undead reindeer cavalry
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Posts posted by undead reindeer cavalry
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wow, nice work on the manual. the FM style is more than cool.
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For a minute there I was getting excited - thanks for stamping out that sentiment so thoroughly. This forum really would be a cold an unfriendly place were it not for warm, welcoming folks like you; if you ever leave the army a career in customer relations surely beckons...
lol, your accurate reply made my day.
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usually the attacker has advantage in large scale actions, if competent. this competence in managing offensive operations is one field that IMO shows clear patterns of nationalistic differences in ETO.
i find it striking how German staffs are unable to execute large scale offensive operations in ETO. if you look at the initial push against the landings, the counter to Cobra, actions around Arracourt, Bulge etc, they all show unability to coordinate or even just control the forces, and the practiced principles are not very sound. the end result is uncoordinated, badly prepared, piecemeal attacks, far too often with single-arms forces, that are defeated by lesser numbers & lesser quality.
if you look at the offensives and then replace German unit names with Russian ones and change dates by three years, you could as well be reading about the Soviet offensive operations of 1941/2. including cowardly yes-men who give senseless orders, only so that the high command would not think they lack determination and loyalty.
it's hard to escape the conclusion that German staffs, and thus ultimately German commanders, at corps and above level, performed by average below the norm in offensive operations. this probably tells of doctrinal weakness under the circumstances & unability to improvise and adjust.
perhaps this is racist, but i think it's hard to escape the facts.
BTW Germans thought their positions & posture was disadvantageous in Normandy.
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It's a bit pricey, but I have heard many times from different sources that "It Never Snows in September" is one of the best. Haven't gotten around to reading it yet.
yes it's a good one. if one buys only one book about the operation written from German perspective, or if one has read only books written from Allied perspecive, this would be a good choise for the book to get.
there's a paperback version that is quite cheap.
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Thanks, URC...I've got Volume 1 in my library -- haven't read it yet but actually referred to the maps therein while reading Kurt's book. I would definitely agree that Hubert's treatment looks more authoritative; Kurt's is just an appetizer. Looking forward to digging in soon!
Kurt's book is a lot more exciting in the sense of a "great adventure".
Hubert's two volumes are one of my favorite German unit histories. i think they are a great reading for anyone interested in the battle for Caen (perhaps even for anyone interested in Normandy). he is relatively objective, often quoting allied sources and offering 12th SS loss tables for any given battle or period, and details all sorts of things in a fairly balanced manner, be it recon ops or how logistics worked. the emphasis is of course on battle accounts, often dealing with panzers.
the book is relatively clean of too much teary-eyed ideological praise of the soldiers of the division, considering that it's the division's history after all and that it's written by a guy who was a high ranking commander in it. nonetheless some things he writes surely does annoy some readers and he often quotes Kurt's book. but if one reads it with a bit of a grain of salt, perhaps accompanied by some allied sources covering the same actions, it should be a good read.
it would have been great if the book would have had even more details, but being already two lengthy volumes long i can understand why some actions are covered in greater detail than some others. the maps could be better.
most of the 2nd volume deals with other operations, like Bulge and Hungary.
BTW the guy is still alive.
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don't use Kurt Meyer's book as a reference for 12th SS. instead use "The 12th SS" by Hubert Meyer who was an officer in the division as well.
while both in general terms regard allied operations to be too rigid, the impression i get from Hubert is that Canadians were highly regarded by the 12th SS.
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They lost, get over it!
no, it was a part of the plan all along. first we lose on purpose, then we call in the bombers. nuking from the orbit is the highest form of all small-unit tactics.
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no they were not total write-offs and that 8 is most likely for July 8th and is actually 18 not 8 (Zaloga's Osprey book on Bagration). anyway 5. Panzer Division strength already 9th July is 25 Panthers (36%), 25 Panzer IVs (45%), 15 Tigers (75%). Zaloga most likely chose July 8th numbers to show that fighting was fierce, eventhough it gives a false impression of the state of 5.PD after that week (or he just overlooked).
by 7th July 505th (another Tiger unit taking part in the battles with 5.PD) is down to 5 operational Tigers, and by 12th leaves the front.
5. PD was fighting a blocking action, trading blood & machines for time for the evacuation of Minsk, so the loss ratio may not have been optimal but it's still very high in my opinion. Soviet sources give a lot of credit to aviation & artillery in fighting 5.PD. last but not least 5 GTA commader was in the end sacked because of the losses in Bagration.
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yes but i was thinking more about the hundreds of assault guns and tank destroyers, and especially how they did in general (not just in the cases where Soviets tried to headbutt against them).
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Given the length of AGC line and the number of AFVs available (which if you think about it is far less than the number of cars in a Mall parking lot), how in the world was it possible to get the StuG/Tanks to the breakthrough points in time? (it is also scary that such a small number of AFV's could make a difference.
they couldn't get the armor to the breakthrough points in time and there were more breakthroughs than there was armor. like mentioned, initially the only Panzer Division is running around without firing a shot as the higher ups keep changing their mind which breakthrough to counter.
most of the armor either happens to be in a breakthrough sector or is later fighting delaying / blocking actions or rescue actions (into or out of an encirclement).
it's hard to judge how much of a difference German armor made because most of the actions are small and scattered.
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yes and there were the Panzerjäger units as well.
yes, often KGs were formed by combining infantry, a StuG Brigade and a Panzerjäger Abteilung. sometimes as "true" KGs (e.g. KG Schünmann 25.6.: I/PGR30, SB 190 & PJA 741) and sometimes as strong integrated groupings (like 78. Sturm Division: had both a SB and a PJA as an integrated part of it -- a powerful SP group of 31 StuGs & 17 Nashorns). the assault (sturm) variants of the SBs even contained an infantry arm in themselves.
the StuG & Panzerjäger Brigades & Abteilungen were certainly of great value. the theory behind their sound use, just like with the Panzer Brigades, is itself of great interest to me.
i might try to find out the Panzerjäger situation for AGC later, but it's very time consuming and making sense of the conflicting reports really stresses the brain. sorting it all out might be almost trivial if my German was better and i had the extra $$$ and luck to obtain the various German books that deal with this very subject.
EDIT: in any case the StuG Brigades in AGC were not used in the kind of "fire brigade" operational reserve role typical for Panzer Divisions. at local level sure, but still as part of the frontline units. there just weren't enough of them with the huge sectors of AGC.
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yes it's not symmetric, but we were talking about reserves and their use in Bagration. StuGs in infantry divisions etc have little to do with it. in practice the punch of reserves comes from the panzer divisions. and, not least importantly, the numbers for operational panzers are far easier to come by than numbers for operational SPs.
i am not trying to distort numbers intentionally. i don't have any personal agenda with this topic. i might as well argue that Germans didn't concentrate any armor in AGNU at all -- the armor was there simply because that's where they were fighting.
anyway, i did try to make sense of SP numbers, because i would myself like to have something better than just panzer numbers. i only got to AGC and only for StuGs and i think i already lost 50% of my remaining sanity.
what comes to the 480 number, the report with that number states that 404 of those are operational. various other reports with later pre-Bagration dates gives something like this:
218 operational StuGs in the seven StuG Brigades within AGC Bagration area (7 of the total 32 brigades are in the AGC Bagration area, and 218 of the 710 operational assault guns).
67 operational StuGs in the three PG Divisions of AGC.
about 278 operational StuGs in Infantry Divisions and equivalents. it's interpolated, i couldn't find reports for all the divisions "yet". minimum number based on known reports (for 15 Infantry Divisions) is 149.
total: about 563 operational StuGs (434 minimum).
while looking at the above i also looked at panzers.
Panzer II: 26 (from Sturm Brigage 667)
Panzer III: 7-22 (7 in 20.PD, 15 extra from unknown source indicated in higher level report)
Panzer IV: 67 (56 in 20.PD, 11 in PGD "FHH")
Panzer VI: 29 (from 501st)
Total: 129-144
now i only need to find reports for the rest of the AGC StuG units. then find reports for all internal and separate Panzerjäger. then all that for AGNU. such happy times. i think i will pass.
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operational panzer number comparison between the Army Groups was just that -- the easiest way to get numerical comparison between panzers. yes, all Groups had several hundred assault guns & tank destroyers (i have no idea about the number of runners of all the units).
1st Ukrainian Front (opposite AGNU) was the strongest of all Soviet Fronts and it had more tank & mech formations than Bagration combined initially. in the number of AFVs the fronts taking part in Bagration are stronger, but there are only 5 tank and 3 mech corps (and a number of cavalry corps). 1st UF alone has 7 tank & 3 mech corps. with 1st Belorussian Front supporting on right it's a very strong force.
even with full hindsight and knowing the actual Soviet planning, i have hard time accepting the fact that 1UF was not The planned history maker of summer 1944.
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re:food, one just has to laugh at the never ceasing ideologically motivated pseudostudies, repeating the same crap again and again. the part that is less funny is the millions and billions wasted in social programs based on similar inane studies, even when again and again proven to have zero effect.
oh the shock horror of IQ being inheritable and more intelligent parents feeding their children with more healthy food, tending to read more books or whatever the current choise of trying to "mistakenly" get the causation totally opposite to the reality.
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Germans send units to help Centre in any case, so the question is a bit moot as the units are going to fight with AGC anyway.
because AGC has so few reseves the reserves end up being wasted. like mentioned, the only panzer division is running around in circles without firing a shot and then its little strength is even further divided by its elements being ordered to different directions. likewise when AGC starts to receive additional reserves, the panzer divisions and their elements are forced to be committed piecemeal as they arrive. the end result is that what little strength the reseves have is wasted in their piecemel commitment. the German panzer elements are quite effective in what they do, but their scattered commitment and low numbers make them insignificant. the Soviet tank & mech formations simply go around them. the effect of German panzer divisions would have been multiplied had they been there to begin with.
Germans simply got fooled by not detecting the new Soviet force concentrations built opposite AGC. as Germans knew of the large tank & mech concentrations facing AGNU, that's where they sent their strength. their error was not that they thought Soviet forces opposite AGNU were very strong, as they were (possibly stronger than those opposite AGC in tank & mech formations), and they certainly did not think the Soviets were spent. their error was to not detect the scale of new forces massed opposite AGC, that the Soviets were shifting their focus from south (where it was previously, very succesfully) to centre.
by looking quickly at the number of operational panzers in 31 May 1944, north to south (ignoring Finland), the numbers seem to be 73 for AGN , 86 for AGC, 606 for AGNU and 190 for AGSU. panzer ratio between AGNU and AGC is 7:1. or in other words, by taking 1/7th of AGNU's panzer strength you double the panzer strenght of AGC.
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A fair comparison might be if Overlord and Dragoon had been launched simultaneously. It might have confused the hell out of Germans, but it would also have made Dragoon far bloodier for Allies and strained their logistic and planning capacity.
it's far more confusing when you don't launch the attacks simultaneously across the whole front of coming operations. the defender won't realize there's a major operation going for a couple of days. when he does realize it, he doesn't know where the main thrusts are coming from or where they are heading at (as some of them haven't even been launched yet).
it creates yours headless chicken situation. in Bagration the limited panzer reserves of AGC spent some days marching around, receiving conflicting and confusing orders, just like the Soviet mech corps did in 1941. also notice how Bagration begins with limited offensives at its both extreme flanks.
in summer 1944 Soviets achieved the same thing on strategic level, by pulling German focus to their allies at extreme north and south before launching the decisive operations in the middle.
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This means that the Soviets had the capability to perhaps attack both places at once.
not only did they have the theoretical capability to hit two places at once, but they actually did hit four places at once (AG Centre, AGNU, AG North and Finland).
yes, those operations weren't launched simultaneously, they had to be launched one after another (and those operations themselves were internally and locally launched one part after another), but they all were still being executed simultaneously after they were launched.
Now I know the idea that that attacking where the reserves are would cause more losses and that attacking the weak forces and eliminating them easily first then causes more manpower shortages for the defender (to fill the gaps) and this is what I presume what was done. But at the same time having the capability to hit both places means that it might not make much of a difference as to if you attacked both simultaneously. You'd be guaranteeing you'd be hitting the defenders at their weak points too.yes, they did all those things.
A major attack in NUkraine would have prevented reserves from going to the Center perhaps?yes, that's exactly what it was supposed to do and what it did.
so I guess perhaps my question is if the force disparity was so great, such that the germans could only defend heavily in one place, and the Russians could deliver two blows, did it really matter if the germans concentrated or spread their reserves a bit more evenly.yes it did, because even a weak panzer corps (an actual panzer formation, not just one in name) could ruin Soviet operations.
even in summer 1944 some Soviet offensives failed even without the help of German reserves (=were defeated locally). when they attack at three locations, two may fail but the third achieves a good penetration. their operational success is based on that third attack causing German defences to fall off balance when Germans don't have proper reserves at hand. if they have good reserves they counter that penetration and the entire Soviet offensive fails (or achieves only limited gains).
In summation, if the Germans correctly anticipated the main target and rushed their reserves there ahead of time it might not have made a difference?it wouldn't have changed the outcome of the war and most likely wouldn't have caused any of those Soviet operations to fail, but it would have limited the level of damage.
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Truppenfuhrung is great, but it is quite theoretical. the described practices were usually impossible to practice in practice, especially what comes to defence.
there are a number of similar translated German training documents online, like
German Squad In Combat of the Special Series. they may be of inspriring reading.
EDIT: the one i keep going back again and again is "Infantry in Battle". it's not about WW2, but the content is good.
http://carl.army.mil/download/csipubs/infantry/inf_intro_cvii.pdf
http://carl.army.mil/download/csipubs/infantry/inf_cviii_cxv.pdf
http://carl.army.mil/download/csipubs/infantry/inf_cXVI_cXXI.pdf
http://carl.army.mil/download/csipubs/infantry/inf_cxxii_end.pdf
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Panzertaktik from Wolfgang Schneider. Althougn I love The Schneider book I recognize it is not for everyone as it is rather picture heavy.
i have found the photo captions exceptionally informative. usually i can't stand picture heavy WW2 books, but for some reason i really enjoy the pictures (and their captions) in this one.
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That my be true in some armies in some battles in some periods. It is not however a universal truth and it is not even wholly applicable to the US army in the ETO 1944-45. Even a casual reading of the history of that campaign will reveal numerous examples when the desire to get the job done trumped the need to avoid casualties.
AFAIK it's universal (e.g. possibly going to neolithic period or some million years further back in time -- think of chimps doing their territorial patrolling) and the mechanism enjoys widespeard agreement on the field (both academic and military), though it's of course far more complex and nuanced than just the idea expressed here. still that's by large how it goes and is the single most important piece of information contained by the idea.
when one is thinking about it, it's important that one realizes that the bonding is not automatical and the expression of the loyalty is not identical across cultures (e.g. going "Banzai!" out of loyalty when the worst thing imaginable in your culture is to lose one's face -- in this case to make your comrades to lose their face by your in/action in combat).
furthermore it (group cohesion) is often divided into different types of elements. e.g. the type of "social cohesion" i discussed regarding surrenders and the type of cohesion you are talking about (often called "task cohesion").
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Your cartoon cutout, Captain America characterisation is not only wrong, carried with it an internal contradiction. If no one ever left their mates in the lurch, why would anyone be tormented by anything for decades after?
You need better sources, not a better command of the language.
you got me very wrong if you think i want more heroism. more cowardice, systematic cowardice, is what i want.
as for cartoon cutout, besides the banality etc, i think the emotions related to circumstances in which a person ended up letting his comrades down are possibly the strongest and the most lasting ones, even if they don't get expressed in such strong ways as the various syndromes do.
my sources consist of a good number of the standard studies done on the subject. they have well established that the primary motivator for soldiers is not self-preservation, sense of duty towards your nation or party or things like that, but the loyalty to other soldiers in their unit, and that the mechanism behind the loyalty is group bonding (which soldiers often say to be stronger than the one towards their wives). this (group loyalty) is also how the military chain of command is established on the concrete level of things and in reverse the reason for negative effects when bonding deals for one reason or another do not exist in an unit.
of course none of the studies claim that things like surrenders didn't happen or weren't done by individual soldiers. on the contrary most of them document the systematic cowardice (re: Captain America stuff, comic book style heroism) and how it was accepted behaviour (from the viewpoint of the group's norms). the way it manifests, however, is not one guy of the team surrendering while at the same time the rest of the team within the same 8x8 meter area are still fighting. rather it usually manifests through becoming "routed" but showing it by doing things that are more useful than sobbing in your foxhole or just running away, e.g. taking a wounded guy to the rear or getting some ammo. of course full blown retreats happened as well. surrendering in most cases required that the group became cut off from the rest of the guys (or chain of command) and in those cases through the decision of the highest ranking person in the group (if any). of course there were plenty of cases, especially in trench rolling style situations, where a guy would try to surrender once the enemy was within almost touching distance (sometimes by surprise, sometimes not). in most cases it didn't make you a POW, it made you an easier target.
as for the logical error in my post, it exists only if your look at the subject is a binary one: either individual guys surrendered while their comrades were still fighting right next to them or there was no surrendering at all. as for finding a good number of well documented cases to be able to say with certainty what the emotional effect would have been like, i honestly don't believe it to be necessary since the basic rationality and logic of small unit moral norms (and the concequences for breaking them) is so well established that there's really not much left to doubt.
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i don't see why realistic suppression effects etc would lead to 4 hour battles. instead of dying, your platoon just does something else or is pinned until someone else does something else.
there's plenty of room for stuff that couldn't be done in such short periods in the real world but stuff that can be done in the game. stuff that couldn't be done because of the amount of organizational work it would have required, not because of realistic weapon effects. in real world it might take two hours to organize and transmit a new plan for a unit, but in a CMBN style game it takes only as long as the unit stays pinned rallying.
of course getting ultra realistic C3 stuff would be pure heaven, but i think it's safe to say it's not going to happen.
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I understand the analogy, I just don't understand exactly what you want.
my comment was more about the logic behind the argument than anything else.
if something i'd love to see good C3 effects. i was a bit surprised to see things like a mixed bag of units acting together without a single "HQ" anywhere. but since i haven't played the game, what do i know. i'll be happy playing CMBN anyway. it's already got such a huge list of improvements (regarding both CMSF and CMx1).
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Yee gods. Where is this purple prose coming from?
from a bad command of (any) language and a weak character?
instead of using cliches in a banal attempt to underline an argument in a forum post i could of course have been more technical, as there are a good number of papers to quote about the subject.
btw if someone is interested in the group dynamics of WW2 units (no, this does not specifically deal about surrendering one way or another), i am currently rereading the free english translation of "Infantry Company as a Society" -- a sociological look done of a Finnish WW2 MG company during the war by a guy who served in the unit. since it's free and contains a good introductory part into the subject (deals with other similar studies with different nationalities and periods), it's worth reading. possibly extremely boring, but some may take joy in it and some of course say there's nothing new or worth reading in it.
Knut Pipping; Infantry Company as a Society (PDF)
anyway, it's great that CMBN has surrendering.
Infantry popping smoke
in Combat Mission Battle for Normandy
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infantry smoke is a nice new feature over CMx1. it will be interesting to see how it plays out in practice. perhaps a bit of a "combat chess" feature, rather than one based on realism, but if it's not overdone it could add to some situations in the game.