jacobs_ladder2

Are you referring to another thread?

Possibly, but I don't see why this is relevant. No one was coming to Poland's aid. Even if they had held out for twice as long (10-14 days instead of 5-7) I don't see how it would have made a difference. Cheers Paul p.s. The argument started out as a debate over the existence of a "blitzkrieg" style campaign in Poland. Did we see anything new in 1939?

Quite the piece of work, isn't it.

On a side note, Zalgiris , I did some research and I have to say you were right about the Welle Plan. It appears that the Poles were much more ready for war than I thought. The German efforts to secretly mobilize probably didn't have the importance that I originally argued. I think the real issue would more closely have been the speed and efficiency of mobilization. From what I have read the Poles had serious problems getting everyone into the field. I need to look at this a bit more, but it seems to me to be a much more important factor. On the other hand, after further research I am still unable to find any examples of the use of modern tactics having any appreciable effect on the campaign. The Polish army was encircled and beaten by the 9th of September with German infantry keeping pace or leading almost every panzer division. The factors concisely listed by JasonC in his last post were the determiners. German superiority in manpower, firepower, mobility, communications and supply and Polish divisions stretched far beyond their capacity to defend such a massive frontier. The large encirclement of the bulk of the Polish army was the result of Army Group North attacking towards Warsaw. Polish forces found themselves withdrawing before they ever really had a chance to make a stand. On the subject of quoting French officers, I can only say that I do not know what he was referring to. If he was referring to the standard German approach to operations during the Polish campaign then, I'm sorry, but he was full of crap, badly mistaken or seriously mislead. Arguing about the source of the quote or its validity is really a waste of time. My suggestion is that no more effort be squandered on it. Cheers Paul

Absolutely not. There could never have been a "long run". According to Zaloga in "The Polish Campaign"... "The infantry division -the only type of Polish division in 1939- had men and weapons adequate to defend a front of ten to twelve kilometres. Unfortunately, the Polish-German border stretched for about 1500 kilometres. So even if all the Polish divisions could have been mobilized and in position on the frontier (an absurd cordon defense that was never even considered) they would still have been stretched more than three times beyond their capability. Thus there was never a realistic chance that the army could conduct more than a delaying action, given existing limitations on manpower and equipment." And, on a separate issue raised by Dandelion, Polish artillery at the divisional level consisted of a platoon of infantry guns per regiment, 39 light artillery regiments and 30 heavy artillery sections. A light regiment consisted of 24 75mm guns and 12 100mm guns. A heavy artillery section consisted of 3 105mm guns and 3 155mm howitzers. For comparison, the Polish division had 45 pieces of 105mm or smaller (representing 94% of their total allotment) while the Germans had 54 pieces of 105mm or larger (representing 73%). A shortage of signals equipment (only 19 radios per division amounting to 1/7th that of a German division) further increased this disparity. Maybe some of Jason's statements have been a little strong, but he is not wrong in his assessment of the campaign as a whole. Cheers Paul

This whole discussion really comes down to one thing and one thing only. Where were the new tactics used and how did they determine the outcome of the campaign? If I see one example of an armoured formation contributing in some significant way to the destruction of the Polish army I will happily recant everything I have said. I see nothing wrong with the figures I already posted as evidence of German superiority. Between 1935 and 1939 Germany spent around 24 billion dollars on defence. Poland, in the same period, spent about 750 million dollars. That is 3%. If you add in French contributions (a battalion of tanks and some cash) the Poles gain an increase of 12% annually. Overall, this bumps them up to about 4 or 5% of German spending. How does this manifest itself on the battlefield? In superior maneuver and firepower. A German infantry division, according to Zaloga in "The Polish Campaign", had about double the firepower of its Polish counterpart. A German regiment had about three times the indirect firepower of a Polish regiment. A Polish division had 48 artillery pieces and 101 mortars compared to 74 pieces (54 being 105mm or larger) and 147 mortars on the German side. German divisions had around 1400 motor vehicles compared to the almost entirely horse-drawn Polish division and a signal battalion of twice the size. Not counting superior training, this gives the Germans at least a 2 to 1 advantage in firepower, mobility and communications. Now, if you count superior support at the corps and army level you begin to see a growing gulf between the two sides. In fact, with numerical superiority taken into account and no chance of stretched supply lines, I have little trouble understanding why the Germans elected to use the tactics they did in Poland. Cheers Paul

I spend hours on those sites with Babelfish. Amazing sources. I know enough Russian to get by. My wish for translation is not only for me. I would love to have the info more readily available to a larger group of people. There is WAY too much disinformation out there. Cheers Paul

These were not armoured thrusts in any way shape or form. Tanks did not concentrate, blast through the enemy and then exploit freely into the enemy's rear while working closely with air and artillery. Even calling these formations "spearheads" is misleading. The tactics and the equipment simply weren't there to merit the use of such a word. I'm sorry Zalgiris, but you are dead wrong here. You are talking about the movements of two corps as if they were the actions of panzer armies in 1941. They were not. In general, tanks were distributed piecemeal in support of the infantry, were never allowed to operate freely until Polish resistance was effectively over and were never the significant factor in any significant battles. JasonC is quite correct in his assessment. This was an infantry battle won by traditional tactics. The Germans simply didn't yet believe in the tactics you are describing. The main proponent of CAS, Von Richthoffen, spent nearly the whole first day of the campaign sitting around his camp waiting for someone to request his assistance. Nobody did. The fact was that "requesting air support" was still a very new idea to the Germans. Remember that before the Spanish Civil War there was no such thing. These were all new ideas that had never been tested in a real campaign. And tested is what some of them were in Poland. But only tested and with great care. The fact that they were successful led to their acceptance and later inclusion on a larger, more significant scale. But in 1939 they were a sideshow at best. The Germans had no need to risk the success of their war effort on newfangled, untried tactics. Why would they do anything so extreme? There was no need of it. There vast superiority in men and material insured them a rapid and decisive victory tanks or no tanks. I will only agree with you on one point. I believe the Luftwaffe to have been an important factor in the campaign from at least a psychological standpoint. However, I do not believe their assistance was critical. The Germans were able to maintain a fluid front in 1914 until they marched too far beyond their railheads. They were able to do the same in 1939 using virtually the same methods, except they were never realistically in any danger of having their offensive grind to a halt due to supply problems. I'm not sure what that French general was referring to, but it wasn't the system the Germans employed on any large scale in Poland. Once again, there were hints of the blitzkrieg but they were not significant to the campaign itself. I haven't read anything from the author you refer to, but if he is arguing that the Germans carried the day by the clever use of armour and air he is misinformed as would be, logically, many of his readers. Cheers Paul

Sweet. I was hoping someone would get around to this. Now if we could just get those bums at mechcorps.rkka.ru and www.rkka.ru working we would really have something. Cheers Paul

Exactly, take away the tanks and neutralize both air forces and the Polish still lose. In fact, my understanding is that Kuechler set Guderian loose because he knew there was little danger of doing so. By that point in the campaign the contributions of the panzer forces were academic at best. Interesting from a tactical standpoint though they might be, they were not significant strategically or even operationally. Zalgiris, I had the same criticisms of Deighton's motivations, but the man's research was complete and his points valid. I have read almost everything he read and I see no problem with his conclusions. Much was made of armour by people whose motivations were also suspect. The usual contributions of the "I told you so" camp. I think he probably was as ignorant of what happened in Russia as almost every other Western author has been, but I do not fault him for it. If I take his book as only being a comparison of Poland and France, I have no trouble accepting it. The truth is that his argument was nothing new. He just popularized it somewhat. In the end, I can only agree with you on the use of new tactics. Despite my respect for your knowledge, I simply can't agree with you on their importance. Good discussion though. At the very least I got to pull out an old classic from my closet. Cheers Paul

German military spending in 1939 reached 9.7 billion dollars (up from 4.7 billion in 1938). Polish spending, in the same years, jumped from a whopping 160 million all the way to 180 million. According to "The Polish Campaign" by Zaloga, the Polish defense budget from 1935 to 1939 was only about 10% of the Luftwaffe 1939 budget alone. Poland was producing about 50 tanks annually where Germany was cranking out 1100 AFVs. Those 50 tanks being the result of a massive effort (70% of capital investment was military). Not much competition really. Cheers Paul

Thank you and the same to you. A lot of what I am saying comes from a book called "Blitzkrieg" by Len Deighton. It is the only source I have on hand at the moment, but it is pretty decent for what we are discussing. I agree with a lot of what you are saying here, but I still maintain that the Germans gained a very important advantage from secret mobilization. Now, without the Welle Plan, would the Germans have advanced so rapidly? Truthfully, I do not know. My feeling is that a prepared and mobilized Polish army would have been far more resistant to the German plan, but this is only my opinion. I guess it really comes down to the significance of German armour in the campaign. I see numerous examples of effective kesselschlacht tactics from the infantry, but honestly do not see significant blitzkrieg tactics in the east. There are hints of the future, to be sure, but I am not convinced that they were either intentional or strategically important. Of course, I may very be wrong. The examples you have cited are, at the very least, about as close to blitzkrieg as I know of during the Polish campaign. I see several critical differences in them (all of which I have already explained), but I am more than willing to concede that they are well within the realm of "new and revolutionary tactics". My argument is that the Polish campaign did not rely on the success of these tactics in the way that we would later see in France and Russia. If the German armoured formations had failed completely, the Polish campaign would still have been carried convincingly by the infantry. If however, the tanks had failed in 1940 or 41, the Wehrmacht would have been in serious trouble. Also, your point about the expected role of German armour is valid. Early German tanks were not designed for direct engagement of heavily defended enemy positions. I think Guderian would have liked to have had that ability, but it seems clear that he was realistic enough to not seriously expect it. I don't remember what happened at Ulm. Sorry. If you could refresh my memory I might be able to offer an opinion. Cheers Paul

They really caught them with their pants down, eh. That's a shame. That surprises me. I would have thought that suicide, but I forgot about the torpedo bombers. What do you suppose the lethal radius is for a 1000lb bomb? Interesting post and thread, btw. A fairly accurate picture of airpower in WWII. Lots of planes buzzing around taking potshots at whatever moved. Sounds about right. Cheers Paul

Read what I wrote again. You missed the point. Also, you are missing the point in regards to the blitzkrieg. The discussion has nothing to do with purist approaches to defining the blitzkrieg. My argument is simple. The blitzkrieg, as we are all aware, no matter what definition you ascribe to it, is a phenomena that first saw the light of day in WWII. However, the belief that the Germans used tactics now associated with the word "blitzkrieg" in Poland is mistaken. There were no significant tank battles, no large concentrations of tanks, no concentrated use of what tanks there were, no tank armies, little cooperation between tanks and the Luftwaffe and no encirclements by armoured spearheads. Guderian's drive on Brest-Litovsk was never envisaged in the original German plan, but was a judgement call by Kuechler. The Germans won in Poland by dusting off the old plan they used for the invasion of France and by ensuring that they did not make the same mistakes. With, of course, the addition of air power in the interdiction role. In fact, beyond the expanded role of the Luftwaffe and the piecemeal participation of light tanks (little more than armoured cars) I fail to see radical changes from WWI. So then, if it was a blitzkrieg we saw in Poland in 1939, then it was also a failed version of the blitzkrieg we saw in the opening days of WWI. I am more inclined to agree with the blitzkrieg never being more than a creation of the media than I am to agree with its intentional use in Poland. Cheers Paul

There are other considerations here. How well-protected were those carriers? I'm thinking, judging by the number of escorts, they were very well-protected. I wonder from what altitude those pilots were forced to bomb from. My guess is that those pilots were releasing from altitudes from which even spotting a tank would be impossible. And remember that despite its size a carrier is a target moving at around 20 knots. Also, a miss on the ocean is not the same as a miss on land. On land, with a soft target, you don't have to score a direct hit with a 1,000lb bomb. To what distance is such a weapon lethal? That I could not say, but I think it would end up compensating greatly for the small size of the target. Of course, hard targets are a different story altogether. Getting a bomb close enough to a medium or heavy tank for, at the very least, a disablement, was probably not an easy thing to do. Cheers Paul

If there was a blitzkrieg in Poland then there was a blitzkrieg in WWI. The surprise came from the Welle Plan which allowed the Germans to mobilize in secret. Without the concealed mobilization there would have been no surprise. The Polish campaign was about infantry marching 30km a day and supply. The encirclement had little to do with anything. The fighting was effectively over long before Guderian ever reached Brest. The armoured formation working closely with concentrated airpower and artillery simply was not a factor or a reality in 1939. In any case, the main German plan was to get behind the Vistula or stop the Poles from reaching it. The important elements of the attack did not rely even in the least on any of the new tactics the Germans would later employ in France. Air support, as Guderian envisioned it, was not really used in Poland. Guderian envisioned the airplane covering the flanks of the panzer division after the infantry was left behind. He imagined it filling in for artillery when the heavy guns could not keep up. None of this happened in Poland on any appreciable scale. Also, the word blitzkrieg is generally recognized as describing the revolutionary tactics employed by the Germans in the early war. Since none of those tactics had anything to do with the victory in Poland I do not see how that victory can be described as a blitzkrieg. Cheers Paul [ August 31, 2005, 08:28 PM: Message edited by: jacobs_ladder2 ]

AFAIK they were taken by surprise when the Polish defences fell apart so rapidly. Consequently they had to for all intents and purposes trump up a force rather quickly with minimal planning so as not to let the Germans advance too far East. </font>

I'd like to see that breakdown (and, if possible, the source.) Cheers Paul

Really? I saw nothing of the sort. At what point did the original poster "extoll SS thugs as heroes"? I'll answer my own question. He did not. That was not his intention as any rational person would have recognized immediately. You saw an opportunity to impress us all with your boundless intellect and seized upon it with no regard for the sensitivity of the subject matter. Stop trying to pretend otherwise.

So, your goal was to see your objection noted? You saw a post, written by a person with no visible alterior motive, wishing for a simple rememberance of lost lives and your only thought was to have your objection noted? Is that a fair assessment of your thought process?

Well, how about we just remember that they died, period. That in itself is enough. I'm sure every one of them believed in something. Be it their children, their future, their country, their girlfriends, their friends, their eternal soul or whatever. On that day, for those men, their beliefs and everything else came to an end. That loss, independantly of anything else, merits a moment's thought. Paul

Absolutely correct. They did it because it was there to do. No further reason required. My understanding of the situation is that a German counterattack was simply impossible. It would have been difficult to sustain and even harder to compensate for in other areas. Remember that the Allies were exerting pressure in a few different places and that the panzer divisions in question were, for the most part, engaged. A push out of Caen would almost inevitably allow for Allied forces to advance everywhere else. Not to mention, if the counterattack failed there would have been nothing left to hold the lines. IMO, Rommel took the only option realistically available to him. Counterattacking without a reserve would have been a bad gamble to take. Cheers Paul

What about Panzer Elite Action? Isn't there a modern version of Panzer Elite out there? I believe I saw something about it around someplace. Cheers Paul

Awesome. Now if I could just find the same thing for the Smolensk area. Or anything along the Minsk-Moscow axis, really. Cheers Paul

Woops, just found the thread in the CMAK forum. Nevermind.