sburke

True enough as pointed out by others there is a wide discrepancy depending on when and how the unit was raised. However regarding being a fire brigade in general you could say it is true of most of the Panzer force once Germany lost the strategic initiative though Wiking was certainly critical for the Korsun breakout. My personal favorites in the Heer are the 11th and 18th Pz Divisions. The 11th for it's fighting along the Chir river (does anyone remember the board game depicting this battle) and the 18th because of an ASL scenario Breakout from Borisov. Manstein certainly appreciated having them on hand during his back hand blow, but again they had just been freshly rebuilt and were at full strength when committed. The Heer units on the other hand had fought through the winter of 1942, forced to withdrawal, defend and then counter attack without the "luxury" of having that period of being off the line to rebuild. The 12th should arguably be included in the "core" considering it had a large number of leaders transferred from the 1st SS. In the two campaigns it participated in I don't think one could rate it's performance as stellar. One of our Canadian friends has already commented on their Normandy performance and in the Ardennes they essentially gutted themselves against the 2nd ID at Krinkelt/Rocherath. The 1st SS didn't do much better. It was 5th Panzer Army that showed the most gains in Wacht am Rhein led by 2nd Panzer.

I have heard similar, but haven't found anything definitive. trying to figure out a standard ToE in the German Armed Forces is pretty futile. (another thing to note on the work BFC has been trying to put into CMBN and the ToEs - not exactly an easy task.) According the the US Army handbook on German military forces a Heer Pz Div ToE was 52 Pz IV and 51 Pz V while the SS was 64 Pz IV and 62 Pz V. Using Thomas Jentz Panzertruppen figures at the battle of the Bulge TOE for various PZ Div 1st SS 82 Pz IV, 42 Pz V Total - 124 2nd SS 28 StuG, 28 Pz IV, 58 PzV Total - 114 9th SS 28 StuG, 32 Pz IV, 33 Pz V (25 Pz V in transit) Total - 118 10th SS 2 PzIV (yes 2) 10 PzV (34 Pz IV, 25 Pz V in transit) Total - 71 12th SS 37 Pz IV, 41 Pz V Total - 78 2nd Pz 24 StuG, 28 Pz IV, 64 Pz V Total - 116 9th Pz 28 Pz IV, 57 Pz V (3 Pz V, 14 StuG in transit) Total - 102 116th Pz 21 Pz IV, 41 Pz V (5 Pz IV, 23 Pz V, 14 StuG in transit) Total - 104 Panzer lehr 27 Pz IV, 30 Pz V (10 Pz IV, 10 Pz V in transit) Total - 77 These figures do not include the heavy panzer/panzerjaeger battalions attached to 1st and 12th SS for example. 9th and 10th SS ToE are reflective of their late withdrawal from combat with 21st Army Group. Keep in mind that during this period the eastern front was being starved of tank replacements. Would be interesting to see the ToE for Wiking and Totenkopf during this period.

I saw Return of the Jedi while under the influence of certain organic substances. During the scene with all the rodent midgets attacking the stormtroopers my buddy leans over and whispers "Sir! Sir! we're being attacked by Muppets". I had to get up and leave, I just couldn't stop laughing. Have never been able to watch a star wars movie since.

Don't disagree with your overall assessment, but the quote "the good of the many sometimes out weighs the good of the few", kill or be killed is probably more appropriate. The good of the many would imply some moral standing that these men should sacrifice their lives for i.e. not killing the goat herders would have been to the benefit of America's moral standing though definitely not in the team's interests. Problem with irregular warfare in hostile country is you almost have to assume anyone is the enemy. Applying the Geneva convention to irregular warfare is problematic at best and the insurgent forces rarely feel any compulsion to follow those rules. The interesting thing about the comments in Destination Normandy is the author is trying to make an argument that America always holds it's soldiers to a perceived level of behavior in WW 2 that was not actually true. The net result is we have an unfair expectation of behavior for our troops in combat based on a myth. That myth in turn undermines our ability to be objective about what soldiers face in combat and to therefore hold them to unreasonable standards.

I think that is exactly what they are doing (they never gave a fixed date, they gave an approx as we all demanded an update on a release date) and look how much space we have given them. :-P Would help if they would just make a sucky product, then we wouldn't be bothered caring- see BFC it's all your fault.

Yeah I can't say I have found anything beyond these. Also note that the instances in D Day regarding the airborne (assuming the data is true) stemmed both from prior experience in Sicily with American POWs getting shot and the nature of landing in occupied territory. The 328th was directly in reaction to Malmedy. There was never as far as I know any suggestion of even a verbal command at Division level or higher in the ETO.

I don't want to belabor the point as considering the time, the circumstances, the nature of war etc I think it is unreasonable to expect much different. I certainly am not going to fault the boots on the ground who had to face the horrors they did day after day through the war. However there may be evidence of at minimum certain units giving orders at least at the regimental level for example the 501st and 508th Para regiments and possibly the 22nd Infantry regiment (page 75 in Destination Normandy recounts these but doesn't supply much as to where the info is coming from). In reaction to Malmedy the 328th Infantry regiment did issue an order that no SS or paratroopers would be taken prisoner and is apparently recorded in the official US history with a note that similar orders may have come from other units. The pacific is a whole other topic. Between cultural issues on the nature of honor and war, the brutality of the fighting etc any rules as we understand them just never really applied. I can't imagine what it must have been like to have been a Marine at Okinawa and seeing what the Japanese Army inflicted even on it's own civilians. Some other links regarding POW treatment in the war. I have no idea who Peter Lieb is or the basis of his claims, but the Der Spiegel article does suggest a policy in the allied command of taking no prisoners in the initial period of the landings. http://www.spiegel.de/international/world/0,1518,692037,00.html http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Allied_war_crimes_during_World_War_II#Comparative_death_rates_of_POWs

Absolutely. I like to think I operate with at least some basic humane behavior, but put me in the above mentioned situation and I can't say I know what I would do. (Probably back hiding in the IFV bawling my eyes out :-P ) Where I think this thread has wandered off to though is the afterward behavior. When the adrenaline of combat has wound down, would you stroll off with a prisoner and put one in his head, or line nine of em up and do the same. I hope like hell I would not be capable of that but not having ever had to face the stress of combat etc, I honestly don't know. Though there are witness accounts of executed prisoners amongst the allies, I don't know of any once the POWS were brought amongst the rear area troops.

I think part of the problem you have here is the US and other allies aren't going to particularly go out of their way to try and document their own abuses. It wouldn't sell well at home. Even today this type of issue gets hyped up by the needs of one side to hide it in order to maintain public support for sometimes difficult to understand missions and for folks on the opposite side to undermine those very same missions. Politics has everything to do with how well these are pursued. Let's be real though, war is by it's nature the suspension of the standard rules of behavior we like to think we follow. Give a million people guns and send em into a fight and under the stress of combat and their own standards of morality you are going to have issues with this. Without the Allies taking the time and effort to pursue this it isn't likely we will have hard evidence, but there are numerous accounts of the Allies executing prisoners in cold blood. As the most recent work I have read covering this Destination Normandy cites some specific examples. Where the distinction becomes an issue though is when these same troops behave the same way towards civilians. Once you cross that line on a systematic basis the murder of POWs is just a second thought. The brutalization of both sides on the Eastern front is on a different scales than the western front. And for the Russians it wasn't just a reaction to German behavior - Katyn preceded Barbarossa. The number of incidents on the Western front in 1940 was small but so was the time frame of combat. However within 16 days the SS had already resorted to this behavior at Les Paradis.

Has anyone seen that commercial with Ozzy? "What's a Bieber?"

A veteran division for sure, but also one with issues. The flip side of being a veteran division is you also have an issue of combat fatigue to overcome. Their performance in the Ardennes on the northern shoulder was without doubt deserving of respect. That they were able to push off the beach on D Day as well despite their leadership not preparing them well enough also reflects their determination and experience. However elite? Not sure I would consider them that. The US did develop some very good divisions at least on par with them (the 30th for example) and I think the US tended toward having a fairly uniform standard and the overall baseline improved as they gathered experience and developed the leadership cadre. On another tangent - has anyone read anything on whether the US ever considered using the Marines to land in Normandy or at least take advantage of the techniques and equipment they had developed? It seems such a glaring shortcoming that the US Marines had so much specialized equipment and experience that it is almost criminal that it wasn't reflected in the D Day landings.

To be frank, I think there was a lot of that going around. There is some question as to whether US units during the landing had a more or less official policy of being prepared to not take prisoners. In Destination Normandy by GH Bennett, he discusses briefly the issue of treatment of POWs and suggests it was fairly routine on both sides to shoot prisoners. The regimental history of the 115th for example is quoted as saying "..while few prisoners taken by our troops reached the collecting cages". Treatment of civilians however is another matter.

I have a copy of Last Victory in Russia that spends a few pages on the fighting in Kharkov. IIRC correctly at one point it suggests Manstein specifically has a direct seizure as a course of action as well as a direct command from Hitler to Sepp Dietrich (partly to make up for having withdrawn against orders from Kharkov earlier. Don't know of the truth of either.

well when he looked at the UI, it didn't say he couldn't take out the Sherman. I'm kidding guys, just kidding!!!

c'mon guys. no name calling, no flip responses or heated disagreements. How the heck are we gonna pass a week with this kind of gentlemanly limp reaction? regarding responses, I didn't say necessarily the best men just that their unit strength was generally kept up with healthy replacements. The fact that they also looked to the occupied countries for troops for sure would introduce a level of inconsistency as well though - good point. Wait I mean "what the heck. Are you kidding me, who cares what language the tall blonde guy speaks, he's still tall and blonde!!". As to equipment, I believe only a handful of divisions in the Wehrmacht got anywhere near the front of the line for equipment replacements like the SS. Probably better to look at the eastern front as all the panzer units on the Western front were gutted in Normandy and rebuilt for Wacht am Rhein. Overall I think the western front would not have the same level of disparity as the eastern front.

Seeing as we have at least a week to kill and we already beat to death the subject of allies versus axis capability - time to take on those wunderkind. Were they really such a big deal or did preferential access to men and material simply waste resources for the Wehrmacht? Personally I think their elite status is much overblown, yes they were fanatical and yeah they had the best toys of the lot (Aside from GrossDeutschland and a few others) and better access to replacements, but given all the resources thrown their way, my personal (usually flawed) opinion is Germany got less out of the bargain than if they had incorporated those resources into the Wehrmacht. Okay flame away.

I don't envy the guy in Indonesia. Company I work for has an office in Jakarta and getting them set up with VoIP had been a challenge. Staying there wasn't so fun either. Mirror checks under the car each night coming back to the hotel etc.

and it made for a great Seinfeld episode.

Not sure I would rate the SS better than the FJ. In terms of the SS, rating them as Elite is an assumption that I don't think necessarily holds across the boards so much as Fanaticsm. The difference I see between the two being not all SS units necessarily fought tactically well, but would be willing to accept higher casualties. I believe that was one of the major criticisms of the Waffen SS by the Wehrmacht. Not having tried the game yet we will see how the various factors work together. From the US perspective, the 2nd Panzer was rated as one of the toughest divisions they faced IIRC from some material I was reading from the Bulge combat.

Thanks guys, much appreciated.

LOL I don't think it's that. It is simply that we are only 6 days into May. It really is too early to be upset at BFC when they are still within the time frames they have stated.

That would work once and then they would pay for it in every release afterwards. LOL

I think we are all getting a bit too crazy parsing every statement or thought they utter looking for a release date. The demo statement was not directly theirs though they didn't contradict it. The MAC OS announcement referenced a possible timeline of up to May 11th. The then and now video also says May 2011. They never said that it would BE end of April, they said around and that was a bit ago and it is after all only May 6th. The more we bug them for updates, the less time they are spending wrapping it up. So let's all give them another week and then ask if they have an update as opposed to asking for an update of the already stated update. Yeah I am as antsy as anyone else and pre ordered I think the day pre order was announced. However they have actually been pretty good at trying to keep us posted within reason. Hell you should see the kind of announcements I get for feature capability from my VoIP vendor and they have loads more money and engineers than BFC. Then again I don't really care some much about VoIP features.

Probably, but it beats pressing F5. Distributes the wear and tear on my fingers.

Don't thank me yet, the release date is now "4/1 to 9/8". Makes our wait for CMBN look like a cake walk. (not to be confused with a training scenario).