Frontsoldaten -- Allied Casualty Revelation?

[Skipper]

> Finnish claims.

If that, divide by 3.14159.... And make em T-70s No offence, this is so for all armies of all times. For some the above coefficient is even 3.14159 squared.

> No data on Soviet losses

> available on Russian archives, I think

Must be available. Most archival documents on the period have been de-classified in the last 10 years.

[Michael Dorosh]

Originally posted by 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.

I'm having trouble understanding some of your sentences, but the last two are clear. So you're saying the doctrine was ok - it was just that the tanks they had to work with sucked?

[ropey]

I actually read the Dupuy book MANY years ago. His attempt was to statistically analyse the effectiveness of various formations in warfare. He analysed official stats (no, I can't be more specific about that - it was a LONG time ago.) for various formations - Allied/Axis, Arab/Israeli (even Union/Confederate if memory serves?) and tried to set a combat effectiveness rating.

He modelled terrain and weather effects, and I believe logistical. He analysed many battles involving these same units, both attacking and defending, and found that with the model used if you factored out the terrain, weather etc, most (not all) German units appeared to perform better than Allied, and Israeli better than Arab.

As always there's "lies, damned lies and statistics". Of course the analysis was open to much criticism, and if you don't accept his model for a start, his deductions may not impress.

I remember finding the book while researching the military's use of wargames, probably because its statistical model was used as a basis for some games.

Again, it was s long time ago so forgive me any frailty of memory.

------------------

Never leave your mind so open your brains fall out.

[Skipper]

> So you're saying the doctrine was ok - it

> was just that the tanks they had to work

> with sucked?

No. I am saying that the "tanks shouldnt fight tanks" doctrine (at least in RKKA) was not meant for tactical situations. It was for regimental level and higher.

[Guest machineman]

Another quote that may be of interest, especially to those who have read a lot of Ambrose:

"It seems that the Allied numerical Superiority in Normandy has not been clear to all authors. Indeed some have not even observed it at all. Stephen E. Ambrose has even written:

'Soviet dictator Joseph Stalin relied on overwhelming numbers, and to some extent American-supplied equipment, to fight the Wehrmacht. The British and Americans were going to have to rely on their soldiers outfighting Nazi soldiers, because the numbers of troops on the opposing sides were roughly equal.'

This is entirely wrong. When Operation Cobra was launched, the Germans had brought to Normandy about 410,000 men in divisions and non-divisional combat units. If this is multiplied by 1.19 [Zetterling's factor for adding service and support manpower outside German divisions and non-div units] we arrive at approximately 490,000 soldiers. However, until 23 July, casualties amounted to 116,863, while only 10,078 replacements had arrived. This means that no more than 380,000 soldiers remained in Normandy or supported the fighting in Normandy. On 25 July there were 812,000 US soldiers and 640,000 British in Normandy. This means that the Allies had a 3.8:1 superiority in manpower. This was better than the superiority enjoyed by the Red Army on the Eastern Front. On 1 June 1944

the Soviets pitted 7.25 million men against 2.62 million Germans."

From:

http://www.sonic.net/~bstone/archives/001126.shtml

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

[Guest machineman]

Some other comments from that article that may have a point here:

"There are far too many books blindly praising the superiority of German arms, worshiping every SS commander as though a god of war incarnate, and sometimes linking combat performance to Nazi racial and political ideology. In an environment where that kind of unhealthy fetishism is distressingly popular, it's no wonder that a cadre of writers such as Ambrose and Mansoor and Doubler and Brown might go a bit overboard in attempting to demonstrate the superiority of American combat performance in Europe."

and:

"Given this database of units and manpower and tanks and guns and casualties, one point shines through. German soldiers certainly were not supermen, and they were never invincible, but in Normandy they absolutely managed to do more with considerably less than most historians have previously conceded."

[Terence]

Fascinating stuff, folks.

Thanks especially to Machineman, Jason Michael, Tero, and Skipper. Really interesting facts and perspectives.

Hope the discussion continues. The author of Frontsoldaten says that some of the success the Germans soldiers was due to their intense training. What do you guys think?

Just from reading, it sounds as if the training the Landser received was more equivalent to the training the elite units such as the 101st Airborne and so on received. Or have I misapprehended the situation?

I also suspect that Lansser training changed from year to year and month to month as time passed and the situation for Germany got more and more desperate. In Steel Inferno, the SS divisions in Normandy got replacement infantry from the Luftwaffe, didn't they?

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

[Aacooper]

DuPuy's statistics can show that US soldiers were superior if you slightly tweak the factors given for airpower and artillery. There's some discussion in an article "Colonel Trevor N. Dupuy and the Mythos of Wehrmacht Superiority: A Reconsideration" by John Sloan Brown in Military Affairs January '86 issue. I haven't read the article, but Mansoor discusses the article, and "Riveria to the Rhine" (US Army Green Book) refers to it.

Basically, you can give the Germans more credit if you analyze the battles of Normandy. Normandy has the ultimate defensive terrain and the US Army had not reached it's "mature" combat capability.

On the other hand, if you read about the September through December battles on the Siegfried Line, Lorraine, and Vosges the Americans consistently took more prisoners than lost men to German fire. Since German casualty records are incomplete, that's the best indication the US Army was winning the attrition battle, even though all three areas had fortifications, and bad weather reduced US advantages in armor and airpower. In addition, supply problems caused artillery shell shortages. That time period also saw the US suffer heavy casualties in the Hurtgen, but the Germans also suffered heavy casualties too -- Gen Model wanted to be buried in the Hurtgen in recognition of the German sacrifices there!

Another problem with DuPuy's analysis is that it studies a disproportionate number of battles with Panzer and Panzergrenadier formations. The "elite" formations of course are going to look better. In reality, the Allies faced good divisions as well as a bunch of thrown-together kampfgruppes which could neither attack nor defend due to their lack of cohesion.

My take on it is that the US Army and the German army peaked at different times, so it's impossible to get a good comparison. The Germans racked up victories against second-rate armies (though the Soviet army was fearsome, on a man-to-man basis there was no comparison), but by the time a first-rate army (or seven armies) landed on the Continent, manpower losses meant the German army was past its peak.

The Western Allies did not push the Germans back with a mass of men and material. The Commonwealth forces peaked in size in July '44, and the US Army had manpower constraints as well.

While I'm at it, there are several battles where the US commanders out-command the German generals. The Vosges are perhaps the best example of this -- the Germans were moving too late, acting on outdated information, and used insufficient forces to accomplish anything. That's how, despite the wettest weather since 1919, two lines of fortifications, and defensible terrain, the Americans punched through territory that Hitler wanted held until April '45.

[Mlapanzer]

Bravo AACOOPER I agree with everything you say. Very well written. I think Kitty was trying to say the same thing when she said the Guy was a twit. (Which by the way is an actual word in the English dictonary. Not just name calling)

To say that the German soldier was %50 more effective man for man over all the forces is just plain ludicrous or Neo-Nazi propaganda.

One other point to counter to some extent.

The statement that U.S. units were just a hodge podge of guys just thrown together from all over the country. Don't tell that to all the National Guard units that fought thoughout history including WW2. Plus it wasn't uncommon for all the Conscript from an area to be put together to form units. If you look through the musters of Divisions before they went into combat you find many men from the same areas together. Of course when the units were replenished after loses the integrity of these units did suffer. A question is which would be worse. Whole units of green troops or mixing in green troops with the veterans?

As for the statements about the man in the German Army being trained as a leader and knowing the battle plans. That thinking was and still is part of the U.S. Army. I wish I could find the book "Panzer Commander:The memoirs of Col. Hans Von Luck" to quote from. Von Luck who fought on every front of the war against every nationality and when asked which was the toughest to fight against he said the U.S. Army because of there resorcefullness and the ability of the soldiers to fight on even when their leaders were killed.

[Michael Dorosh]

Originally posted by Terence:

Fascinating stuff, folks.

Thanks especially to Machineman, Jason Michael, Tero, and Skipper. Really interesting facts and perspectives.

Hope the discussion continues. The author of Frontsoldaten says that some of the success the Germans soldiers was due to their intense training. What do you guys think?

Just from reading, it sounds as if the training the Landser received was more equivalent to the training the elite units such as the 101st Airborne and so on received. Or have I misapprehended the situation?

I also suspect that Lansser training changed from year to year and month to month as time passed and the situation for Germany got more and more desperate. In Steel Inferno, the SS divisions in Normandy got replacement infantry from the Luftwaffe, didn't they?

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

German Infantry received 16 weeks of basic training, followed by trades training - during the war this shortened considerably, officially to 7 or 8 weeks but sometimes less than even that.

Canadian units, for example, in 1939 received no formal basic training, and learned drill On The Job. In 1940, they were still learning how to fight in WW I trenches. By 1942 they were doing serious work in combined arms training, and new recruits did go through formalized basic training followed by trades training.

But the Germans taught their basic training at home, then sent the recruit off to his trades training in the occupied countries, sometimes near the front lines - usually in a draft composed of men from the same region or city, and as a formed unit. His advanced training often involved partisan hunts, and other realistic forms of training.

Canadian training seemed a little less serious - one infantry signaller called his advanced training in England nothing but a glorified pub crawl. I am not saying they didn't work hard - battle drill was especially demanding physically and mentally - I just think historians are up in the air as to how relevant the training Allied soldiers did was.

The Germans stopped teaching drill, for example, and bayonet fighting, as both were seen as of little relevancy. Allied troops continued to spend time on stuff like this, on the other hand.

I stand corrected on "twit" - though Oxford doesn't provide any more of a meaning than "person with fault." If Kitty's intended use of the word was academic in nature, then I apologize.

[Terence]

Originally posted by Mlapanzer:

)

To say that the German soldier was %50 more effective man for man over all the forces is just plain ludicrous or Neo-Nazi propaganda.

I'm pretty certain that Col. Dupuy is not a Neo-Nazi.

And since he did a great deal of research to add to his own military service, I think we can be pretty sure that his conclusions (while they might in fact be wrong, exxagerated or off base) are not "ludicrous."

And while some US formation did contain men from the same town, its pretty clear that it was not the STATED POLICY of the US Army to keep men from the same home towns together.

In fact, consistently one of Eisenhowers first questions to soldiers, when he toured the units under his command, was "Where are you from, son?" He was always tickled by the many different answers he got in the same unit.

[Guest tero]

>If that, divide by 3.14159.... And make em T-70s No offence, this is so for all armies of all times. For some the above coefficient is even 3.14159 squared.

Yes.

But they were STILL mostly T-34's and IS-2's.

Also, please consider the fact that Finnish claims for tanks destroyed during Winter War was 1 200. The actual total losses (verified by the Russians themselves) were over 3 000 and of those the actual combat losses VERY close to that 1 200 claim.

>Must be available. Most archival documents on the period have been de-classified in the last 10 years.

So far these figures have been in the dark. Believe me, Finnish historians have been going through the Russian archives throughly.

[jasoncawley@ameritech.net]

>History according to SPR ?

No, just plain history. I don't get my history from popular accounts. OB West was largely destroyed between the Normandy attrition fighting and the Falaise pocket. Model had to pull one of his patented "jump through your anatomy" exercises. The German histories refer to it as "the miracle of the West". We also know the Allied losses, and the number of PWs. In fact, in more than 15 years of studying the histories, I have never heard a single source even allege that the Germans actually lost fewer men in the west than the Allies. Can you name one that does?

>You forget there were a few other Western Allied nationalities

Nonsense. Why the uncharitable sniping, anyway? I assume everyone knows that the U.S. contribution was around 2/3rds of the Allied one, increasing from around 1/2 at the time of Normandy, to more like 3/4 by the end. If the U.S. lost less in the entire campaign than the Germans did in Normandy alone - and I have every reason to think so, and you have advanced none for me to think otherwise - then there is no way the German losses were lower than Allied for the whole war. Because ~2/3rds of the losses were U.S., and Normandy was nothing like most of the campaign. "More" times one over "nothing like most", is going to be larger than, "less" times one over "2/3rds".

And of course PWs are combat losses - up until the final collapse, say, at the surrender of the Ruhr pocket. They certainly aren't still serving in their units. As for counting them, you look at the captor's figures for PWs. The missing figure is usually a mix of PWs, KIAs, and stragglers.

I made the point that greater combat effectiveness does not equal lower losses. You replied with four question marks and a lot of irrelevant "compared to what?" Compared to the other guys losses, obviously. If I bring 10 men to a fight and you bring 3, and afterward I have 8 standing and you have none, it is entirely possible that your combat effectiveness per person was higher than mine. But your losses were also higher, 3 vs. 2. Your losses were higher because you faced superior odds. That in itself does not imply lower combat effectiveness. It just means - you faced superior odds, so you took higher losses. The higher odds outweighed and swamped whatever effectiveness edge you may have had.

And this, I believe, is substantially the case in the fight in the West. The Germans took higher losses than the Allies - more than 1.5 times the Americans losses (close enough to the same statement). They lost most of OB West, twice. That is a huge scale of losses. I do not know why this is so hard to grok. The Germans faced a superior Allied force, which attrited the Germans (several times over really), and moved the "fielded numbers ratio" further in the Allied favor.

In Normandy, for instance, losses in engaged German formations ran at around 6 times the rate of replacements reaching the front. On the U.S. side, replacements equaled losses and additional formations were continually added to the battle. The Brits had less ability to replace losses, but had some formations not yet ashore. This was during the attrition phase, when overall losses rates were running roughly equal. After a while of this, the fielded German force was substantially weaker than it had been. The Allied force was not weaker, but stronger, despite roughly equal losses to that point.

This growing odds difference then led (with other actions, but this was the main driver) to the Germans no longer being able to hold a continuous front, and breakout was achieved. The breakout destroyed much of the German Normandy force that hadn't been attrited away already, especially in the Falaise pocket. Such German formations as did make it out of the Normandy battle were mostly cadres rather than field units anymore.

But perhaps somebody thinks I am making it up. Here are the field strengths of German AFVs operational in the mobile divisions that fought in Normandy, by early August (thus soon after the breakout), according to a source citing German records - taking the *highest* daily figure in early August, not low points -

Pz Lehr - 34, 1st SS - 29, 2nd Pz - 24, 2nd SS - 16, 9th SS - 40, 10th SS - 20, 12th SS - 29, 21st Pz - 20, 116th Pz - between 77 (end of July) and 18 (3rd week in August), 17th SS PG - 10

That is all the mobile divisions that fought in Normandy. Add 'em up - 300 running tanks and TDs, on the highest 116th Pz figure (it was in reserve and not committed until the end of July). Their TOE is more like 2000, and a detailed "census" of German AFVs records ~2500 AFVs sent to Normandy all told.

A random "pick a couple" survey of German infantry divisions shows some losing 1/3rds of their strength before the breakout, anothers losing 1/2 in the Falaise pocket and almost all their heavy weapons, etc. While the attrition period was doing that to the Germans, the Allies were doubling their number of divisions in combat, then pushed that to triple in the breakout as more room to deploy was created, including commitment of the armor.

It is not in the least surprising that the Germans lost more men as a result of all of the above. They were facing far superior total odds, both through time (or depth, or fresh formations being fed into the front) as well as along the front at any given moment. By the time of the breakout, the odds ratio in operational tanks was probably 10 to 1. Not because of "outproducing them" by anything near that ratio, but because 2500 - 2200 is only 300, so 10 to 1 odds only takes 3000 plus losses incurred. It does not require 25000 built. Attrition is all about the effect *subtraction* has on ratios. That subtraction is how ~2:1 initially, and just fairly even losses, turns into a huge odds edge.

The U.S. alone had 5 armored and 13 infantry divisions in the fighting line, with a TOE of ~2800 tanks, and committed another armored and 4 new infantry divisions during August with a TOE of ~700 more. And the U.S. could lose 2-3k tanks and still have those divisions at a high % of TOE. In fact, none of the U.S. armored divisions was assigned actual frontage until the end of July (they did act as reserves and sometimes "lent out" teams). The German armored divisions were fighting the British armor, and the armor of the U.S. infantry divisions, but *not* the U.S. armored divisions, when they incurred most of the reductions in AFV strength outlined above.

The U.S. armored divisions, alone, not counting U.S. infantry divisions or Brits, probably outnumbered the whole German operational tank fleet by a factor of five by early August, at the latest. Why? They simply had not been committed to the battle at all, until the breakout, and the Germans had lost most of their operational tanks in the meantime. As the attrition process was going on, the U.S. was continuing to hold and even build a large uncommitted reserve of armor. When the German armor force was weak enough, this reserve could be turned loose.

Well it was, and captured France and destroyed most of OB West. Just a little thing, you know, like that. When one faces odds effect like that, one just loses, and one loses more men - as in the whole Falaise affair, which was the "pay-off" for the success of the attrition period. But the higher losses resulting from that sort of process, do not mean that combat effectiveness per person is lower. It just means steep odds, applied with a modicum of intelligence, cause higher losses to the guy who is outnumbered.

Combat effectiveness measures are an attempt to "look through" such odds-based effects, to arrive at a judgment of how well one force or another would do, with the odds even. It does this by holding various factors constant and making comparisons, coming up with impute ratios of effects caused by odds, and dividing those imputed effects of odds out of the picture.

Losing more men when the odds are against you, is not enough to impute a lower combat effectiveness, and is perfectly compatible with a higher effectiveness. High effectiveness in that case, simply means taken lower losses and inflicting higher losses, *than others would when facing the same odds*. No claim about absolute numerical losses is being made. When such an analysis concludes "1 German fought as well as 1.5 British" or whatever, it does not in the least mean that the British lost 1.5 times as many men as the Germans did in their fights against each other. The odds were not 1 to 1. They were not even close to it, in the militarily relevant respects.

When I mention Bagration, you mention Finns. Can you possibly believe the Finnish front mattered as much to the overall outcome of the war, as the complete destruction of the largest German army group? Please. Everyone knows the Finns fought well, and everyone knows the Russians attacking them did silly things, particularly earlier on. But this did not do Model any good when he found the German army inside European Russia had ceased to exist, at the same time France had fallen with losses of a marginally smaller scope. It was a nearly total collapse of the two most important fronts, not a side show.

When I specified ratios of depletion in a typical case, you replaced my figures with others for no particular reason as though it were some important point. It is very common to find infantry formations rated by their commanders as 50% strength in infantry and ~70% in artillery. I am not making these numbers up. E.g. the 346th Infantry after Operation Goodwood - 50% infantry, 60% Anti-tank, 70% artillery, says the division's chief of staff. Yes, sometimes units could be depleted lower still in infantry. No, units at 20% infantry strength did not commonly have division-sized sections of the front assigned to them, let alone facing entire U.S. or Brit divisions at or near TOE. They were more likely to be subordinated to another unit, eliminated completely in a reorganization, or sent to the rear and rebuilt to use their cadres and remaining heavy weapons.

Your comment on the peak combat performance for infantry data was that "it depends on the intensity of the fighting". I don't really think so. If you refer to completely inactive areas of the front, perhaps. I have never seen a single combat psych study that found any longevity beyond ~120 days of combat, regardless of the supposed intensity. It is much more a function of total duration, and contain predictable sub-phases. By the 150 day mark you've got excessive risk-taking, and by 180 you've got complete indifference. If the loss rate of a unit is high enough, this has almost no effect on the combat performance of large units, because people have been wounded and out, and plenty of newcomers are in other stages. Not that many people *survive* 180 days of combat; that is sort of why it is somewhat sensible in those who do, to go at least slightly nuts about it.

Of course casualties were highest among rookies, through their first week about. Then the loss rate is scarcely above normal. But this has nothing to do with either combat longevity questions nor the usefulness of battlefield experience for officers and NCOs, compared to its generally bad effects on the line privates beyond a certain point. It takes 30-60 days for a private to learn enough to be truly effective, and his effectiveness is at a peak ~90 days after entry to combat. The pysch problems later undermine this for almost everyone, however. What is different about officers and NCOs is that much more of what makes them effective, is relatively intellectual and learned by close experience with enemy methods, real conditions, etc. That stuff lasts beyond the clueless to safe to brave to risky to "who cares?" cycle.

Yes, U.S. armored divisions had doctrine as advanced as the Germans and were the only ones who did. They both used flexible combined arms teams in the right balanced mix, infantry armor and artillery in real-time coordination, etc. The Russians never got the artillery cooperation thing down, the U.S. infantry divisions weren't long enough on armor to act as tank divisions, the Brits used their armor en masse without enough support by other arms and tended to lead with it too much (see Goodwood e.g.)

As for TDs, the Germans had the same doctrine of seperated divisional AT battalions to give the divisional commander an asset to commit above the regiment/kamgruppe level. Every German division had an AT battalion, and so did every U.S. one. The German infantry ones had towed PAK, and in a pinch the mobile divisions sometimes had a portion of PAK or heavy FLAK in them. If they had enough of them, the German doctrine was to use Jadgpanzers or StuGs for this in the mobile divisions, but they rarely had enough.

But I gather you are talking about something completely different, and mean instead "why weren't tanks upgunned?" Of course they should have been upgunned sooner and more completely. The U.S. fielded around 11,000 Sherman 76s and around 10,000 TDs with 76mm or 90mm. These figures compare with around 34,000 Sherman 75s. The upgunned Shermans and the TDs were more common than StuGs and Pz IVs, let alone that Panthers or Tigers. There were 2 upgunned U.S. built tanks, in U.S. or British service, for every German AFV that could stop a 75mm short round, including those deployed against the Russians (which was most of them).

It seems to me at least slightly strange to wonder why the Allies only had ~40% of their armor force upgunned, without asking why the Germans only had ~30% of their armor force up-armored. Indeed, I sometimes get the sense that CM fantasy roleplayers think every German tank was a Panther, as in Lake Woebegone, where all the children are above average.

As for your idea that the German units all "consolidated in the field" and "spent years in the line", I simply do not recognize it as factual. Some formations did spend years in the line certainly. But "a year" is a more common figure, in the mobile forces anyway. I give some real unit-history examples.

1st Pz. Fights in Poland, refits afterward, same for France. Then Russia. In line in AG North June-Oct 41. Switched to AG Center in Oct. Involved in tough fighting, depleted. Withdrawn and sent to France to refit. Stays in France until June, 1943, then sent to the Balkans and Greece on invasion scares. November 1943 sent east, to the Ukraine - stayed there until January 1944. Later it switches to Center to help after Bagration, then goes to Hungary in Oct 44. Eventually pushed out of Hungary, and surrenders to U.S. in Austria in May 1945.

16th (Mot, then PG, then 116th Pz) Fights in the Balkans as a motorized infantry division. Then AG South, fights in Ukraine, including one serious battle. In '42, sent to Caucausus, then north to a position south of Stalingrad. Avoids encirclement, fights in the retreat. Summer of 43, reformed as the 16 PG division. Misses Kursk, but swept up in the retreat after, and mauled in the Dnepr battles. Sent to France in March '44 to rebuild, as the 116th Panzer. Sent to Normandy but kept in reserve, until the breakout. Committed to try to stop this and takes serious losses in a matter of weeks. Caught in the Falaise pocket, breaks out with heavy losses. It had 600 men, 12 AFVs, no artillery afterward. Fights briefly in Aachen, then sent to Dusseldorf and rebuilt. October and November, committed twice for short periods in the Aachen-Hurtgen area, 11 days and then 5. Losses low. Sent to Cologne, goes into reserve for the Ardennes. Fights in the Ardennes and is largely destroyed, withdrawn to Holland to refit. February and March of 45 spent fighting Brits and Americans both, later surrenders in the Ruhr pocket.

This division was rebuilt at least three times. But it was sent to the rear to do it, not "consolidated with other units in the field". The other spent a year and a half in France and another half-a-year in the Balkans on garrison duty, yet still managed to fight in some of the toughest actions of the war (first winter in front of Moscow, and the post-Bagration eastern front all the way to the end).

You do not find *undestroyed* divisions fighting in all of the tough actions of the war without a break out of the line, simply because divisions *evaporate* faster than that, in combat. Campaigns were longer-lived entities than German divisions were, between rebuilds.

That was not true for U.S. formations. The ones that came ashore at D-Day had frontage assigned to them until May 45, turning over their entire personnel twice in the process. This was by German standards only one campaign, less than a single year. But the units were not rotated out to rebuild, except the Airborne, who were not supposed to be in prolonged combat in the first place but were pressed into that service. A few were sent to quieter sectors, that is all. There definitely was rotation out of the immediate line in the U.S. army, but it was at the combat team and the battalion level - fighting in 2 up, 1 back formations. Everybody did so, when they could. In calamity it could not be done, that is true.

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

You have got to be joking. LOL. Yes, after driving clear across France, the trucks would eat up gas as fast as they could haul the weight at some point, making further advance difficult at the Westwall, until pipelines and railroads could be built or repaired. And yes, any artillery in the world can fire off its shells faster than anyone could possible ship them, if firing all day.

But there is simply no comparison whatever between the typical 44-45 Allied supply situation (in the west), and the German one. None whatever. The Germans complain about a shortage when they have a problem like "I have to choose which battalion I should attack with, at this position 5 miles away, because I only have gas for one of them to do so, today". Americans complain about a shortage when they had problems like "I can't get these 10 divisions another 100 miles in the next week because the gas isn't getting here fast enough." The German problem was they had to make gasoline out of raw coal in plants being bombed; the U.S. problem was the gas milage of a deuce-and-a-half to get it from the beach to the front.

In artillery ammo it was equally pronounced. The shells per day fired by a typical U.S. infantry division (from its heavy guns) were more like the weekly allotments for German ones. The Germans were trying to supply ~200 divisions with an industrial capacity 1/4th that of the combined Allies; the U.S. was supplying 60 divisions with ~2/3rds of its industrial capacity (rest Japan), which was more than twice Germany's, alone, not counting the UK and Russia. On supplies, there is simply no comparison.

As for the quip about "events in the Pacific", first you got the year wrong. But the comparison of a hold-out on a cut off penisula, while the enemy controls the surrounding sea and the air, may prove amusing.

In the case of Bataan, a division and one regiment, plus numerous Philipino forces, see an enemy invasion in December. They retreat to their jungle penisula. The first heavy attacks are made on them in the first week of January, 1942, and continue throughout that month, with the Philipinos often giving way and allowing incursions, which the U.S. troops cut off and reduce. By mid-January, the men are on half-rations. By the end of January, the malaria pills have run out, but the Japanese attacks also slack off (with losses in the thousands on both sides). By mid February the rations are down to 1000 calories per day, and the entire force has malaria and dysentry. In mid March, their general is ordered to leave them, by the President. At the end of March, the new Japanese offensive begins, at a force that has been starving and diseased for a month and a half. It takes the Japanese a week to break through, and the forces on the mainland surrender on April 9. The U.S. force surrending there is ~12000 men, ~1500 of them in hospital. It takes the Japanese two weeks to set up artillery on the land thus cleared and begin bombarding the offshore island where one regiment, AA, coastal defense, and rear area forces are holding out. These withstand two weeks of bombardment before surrendering. The total bag from both places includes around 25000 U.S. PWs (less than half of whom, incidentally, survived Japanese custody, compared to 98% survival for U.S. PWs of the Germans). Total elapsed time from invasion to surrender - 6 months.

Let us look at another penisula with a fortress at the end of it, called Cherbourg. For the first week after D-Day, U.S. forces push across the neck of the penisula, consolidating with their airborne units. The Germans try a local counterattack or two, but are quickly back on the defensive. Some mobile formations escape encirclement on the penisula, with a channel held open for nearly another week. 10 regiments remain to defend the port at the end, in a fair countryside with abundant wine cellars and a once-pretty provincal European port now spoiled by the ravages of war. On D plus 13, the penisula having been cut, the drive toward the end of the penisula begins. It reaches the outskirts of Cherbourg four days later. The next four days see the fight for the city itself, which falls with 10000 PWs, 2600 of them in hospital. 6000 more are taken over the next three days, defending outlying forts. The total PW bag in the whole penisula fight is 39000. Total elapsed time from invasion to surrender - 21 days.

"Oh, but the opposing forces" - consisted of 3 infantry divisions for the attacks that broke through, in both cases.

An amusing pair of anecdotes, nothing more...

[Michael Dorosh]

Oh for the love of God, Jason - you gave the figure for total German casualties and then total American casualties in Normandy, and then made a comparison of "Allied" and "German" casualties.

If you reread your original post, you will realize your figures are out by several thousand, since the British, Canadians, Polish, and French also took casualties, and also inflicted thousands of the casualties you claim as being inflicted by the Americans.

If you have some more reliable figures, it would be a help.

[Michael Dorosh]

I also find the number of German tanks in Normandy rather irrelevant. I tried to use that same data in a paper; my professor asked the question in return "what about anti-tank guns"?

With the prevalence of panzerfauste, mines, anti-tank guns, etc., and the fact that they were on the defensive, I don't see that the number of tanks is a significant way to illustrate "strength" or that it lends ourself to the main topic at hand - that German units inflicted more casualties, man for man, than Allied units.

Surely, other factors - aerial superiority, the needs of the Russian Front, lower AFV production - prevented the Germans from fielding significant numbers of AFVs just as much as the fact that one or two were being knocked out in the field by Allied soldiers.

I just don't see the correlation between the question of how efficiently soldiers were trained (and how many enemy soldiers they killed) and the number of tanks running in any given theatre at any given time.

Perhaps someone would care to address the issue of training that has been brought up by Terence and some of the others? It seems far more germaine.

[Simon Fox]

Simon will say I'm sermonizing

How percipacious (look that up in yer 'Oxford) of you Dorosh. So it is OK for you to accuse Kitty of "name calling" for saying this Fritz character is a twit when you said: "I don't think it is a particularly good book, and it seems poorly researched." about his work. Well I can expect you to leap to the defense of Ambrose, Corelli Barnett etc and any other author who is categorised as a twit in future. Or could it be that you failed to observe the double quotation in Kitty's post? Could it be you are a hair trigger sermoniser?

This means that the Allies had a 3.8:1 superiority in manpower.

I would really need to see how Zetterling derives this comparison to comment. But it seems like a rather simplistic comparison as I see: no mention of the rather wasteful ratio of support personell to actual combat troops in especially US formations (the allied 'tail' was a lot larger than the German), no mention of the fact that these other authors based their analysis on the 'pointy end' of the equation. I'll reserve my judgement as the Zetterling book looks pretty good.

Michael the book is "Genius for War: German General Staff......." by Dupuy

I seem to recall that the combat effectiveness ratio derived by Dupuy was more akin to 1.25:1 than 1.5:1. Also Dupuys mathematical modelling contains a number of underlying assumptions which are necessarily open to debate as pointed out by aacooper they have been questioned by John Sloan Brown. I recall I read an article in "parameters" which was by Brown, I think it is on line so I will try and hunt it out.

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.

Bit of a sweeping statement don't you think Michael. You don't see a lot of tactical brilliance in many of the German attacks in Normandy either.

------------------

"Stand to your glasses steady,

This world is a world of lies,

Here's a toast to the dead already,

And here's to the next man to die."

-hymn of the "Double Reds"

[Guest tero]

>No, just plain history. I don't get my history from popular accounts.

Yet your statements in this case resemble more the version given out by SPR than actual events.

>OB West was largely destroyed between the Normandy attrition fighting and the Falaise pocket.

There is no denying that.

>Model had to pull one of his patented "jump through your anatomy" exercises. The German histories refer to it as "the miracle of the West". We also know the Allied losses, and the number of PWs. In fact, in more than 15 years of studying the histories, I have never heard a single source even allege that the Germans actually lost fewer men in the west than the Allies. Can you name one that does?

No. But you must consider the fact that POW's are counted in as losses and that does distort the figures when it comes to actual COMBAT losses (KIA/WIA). And when only these are considered the ratios start leaning towards the Germans. Heavily. The Allied figures are almost exlusively KIA/WIA while the German figures are KIA/WIA + POW. When you lose the POW's from the equation the numbers shift rather significantly in favour of the Germans.

>Nonsense. Why the uncharitable sniping, anyway?

Because the Americans and the Russians seem to share the same notion that they and they alone defeated the Germans. Everybody else took part in spirit only.

>I assume everyone knows that the U.S. contribution was around 2/3rds of the Allied one, increasing from around 1/2 at the time of Normandy, to more like 3/4 by the end.

You forget the Soviets were Allies. And they share the same kind of notion. 3/4 + 3/4 is 6/4. There is something fishy in that equation.

>If the U.S. lost less in the entire campaign than the Germans did in Normandy alone - and I have every reason to think so, and you have advanced none for me to think otherwise - then there is no way the German losses were lower than Allied for the whole war.

Combined or USA alone ? Do you count in the Soviet losses ?

>Because ~2/3rds of the losses were U.S., and Normandy was nothing like most of the campaign. "More" times one over "nothing like most", is going to be larger than, "less" times one over "2/3rds".

Lost me there.

>And of course PWs are combat losses - up until the final collapse, say, at the surrender of the Ruhr pocket. They certainly aren't still serving in their units. As for counting them, you look at the captor's figures for PWs. The missing figure is usually a mix of PWs, KIAs, and stragglers.

Yes. But how do they reflect the COMBAT losses and their ratios. A Company can inflict enourmous casualties on the enemy and sustain light losses and then surrender. How can you asses the relative combat effectivness of this company when combat losses are 5 % but total losses 100% while they inflicted 30% casualties on the enemy ? Is it 5% vs 30 % or 100% vs 30% ?

>I made the point that greater combat effectiveness does not equal lower losses.

Depends on how you define combat effectiveness.

>You replied with four question marks and a lot of irrelevant "compared to what?" Compared to the other guys losses, obviously. If I bring 10 men to a fight and you bring 3, and afterward I have 8 standing and you have none, it is entirely possible that your combat effectiveness per person was higher than mine.

How ? In a scenario like that I sustained 100% while inflicting 20% casualties but I also failed to complete my mission.

>But your losses were also higher, 3 vs. 2.

Oh. Redirect: 66% losses sustained vs 20% losses inflicted. Boy, was my force VERY ineffective.

> Your losses were higher because you faced superior odds.

Nope. Odds have very little to do with it. My losses were higher because my guys were:

1) sloppy

2) inexperienced

3) they had chosen/they were ordered to choose a poor spot to defend

4) due to poor camouflage or other factors their positions were compromised and your force got to use long range assets to grind my positions

>That in itself does not imply lower combat effectiveness. It just means - you faced superior odds, so you took higher losses. The higher odds outweighed and swamped whatever effectiveness edge you may have had.

Nonononono. They just chose unfavourable ground and your guys had an easy job attacking their positions. Had the ground been chosen more carefully the losse would have been 6 to you, 1 to mine.

Superior numbers have little or nothing to do with effectiveness.

>And this, I believe, is substantially the case in the fight in the West.

No. The Germans were deprived their tactical freedom by orders from Berlin so they had to resort to static defences which attrited their mobile assets in unfavourable ground. Had Rommel had his way in positioning the troops in the first place the landing might have ended very differently.

>They lost most of OB West, twice. That is a huge scale of losses. I do not know why this is so hard to grok. The Germans faced a superior Allied force, which attrited the Germans (several times over really), and moved the "fielded numbers ratio" further in the Allied favor.

Somehow the Anglo-American historians have been able to ascertain the German losses very precisely but when it comes to Allied losses there are HUGE gaps which make relevant comparisons impossible.

>In Normandy, for instance, losses in engaged German formations ran at around 6 times the rate of replacements reaching the front. On the U.S. side, replacements equaled losses and additional formations were continually added to the battle.

Yes. But what were the actual US losses compared to actual German losses ? Replacement rates are good when you compare rate of attrition but they hide the true, exact numbers VERY effectively.

>Such German formations as did make it out of the Normandy battle were mostly cadres rather than field units anymore.

No. The Germans had experience in organizing depleted combat units into new, cohesive combat units. They were called Kampfgruppes.

>That is all the mobile divisions that fought in Normandy. Add 'em up - 300 running tanks and TDs, on the highest 116th Pz figure (it was in reserve and not committed until the end of July). Their TOE is more like 2000, and a detailed "census" of German AFVs records ~2500 AFVs sent to Normandy all told.

OK. Now do the same calculations to the Allied armour and we get data that is comparable.

>A random "pick a couple" survey of German infantry divisions shows some losing 1/3rds of their strength before the breakout, anothers losing 1/2 in the Falaise pocket and almost all their heavy weapons, etc.

OK. Now do the same calculations to a couple of Allied infantry divisions and we get data that is comparable.

>While the attrition period was doing that to the Germans, the Allies were doubling their number of divisions in combat, then pushed that to triple in the breakout as more room to deploy was created, including commitment of the armor.

What does that have to do with losses and combat effectiveness ?

>It is not in the least surprising that the Germans lost more men as a result of all of the above.

Most of these losses are as attributable to a certain Mr. H back in Berlin doing some creative decision making (overruling the man on the spot) as they are attributable to Allied actions.

>By the time of the breakout, the odds ratio in operational tanks was probably 10 to 1.

Now we are getting somewhere ! What were the respective loss ratios of armour ?

>That subtraction is how ~2:1 initially, and just fairly even losses, turns into a huge odds edge.

That is attrition and replacement rate. Only, were are talking about loss rates now. They are not quite the same.

>In fact, none of the U.S. armored divisions was assigned actual frontage until the end of July (they did act as reserves and sometimes "lent out" teams).

So CM is ahistorical when the Americans get armour already in June ?

>The German armored divisions were fighting the British armor, and the armor of the U.S. infantry divisions, but *not* the U.S. armored divisions, when they incurred most of the reductions in AFV strength outlined above.

Are saying the Americans should get credit for armour losses inflicted by British forces when you include only American INFANTRY losses when you compare ALLIED losses to the German losses ?

>The U.S. armored divisions, alone, not counting U.S. infantry divisions or Brits, probably outnumbered the whole German operational tank fleet by a factor of five by early August, at the latest.

OK. What was the loss/replacement rate of Allied armour ?

>When I mention Bagration, you mention Finns. Can you possibly believe the Finnish front mattered as much to the overall outcome of the war, as the complete destruction of the largest German army group?

It was an insignificant event in world scale and it gets overlooked. But it does deserve closer attention in the military history sense. Had I mentioned Vietnam or Chechenia you would have seen the light. But these do not relate to WWII. The events in this corner of the world are VERY significant when the dynamics of warfare during WWII are examined. They are THE exception to the rule. Since they happened outside the Anglo-American sphere they get overlooked as irrelevant. Which is a shame.

>Please. Everyone knows the Finns fought well, and everyone knows the Russians attacking them did silly things, particularly earlier on. But this did not do Model any good when he found the German army inside European Russia had ceased to exist, at the same time France had fallen with losses of a marginally smaller scope. It was a nearly total collapse of the two most important fronts, not a side show.

These collapses are "outside CM scope" while the events in the Finnish front relate very significantly with the "CM scope". Both in typical scale of battle in terms of forces engaged and in the overall scale in operational level. And there are significant differences in the outcomes between the main even and the sideshow that challenge the "established" view on the dynamics of battle in the modern battlefield.

>When I specified ratios of depletion in a typical case, you replaced my figures with others for no particular reason as though it were some important point.

It is. There are no figures available on Allied tank losses in the West. The German losses can be counted down to the last pair of shoes. You claim that by using only the German loss figures on armour you can extrapolate the effectiveness of both Allied and German forces. The fallacy of your point is the fact that your sources only have the German losses but you have no base upon which you can build your claim on the Allied effectiveness when you can not provide comparative loss data on the Allies.

You are not alone in this. ALL Anglo-American historians have fallen to this pit.

> It is very common to find infantry formations rated by their commanders as 50% strength in infantry and ~70% in artillery. I am not making these numbers up. E.g. the 346th Infantry

German ?

>after Operation Goodwood - 50% infantry, 60% Anti-tank, 70% artillery, says the division's chief of staff. Yes, sometimes units could be depleted lower still in infantry. No, units at 20% infantry strength did not commonly have division-sized sections of the front assigned to them, let alone facing entire U.S. or Brit divisions at or near TOE. They were more likely to be subordinated to another unit, eliminated completely in a reorganization, or sent to the rear and rebuilt to use their cadres and remaining heavy weapons.

Except the German SOP was to leave ALL remaining heavy hardware behind to be used as replenishments for other units IF the formation was widrawn to the rear for rebuilding.

>Your comment on the peak combat performance for infantry data was that "it depends on the intensity of the fighting". I don't really think so. If you refer to completely inactive areas of the front, perhaps. I have never seen a single combat psych study that found any longevity beyond ~120 days of combat, regardless of the supposed intensity. It is much more a function of total duration, and contain predictable sub-phases. By the 150 day mark you've got excessive risk-taking, and by 180 you've got complete indifference. If the loss rate of a unit is high enough, this has almost no effect on the combat performance of large units, because people have been wounded and out, and plenty of newcomers are in other stages. Not that many people *survive* 180 days of combat; that is sort of why it is somewhat sensible in those who do, to go at least slightly nuts about it.

>Of course casualties were highest among rookies, through their first week about. Then the loss rate is scarcely above normal. But this has nothing to do with either combat longevity questions nor the usefulness of battlefield experience for officers and NCOs, compared to its generally bad effects on the line privates beyond a certain point. It takes 30-60 days for a private to learn enough to be truly effective, and his effectiveness is at a peak ~90 days after entry to combat.

>The pysch problems later undermine this for almost everyone, however. What is different about officers and NCOs is that much more of what makes them effective, is relatively intellectual and learned by close experience with enemy methods, real conditions, etc. That stuff lasts beyond the clueless to safe to brave to risky to "who cares?" cycle.

You should try to find data on Winter War. It lasted 105 days and many units spent 105 days in the front line.

>Yes, U.S. armored divisions had doctrine as advanced as the Germans and were the only ones who did.

Given the fact that most of the German army was NOT even motorized I find it odd that you pick out the armoured branch of the US Army as an example since the US Army was practically completelly motorized/mechanized.

>As for TDs, the Germans had the same doctrine of seperated divisional AT battalions to give the divisional commander an asset to commit above the regiment/kamgruppe level. Every German division had an AT battalion, and so did every U.S. one. The German infantry ones had towed PAK, and in a pinch the mobile divisions sometimes had a portion of PAK or heavy FLAK in them. If they had enough of them, the German doctrine was to use Jadgpanzers or StuGs for this in the mobile divisions, but they rarely had enough.

>But I gather you are talking about something completely different, and mean instead "why weren't tanks upgunned?" Of course they should have been upgunned sooner and more completely. The U.S. fielded around 11,000 Sherman 76s and around 10,000 TDs with 76mm or 90mm. These figures compare with around 34,000 Sherman 75s. The upgunned Shermans and the TDs were more common than StuGs and Pz IVs, let alone that Panthers or Tigers.

You nimbly bypass the fact that while the Germans did not have standardized platforms they had more standardized weapons systems when it comes to AT capability (75/L48) capable of dealing with most armour they were pitted against. For the Western Allies it was largely the other way around. The platforms were (by and large) standardized but the weapon systems were highly specialiced. Also the VERY poor US choice of separate TD doctrine left the armoured formations with highly centralized AT capability which was too often were the Germans armour wasn't as the Germans did not play ball by using the armour only against TD's.

>There were 2 upgunned U.S. built tanks, in U.S. or British service, for every German AFV that could stop a 75mm short round, including those deployed against the Russians (which was most of them).

Perhaps. But you still do not think (along with the Anglo-American historians) that the actual figures for Allied tank losses are relevant in ANY context. How many tanks did the Allies lose ?

>It seems to me at least slightly strange to wonder why the Allies only had ~40% of their armor force upgunned, without asking why the Germans only had ~30% of their armor force up-armored.

I find it even stranger nobody seems to be interested in how many AFV's the Western Allies actually lost.

>As for your idea that the German units all "consolidated in the field" and "spent years in the line", I simply do not recognize it as factual. Some formations did spend years in the line certainly. But "a year" is a more common figure, in the mobile forces anyway. I give some real unit-history examples.

Please check out the actions they fought and how the "consolidate in the field" worked.

Kampfgruppes were the penultimate form of consolidation in the field. And I take it you DO recoqnize them and their existence as being factual.

>1st Pz....

>16th (Mot, then PG, then 116th Pz)...

>But it was sent to the rear to do it, not "consolidated with other units in the field".

Refurbishing a division size formation is not what I am talking about. I am talking about what went on in the field during operations in the sub units.

>You do not find *undestroyed* divisions fighting in all of the tough actions of the war without a break out of the line, simply because divisions *evaporate* faster than that, in combat.

True.

>Campaigns were longer-lived entities than German divisions were, between rebuilds.

By definition.

>That was not true for U.S. formations. The ones that came ashore at D-Day had frontage assigned to them until May 45, turning over their entire personnel twice in the process. This was by German standards only one campaign, less than a single year. But the units were not rotated out to rebuild

What was the US formation you are talking about: Army Group, Army, Division ?

>A few were sent to quieter sectors, that is all.

Like the Ardennes ? ;p

>There definitely was rotation out of the immediate line in the U.S. army, but it was at the combat team and the battalion level - fighting in 2 up, 1 back formations. Everybody did so, when they could. In calamity it could not be done, that is true.

And here comes the punch line: the German units "consolidated in the field" by amalgamating spent units while the Allies (Americans) replenished spent units. That means the Germans had more or less full strength formations but fewer formations whereas the Allies had more or less the number of units set down in field regulations all the time. In reality this meant the Germans were seldom at 100% strength and they had fewer formations to boot while the Allies were at or near 100% strenght at all times when they came to the bat.

>You have got to be joking. LOL. Yes, after driving clear across France, the trucks would eat up gas as fast as they could haul the weight at some point, making further advance difficult at the Westwall, until pipelines and railroads could be built or repaired. And yes, any artillery in the world can fire off its shells faster than anyone could possible ship them, if firing all day.

How is this modelled in CM ?

>But there is simply no comparison whatever between the typical 44-45 Allied supply situation (in the west), and the German one. None whatever.

In CM scope it should....

[This message has been edited by tero (edited 03-02-2001).]

[Michael Dorosh]

Originally posted by Simon Fox:

So it is OK for you to accuse Kitty of "name calling" for saying this Fritz character is a twit when you said: "I don't think it is a particularly good book, and it seems poorly researched." about his work. "

Come now, calling someone a twit is namecalling. Saying someone hasn't written a good book and explaining why is not. I know you know the difference.

EDIT - well, I see I was still blathering at this point. Please see my apology in a seperate thread. I really had my head up my backside on this one.

Well I can expect you to leap to the defense of Ambrose, Corelli Barnett etc and any other author who is categorised as a twit in future. Or could it be that you failed to observe the double quotation in Kitty's post? Could it be you are a hair trigger sermoniser?

I don't know what to make of Ambrose; on the face of it I don't like what I hear about him. Not familiar with the others. Are they Aussie scholars? Yes, I will admit to having a hair trigger if you will admit to a penchant for stirring the pot unnecessarily!

EDIT - Doh! Obviously, calling an author a twit is fair game. I thought Kitty was referring to the poster, not the author he was citing. My mistake entirely - please see my apology elsewhere.

Michael the book is "Genius for War: German General Staff......." by Dupuy

Thank you! Didn't d'Este have a book about Patton by the same name, or something similar? That is where my confusion lies. Thanks for the clarification.

Bit of a sweeping statement don't you think Michael. You don't see a lot of tactical brilliance in many of the German attacks in Normandy either.

Yes, it is. Bear in mind the Germans were defending, not attacking - but looking at some of their counterattacks you may have a point - driving up to the headquarters of the Regina Rifles in the middle of the night and losing a bunch of Panthers, for example.

And some of the Allied innovations - the Kangaroo armoured personnel carrier, the use of radio for direction finding at night, artificial moonlight - seem to have worked fairly well. But this was all on the job learning, not a result of their training, which I think is where the conversation has started to head towards. I think the main point - that the Germans inflicted more casualties in any situations compared to Allied troops - is still in dispute here.

[This message has been edited by Michael Dorosh (edited 03-02-2001).]

[Guest Rex_Bellator]

Always remember that 82.2% of statistics are made up on the spot

[RMC]

I'm with jason on this one. I thought everyone knew that the Allies didn't finesse the germans, they crushed them with Brute Force (read John Ellis) not because they had to but because they could.

I read the Frontsoldaten book several years ago. I picked it up because most books I see focus on the US/Allied perspective and use offical reports to represent the german view. It's funny how the book is attacked for using someone else's numbers as a reference.

Back to the training issue. A couple of books touch on related topics. On Infantry compares the infantry of the day and addresses training a little bit.

"The skill shown by the German infantry in defending the villages south and east of Caen was displayed throughout the battle for Normandy and, indeed, throughtout the campaignin Northwest europe. While there were many reasons for this, the heart of German infantry tactics (and thus the tactial superiority of the German infantry) was the ability of German squads to maneuver. This was a fucntion, not merely of organization and weapons, or even of Stosstrupp tactics, but of the psychology of the young NCOs and men within them. Contrary to the view promulgated by allied propaganda, the German soldier was far from an automaton. Less greagrious than either his British or American counterpart, he was highly capable of inidividual thoguth and action. Comments such as 'the infantry soldier is not trained to fight in twos and threes whereas the German does so frequently,' and 'the German is first-class at infiltration, because he will work as a single individual' often appeared in Allied reports. While some of this can be explained by pointing to the high standards of education and strong traditions of craftmanship in German civil society, a good deal of credit can be given to the German Army practice of training every soldier to take charge of himself and his comrades."

One quote referred to the noted cohesion of the german small unit:

"From the start of the war, German small-unit offensive action were characterized by incessant talking and shouting. Erroneously interpreted by Allied soldiers as a sign of poor discipline, it was later ascertained that such chatter was, in fact, an effective means of dispelling individual loneliness and heightening group cohesion."

Joseph Balkoski in his Beyond the Beachhead: The 29th Infantry Divsion in Normandy talks a little about the influence of the German replacement system on the effectiveness of the German soldier.

"The German army's replacement policy was far more humane and produced better soldiers than the US Army system, but it was also less flexible."

"Because of the German army's replacement system, German replacements weremore content than were their American counterparts. when a German recruit departed for the front, he traveled with his closest friends. Unlike an American member of a repple depple, a German replacement belonged to a specific division even before he was shipped to the front. During the four months of his training he had developed a strong sense of unit loyalty.

A German replacement knew exactly where he was going when he set out for the front. He seldom worried about acceptance by the unit's old-timers. Indeed, since almost infantryman in the division had gone through the same training regimen, the infusion of new replacements was invariably smooth and the new men usually made good fighters."

[Michael Dorosh]

I was hoping you'd show up, RMC. Excellent post, and I must say, I agree.

Do you think Combat Mission needs to provide special bonuses for the Germans to allow them to fight in "twos and threes"? Is there any way of doing this subtly? Or would that simpy unbalance the game?

[Guest Mikey D]

I'd heard those German effectiveness/survival figures before, myself.

U.S. Army policy towards repacing troops in the field contributed greatly to the higher loss ratio comparted to German units. If a company sustained 30% casualties for example (casualty rates to 90% weren't inheard-of), instead of withdrawing the entire unit for refit raw recruits would be shovelled in to fill the holes. The life expectance of a a replacement soldier was something like 10 times below that of a surviving veteran. Green replacement officers were especially feared because they were liable to get you killed as well as themselves! Vietnam had even greater problems in this regard.

[Guest tero]

>I'm with jason on this one. I thought everyone knew that the Allies didn't finesse the germans, they crushed them with Brute Force (read John Ellis) not because they had to but because they could.

I for one have no illusions about the methods the Allies used to "sweet talk" the Germans into submission. But I would like to know how much they had to expend to get the German army to lie down and play dead.

All the sources are VERY specific about German losses but the Allied losses are cleverly bypassed with circular statements and repeated referrals to self evident factoids.

>"From the start of the war, German small-unit offensive action were characterized by incessant talking and shouting. Erroneously interpreted by Allied soldiers as a sign of poor discipline, it was later ascertained that such chatter was, in fact, an effective means of dispelling individual loneliness and heightening group cohesion."

This is why the Finnish troops thought the German troops were a bunch of roudy school boys on a field trip. In the forests by the Polar circle were the Germans operated silence was a key factor and the German troops just could/would not keep silent.

[RMC]

Do you think Combat Mission needs to provide special bonuses for the Germans to allow them to fight in "twos and threes"? Is there any way of doing this subtly? Or would that simpy unbalance the game?

In a way I'd like to see some sort of national flavor represented because SL/ASL had it and I enjoyed it alot. BTS has explained their approach and I don't think they are going to budge. The problem is while the Germans may have been better on average, if you build that superiority into the system it makes it harder to represent actions where their troops were inferior. Additionally, how do we quantify the german tactical advantage? Do we use Dupuy's numbers or something else?

[Michael Dorosh]

Originally posted by RMC:

In a way I'd like to see some sort of national flavor represented because SL/ASL had it and I enjoyed it alot. BTS has explained their approach and I don't think they are going to budge. The problem is while the Germans may have been better on average, if you build that superiority into the system it makes it harder to represent actions where their troops were inferior. Additionally, how do we quantify the german tactical advantage? Do we use Dupuy's numbers or something else?

Exactly. National characteristics make for a great game but a lousy simulation. And most of these characteristics are gross stereotypes - for instance, most Japanese soldiers never received "jungle training", yet many games give them invincible powers and stealth advantages that seem rather silly.

I would like to see (at some point down the road) squads split up realistically - a Brit squad in the game breaks down as 5 and 5, in real life they trained to break down as a 4 man Bren team and 6 man rifle team. When at full strength. I guess I'm saying I would like to see more detail at the squad level - and this would also reflect the "fighting in 2s and 3s" you mention above. Maybe give squad leaders, or even fireteam leaders the same comand advantages a platoon HQ does, in order to simulate individual aggressiveness?

I doubt this is possible now given the complexity of the game as is - just something to consider when we all are running Pentium 1000s.

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