Frontsoldaten -- Allied Casualty Revelation?

[Terence]

Hey,

Im about 40 pages into the book Frontsoldaten, and Im rather enjoying it. The translations of the German soldiers diaries and letters (of which the book is mainly comprised) seem rather good.

Anyone more knowlegable read the book and have some comment on it?

What really amazes me and motivates my post is this quote from page 24 of my edition

"on a man for man basis, the German ground soldiers consistently inflicted casualties at about a 50% higher rate than they incurred from opposing British and American troops under all circumstances."

The author goes on to amplify that this means both attacking and defending and when the German forces were outnumbered.

Now, Im not an "uber German" advocate. If such a thing exists. Im not demanding anything, LEAST OF ALL any modification to the Game Engine.

Im just a non-expert, interested in history who ran across this and wants to know what the more well read folks on the board think about the book and that quote.

The author cites the author Dupuy, and the book A Genius for War as reference for this info.

[Michael Dorosh]

See my comments in the Russian Stories thread regarding Frontsoldaten - I don't think it is a particularly good book, and it seems poorly researched.

However, that doesn't invalidate the specific conclusion here. Dupuy seems like a reliable source; would be interesting to know where he got his statistics from.

Certainly, since they were on the defence for the last half of the war, and in terrain very favourable for the defender (bocage (Normandy), mountains (Italy), polder (Holland)) it would be easy to accept this as true. Since he is including troops on the attack ("all circumstances") it would be a complicated case to make effectively.

I thought A Genius For War was a biography of Patton, though? Seems like an odd reference for this kind of info. Wonder how much research Dupuy really did, or if he simply quote Blood and Guts himself?

[Terence]

Originally posted by Michael Dorosh:

Certainly, since they were on the defence for the last half of the war, and in terrain very favourable for the defender (bocage (Normandy), mountains (Italy), polder (Holland)) it would be easy to accept this as true. Since he is including troops on the attack ("all circumstances") it would be a complicated case to make effectively.

B]

I thought about this -- the fact that the germans were on the defensive, but then he goes and makes the same casualty claim for the attack as well. Ill try to track down the Dupuy book and see what I can learn.

[Forever Babra]

I've run across similar statements before, but the sources are often suspect, and without a detailed casualty analysis it would be impossible to evaluate anyway. I don't say it isn't true, but I would need some empirical data to confirm or deny it. The one casualty analysis I have seen, though, indicates that 70% of all casualties for 21st Army Group between June and January were caused by mortars (including Nebelwerfers), with the vast bulk of the casualties belonging to the rifle companies. It is also generally accepted as true that a Commonwealth soldier in Normandy had a statistically higher probability of being killed or wounded than his father in a similar space of time in WW1, which certainly gives an idea of the ferocity of the fighting. As well, infantry doctrines were quite varied among the allies, so it may well be that the German infantry performed better against one nation's infantry over another, but a flat, across-the-board, figure of 50% better is suspect in my opinion.

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Mein Vater, mein Vater, und hörest du nicht,

Was Erlenkönig mir leise verspricht? -

Sei ruhig, bleibe ruhig, mein Kind;

In dürren Blättern säuselt der Wind.

Stereotypes

The Un-Rant

[Steve McClaire]

Hmmm. Any statement that says something as sweeping as "...under all circumstances" is pretty likely to be suspect. Here's some specific numbers for circumstances where the German soldier did not inflict 50% more casualities then his allied counterpart (Source -- pg 501 "Hitler's Last Gamble" by T.N. Dupuy et al):

Krinkelt-Rocherath (Dec 16-18 1944): US 2nd and 99th Divisions = ~696 casualties per day vs. German 1st SS Pz Corps = ~654 casualties per day.

Harlange (Jan 9-11 1945): US 90th Division = 176 casualties per day vs. German 5th FJ Division = 212 casualties per day.

In fact, of the 11 actions Dupuy examines in this section, not one involves more then 50% greater casualties for either side. Granted, this may be due to his choice of actions to cover, or the scale he used (several days of fighting at the large-unit level), but it does seem to contradict the original statement.

I could easily accept the fact that, to a German soldier on the front lines, it felt like they were causing 50% more losses to the enemy. It may also be that if you take total losses from direct ground combat for the three armies, add them up, and look at the total, the Commonwealth + US losses combined are 50% higher than the German losses. This could be the meaning of the original statement, even though it seems to imply something different.

[jasoncawley@ameritech.net]

I don't think so. There are combat effectiveness calculations that yield the 1.5 ratio, but it does not mean that was the ratio of actual losses. It wasn't. The U.S. Army lost 435k in the whole ETO for the whole war, for instance, dead wounded and missing (the Air Force excluded), while the Germans lost more than that in Normandy alone (450k - nearly half of them PWs), in just 2 1/2 months.

I think what is involved in the calculations, is an implied "correction" for odds. As in, look at what these folks did against 3:1 odds, and look at what these folks did against 2:1 odds, and it looks about the same. That implies greater combat effectiveness per person, yes. But it doesn't mean the guy with the smaller force (lower side of the odds ratio), didn't take higher losses in both cases, than the guy with the higher side.

Basically the Germans took higher losses but did much better than you'd "expect" them too given the odds they faced. In cases were the U.S. and Brits were defending, they did not do as well when the odds were as steeply against them as they usually were for the Germans. That can meaningfully be called combat effectiveness. But it means no such simplistic thing, as that the Germans inflicted higher losses than they took.

With the Russians they did (first year and a half included, when it was hugely lopsided in favor of the Germans), but not in the west. Even in Russia, the overall totals for military battle losses (not civilians, non-battle, etc) was not more then 2:1 for the whole war (same ratio as the populations, incidentally, or close to it), and it was dropping over the course of it as overall odds moved toward Russia. By mid 1944, the Russians often inflicted greater losses than they took (e.g. in Bagration).

As for the reasons for the better German combat performance, there are certainly a number of reasons given, but just being on the defensive is not a convincing one. Defenders are often losing, and have large pieces of their army torn apart. And the Allies had definite advantages in supply and air power that went hand and hand with an attacking position.

More convincing explanations are the following -

1. The scratch, reduced forces the Germans had to fight with, often had a much higher portion of heavy weapons to men, since the heavy weapons were closer to TOE than the rifle strength was. Heavy weapons have greater range, and fire from positions of greater safety, and thus deplete less rapidly in action. A unit in action for a long time will often see 50% rifle strength but 70-80% artillery strength, for example. Whereas the attacking Allied formation, recently "replaced", might have 90 and 95% of TOE. Thus the manpower odds may be ~2:1 while the weapons odds are only ~3:2.

2. The Germans had more combat experience, particularly the officer corps and the senior NCOs. They had been fighting, in many cases, for 3-5 years before encountering the Americans. The Brits had also been fighting as long, but with relatively small land forces until D-Day. While the privates in the German army in the west often had no more combat experience than the Allied men they faced, their officers generally did. While it is known that for the front-line private, combat performance for infantry peaks at a definite time not long after exposure to combat (2-4 months is the range), there is little doubt that officers and NCOs (at least the ones that do not "crack" or become casualties) benefit from length of experience.

3. In some cases, the Germans possessed definite technical advantages in weapons or doctrine. Compared to the western Allies, they had heavier tanks, as all CM players know. They also had the best MG in the world, the best anti-tank rockets, excellent AT and AA guns. While lapses from sound doctrine certainly hampered them at the strategic level, the field officers had been trained by those who invented mobile warfare techniques, and combined arms, flexible kampgruppes, etc were considerably better than the Allied standards, at least in the German mobile formations. Only the U.S. armored divisions had a similarly advanced doctrine, and there were only 6 of those in the Normandy fight and ~12 at the West-wall and Ardennes.

4. Another explanation often put forward, though the analysis of it is sketchier and harder to put a numerical factor on, is what goes in the literature by the name of "small unit cohesion". At the basic level, that just means the men of a company (or less) showing high loyalty and self-sacrifice to each other. And this can be traced to definite practices, not relegated to some alleged political or cultural point.

For instance, German units were generally recruited from the same town or village. The men had in many cases known each other since childhood - although they often did not know their officers. In the U.S. Army, units were a hodge-podge from everywhere thrown together, just as Americans expect to function in any civilian job.

U.S. units were kept in the line continually, while individual replacements filled out losses. German units fought until "spent", then were sent to the rear to refit, with new men again from some one place (the same or a new one). This practice may also have prevented "peaking" of combat performance after the 2-4 month period, better than new raw recruits thrown in with the burnt-out old hands, in the U.S. system. (The Brits were somewhat like the Germans in these regards, incidentally, but less so).

It is hard to quantify the relative impacts of these sorts of factors. If one finds little evidence for the first three being meaningful, then one is thrown onto the mushier fourth, or others.

Personally, I think the equipment advantages were balanced by technical Allied advantages in other areas, and above all by the comparatively dismal supply situation. I think the heavy weapons effect is definite and real, and may account for as much as half of the detected "combat effectiveness" difference. That part, in other words, is just counting the wrong beans (men, instead of heavy weapons). That still leaves a ~25% edge to be accounted for by the other two factors.

I think the doctrine and experience differences account for some of that remainder, but probably not all of it. The rest goes to the recruitment and replacement factors and their cohesion effects.

But it is noticable that these cohesion effects have something of an all-or-nothing quality. The men will fight better to save each other, but (at least against the western Allies, rather than Russians) once the situation was hopeless enough it would also council more surrenders.

I mean, the men are fighting much more to literally save each other's lives, than to fufill any political purpose, and the standards of allowable and shameful would be focused much more within the small group, much less outside of it. Compared to the relative "corporate anonymity" of U.S. formations, I mean.

Obviously, both factors are present in both cases. It is just a shading of weight between them, involved. U.S. soldiers fought to save each other and Germans fought to accomplish missions and win praise from superiors, of course. They just probably did these things in different amounts, because of "who they were hanging with". The Americans were "at the office", in terms of their associations with the men around them; the Germans were in their home "neighborhood". If that back-of-the-evelope anthropology-psychology makes any sense.

Undoubtedly how the whole war was going (global morale) had a big impact on this. It is still striking that the largest U.S. formation that surrendered in the war was one regiment cut off in the Ardennes, while even before the final collapse, Germans surrendered in numbers orders of magnitude larger. They fought harder, but gave up more easily too. It was all or nothing.

My thoughts on an old issue...

[Michael Dorosh]

Originally posted by jasoncawley@ameritech.net:

I don't think so. There are combat effectiveness calculations that yield the 1.5 ratio, but it does not mean that was the ratio of actual losses. It wasn't. The U.S. Army lost 435k in the whole ETO for the whole war, for instance, dead wounded and missing (the Air Force excluded), while the Germans lost more than that in Normandy alone (450k - nearly half of them PWs), in just 2 1/2 months.

I think wh.

Did the British, Canadians, Poles and French kill one or two of them?

[Mlapanzer]

First off I would like to know who went around and decided if a man was killed by ground fire, aircraft, mortor, Arty, EtEl.

I have never seen actual substantiated numbers broken out this way.

The myth of the super German soldier is just that, a myth.

The Numbers I found on the US Army web site are. In the west 265,000 Germans 135,576

Americans and 60,00 Allied deaths. (May God rest all there souls.)These are deaths directly attributed to battle. That does not add up. Does it matter how a man is killed? I think not.

And how about the number of Germans who surrendered? 275,000 alone in North Africa.

Super soldier I think not. If you want to call any men who fought in WW2 super soldiers it would be the Allied Paratroopers.

The Red Devils, Screaming Eagles and the rest. How many Divisions was it that couldn't take Bastone? Hum! I beleive it was 9Div. that couldn't defeat an under strenght airborne Div. with some armor support.Thats without the Allied Airforce that was grounded for most of the battle and only the Div. own Arty for support.

As in the words of Gen. McAuliffe "NUTS"

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If my numbers are slightly off or I missed a few units at Bastone I apologize but I think you get the gist of this post.

[Michael Dorosh]

Having said that, your other points are valid on their face. Not sure the regimental system is a big advantage; it has its drawbacks as employed by the British and Canadians - ie promoting from within one battalion rather than having the best leaders from across a division.

Without a doubt the German Army performed extremely well - they took in 6 months what it took the Russians at least 4 times as long to get back. It was the same story in the west.

Add in the cradle to grave system of service to the state - HJ, RAD, Army - you have a very motivated pool of manpower.

And when you kill their families and burn their hometowns to the ground with firebombs, they don't have much reason to lay down their arms and quit, even once they've been beaten.

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CANUCK: Clothing, Equipping and Employing the Canadian Soldier in Combat Mission

[Michael Dorosh]

Originally posted by Mlapanzer:

First off I would like to know who went around and decided if a man was killed by ground fire, aircraft, mortor, Arty, EtEl.

I have never seen actual substantiated numbers broken out this way.

The myth of the super German soldier is just that, a myth.

The Numbers I found on the US Army web site are. In the west 265,000 Germans 135,576

Americans and 60,00 Allied deaths. (May God rest all there souls.)These are deaths directly attributed to battle. That does not add up. Does it matter how a man is killed? I think not.

And how about the number of Germans who surrendered? 275,000 alone in North Africa.

Super soldier I think not. If you want to call any men who fought in WW2 super soldiers it would be the Allied Paratroopers.

The Red Devils, Screaming Eagles and the rest. How many Divisions was it that couldn't take Bastone? Hum! I beleive it was 9Div. that couldn't defeat an under strenght airborne Div. with some armor support.Thats without the Allied Airforce that was grounded for most of the battle and only the Div. own Arty for support.

As in the words of Gen. McAuliffe "NUTS"

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If my numbers are slightly off or I missed a few units at Bastone I apologize but I think you get the gist of this post.

They were ALL brave men, just for having been there. Speaking from a non-emotional, professional viewpoint, the Allies had a very amateur show, and won their victories through numbers and firepower. What matters in the end is that they won, but tactical brilliance unfortunately wasn't part of their make up.

How could it be? Canada had about 1000 fulltime infantrymen in 1939. She expanded to 5 overseas divisions by 1943. The US was in similar shape. The democracies didn't want large standing armies, and I think they suffered because of it. The Germans were better, because their men served in uniform, almost universally, from the age of about 12.

That the Allies won despite all that is testament to their courage, their conviction, but also their wealth of resources, and in the case of Russia, vast manpower pool.

[Terence]

Originally posted by Mlapanzer:

If my numbers are slightly off or I missed a few units at Bastone I apologize but I think you get the gist of this post.

Umm. Not really.

[Barticus]

OK, a quick question. How many men were in an Allied or Axis Division at this time? If Divisions are engaged and inflicting 150 to 250 casualties per day, well, it seems kinda low. At least low when compared to moderate sized engagements in CMBO. A quick battle last night that had 3 companies of Americans defending yielded over 200 casualties per side.

Just wondering.

Bart

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"I have slipped the

surly bonds of earth...."

[Michael Dorosh]

Originally posted by Barticus:

OK, a quick question. How many men were in an Allied or Axis Division at this time? If Divisions are engaged and inflicting 150 to 250 casualties per day, well, it seems kinda low. At least low when compared to moderate sized engagements in CMBO. A quick battle last night that had 3 companies of Americans defending yielded over 200 casualties per side.

Just wondering.

Bart

You need to look at how many riflemen there were; they took the majority of the casualties.

The Canadian or British division had 9 rifle battalions, 4 companies per battalion, about 120 men per company - 4320 men in the rifle companies. They didn't suffer the only casualties, just the majority. I have figures at home for daily averages, but the total over 9 months for some Canadian battalions was about 1500 total casualties, about 400 being killed. These includes the winter stalemate and quiet periods. During full scale attacks, casualties went through the roof - HLI lost 262 in one day at Buron, Black Watch lost 310 at Verrierres Ridge (mostly in the rifle companies, again).

On the average, though, 100 or 200 casualties a day for an infantry division, averaged out over a month, doesn't seem unreasonable.

Bear in mind that combat on the CM scale was rare - most actions were fighting patrols (30 men) and smaller actions. Full scale attacks were costly and rare, and shared out among the units.

[Guest machineman]

There was also a fair bit of effort in the interwar period to create a 'thinking fighting man' that could readily adapt to new situations. From what I understand this helped combat effectiveness considerably, especially when outnumbered and things were otherwise going to hell.

"Every one of us was instructed in nearly every fact of infantry and armored warfare; not ust as a soldier who must know how to fight in the ditch or foxhole, or how to assemble or disassemble a firearm blind-folded, but training in tactics as well. In other words, it was put to us like this: "What would you do now if your platoon leader was killed? What course of action would you undertake? What decisions would you make?" Thinking back, it seems like every recruit was trained as a potential leader - one who could competently assume command should the need arise."

From:

http://www.feldgrau.com/interview6.html

[jasoncawley@ameritech.net]

Authorized division strengths were around 10-15k men, while typical actual strengths were more like 8-10k men. Burnt out formations could be as low as half of that. You must also understand, however, that only half of those - or less, perhaps 1/4 in some cases after long periods of fighting - are the actual "teeth" manpower numbers that appear on CM battlefields. As opposed to rear area troops, supply, artillery, signals, maintenance, yadda yadda.

CM combats are fights at very close odds ratios and at very close ranges. Most fights in WW II were not of that character - they were lopsided affairs, locally, where one side had everything and the other side fought back feebly and then gave up, ran, surrendered, or were wiped out. Or situations in which numbers didn't help and defenders just picked men off at their leisure, from long range and without being in any serious danger themselves, until the attackers gave it up.

Lots of areas of the front, there was either no fighting going on at any given time, or more commonly just occasional artillery shelling and small patrols. When the war is going to be decided by the breakthrough battle 50 miles away, there is not a high priority put on going and getting killed before its outcome is known.

The formations involved typically turned over their entire combat strength once or twice in the course of the campaign, from D-Day until the end of the war. In the case of the U.S., about half of these losses were from combat and half were from sickness and other causes - like trenchfoot, frostbite, etc.

By comparison, a typical CM engagement features losses on the order of 2/3rds on one side, and 1/3rds on the other. If which side each happened to were a coin-flip, that would imply the average soldier only saw two fights that intense in his whole period in combat. He either got wounded in one of them, or got trenchfoot between two of them, and that was his war.

This does not mean he did not see plenty of other combats, he probably did. They just weren't fights pursued to such a bloody outcome by both sides, at such short ranges, and with such even odds. CM style fights did happen, they just aren't the only things going on. More like the worst ones.

Some people, of course, faced more than their share of these. As an example, though, the 101st Airborne lost half its strength in Normandy, in about a month of combat before being pulled out of the line. This was high losses by any measure. But many CM players think nothing of taking losses that high, to their own little paratroop force, in one half-hour fight.

The real participants did not mash into each other in such dicey, close encounters, with the abandon that CM players mash their digital images into each other. They consequently lived rather longer than the digital images do.

[Michael Dorosh]

Originally posted by machineman:

There was also a fair bit of effort in the interwar period to create a 'thinking fighting man' that could readily adapt to new situations. From what I understand this helped combat effectiveness considerably, especially when outnumbered and things were otherwise going to hell.

Good point; I'd be interested in learning more. The 47th (London) Division did invent "Battle Drill" during WW II and it spread to the British and Canadians. One catchprase of this training was "every man a general."

This kind of training was actually criticized, because it was practiced (in the case of the Canadians, anyway) at the expense of collective trainnig at the company and battalion level. All it did was teach reactions to specific "events" at the squad and platoon level. I suspect it was very much different from what the Germans taught their own men, and I think your comments about "thinking men" are right on the money. I have read that German junior NCOs were told that any decision - even a bad one - was better than no decision at all.

I don't know specifically how the Germans trained, but would suspect based on your comments and other things that I've read that they had a much better system of training battalions and subunits than the Allies. Jason points out too the addition of experience by 1944-45 as pretty important. Anyone who can shed more light on this is encouraged to do so.

[Tiger]

A good book to read that relates to this is "Steel Inferno, 1st SS panzer Corps in Normandy" by Michael Reynolds. I've been reading it and it seems he doesn't pull alot of punches for either side. This book gives a good comparison of casulties inflicted and suffered for both sides.

`Tiger

[Barticus]

Originally posted by Michael Dorosh:

This kind of training was actually criticized, because it was practiced (in the case of the Canadians, anyway) at the expense of collective trainnig at the company and battalion level. All it did was teach reactions to specific "events" at the squad and platoon level. I suspect it was very much different from what the Germans taught their own men, and I think your comments about "thinking men" are right on the money. I have read that German junior NCOs were told that any decision - even a bad one - was better than no decision at all.

I don't know specifically how the Germans trained, but would suspect based on your comments and other things that I've read that they had a much better system of training battalions and subunits than the Allies. Jason points out too the addition of experience by 1944-45 as pretty important. Anyone who can shed more light on this is encouraged to do so.

Don't know if this will shed more light or not, but id does make you think a bit. My Father lived through the war in Holland and has stated on numerous occasions that every German soldier knew what the battle plan was, and his part in it. I do not know how he knows this, but he certainly believed it, and since he was there........

Secondly, I heard this comment somewhere, I can't remember where, and it has stuck with me;

"It was unsure to the infantry whether the success of the Canadian troops were because of inspired leadership, or despite the lack of it."

Or something to that effect (it was a long time ago).

[Guest tero]

>I don't think so. There are combat effectiveness calculations that yield the 1.5 ratio, but it does not mean that was the ratio of actual losses. It wasn't. The U.S. Army lost 435k in the whole ETO for the whole war, for instance, dead wounded and missing (the Air Force excluded), while the Germans lost more than that in Normandy alone (450k - nearly half of them PWs), in just 2 1/2 months.

History according to SPR ?

You forget there were a few other Western Allied nationalities doing their fair share of dying. How do they fit into these calculations ?

And do POW's add to the numbers of combat losses ? They were listed as MIA at the time. Depends whose figures you read into the statistics.

>That implies greater combat effectiveness per person, yes. But it doesn't mean the guy with the smaller force (lower side of the odds ratio), didn't take higher losses in both cases, than the guy with the higher side.

????

Compared to what ? Absolute losses ? Entire population ? Combat strenght of according to regulations ? Actual field strenght of a unit (where 30% loss from a platoon of 9 men is way less than 30 % losses of a full streght company fresh out of boot camp) ?

Germans consolidated in the field while the Allies rotated out of the front line to replenish the formations.

Please take off your red/white/blue reading classes and insert some source critique on ALL sources, not just non-American ones.

>Basically the Germans took higher losses but did much better than you'd "expect" them too given the odds they faced.

According to what sources ? I have been looking for actual loss figures for Western Allied armour for years so PLEASE feel free to quote them and compare them to German armour losses.

>In cases were the U.S. and Brits were defending, they did not do as well when the odds were as steeply against them as they usually were for the Germans. That can meaningfully be called combat effectiveness. But it means no such simplistic thing, as that the Germans inflicted higher losses than they took.

What WERE the losses sustained by the Americans during the early stages of the Ardennes offencive, compared to the German losses during that same period of time ?

Whenever Anglo-American historians make these comparisons they conveniently use incompatible criteria when they compare Allied losses to German losses. Or they use the phrases like "there is no reliable data available on Allied losses for that period of time". I DO wonder so how the German figures are readily available...

>By mid 1944, the Russians often inflicted greater losses than they took (e.g. in Bagration).

Or not. During their assault in the Karelian Isthmus during the summer of 1944 the human losses were fairly equal at the start but they taking more losses than they inflicted in the end. Whereas the Finns lost a grand total of 44 tanks during that period (out of some 120 = ~30% losses and most of the losses were T-26's which were no match for the Soviets tanks of the period) the Soviets lost between 700 and 1 000 tanks, most of them T-34's, KV's, IS's, ISU/JSU's.

For comparison: total losses for Winter War: Finns (defending) 26 000 KIA, 6 (?) tanks, Soviets (attacking, mostly ) 130 000 - 200 000 KIA, 3 000 tanks.

>Whereas the attacking Allied formation, recently "replaced", might have 90 and 95% of TOE. Thus the manpower odds may be ~2:1 while the weapons odds are only ~3:2.

If the Allied units are recently replaced and the Germans are worn out that would mean closer to 5-1 odds in rifle man power while the heavy weapons ratio is the said 3:2.

>2.(2-4 months is the range)

Depends on the intensity of the fighting.

>, there is little doubt that officers and NCOs (at least the ones that do not "crack" or become casualties) benefit from length of experience.

And yet it was always the rookies who got shot first time out...

>Only the U.S. armored divisions had a similarly advanced doctrine, and there were only 6 of those in the Normandy fight and ~12 at the West-wall and Ardennes.

You call the TD separation doctrine advanced ?

>4.At the basic level, that just means the men of a company (or less) showing high loyalty and self-sacrifice to each other. And this can be traced to definite practices, not relegated to some alleged political or cultural point.

Agreed. That is why the German formations were more cohesive. They consolidated in the field so the infusion of "foreign" materiel into the unit was not very traumatic as the newcomers had had their parent units shot from under them. The Allies had a constant influx of materiel not used to combat that made the old hands wary. Being put in charge of the rookies must have been a great strain to their psyche, given the fact that they were liable to see them killed in a day or two. Bonding between the newcomers and the old hands was harder.

>For instance, German units were generally recruited from the same town or village. The men had in many cases known each other since childhood - although they often did not know their officers. In the U.S. Army, units were a hodge-podge from everywhere thrown together, just as Americans expect to function in any civilian job.

That is possibly why the losses were not so hard felt. You did not lose your next door neighbour so you did not take the war so personally.

>U.S. units were kept in the line continually, while individual replacements filled out losses. German units fought until "spent", then were sent to the rear to refit, with new men again from some one place (the same or a new one).

I think you have it backwards. When the German unit was spent it was amalgameted to another spent unit. They would often be rotated back only when the entire parent unit was spent, if at all. This meant the survivors spent more time in the front line than the average Allied survivor.

>This practice may also have prevented "peaking" of combat performance after the 2-4 month period, better than new raw recruits thrown in with the burnt-out old hands, in the U.S. system.

Nonononono. The average German soldier could spend YEARS on end in combat conditions in the frontline while the average American spent perhaps a few months at a time front line and the rest of the time being rotated to and from the front line.

>Allied advantages in other areas, and above all by the comparatively dismal supply situation.

Yet I read stories how the Allies were often short on this or that, mostly fuel or arty ammo....

>But it is noticable that these cohesion effects have something of an all-or-nothing quality. The men will fight better to save each other, but (at least against the western Allies, rather than Russians) once the situation was hopeless enough it would also council more surrenders.

By 1944 that is very true.

>Undoubtedly how the whole war was going (global morale) had a big impact on this. It is still striking that the largest U.S. formation that surrendered in the war was one regiment cut off in the Ardennes, while even before the final collapse, Germans surrendered in numbers orders of magnitude larger.

This applies to the situation in 1944 but you forget the events in the Pacific in 1941. When these events are taken into account this picture becomes a bit blurred.

[This message has been edited by tero (edited 03-01-2001).]

[Michael Dorosh]

Originally posted by tero:

>

You call the TD separation doctrine advanced ?

Yet I read stories how the Allies were often short on this or that, mostly fuel or arty ammo....

[This message has been edited by tero (edited 03-01-2001).]

Two comments - the western Allies were short of manpower also- in the Canadian case, there were enough troops, but not enough of them were trained as infantry. There was duplication caused by the unnecessary addition of a second Corps Headquarters to the Army, which sucked able bodied men away from the front, for just one example, plus all the redundant anti-aircraft units, a 200 man Tobacco Depot in England, etc., etc.

Also, the failure to predict the godawful infantry casualties of Normandy (they based their predictions on the desert experience of 8th Army), led to a crisis by November 1944. The British also had a crisis (they used the same predictions), and had to disband some units to make up shortfalls. Not sure about the Yanks. The Canadians were desperate enough to send conscripts to Europe, but by the time they got there, the problem had resolved itself by a relatively calm winter with light casualties (Kapelsche Veer and other exceptions notwithstanding).

As for TD doctrine - LOL! But you know, the doctrine may have been okay, the terrain in Normandy just didn't allow them to put it into practice. You turn the corner in a country lane with your Sherman and find Barkmann or Wittman in a Panther or Tiger, you can't call for the TDs....

[Kitty]

Originally posted by Terence:

"on a man for man basis, the German ground soldiers consistently inflicted casualties at about a 50% higher rate than they incurred from opposing British and American troops under all circumstances."

There's absolutely no way to prove that. Think about it. Graves registration team member comes across a dead German soldier with a .50 caliber bullet hole through his chest. Was this soldier a) killed by ground fire or by a strafing P-47? I mean

how many battles in the war were fought exclusively by "ground soldiers?" Do artillery and armor count as "ground soldiers?" Last I looked they were machines and or/machinery.

I don't care if his statement is true or not, whoever wrote it is a twit. <shrug>

Kitty

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[Skipper]

> the Soviets lost between 700 and 1 000

> tanks, most of them T-34's, KV's, IS's,

> ISU/JSU's.

That's hardly correct. Most of them must be SU-76s methinks.

By the way, there was no such thing as JSU - ISU abbreviation means self-propelled destroyer [of tanks] and has nothing to do with Uncle Joe.

[Guest tero]

>That's hardly correct.

Finnish claims. No data on Soviet losses available on Russian archives, I think

> Most of them must be SU-76s methinks.

Nope. Mostly T-34/85's.

>By the way, there was no such thing as JSU - ISU abbreviation means self-propelled destroyer [of tanks] and has nothing to do with Uncle Joe.

I was referring to the JS and KV chassis. It should have read SU/ISU(-152). Bonafide typo.

[Michael Dorosh]

Originally posted by Kitty:

There's absolutely no way to prove that. Think about it. Graves registration team member comes across a dead German soldier with a .50 caliber bullet hole through his chest. Was this soldier a) killed by ground fire or by a strafing P-47? I mean

how many battles in the war were fought exclusively by "ground soldiers?" Do artillery and armor count as "ground soldiers?" Last I looked they were machines and or/machinery.

I don't care if his statement is true or not, whoever wrote it is a twit. <shrug>

Kitty

Meow, Kitty. In most cases, casualties occur in infantry units in twos or threes, seldom entire units at a time. Meticulous records are kept, or attempted to be kept. No doubt this breaks down during large battles, or when the enemy is losing.

But where I agree that cause of death is difficult to track with accuracy (in some cases, certainly not all), the numbers are generally accurate since units report up the chain of command regularly. The Germans were best of all about keeping records - look at the concentration camp papers they saved, and the fact that this was evidence of mass murder apparently didn't deter them!

Simon will say I'm sermonizing, but your name calling doesn't add to the level of discourse - this was, for me, one of the best conversations we've had going in recent days, I hope it won't devolve into immature name calling because of your lack of understanding of military procedure. I'm here to learn, not namecall when I don't understand something, and from the other uniformly excellent posts here, I think the same is true of the others as well.

[Skipper]

> As for TD doctrine - LOL! But you know,

> the doctrine may have been okay, the

> terrain in Normandy just didn't allow them

> to put it into practice.

I don;t know if this is your own miunderstanding or a widespread misunderstanding, but in its true original form it was not a tactical doctrine, but an operational one. Exact meaning being:

"friggin never use tanks to defend the directions of a possible tank attack, if there is any other choice."

Not because tanks are worse at that than AT or SP-AT guns, but because using them as as anti-tank weapons is a poor "value for money".

OTOH, if you are a tank platoon CO advancing through a terrain and you see an enemy tank, you engage it.