful than Manstein's part of the Kursk offensive. The Soviet attack also bogged down in the face of German armoured counter attacks shortly after breaking through the initial German positions...and these defences were not on the scale of the Soviet ones at Kursk. The difference is that the Soviets had more strategic reserves and therefore could gain the initative on many sectors of the front simultaneously. There were simply not enough mobile, armoured formations in the German inventory to live with this.

I think it's also naive to believe that the Soviets had hit on a consistently winning formula...it worked extremely well against stretched and depleted German defences but there are numerous examples (probably more than successes) where it failed against better organised and manned lines (Mius, Kiev, Jassy, battles against AGC in the winter of 1943/44, the Courland battles, attacks along the Vistula in late summer/autumn 1944).

I think that Soviet weight of numbers (in the strategic not necessarily tactical/operational), greater strategic mobility and above all a coherent strategy from late 1943 onwards were far more important that their operational doctrine.

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