Bring out your dead!

CMplayer · December 14, 2001

<blockquote>quote:<hr>Originally posted by Brian:

I'm surprised. Every analysis I've read of Normandy has made that point about the use of strategic bombers.

I guess I went to the toilet during that part.

The_Capt · December 14, 2001

Gentlemen,

I think you are only looking at a narrow view of the German performance in the War. Let's face it the Western Front was a sideshow, a very important sideshow, but not where the big league games were played.

I have read from various authors that German's were much better at the tactical art of warfare than the more inexperienced Allies, yet they failed at the Operational and most importantly Strategic level. Take a look to the Eastern Front, the Russians beat them due in large part to the fact that they would not play the Germans on their level. The Russian concept was (and this you can follow all the way up thru the Soviet Cold-War era) is Operational Manouevre. Divisions are used like Bns or Bdes in our Western mentality. It was in the scale and ability to use their resources effectively at that scale which led to the German forces having their asses handed to them.

The Germans were simply not prepared for the scale and momentum of the Soviet Advance. Now to try and suggest that the Germans "lost to their own beat", is I think a bit silly. I would argue that their ability and experience at the Tactical level lengthened the war but failures at the other two levels made the outcome inevitable.

Many Western militaries are currently undergoing a "Wermacht" (sp?) Revolution. We are embracing the doctrine of the German Army as gospel and a holy grail. "Manouevre" this and that and German buzzwords like "fingerspitzengefuel" and "aufstragtaktic" (again forgive my mispelling but German is not my mother tongue). We have to keep in mind that this doctrine is like German, we are not going to learn the language and culture in a few lectures and a few words. We in the west need to adopt elements and make our own path. Already technology has driven our mentality away from manouevre. Now with the e-battlefield, an attritionist method will be used to make manouevrist gains.

Whoops, bit of rant there....

Spook · December 14, 2001

Much of what you've posted, Capt, I am in agreement with, especially about the prominence of the East Front in wearing down and cracking the German armies. But taking note on the following:

<blockquote>quote:<hr>Originally posted by The_Capt:

The Germans were simply not prepared for the scale and momentum of the Soviet Advance. Now to try and suggest that the Germans "lost to their own beat", is I think a bit silly. I would argue that their ability and experience at the Tactical level lengthened the war but failures at the other two levels made the outcome inevitable.

Many Western militaries are currently undergoing a "Wermacht" (sp?) Revolution. We are embracing the doctrine of the German Army as gospel and a holy grail. "Manouevre" this and that and German buzzwords like "fingerspitzengefuel" and "aufstragtaktic" (again forgive my mispelling but German is not my mother tongue). We have to keep in mind that this doctrine is like German, we are not going to learn the language and culture in a few lectures and a few words. We in the west need to adopt elements and make our own path. Already technology has driven our mentality away from manouevre. Now with the e-battlefield, an attritionist method will be used to make manouevrist gains.

Whoops, bit of rant there....<hr></blockquote>

Much of this is true too. But if you will allow, my own "counter-rant" is that often, armchair strategists and wargamers will misinterpret the meanings and utilities of "attrition" & "maneuver." For starters, these terms may be bantered without someone bothering to frame the objectives & scale of the battle at issue.

A recent military info "pam" that I've reviewed, "A Revolution in Military Affairs" or RMA (a term that even the media has now glommed onto), takes the issue a bit higher on arguing what is desired as to defeat an enemy in the strategic sense. Is it such that the enemy can only be defeated by Clausewitzian "destruction"? Or in some cases, can "paralysis" supplant or even supercede "destruction" as to more efficiently accomplish defeat of the enemy?

JasonC · December 14, 2001

First, various points on Normandy. The attrition certainly affected German infantry strength as well as armor, but it was the armor attrition that made the largest difference. The reason is that Allied infantry losses were relatively high, and German infantry was not as scarce and unreplacable as armor. Thus, in the St. Lo attrition fighting in July, the attacking US divisions typically lost 250 men per day. The defending German divisions lost abotu 200 men per day - while each facing two US divisions, on average.

The overall infantry odds were around 2:1 by the time most German reinforcements reached the area, by late June. They basically stayed there, despite more Allied troops coming ashore. By the time of Cobra, German infantry formations were down 20-30% in strength, and some units had been destroyed as fighting forces. But the largest losses to the German infantry force in Normandy did not occur until Falaise, when they failed to get away. And roughly half the manpower involved still got out, and back across France. Overall, the infantry odds may have varied from 3:1 to 3:2 at various points in time, averaging 2:1 throughout the battle, and not above 3:1 at the time of the breakout. There was no large swing in infantry odds, despite the definite advantage in weight of artillery and logisitics on the Allied side.

But there was a large swing in armor odds. Very few German armor replacements reached Normandy (more on that below). About 2500 AFVs were sent, and 3/4 of them were gone by the time of Cobra. Half of the remainder were destroyed in the Mortain attempt. A few more were lost in Falaise. 10% or less of the AFVs sent to the theater made it out again. The armor odds varied from 3:2 to 10:1 by the end, and had already reached 5 or 6 to 1 by the time of Cobra. While there was a German infantry force in the west after the breakout, though disorganized and reduced to cadres in many cases, there wasn't an armor force at all. And this mattered for the success of the breakout. To see this, all you have to do is look at the role German armor reserves played in earlier offensives in the theater.

It is not like the Allies never pounded the stuffing out of the German front line positions until Cobra. They did so regularly. Their advantage in fire support - logistical, artillery, air - and in overall odds, saw to that. Even in late June in Epsom, the initial attack broke through the defended zone of the first division hit. But they what happened? An entire Panzer corps sent its tanks and combined arms teams to seal off the penetration. The few hundred British tanks trying to exploit the initial success met equal numbers of German tanks, many of them Panthers or Tigers. They got to a last ridge line, but any attempt to move beyond it got the tanks KOed. They held most of the ground already gained, but further exploitation was impossible.

And the same thing repeated on later occasions. As late as Goodwood, less than a week before Cobra, intervention by German armor reserves stopped an initial break-in, eliminated the foremost intruders, and restored the front. Panzer Lehr was switched to the US sector fo the front in July, precisely to perform the same sort of mission - though it first tried an actual counterattack, which failed miserably. 2SS was used for the same purpose even earlier, in the first week in July. While 17SS and the FJ bore the brunt of the early fighting in the US sector, the US was advancing, but without breakthrough, against Panzer Lehr before Cobra. The actual breakthrough occurred only after Panzer Lehr was penetrated.

Then the last German armor reserve in the theater, the 116th Panzer (with a StuG brigade added) was thrown in in an attempt to stop the breakout, much as 1SS and 21 Pz had stopped Goodwood. (This was before Mortain, and a defensive blocking action rather than a counterattack). But it failed. The US 2nd AD in particular, outfought 116th Panzer at the point of breakout. The armor odds were too steep for the previous process of sealing-off to succeed. 1500 US AFVs in five armor divisions, three of them that had never seen any action so far, were unleashed against ~150 defending reserve AFVs. The evidence is clear that the giant swing in the overall armor ratio is what eventually proved decisive in achieving actual breakout, after numerous successful initial "break-ins", on both the US and British sectors, were stopped by armored reserves.

Nor was this lack of German armor due to none having been sent originally. They had 2500 AFVs sent all told, which made the initial armor odds only about 3:2 in favor of the Allies. Nor was the lack due to air power disrupting communications across France. There were no reserve armor fleets waiting in Germany, unable to reach the front due to air power. The Germans did not lack the ability to get tanks across France - they got 2500 AFVs across France, almost all of them within 2-3 weeks of the invasion, and with limited losses of actual tanks to air power. What they lacked was more tanks, absolutely.

In addition, it must be remembered that Army Group Center was dissolving under Bagration at the same time as the Normandy battle. The initial force strength of armor units stationed in the west was sent to Normandy and arrived there. Replacements could not be sent. Whatever was coming out of the factories - hundreds of tanks per month - was sent east to try to restore the collapsing center of the German army in Russia. After the breakout, a few formations of new tanks were sent west - the Panzer brigades - but proved unsuccessful in stemming the Allied advance. Which was eventually stopped (after the failure of the Market-Garden gamble) by logistical difficulties, reorganized German infantry rallying near the German border, and worsening weather.

As for the debate about the closure of the Falaise gap, it was not simply due to command failures on the Allied side, though those certainly played a role. It was also due to the actions of the only significant body of German armor remaining in France at that point, which attacked from outside the pocket proper, from the north (nearer the channel), to stop the British (and Canadian, and Polish) thrust to close the north side of the gap. It was a body of 100-150 AFVs, mostly from 9SS and 12SS, including about 20 Tigers from the 101 sPzAbt. They messed up the Polish armor division rather seriously. The remaining armor that might have performed similar services on the south side of the pocket had been lost in the Mortain attempt.

The basic fact therefore remains that Normandy was a battle of attrition which the Allies won when the Germans ran out of armor. The armor mattered because of its critical role in sealing off initial penetrations, which superior Allied fire support (largely due to logistics) made inevitable, regular occurances. Alone, those initial penetrations would not have led to the breakout, and the early ones did not. But when there was no longer sufficient armor for the reactive, defensive, reserve role, the front collapsed. The armor was lost gradually, mostly in the course of exactly those defensive battles (and a small portion in ill-conceived attempted counterattacks - e.g. 17SS early at Caretan, Lehr in July on the US sector).

The Germans made a poor use of what armor remained to them after the Cobra breakout, by throwing half of it away in the Mortain fiasco. That made Falaise the German debacle it was. The high command was unwilling to husband the remaining armor for its critical role, because that role was purely defensive, and they did not want to face that reality. But the northern side of the gap showed that armor-in-being protected the rest of the force, by giving local counterattack and blocking options, in a way nothing else could.

Armor reserves are a critical defensive asset in combined arms warfare. But the many of the commanders of the time, especially the higher HQs less impressed with the obvious practical realities taught by "fire brigade" defensive fighting at the front line, did not have an adequate theoretical framework for thinking about this armor role. They persisted in thinking that armor was an offensive weapon, that "seizing" the "initiative" was the most important thing, and thus repeatedly conceived unsound counterattacks, not just as reactions to local tactical situations (which would be normal fire-brigade use of the armor), but with overly ambitious, operational and strategic goals in mind. Which were pipe dreams, and diversions of critically scarce armor from its most important role in combined arms defense.

They resulted in large scale losses of armor in offensive maneuver attempts, when the logic of the fighting was clearly attrition, and husbanding armor reserves absolutely critical to continue to hold. This was a failure of doctrine. This is obvious when you consider the number of times the same mistakes were repeated, once the Germans were pushed onto the defensive. The same thoughts were behind Kursk, Mortain, and the Ardennes Offensive - the cult of the offensive with massed armor, neglecting the attrition logic of reserve preservation and careful reserve "spending", which is needed for defensive combined arms warfare.

I will address Kallimakhos' comments in a seperate post.

Barrold · December 14, 2001

I'm following JasonC's informative and well-written post for the cache value alone.

JasonC · December 14, 2001

Kallimakhos said - "Let's assume infantry defending a treeline"

The first thing to notice is that treelines are a kopeck a bushel in forested terrain, and as rare as snowflakes in the sahara in truly open terrain. Therefore, logically, anything you find suggesting the treelines are great defensive features argues in favor of CMplayer's proposition that attacking is easier in open ground than in covered terrain. I take it you overlooked this because either (1) you can't even conceive of truly open terrain, being so used to forested western Europe maps, or (2) you still can't differentiate between "attacking" and "charging", and imagine attacking in the open means charging across the fields between treelines in forested terrain.

Obviously, if the terrain is forested enough that the defender can have treelines wherever he needs them, then it will almost always also be forested enough that attacking overwatch positions will also have forest cover, which of course the attackers will use. Then you have the tactics of fighting in forests, or in "open" forests if you like (meaning, with some clearings as virtually all settled areas have), not those of fighting in the open.

"the defender has better concealment than attacker, who is in moving in the open"

If the terrain is forested, why? Why aren't both under cover? For that matter, even if the ground is open and the attacker is attacking in the open, why is he moving? "Because attacking means moving, um, charging, um, trying to move on top of the defenders". No. Shock action may mean that, but attack and shock action are not synonymous. Fire exists.

The only reason for a combined arms frontal attack to move onto the defenders, is to threaten them with destruction at point blank range if they do not reveal themselves by firing. As soon as some of the defenders reveal themselves by firing, the necessity to move on top of them disappears. You can just fire at them instead, from range. If they are suppressed enough by that ranged fire that moving closer again becames easy, then it can be used to swell the volume of fire. But it needn't be.

I don't know how many times I have to repeat that the idea of attrition is killing the enemy. Not moving onto him, let alone past him. It is about expending the other guy's lives and your own ammo. In frontal attrition attacks, the decision is achieved by fire. Repeat after me "the decision is achieved by fire". "By fire. By fire". Get it between the ears.

Attrition attacks are not about recreating Pickett's charge. The cult of the offensive is not an attrition idea. Closing to point blank is only one tool in the combined arms attrition attacker's bag, to be used only if and when the state of the enemy in front of him calls for it. Meaning - the threat of it is used if they are all hiding, to force some of them to reveal themselves by firing. The reality of it used if they are all suppressed, to swell the firepower reaching them, relatively safely. Otherwise, just shoot them. Sends bullets, not butts.

"when the attacker must resort to area fire"

Um, if the defenders are shooting and seen, then the reply is not area fire at all. Not to mention the fact that defenders in the open don't have concealment beyond foxholes to start with. Also, artillery is area fire almost by definition, so this is not saying anything about that vital part of the attacker's arsenal. (If the attacker is not superior in artillery, in ammo weight available to throw, he has no business attacking anyway).

"Defender can often also switch places unseen by the enemy once they are spotted, fire few shots, change again"

This is true, but only at the cost of reducing the firepower they can put out by about a factor of two. Since typically, about half the men are creeping here or there before firing again. Since the defenders are outnumbered as well, this means their firepower output can be barely a third of the attackers. In addition, this method fails to offer any significant protection against the attacker's wide area weapons, artillery in particular, because the practical distances between such relocations is usually small compared to barrage sizes.

In addition, the defender has to put down more men to stay even in percentage strength terms, again because he is outnumbered and can afford fewer losses himself. Now, if you put out 1/3rd the firepower and need to hit 3/2s as many men, you need to be hitting 4.5 times as often with each shot. And that is without counting the ability of artillery to hit them just as well. In just foxholes against men in the open, you aren't going to get that kind of hit ratio. In fact, you need very good cover to even be in the league (like wooded foxholes against nothing). Moreover, putting out only 1/3rd the firepower at 1.5 times the men, will tend to suppress their replies less than their replies suppress you.

"artillery is more efficient against attackers in the open than defenders in their prepared positions"

Shell for shell, foxholes certainly help. But the attackers have more artillery, the defenders in your example are restricted to a known location (a treeline), while the attackers are dispersed in space, front to back, treebursts can partially negate the benefit of foxholes. The most important of these is simply the greater artillery available to attackers. Even in CM they will have 1.5 times as much - in reality, they often had 3-10 times as much. Also, the defenders have to kill or break 1.5 times as many men with their 2/3rds as many shells, to stay "even" in odds terms. Which means each shell has to do more than twice as much. They only will if the attackers are forced to bunch up far more than the defenders.

"we shouldn't assume that defender places all his forces on the MLR. In this kind of situation a good commander would a reserve a large part of his troops"

Fine, say he leaves 1/3rd of his force out of the main line. The attackers then have 2:1 odds against the remaining front-line forces. Since they do not charge the line, they never come within range of the 1/3rd SMG infantry waiting behind it. They just shoot it out with the guys on the front line - or rather, with the third of them at the front line at any given point in time, since the other third are slinking around to hide their positions periodically. Making the shooter odds 4.5 to 1, and the needed cover differential about 7 to 1.

""once part of the attackers troops get to the treeline, propably tired and spending good part of their ammo"

Repeat after me. The decision is achieve by fire. They aren't charging the treeline. They will only close to point blank if the defenders there are all heads-down cowering. It is not Pickett's charge. If none of the attackers ever reach the treeline, the attack can still be a roaring success - as long as the defenders are dead. I don't know how many times I have to say it before anyone actually believes it literally, but taking ground is utterly beside the point. The goal is to kill the defenders. Period.

"attacker really needs to get that ground and more importantly to keep it"

Nope, simply false, maneuverist dogma at its most hidebound. A defensive feature populated entirely with body parts of the former defenders is quite sufficient. Dead enemies don't continue to resist anything. I am not talking about each squad losing one man. I am talking about the defenders being dead. All of them. By fire.

As for the revolution in military affairs others are discussing, I notice that it is hardly in evidence in a certain recent engagement. Assymmetry was supposed to scare the pants off of the partisans of heavy firepower. But lo, it turns out that assymmetric forces can still be rendered inoffensive if enough iron bombs and daisy cutters are dropped all over them. (Or artillery shells, or MLRS bomblets, or JDAMs, etc). Maneuver forces are not always and necessarily in the driver's seat.

They still have a role to play in a firepower based attrition strategy - marking targets, gathering intel, restricting the areas open to defenders, occupying ground cleared by fire, forcing defenders to man front lines and thus present targets, or to lose area to hide in. But, repeat after me - it is possible to achieve a decision by fire. It is not criminally stupid to expend ammunition and enemy lives. It does not automatically result it greater losses for the side doing it. Shooting is not the same as being shot. Only maneuver element denizens unable to think outside their own unit's capabilities, think it has to be. The firepower arms - artillery and air - know better.

Redwolf · December 14, 2001

<blockquote>quote:<hr>Originally posted by JasonC:

First, various points on Normandy. The attrition certainly affected German infantry strength as well as armor, but it was the armor attrition that made the largest difference.

It is also worth noting that much of the German armour in Normandy, especially in front of the British, was permanently engaged right in the frontline and could not be replace with infantry to free them for more appropriate tasks.

As a result, many of the British and Canadian attacks faced Panthers, Jagdpanzer IVs and veteran Panzergrenadiere supported by thin support armour. Granted, that held the attack. But the Germans lost parts of this equipment where they could as well have lost towed Pak40, infantry guns, "less valuable" infantry and a few Hetzers for about the same defense effect.

So the damage is twofold, not only wasn't the armour available for better use, it was attricted. Everytime the British commited large amounts of artillery or planes, they hit far more valuable targets than were required for defense.

Wreck · December 14, 2001

Back on the original topic...

There are two main reasons why CM battles are bloodier than WWII battles, that I have not seen directly addressed as yet.

One is, that CM troops follow orders far better than real troops would. Only fire will stop them from carrying out orders, and even then not always. In the real thing, troops were resistant to getting into close quarters battles. You might order them to charge, but they would use their own judgement, conscious or unconscious.

Players exploit this by routinely ordering infantry into grenade and even close combat range.

This particular aspect of CM is something that we will probably have to live with, even for CMBB. For one thing it is rather hard to compute when an action might be "too dangerous". For another, even if this could be computed well, I suspect a large number of players would hate it. (I would like it, myself.)

A second flaw in the simulation is the effect of firepower on moving men. In the real thing, firepower would drive men to ground, slowing and stopping their movement. This is hardly true in CM. Fire can stop men only via morale effects.

Player exploit this by moving freely over ground "covered" by enemy firepower. It is particularly noticable for MG firepower, since it has long range, but in fact it is true of all sorts of firepower, including rifle squads, artillery, etc.

Some solutions to this are planned for CMBB, at least for MG firepower. I am a bit sceptical that they have it as I would like, but we shall see.

All told, I would expect CMBB to have somewhat lower casualty ratios than CMBO, because the augmentation of MG effectiveness will, hopefully, translate into reduced infantry mobility. But we should still expect rather severe casualty rates to be common.

Kallimakhos · December 15, 2001

"Therefore, logically, anything you find suggesting the treelines are great defensive features argues in favor of CMplayer's proposition that attacking is easier in open ground than in covered terrain. I take it you overlooked this because either (1) you can't even conceive of truly open terrain, being so used to forested western Europe maps, or (2) you still can't differentiate between "attacking" and "charging", and imagine attacking in the open means charging across the fields between treelines in forested terrain.

Obviously, if the terrain is forested enough that the defender can have treelines wherever he needs them, then it will almost always also be forested enough that attacking overwatch positions will also have forest cover, which of course the attackers will use. Then you have the tactics of fighting in forests, or in "open" forests if you like (meaning, with some clearings as virtually all settled areas have), not those of fighting in the open."

"The only reason for a combined arms frontal attack to move onto the defenders, is to threaten them with destruction at point blank range if they do not reveal themselves by firing."

I don't think I'm overlooking the points you mentioned - I read your post . So we can sit at our treelines, throw artillery on each other and the attacker can shoot trees as much as he wants, until regiment commander starts to question what the hell is going on. Defender don't have to play game, and in fact, he shouldn't. Yes, sometimes you can kill and win a battle with artillery only, or even nuke your opponent out of existance, but I don't believe this is the case we are talking here.

So the one thing you do admit, that if the defender refuses to play all shoot out, attacker must move his infantry or whatever closer, at what ever pace, crawling, walking, running, but out of the woods and into open (I won't go the this time to the crucial tactical question of what is the ideal size of the force defender needs to move). So they move, they get hurt and the game starts. This can happen as many times you want, you stop moving, defender stops shooting and goes again unspotted, as you admitted to be possible. That's what he must try to do or he looses.

So attacker MUST move and of course he is backed by the suppreme firepower which can still decide the battle for him, but the defender has other factors working for him, better concealment compered to the moving enemy, mines etc. Also the defender shouldn't stubbornly hold the line at all costs, if possible not to (hopefully their suppreme commander is not Adolf Hitle), usually they wont to disengage and fight another day. Then the attackers level of aggressiveness often decides whether the defender succeeds in this.

Main point is that there are also other factors than just raw firepower, and any little thing (such as coordination, timing, moral etc) can decide the outcome, which in this case should be, i agree with you, which side get's hurt more.

"Um, if the defenders are shooting and seen, then the reply is not area fire at all."

No, the point was that better concealment allows defender to fire for some time unspotted, which means more casualties for the attacker. Other wise it wouldn't be called concealment. Once spotted, he can try to relocate and repeat the procedure.

"Also, the defenders have to kill or break 1.5 times as many men with their 2/3rds as many shells, to stay "even" in odds terms. Which means each shell has to do more than twice as much. They only will if the attackers are forced to bunch up far more than the defenders."

I won't go into the math part, can't handle that, but what you say about bunching up is to the point. If and when attacer is forced to threaten the defender, his guys in the open are more often than not more bunched up than the defender - this brings us back to the question of a credible threat, the size of the advancing force.

One thing you forget is that the defender has usually the advantage of TRP's (in the case of Finnish artillery on defense imagine a TRP in every CM square), he can react very quickly to any enemy repositioning or movement - this means better accuracy, more bang for the buck. Also after the attackers troops are forced in to the open, they loose moral more easily. When they are broken and run for better cover, they are moving targets who don't shoot back.

"Repeat after me. The decision is achieved by fire. They aren't charging the treeline. They will only close to point blank if the defenders there are all heads-down cowering."

No, you repeat after me. Decision is achieved by fire plus many other factors which affect it's efficiensy, like accuracy and concealment. You can fire all you want but the purpose is to hit.

The attacker won't ever have certain knowlegde that ALL the defenders are "heads-down cowering", or that more of them are not hiding close by ready to charge you if you finally decide to close to point blank. Which you according to your own philosophy will never do. So your threat is really not a threat, my guys can safely sit in their holes, dodge the occasional treebursts or even better: stay home with the wife and kids and let you wait until someone shows up to be shoot at. Or did I take you too literally?

Why do you so stubbornely dodge the claim maid by me and many that better position can give better and more efficient firepower, and if you don't wanna go home, in some tactical situations you need to take and hold ground - for the very reason that in the end all comes down to attrition? Ah, but here it comes:

"They still have a role to play in a firepower based attrition strategy - marking targets, gathering intel, restricting the areas open to defenders, occupying ground cleared by fire, forcing defenders to man front lines and thus present targets, or to lose area to hide in."

Lo and behold, we might agree after all!

[ 12-14-2001: Message edited by: Kallimakhos ]

Spook · December 15, 2001

<blockquote>quote:<hr>Originally posted by JasonC:

I don't know how many times I have to repeat that the idea of attrition is killing the enemy. Not moving onto him, let alone past him. It is about expending the other guy's lives and your own ammo. In frontal attrition attacks, the decision is achieved by fire. Repeat after me "the decision is achieved by fire". "By fire. By fire". Get it between the ears. <hr></blockquote>

Repeat after me. "The decision can be achieved by effective fire." By effective fire.

Attrition, as a "doctrine," does not ensure that firepower is applied effectively. Nor is attrition really defined as "frontal attacks" in the strictest sense. Instead, the basic concept of attrition is to directly engage an enemy combat unit (by attacking its frontal combat elements) and destroy it, by various means of combat, through advantageous odds. Which means that hitting an enemy unit on its flank, and shooting up that flank through massed effective fire, is within bounds of an "attritional attack" too. The "frontal attack" nature is that you are still engaging its frontal combat units directly, even against its flank, instead of seeking to disrupt the unit by going after the rear echelon, or bypassing the unit for an isolation attempt.

And which would be better? To pin and attack the enemy force directly? Or bypass and isolate it? It depends --- on the scope and objectives of the military operation, and on the nature & capabilities of the defender. Take note that US 3rd Army's first attempt against Ft. Driant (in front of Metz) was a "frontal attack" that was a bloody repulse. Later instead, when the Moselle was crossed north of Metz and 3rd Army stormed that city "from behind," Ft. Driant surrendered soon after Metz's capture.

This example isn't cited just to say, "Chalk one up for maneuver theory." Rather, it's a reminder that attrition theory doesn't always cover all of the bases.

Now, Jason, you've made quite a few good points on your latest posts. I disagree with you to a degree regarding the Normandy campaign, in that you assert the German infantry attrition there was "not as significant" as the German armor losses. (German losses for 6-25 June were 47,000 men, with only 6,000 replacements coming in at the same time.) But you are correct that that German armor losses cut into the ability of the Germans to maintain "fire brigade" reserves in a real way.

However............

<blockquote>quote:<hr>

"attacker really needs to get that ground and more importantly to keep it"

Nope, simply false, maneuverist dogma at its most hidebound. A defensive feature populated entirely with body parts of the former defenders is quite sufficient. Dead enemies don't continue to resist anything. I am not talking about each squad losing one man. I am talking about the defenders being dead. All of them. By fire.

I agree in one sense --- the ultimate objective of a military operation shouldn't be to "take ground" in and of itself, but to defeat & destroy the enemy force in the most advantageous way possible.

But it would be a mischaracterization to assert that all that maneuver theory is about is only on "taking ground" or "bypassing the enemy." If properly exercised, maneuver theory seeks the same goal as for attrition --- to defeat and "destroy" a specific force. But it typically seeks that type of victory by different means than by the attritionist method of "engage and annihilate the enemy frontal units directly with favorable odds."

"Maneuver," if properly applied, is not exclusionary to defeating an enemy force. And as I & others have stated before, attrition & maneuver do not have to operate in exclusion from each other. They can be mutually supportive, depending on the specific military situation.

Battlefront.com · December 15, 2001

Maneuver Theory misapplied...

Case Blue, the German 1942 Summer offensive. Right idea (in theory), totally botched up execution. Germans took tons of ground. The most ground they ever took in one single operation in the entire war IIRC. But they failed to surround and destroy the Soviet forces or otherwise force some sort of decisive victory. Worse, they left their left and right flanks horribly thin and grouped their main force at the very tip, in a huge urban area. The Germans were therefore 100% responsible for making the following disaster possible.

So what started out to be a fantastic offensive based on maneuver turned into a battle of attrition under the absolute WORST circumstances. Overstretched supply lines, onset of winter, difficult to defend terrain, and flanks entrusted to forces which were clearly 2nd rate and very overstretched.

Now, contrast that with the Soviet counter attacks. A near perfect execution of maneuver warfare.

The Soviets did not launch a new built up battle of attrition inside Stalingrad. Instead, they used maneuver to surround the bulk of the German forces while smashing its flanking force into little pieces. They then consolidated their forces and forced a decision at Stalingrad through attrition. But here is the key point... attrition under favorable circumstances made possible through maneuver. You don't have to kill your enemy if he starves to death with an empty gun first Such conditions were not made possible through attrition, but through maneuver. Anybody that can not see this, or understand it, is a fool.

After disposing of the forces trapped at Stalingrad, their flanking forces, and the subsequent relief forces, they struck out again. This was maneuver at its finest. They sliced through the center of the territory the Germans had sized and forced the withdrawal of German forces battling down in the Caucuses. If they had executed things a bit better, and the Germans had screwed up things a bit more, the disaster of Stalingrad would have probably been twice as bad for the Germans.

So... what happened? The Germans took a lot of territory then got stuck in a battle of attrition without the means to properly do so. Their strategic aims for the campaign were not fulfilled and their situation militarily untenable. The Soviets used maneuver to take the flagging initiative away for the Germans and then destroyed a huge force through a favorable battle of attrition. After that, they took back, directly and INDIRECTLY, all the territory lost during the German's initial attacks. In fact, they took back more than they had lost.

Lessons? The execution of maneuver warfare was decisive in both operations. German misapplication gave the Soviets the ability to apply it correctly. Attrition was also very important, but it happened only AFTER significant acts of maneuver.

Honestly, I am at a total loss how it can be argued that maneuver is not important in warfare. I also am stunned that anybody could seriously argue that attrition without maneuver is not only preferable, but more successful. I do, however, totally agree that maneuver warfare can lead to disaster if executed with reckless abandon and improper priorities (which are different for each situation). But then again, attrition by itself can also lead to disaster when maneuver is not employed. So why is it so hard to believe that the combination of the two is the best of both worlds, provided each is planned and executed with one set of conditions for success?

Steve

[ 12-14-2001: Message edited by: Big Time Software ]

Tero · December 15, 2001

Originally posted by Big Time Software:

So why is it so hard to believe that the combination of the two is the best of both worlds, provided each is planned and executed with one set of conditions for success?

Because none of the approaches, pure attrition, pure manouver or a combination of both, work if the opponent won't play ball and assume the position for getting shafted like he is supposed to ? Only when the opponent buys your agenda or thinks along the same lines you think (including admiration and proper awe towards your assets) will there be any chance for any of it working like you plan.

Attrition warfare missapplied:

Winter War: attrited the enemy into submission but not according to plan, also friendly losses were way out of proportion to the gains and enemy casualties (Winter War did have a pure manouver aspect to it as well but that led to a total annihilation of the two attacking divisions along the Raate road, mostly due to poor planning). Dien Bien Phu (the French plan).

[ 12-15-2001: Message edited by: tero ]

JasonC · December 15, 2001

The German force in the Normandy theater, by the time of Cobra, amounted to 750,000 men. Yes, losses had been much higher than "replacements", and therefore each designated unit was lower in strength than when it had arrived in theater. But there were a lot more units in theater at the time of Cobra, than on June 6. The losses before Falaise had reduced the infantry 20-30%, but the overall manpower odds in the theater were still only about 2 to 1.

The highest losses to the infantry and artillery arms (and rear area support troops as well) came after the breakout, when they could not get away. Patton's men alone - about half the the American force, which itself was only half of the Allied force - took 85,000 PWs in just the month of August.

This is not the case with the tanks. The tanks were dead before the breakout (3/4) or knocked out during the course of it (1/8). The change from June to August was no more armor left, not no more army left. In manpower terms, half the force got away even from the Falaise debacle.

As for the fellow who wants to claim that maneuver warfare is also always about destroying enemy forces, he is preaching it to the wrong audience. Many maneuverists do not believe that. When they claim the decision to close the Kiev pocket and wipe out a million Russian troops was a mistake, because it diverted the German armor from racing to the rear area objective of Moscow, they are not saying this because they believe the purpose of maneuver is always to destroy enemy forces more efficiently.

Personally, I agree that the main use of maneuver is as a "force multiplier" in an overall attrition logic, of focus on odds ratios of fielded forces and getting them to move your way. By destroying the enemy army. And some who may think that is maneuver doctrine may agree with me. But that is not in fact what the maneuver doctrine gurus write and say.

The reason I think that, is that for attrition-logic reasons, I regard a sufficiently high ratio of fielded forces as (essentially always) decisive in itself. But maneuverists true believers do not think that odds are decisive in warfare - they think clever enough maneuver can outweigh disadvantageous odds. I think they are only likely to against dumb enemies with poor doctrine or very inferior forces technologically.

But no, reducing Stalingrad was not "attrition" because it meant destruction of enemy forces. The Stalingrad encirlement was maneuver warfare. The earlier fight for the city was certainly a battle of attrition, however, and prepared that breakthrough battle, by drawing in most of the German reserves and thus denuding the flanks of the position - while the Russians husbanded an additional reserve for months. But the use they then made of the edge they had achieved in the attrition fighting of the fall, was an maneuver warfare use of it. Seeking high local odds by flanking an enemy deployed in a long line is also a maneuver warfare idea. So it moving a tight spearhead through numerous enemies to fight them with high local odds in sequence.

But El Alamein, Kursk and its aftermath, Normandy, Bagration, and the Bulge - were attrition warfare. This is not simply equivalent to "frontal attack", because there are frontal attacks that were not attrition warfare (breakthrough attempts, some successful and some not, are often frontal attacks while often not obeying any attrition plan or logic). The issue is not whether enemies are KOed, or the direction they are approached.

When the destruction of the enemy forces is supposed to be brought about by favorable local odds based on the specific placement of specific maneuver elements at definite times, the plan is based on maneuver. Getting planned forces to the right spot is supposed to reap large rewards. Pieces of the enemy are meant to be fought, not all of his force.

Attrition strategies do not rely on these elements. Where everybody is, is usually a matter relatively indifferent - it is how much combat power exists that matters. The entire available forces on both sides are involved, often cycled through a front.

The plan does not depend on the enemy being out of position. It does not depend on most of the enemy force not being able to engage. On the contrary, it depends on wearing out most or all of the enemy force. On combat *endurance*, not on being exactly at X at 0N00 hours. The focus is not on shock action but on fire action. The focus is not on getting somewhere first with the most, but on having the last intact, fresh reserve, after the enemy has run out of them.

This is an entirely different way of seeking victory. It has an entirely different logic, different dos and don'ts, different subordinations of the role of arm A to arm B, different deployments, different pacing.

And why do I endlessly insist on this? Because most maneuverists do not admit that two styles exist. They want to claim that everything is part of their own understanding of war, their own doctrine, there own style. And it simply isn't the case. Does this mean maneuver is always useless or inferior? Of course not. Nobody ever said so.

It does mean that attrition is not always useless or inferior. And it also means that a commander that does not perfectly understand both systems, able to apply either as wrench or hammer as the case before him dictates(enemy strengths, deployments, intel, etc), is like a one armed boxer. Including anyone who conflates them, who can't tell them apart, who denies they are really distinct, and all the rest of the dodges.

Battlefront.com · December 15, 2001

Tero,

<blockquote>quote:<hr>Because none of the approaches, pure attrition, pure manouver or a combination of both, work if the opponent won't play ball and assume the position for getting shafted like he is supposed to ? <hr></blockquote>

See... this is where you lose me (and everybody else I think). Do you mean to tell me that the Germans decided to lose 6th German, 8th Italian, 4th Romanian, 2nd Hungarian Armies on purpose during the Stalingrad battle? Or was it that they screwed up royally and the Soviets did a very good job of capitalizing on this despite the wishes of Hitler and the rest of the Axis forces?

<blockquote>quote:<hr>Only when the opponent buys your agenda or thinks along the same lines you think (including admiration and proper awe towards your assets) will there be any chance for any of it working like you plan.<hr></blockquote>

Quite untrue, as the facts clearly show. If the attacker wishes to attrit the other, and has the means to do it, then the defender has really only two options - get smashed ("play ball") or withdraw ("refuse to play ball"). Counter attacking by the defender isn't a viable option if the enemy is superior since it generally only makes a battle of attrition easier for the attacker. Or do you disagree with this?

Assuming there are only two choices (getting smashed or withdrawing), if the decision is to withdraw then how can one expect to hold a front line if one is always retreating everytime the enemy brings up decent sized forces? And if the decision is to remain put, then how can that side possibly win the war if it is outnumbered, out gunned, and generally out produced by a nation which is at least competent on the battlefield? And what if during the withdrawal the enemy seizes upon this and does some fancy maneuvering and hits the defending forces while they are in the process of redeploying? You are aware, aren't you, that withdrawing is considered the most difficult military maneuver to do under pressure? You also should be aware that an individual battle does not happen in a vacuum. So individual units can't just withdraw willy nilly simply because they are facing attrition. Sometimes, actually very often, they have to stick it out and suffer badly so that the front as a whole can be maintained. A little of this can be absorbed, but if the war drags on it adds up.

A perfect example of this is Normandy. The Germans had the Allied pretty well bottled up at first. But their initial counter attacks failed to yield the desired results (i.e. pushing the Allies back into the sea) and so much of the subsequent fighting was attritional in nature. These battles weakened the existing German formations to a serious degree, while the Allied formations got stronger and stronger. For a while the Germans were able to withstand the onslaught of Allied power, but once again at the cost of huge amounts of men and equipment. This caused the German's mobile formations to be fully committed to holding the line, which greatly nullified their intended role. Then, after even more attrition, the German positions were simply too thinly and weakly held to withstand a serious Allied push. The Allies finally did this and got to do some maneuvering, destroying most of the German forces in the area (remains of 2 Armies) quite quickly, followed by a wild and fast paced drive across the rest of France.

So tell me... how was it that the Germans won these tactical battles (which clearly they lost operationally and strategically) by "not playing ball"? In my thinking if you force the enemy to retreat that is at least a partial victory, while every step backwards for the defender is potentially one step closer to ultimate defeat. If the defender manages to withdraw in one piece, dishing out huge losses to the attacker in the process, then perhaps it can stalemate the situation. But the chances of this happening against a larger and at least competent foe are slim to none. There are no example of German operational or strategic level withdrawals that I would call a success. Some were better than others, but all of them were costly and impacted future chances of victory to the point of not having any chance at all.

I'd say the Germans were damned no matter what in NW Europe. They couldn't win a war of attrition, nor were the circumstances favorable for them to withdraw slowly on their own terms. In other words, the day the Allies became impossible to dislodge from Normandy, it was only a matter of time before the entire German front collapsed and the Allies reached the Rein.

I guess I see what you are saying, and in theory or on a VERY small scale it makes some sense. But at the operational and strategic level you are 100% wrong. The attacker dictates how and where the battles are to be fought. The defender can influence this to some degree, but can not control it.

Steve

CMplayer · December 15, 2001

<blockquote>quote:<hr>Originally posted by Wreck:

A second flaw in the simulation is the effect of firepower on moving men. In the real thing, firepower would drive men to ground, slowing and stopping their movement. This is hardly true in CM. Fire can stop men only via morale effects.

This is something that has led me to think that it would be good if the 'pinned' status wasn't part of the scale of morale, but only referred to mobility and ability to return fire. Together with a bit more survivability when prone in open ground I think you would get a much more realistic version of infantry advances.

(edit: or rather, troops prone in open ground under fire ought not to be so quick to make a beeline for the nearest treeline)

[ 12-15-2001: Message edited by: CMplayer ]

CMplayer · December 15, 2001

<blockquote>quote:<hr>Originally posted by tero:

Only when the opponent buys your agenda or thinks along the same lines you think (including admiration and proper awe towards your assets) will there be any chance for any of it working like you plan.

Perhaps that depends on just how robust your plan is. I'm just talking in CM terms here, not history, but an attacking plan shouldn't depend on too many separate factors (including the disposition of the enemy) all working perfectly to get the desired result. On the contrary, it should include a good deal of redundancy and a couple of alternative approaches precisely to cope with the opponent 'not playing ball'. This is a well known idea to CM players, of course, but perhaps it's worth thinking about here.

CMplayer · December 15, 2001

<blockquote>quote:<hr>Originally posted by Big Time Software:

But here is the key point... attrition under favorable circumstances made possible through maneuver. <hr></blockquote>

This must be what the guy means whose sig reads: strategy is the art of avoiding a fair fight.

The only objection I can think of to the above is that sometimes you don't have the luxury of maneuver (such as in the initial stages of expanding a beachhead). Then it all comes down to pouring in men and machines.

Om the other hand I remember reading how at El Alamein, part of the British plan involved driving wedges between the checkerboarded Italian troops and the Germans. The idea was that the Italians would be more likely to surrender once their 'guards' weren't breathing down their necks. So even in a fairly head-on attrition oriented fight, there are plenty of maneuver elements at the level of details. This can even be the case on a beach LZ when troops are tasked to reach an assembly area off the beach at a certain point, or assault a specific portion of the defences such as a pillbox.

[ 12-15-2001: Message edited by: CMplayer ]

patolino · December 15, 2001

<blockquote>quote:<hr>Originally posted by Big Time Software:

Maneuver Theory misapplied...

If they had executed things a bit better, and the Germans had screwed up things a bit more, the disaster of Stalingrad would have probably been twice as bad for the Germans.

[ 12-14-2001: Message edited by: Big Time Software ]<hr></blockquote>

Manstein argues in his "Verlorene Siege" chap. 13 that the Soviets could have crushed the entire southern wing of the German army at that time, had they been able to concentrate enough strength and mobility in one place. Instead, the Germans managed to counter the attacks Soviets spread from Kursk to Voroshilovgrad even with their meager reserves and stabilize the front in March 1943, managing to retake Kharkov and Belogorod in the end.

Destruction of the German southern flank in early 1943 would have certainly changed the course of the war quite dramatically (something similar to Bagration 1 1/2 years later I suppose). Any comments on how realistic this would have been? Manstein certainly seems to have considered it a very real risk.

Battlefront.com · December 15, 2001

CMplayer wrote:

<blockquote>quote:<hr>This must be what the guy means whose sig reads: strategy is the art of avoiding a fair fight.<hr></blockquote>

Not wanting to get into a definition of what is "fair" and why it is or is not relevant to war, I would like to point out that the Talaban leadership accused the US of being "cowardly" and not "fighting fair" because it used massive, precision air attacks as its primary means of attack. Instead, the Talaban wanted the US to engage their forces with ground troops, where they had a chance of inflicting significant casualties. By some outdated notions of what is fair in war, the US plan was unfair. However it was smart and very effective. Remember... all's fair in love and war!

In response to the Talaban's calls for an end to air attacks and the commencement of ground assualts the US could very well have used the words of Homey the Clown... "Homey don't play that!"

Given two options in war, it is generally smarter to take the one that offers the highest chance of success with the lowest chance of friendly casualties in the shortest amount of time. This generally means a major emphasis on maneuver instead of attrition. Not in PLACE of attrition, but an de-emphasis on it.

<blockquote>quote:<hr>The only objection I can think of to the above is that sometimes you don't have the luxury of maneuver (such as in the initial stages of expanding a beachhead). Then it all comes down to pouring in men and machines.<hr></blockquote>

Sure. And anybody who would argue that pure maneuver is possible would be just as much of fool as someone who suggested pure attrition was the only means to an end. As I and others said earlier... maneuver and attrition are not mutually exclusive. They are, in fact, generally working hand in hand. The trick is to know which to use at what time, place, and extent.

patolino wrote:

<blockquote>quote:<hr>Destruction of the German southern flank in early 1943 would have certainly changed the course of the war quite dramatically (something similar to Bagration 1 1/2 years later I suppose). Any comments on how realistic this would have been? Manstein certainly seems to have considered it a very real risk. <hr></blockquote>

I've read many accounts of this, including Manstein's "Lost Victories" ("Verlorene Siege"). It was a real threat. Huge, in fact. IIRC the main reason why the Soviets missed out on destroying both A and B segments of Army Group South was because they aimed too far west. In other words, they attempted to make too wide of an arc. If they had immediately gone for Rostov instead of the Dnepr River, it is unlikely the Germans could have successfully withdrawn 1st Panzer and 17th Armies as well as they subsequently did.

In short, the Soviet plan was too grand for their operational and strategic capabilities. The Germans fought very well and with great creativity. The combination of the two resulted in minimizing the German catastrophe and making the Soviet forces pay a heavy price for their over ambitions. Thankfully, for the Germans, they had commanders who were willing to disobey Hitler/OKH directives or all would likely have been lost.

Steve

[ 12-15-2001: Message edited by: Big Time Software ]

Lincoln · December 15, 2001

<blockquote>quote:<hr>Originally posted by Big Time Software:

CMplayer wrote:

I've read many accounts of this, including Manstein's "Lost Victories" ("Verlorene Siege"). It was a real threat. Huge, in fact. IIRC the main reason why the Soviets missed out on destroying both A and B segments of Army Group South was because they aimed too far west. In other words, they attempted to make too wide of an arc. If they had immediately gone for Rostov instead of the Dnepr River, it is unlikely the Germans could have successfully withdrawn 1st Panzer and 17th Armies as well as they subsequently did.

In short, the Soviet plan was too grand for their operational and strategic capabilities. The Germans fought very well and with great creativity. The combination of the two resulted in minimizing the German catastrophe and making the Soviet forces pay a heavy price for their over ambitions. Thankfully, for the Germans, they had commanders who were willing to disobey Hitler/OKH directives or all would likely have been lost.

Steve

[ 12-15-2001: Message edited by: Big Time Software ]<hr></blockquote>

I am new to the list and there is an awful lot of discussion to wade through on this topic. I have tried to do this and want to introduce a concept which is under-represented in the discussion and yet is, IMHO, central to operational thinking and therefore casts light on this attrition vs manouevre debate.

The central concept which I have not seen referred to in this discussion is "shock". Yet "shock" is the main aim of operational action and serves to distinguish it from tactical and strategic action. The fact that it plays such little role in western military thinking (and therefore in this discussion) is due to a failure to embrace the systemic thinking of the Soviets (it may, after all, be flawed). The half-way operational thinking is called "manouevre" and it has characterised Western doctrine since Liddel Hart/Guderian. (This use of the term "half-way" is not intended to be pejorative, just descriptive.) Only systems suffer shock in this sense. Echelons are surrounded or destroyed or neutralised.

The main reason why so called "attritionist" thinking has gained such a bad press is that it is focused on the effects of friendly action on the "body" of the enemy force. You measure attrition in terms of the degree of materielschlact. An attritionist doctrine seeks as its primary purpose to increase materialschlact.

The observation of the Russian revolutionaries, and Soviet operational theorists subsequently, was that material success in battle could no longer be relied on to yeild strategic success due to the industrialisation and popularisation of armed conflict.

The Soviets recognised that an armed force was now more than the sum of its parts. No matter how much damage the parts sustained, with proper management, the force could and would remain "in the field" resulting in no strategic decision. (This included complete enemy overrunning of the Motherland of the force and was why partisan activity and organisation was as much a central part of military planning as so-called "regular" armies - the distinction is only present in the non-revolutionary Western tactical-strategic mind.) In short, there is no distinction between front-oine troops and the body politic.

Operational warfare is armed action aimed at the systemic aspects of the opponents force. The aim of operational action is to induce shock in that system so that it no longer functions. At that point the enemy is unable to build tactical action into strategic success and is unable to pursue its strategic aims. This concept is crudely translated in manouevrist doctrine as action against the logistical system of the opponent. (In a boxing analogy I saw on an earlier post this would equate to going after your opponents family, pets, mail, home, car, tailor, supermarket, etc. in order to defeat him in the ring. Your aim is for him never to enter the ring.)

Modern US doctrine is closer to WWII German doctrine, than to pre-Stalinist Soviet doctrine. It elevates "manouevre" to a tool for achieving attrition. It is fair therefore to characterise current doctrine as attritionist despite its use of operational language. The limitations of such doctrine are obvious when confronting a non-industrialised enemy as the typical manouevrist targets are unavailable, or limited. Against an industrialised enemy apparent tactical success, even enormous, overwhelming tactical success is no guarantor of strategic victory. Operation Desert Storm is a classic example. The Western eye might be reminded of Dunkirk by the outcome of this "battle" and blame premature halt orders for strategic failure. The operationalist would be more reminded of Kiev or Stalingrad and observe that the bringing about of materialschlact was directly responsible yet again for operational failure, and hence ultimately strategic failure. The focus was on the body, rather than the system. It is a politico-philosophical point that the western industrialised mind equates "infrastructure" with "system". When fighting enemies with other philosophies this myopia can be fatal.

The Soviet action against Army Group South in the Winter of 1942 was conceived as an operation, but reduced by Stalin's desperate need for a local success to a tactical action similar to the actions the Axis forces had inflicted on the Soviets up to that point. The reduction of Saturn to small Saturn ensured this. The attempt to raise the action after that was futile.

Bagration is widely recognised as the first reasonable example of an operation in the original Soviet sense. The reason for this is that it was planned and executed as an action against the system that was Army Group Centre, rather than the body of that system. The wholesale distintegration of the Army Group was the result. (NB. The balance of forces in Bagration was much more favourable to the Germans than in Uranus. The movement of German operational reserves was an integral part of the Soviet operation.)

The Soviets stressed the use of operational "strikes" to induce operational shock in their opponent. This is very different from the "envelopments" and "Kessel"-Logik that the German's employed. Notice the aim and direction of the "strikes" in Bagration. Very different in geometry, force and depth than the actions in Uranus or Barbarossa or Desert Storm.

So I would suggest that it is the purpose and intention of an armed action that allows it to be classified within doctrinal schools, not, strictly speaking, its outcome. Defenders of attritionist thinking have much ammunition to throw at manoeuvrists because the latter tend to be playing the same game as the attritionists. Operational theory as articulated by revolutionary Soviet thinking steps outside this logic. This step, IMHO is still waiting to be taken by western doctrinal schools. Asymmetric warfare may provide the motivation to finally engage with this.

[ 12-15-2001: Message edited by: Lincoln ]

Tero · December 16, 2001

Originally posted by Big Time Software:

Do you mean to tell me that the Germans decided to lose 6th German, 8th Italian, 4th Romanian, 2nd Hungarian Armies on purpose during the Stalingrad battle?

Deliberately ? No. And yes. Hitler did deny breaking out or later surrender so they would tie up the Soviet forces that much longer. So Hitler did write them off before they got erased.

Or was it that they screwed up royally and the Soviets did a very good job of capitalizing on this despite the wishes of Hitler and the rest of the Axis forces?

The actions they took to rescue the forces encirceled in Stalingrad point towards either explanations, depending on your preferences.

What I actually meant by my remark is that when the two forces engaged plan for actions in the same space chances are the plans you draw may work fine. Or not, depending what the opponent has planned. Take the Soviet assault in Kharkov. The plan itself was viable. Only, the Germans refused to play ball and their planed simultaneous action worked better because Stalin refused to deviate from his plan one inch while the Germans adapted their plan to suit the situation. The Soviet plan in and around Stalingrad worked fine because the Germans got greedy, deviated from the original plan and when all went to hell refused to face facts and take immediate action to salvage the situation.

Quite untrue, as the facts clearly show. If the attacker wishes to attrit the other, and has the means to do it, then the defender has really only two options - get smashed ("play ball") or withdraw ("refuse to play ball").

Refuse to play ball 2: weather out the storm and outlast you. Drive towards Moscow, Kursk, Normandy, Winter War

Refuse to play ball 3: turn the attrition battle into manouver battle thus denying the initial advantage of superior firepower through avoiding getting caught under it until your forces are sufficiently depleated or exhausted. Kharkov, Soviet assault on the Finns in the summer of 1944.

Counter attacking by the defender isn't a viable option if the enemy is superior since it generally only makes a battle of attrition easier for the attacker. Or do you disagree with this?

In the West it would seem to be true. The Germans counter attacked. The Americans supposedly used firepower to avoid casualties.

Yet the amount of front line infantry casualties sustained by the Americans is surprisingly high, given their axiom of using firepower to save lives. 100 000 German casualties vs 100 000 American casualties before the break out (by June 30something IIRC). The US infantry division turnover figures are anything but indicative that the use of massive firepower prevented serious friendly casualties. They managed to get a 1:1 kill loss ratio and that was good enough as the Germans could not take a ratio like that for prolonged periods of time. But these figures do not indicate counterattacking was counterproductive in and of itself. The Germans just did not have the resources to sustain that kind of operations. Nor did they have the space they could trade for time as they knew that once out of the bag the better roads of France would work against them the same way the poor roads had worked against them in the East.

The Finnish doctrine during the Winter War worked and it was based on counter attacking to hold the MLR. In 1944 the doctrine was somewhat modified but basically the same. It was costly (for a people of 3,5 million) but it worked to wear down the Soviet divisions. ~23 000 Finnish KIA vs ~130 000 Soviet KIA. In the summer of 1944 the Soviets admit losing 23 674 KIA/MIA and 72 701 WIA (Soviet era figures) while the Finnish casualties were ~15 000 KIA/MIA (unfortunately I do not have the number of WIA but it could be around 45 000). The Soviet forces steamed ahead for ~10 days and then spent the better part of a two months trying to grind their way through the Finnish defences, without success.

So I would have to say I disagree on principle. Counterattacking is not counterproductive in a attrition type battle in and of itself without circumstantial provisos.

Assuming there are only two choices (getting smashed or withdrawing), if the decision is to withdraw then how can one expect to hold a front line if one is always retreating everytime the enemy brings up decent sized forces? And if the decision is to remain put, then how can that side possibly win the war if it is outnumbered, out gunned, and generally out produced by a nation which is at least competent on the battlefield? And what if during the withdrawal the enemy seizes upon this and does some fancy maneuvering and hits the defending forces while they are in the process of redeploying? You are aware, aren't you, that withdrawing is considered the most difficult military maneuver to do under pressure? You also should be aware that an individual battle does not happen in a vacuum. So individual units can't just withdraw willy nilly simply because they are facing attrition. Sometimes, actually very often, they have to stick it out and suffer badly so that the front as a whole can be maintained. A little of this can be absorbed, but if the war drags on it adds up.

A perfect example of this is Normandy. The Germans had the Allied pretty well bottled up at first. But their initial counter attacks failed to yield the desired results (i.e. pushing the Allies back into the sea) and so much of the subsequent fighting was attritional in nature. These battles weakened the existing German formations to a serious degree, while the Allied formations got stronger and stronger. For a while the Germans were able to withstand the onslaught of Allied power, but once again at the cost of huge amounts of men and equipment. This caused the German's mobile formations to be fully committed to holding the line, which greatly nullified their intended role. Then, after even more attrition, the German positions were simply too thinly and weakly held to withstand a serious Allied push. The Allies finally did this and got to do some maneuvering, destroying most of the German forces in the area (remains of 2 Armies) quite quickly, followed by a wild and fast paced drive across the rest of France.

I totally depends on what kind of a plan you are working with. The Germans could not afford to retreat in front of the Allies so bottling up was the only thing they could do. Mind you, the Finnish army faces a similar situation during Winter War and it held on for 105 days. Bottling up the Soviet army was the only way to go about it and it was enough to convince the Soviets to go for a negotiated settlement. The situation was repeated in the summer of 1944 but this time around the Finnish army ended up being in a much better shape in terms of manpower and materiel than was the case during Winter War.

So tell me... how was it that the Germans won these tactical battles (which clearly they lost operationally and strategically) by "not playing ball"?

As long as they could keep the Allies bottled up they had a chance. And they could stand up the heat for ~55 days. During those 55 days they could partially negate the Allied advantages by denying them movement to open country. But once the jig was up they were up **** creek because they could not pull out in an orderly fashion. They had not planned for that because that was not an option for them. In my view their gravest mistake was feeding in reinforcements piece meal when the situation was clearly lost. Instead of trading space for time they traded time for enemy casualties (which the enemy could sustain). Leaving garrisons to defend the ports was a lost cause and a waste of resources as the Allies could picket them until such time they could take them or starve them out at leisure. One problem they faces of course was the fact that there was no suitable defensive terrain between the bogace and the border in the East and the Netherlands it the NE. The frontage was too wide and the natural barriers (rivers) too easily traversible.

In my thinking if you force the enemy to retreat that is at least a partial victory, while every step backwards for the defender is potentially one step closer to ultimate defeat. If the defender manages to withdraw in one piece, dishing out huge losses to the attacker in the process, then perhaps it can stalemate the situation. But the chances of this happening against a larger and at least competent foe are slim to none. There are no example of German operational or strategic level withdrawals that I would call a success. Some were better than others, but all of them were costly and impacted future chances of victory to the point of not having any chance at all.

Agreed. But I would say that is not because they could not execute such plans but because certain people in the top of the chain of command refused to even consider them as options.

I'd say the Germans were damned no matter what in NW Europe. They couldn't win a war of attrition, nor were the circumstances favorable for them to withdraw slowly on their own terms. In other words, the day the Allies became impossible to dislodge from Normandy, it was only a matter of time before the entire German front collapsed and the Allies reached the Rein.

I agree 100%. That is why I think they should have husbanded their reserves instead of sending them in to be butchered. They put all their eggs in one basket which was already gathering speed on its way down.

It is quite funny actually how the Germans told the Finnish high command our defensive operation in 1944 was flawed and totally wrong (and it failed in their opinion, as told by Ehrfurt and Ziemke) and the only real way to stop a Soviet assault was a defecesive zone in depth, considering the success they had in stopping similar assaults with their doctrine.

I guess I see what you are saying, and in theory or on a VERY small scale it makes some sense. But at the operational and strategic level you are 100% wrong. The attacker dictates how and where the battles are to be fought. The defender can influence this to some degree, but can not control it.

I would not say the Soviet summer assault of the summer of 1944 was a VERY small scale affair (even if the terrain is not your typical Central European type): In the outset the Soviets had in the Istmus 260 000-280 000 men (Finnish estimates) men against 70 000 men. By mid July the Finnish army had ~500 000 men at arms against 451 500 Soviet troops (their own figure for the Vyborg-Petrozavodsk operation from When Titans Clashed) in two fronts, the Isthmus and North of lake Ladoga. The assault started with a barrage of 280 000 gun and mortar shells which (quite surprisingly ) pulverized the Finnish frontline defences.

Kallimakhos · December 16, 2001

<blockquote>quote:<hr>Originally posted by tero:

I would not say the Soviet summer assault of the summer of 1944 was a VERY small scale affair (even if the terrain is not your typical Central European type): In the outset the Soviets had in the Istmus 260 000-280 000 men (Finnish estimates) men against 70 000 men. By mid July the Finnish army had ~500 000 men at arms against 451 500 Soviet troops (their own figure for the Vyborg-Petrozavodsk operation from When Titans Clashed) in two fronts, the Isthmus and North of lake Ladoga. The assault started with a barrage of 280 000 gun and mortar shells which (quite surprisingly ) pulverized the Finnish frontline defences.<hr></blockquote>

I agree with Tero. But it must be said that initially the Soviet 44 offence was a disaster for the Finns. Finns were trying to hold a rigid line, which was lost when the right wing, where the most pressure was, collapsed totally, and was forced to withdraw in total disorder. It was only later, in Tali-Ihantala and other battles, when suppreme command started to accept, at least to some extent, a more flexible defence, giving ground for time and other things and counterattacking, a flexible line, so to speak - in other words not playing ball.

In Tali, after a major breakthough, the Finnish armoured division beat back the Russian armored spearhed and in the following weeks the armoured division together with other units allmost surrounded - with lesser forces I might add - a whole guards army group, three divisions. The two Finnish spearheads got into 1 km distance from each other. Of cource, the counterattack was not a total succes, the operational target, i.e. totally destroying the guards army, was not met and in the end the attack was given up when guards army made a breakthough towards north. It was very costly of course, jaeger battallions were reduced to companies or worse, but on the other hand the guards army breakthrough was containded for a week in a very small area (2x5km of woods terrain) which had to mean huge losses from artillery and air attacks for the Soviet side and very difficult supply. And of course, it gave time to prepare positions behind the lines, and to get those much needed schrecks and fausts from Germany.

(The obligatory überfinn story: there was a guy, who had just received his first schreck, never used it before, got stuck alone in the middle of enemy tank company, took out 5-6 tanks, if I remember right, until he ran out of ammo, halted the company - and lived to tell the story.)

The claim that withdrawing is the most difficult manouver needs also some commenting. In Tali-Ihantala for some reason even the most beaten Finnish units were normally able to retreat with no cumulating losses - not in orderly fashion but in small groups, often through enemy lines - and some times the stragglers who had found what was left of their unit, had to fight the very next day - and did so. In other battles at the same time, in Äyräpää and Viipurinlahti, Finns were fighting with water in their back, and when forced to retreat the losses in KIA and POW were surprisingly low considering the circumstanses (boats were destroyed by artillery and airplanes, but fortunately the men could swim).

The single most decisive factor should also be mentioned: artillery. The Soviet artillery had manifold guns compered to Finns, but Finnish artillery was more accurate and could react very swiftly, so that more often than not Soviet attacks were broken even before they started. Despite their efforts, Russians didn't get total air suppremacy, and Finnish air recon helped a lot.

Sorry for the rant, but I believe Tali-Ihantala is one of the great forgotten battles in history, that offers many lessons or at least food for thought for all the doctrines mentioned here. I hope this rant has touched these issues at least in some way. One of the lessons is that much to their surprice Russians weren't able to get total suppremacy in any area, not in air (German reinforcements helped a lot), not on ground, not in artillery over all efficiency, even though they had all the numbers working for them in all these areas, so from attritionist point of view, if some part of your plan doesn't work as expected, you might find yourself in trouble. And you never know beforehand for certain.

Battlefront.com · December 16, 2001

Lincoln,

Yes, "shock" at the scale the Soviets practiced it is something that no other WWII force could match. Their doctrine, from top to bottom, was based on smashing the enemy's immediate zone as hard as possible, then push forward with a might lunge regardless of tactical losses. This did not work very well at first at the strategic sense, but often did at the operational sense (Yelnia and Moscow jump to mind right away). The aborted 1942 summer offensive in and around Kharkov was another example of failure. Failure in the sense that they had not quite got the "shock" thing down to a science and the Germans didn't fold up, but instead recoiled and struck back very hard. But at a tactical level they achieved success many times. German troops were still getting used to being hit hard in this way.

Honestly, I think the specific nature of Soviet doctrine is rooted in cultural and institutional differences that make such a "shock" strategy not unpalatable to Western nations. But is such a doctrine either necessary or even best? I would counter that the examples of Desert Shield/Storm, Kosovo, and now Afganahstan perhaps demonstrate that there is no need for such a doctrine. The use of overwhelming and technologically advanced force, without offering the defending forces a chance to retaliate, is perhaps even more "shock" than what was practiced by the Soviets in WWII. The effects of infrastructure collapse, material losses, and death render the nation state as a whole (or at least a large part of it) from being capable of reacting to conventional military action when, and if, it ever comes. The demoralizing effect of being bled white by an attacker that can not be harmed or exhausted can even be seen as decisive.

<blockquote>quote:<hr>Against an industrialized enemy apparent tactical success, even enormous, overwhelming tactical success is no guarantor of strategic victory.<hr></blockquote>

Agreed.

<blockquote>quote:<hr> Operation Desert Storm is a classic example.<hr></blockquote>

I disagree. Desert Storm was a complete and total victory according to the war aims of the Coalition. Remember, the aim of the action was not to topple the Iraqi government, nor was it to occupy all of its territory. It was to get the Iraqis out of Kuwait and destroy their ability to threaten its neighbors in the traditional military sense, while at the same time taking as few friendly casualties as possible. There can be no argument that this was in fact exactly what happened. In fact, the victory in terms of friendly casualties was even more favorable than expected. However, one can argue if such goals were wise to have been limited in such ways, but that is where politics gets involved and military strategy is pushed aside. It is important to remember that when analyzing military doctrine that political interference be accounted for as its own beast.

Now, against a non-industrialized enemy... no modern examples exist of military force (or police force) being successful in completely stamping out opposition. At best there are examples of pushing the opposition down into a protracted, low level guerrilla action. To win a war against an occupied hostile population the occupier has to draw upon far more enlightened and creative means to an end than simply how many bombs to put where and when.

<blockquote>quote:<hr>The Soviets stressed the use of operational "strikes" to induce operational shock in their opponent. This is very different from the "envelopments" and "Kessel"-Logik that the German's employed. Notice the aim and direction of the "strikes" in Bagration. Very different in geometry, force and depth than the actions in Uranus or Barbarossa or Desert Storm.<hr></blockquote>

Actually, Bagration and Barbarossa were quite similar in concept. However, Bagration worked as planned while Barbarossa failed. The reasons were many, but basically the Soviets had:

1. A definite and ultimate strategic goal - meeting up with the Western Allies for the total, 100% occupation of Germany. The Germans had no such strategic goal for Barbarossa, nor was it even practical to have sought.

2. The defending force was already worn down by 4 years of continuous, and at times disastorous, combat. Not only did that make for a favorable initial attack (i.e. weak, overstretched, immobile forces faced the Soviets), the chances of the Germans bouncing back from such a devistating blow was not even close to the same as the Soviets in 1941.

3. The German forces facing the Soviets in 1944 were irreplacable and already of declining quality and quantity. On the other hand, the Soviet forces which faced the German front in 1941 were designed to be expendable. To a large extent, so was the second echelon.

4. Time was on the Soviet's side. They only had one enemy to fight, the Germans many. In terms of manpower and raw resources, the Soviets also knew that even without help they could (in theory) survive a war of attrition. For the Germans, every day spent messing about in search of a total victory brought Germany one day closer to defeat. The Soviets in 1944 could have afforded an offensive 1/4 as effective and still would have won in the end.

5. Scale of terrain. Every inch the Soviets moved westward mattered, while every mile the Germans advanced eastward didn't amount to much of anything. This is exactly why the Germans were able to win so quickly in the West, but absolutely could not win in the East. Their strategic thinking was based around quick thrusts with finite geographical boundaries. These conditions did not exist in the Soviet territories.

6. Pocketing of enemy forces was desirable for both sides. Trouble was that the Germans couldn't afford to lose forces in such a way, the Soviets (barely) could. The Soviets pocketed many large German forces even in 1944 and 1945. The difference was that because of all the above, they were able to hold the pockets while they were reduced while at the same time pushing on for the ultimate strategic goal (#1 above). The Germans did not have the forces nor the conditions to do likewise to the Soviets.

There are other differences between the two operations, but the bottom line was the deck was stacked against the Germans from the moment they opened up the first volley on the morning of June 22, 1941. As long as the Soviet side managed to hold its own, victory was more or less assured no matter what the Germans did. Perhaps if both sides played their cards differently (Germans better, Soviets worse) the Germans might have won a decisive military decision in the East. But even if they had... could they have held it? Not unless the very nature of the 3rd Reich changed itself.

Tero wrote:

<blockquote>quote:<hr>The US infantry division turnover figures are anything but indicative that the use of massive firepower prevented serious friendly casualties. <hr></blockquote>

Well, if you play with the numbers like you did... sure But look at other operations other than the first, and least favorable from the attacker's standpoint, and I think the record is clear that the US/UK strategy of applying firepower to reduce casualties did in fact work. For example, the 12th SS Panzer Division during the Bulge practically ceased to exist as a fighting formation when it ran up against a tiny US blocking force. US casualties were tiny, yet the attacker's were crippling. How did this happen? Massive and overwhelming use of artillery, good use of defending terrain, and carefull coordination between the various friendly forces involved.

<blockquote>quote:<hr>The Finnish doctrine during the Winter War worked ... to wear down the Soviet divisions. ~23 000 Finnish KIA vs ~130 000 Soviet KIA. In the summer of 1944 the Soviets admit losing 23 674 KIA/MIA and 72 701 WIA (Soviet era figures) while the Finnish casualties were ~15 000 KIA/MIA (unfortunately I do not have the number of WIA but it could be around 45 000). <hr></blockquote>

Apples to oranges. The US did not face the Soviets, nor did the Finns face the Germans. You are therefore comparing one Doctrine A vs. Doctrine B to Doctrine C vs. Doctrine D. Direct comparisions are therefore utterly impossible to draw.

<blockquote>quote:<hr>So I would have to say I disagree on principle. Counterattacking is not counterproductive in a attrition type battle in and of itself without circumstantial provisos.<hr></blockquote>

Oh, I agree with this completely. Remember, I am the one saying that everything is conditional, while you are the one who is saying that the Germans basically always had things go just the way they wanted them to (at least in the West). And since I was only talking about the battles in the West, your examples are totally irrelevant. The fact is that German counter attacks in the West did very little to influence Operational conditions in their favor. In fact, they more often than not resulted in the exact opposite. And from the Strategic point of view, they failed miserably. Not just in France and Belgium, but also in North Africa and Italy as well.

<blockquote>quote:<hr>It totally depends on what kind of a plan you are working with. The Germans could not afford to retreat in front of the Allies so bottling up was the only thing they could do. <hr></blockquote>

True, but they also couldn't afford to stand up to a battle of attrition. So I say once again, how can you possibly argue that the Germans had a viable choice to make and that they in fact held the initiative? They most certainly did not have a viable solution, nor did they have the ability to decide which of the poor choices they would have to live with. They had to try and beat the Allies in a short battle of attrition, even though the odds were long. They failed to do this and so ended their only chance for even a stalemate in the West.

<blockquote>quote:<hr>Mind you, the Finnish army faces a similar situation during Winter War and it held on for 105 days. Bottling up the Soviet army was the only way to go about it and it was enough to convince the Soviets to go for a negotiated settlement. <hr></blockquote>

Mind you that Finland was a minor blip on the Soviet strategic radar both during the Winter War and during the War of Continuation. This meant that all Finland had to do was put up a good enough fight and make victory "not worth the effort" for the Soviets. In 1944 they had far bigger fish to fry in Central and Eastern Europe. Finland was very much a "let's see if we can take them out, otherwise we'll just quit and forget about it" situation for the Soviets. This was not the case on either the Western, Southern, or Eastern Fronts. The entire energy was focused on taking Germany out and occupying every inch of its soil. So one should expect to see differences in how the nations on these fronts fought.

While I very much admire and take great interest in Finland's military experiences, they simply can not be compared with the Western forces fighting the Germans in the way you have attempted to do. Might as well bring in examples from the Pacific Theater for all the similarities they shared.

To sum this all up... your original position was that the Germans somehow managed to retain tactical and even operational initiative in the West. I say this is totally incorrect. The Allies had the initiative at the operational level almost the entire time, and at the Strategic level all the time. Therefore the image of German tactical units doing as they pleased to the frustration of Allied forces, as a rule, is something I find unsuportable.

Steve

Kallimakhos · December 16, 2001

Still going on... there is one thing that tends to get forgotten in these discussions, one aspect that applies also to Afganistan very much. The questions who is right and who is wrong! People are not sheep and in the battlefield the side that believes more in the justification of their cause have better moral and in the end they will win. When in continuation war the Finnish army crossed the old borders and started occupying enemy territory, a lot of troops mutinied and some were even shot for treason. Moral got low in many units, and this is one explanation why the Finnish lines crumbled so easily in 44. Only after they were driven back to their own borders, their moral stiffened and they, once again, started to fight for their homes and families. The situation is of course slightly different when you compere countries with tradition in peoples army versus countries traditionally using professional army, but even in this case it is quite obvious that USA lost in Vietnam because majority stopped believing that the war was justified, not because they couldn't handle VC. Sometimes it can take hundreds of years before justice prevails (e.g. colonialism) but it will. Thats the drift. In the mean time, things tend to get really ugly when both sides insist in being wrong (e.g. Israel and Palestine). Of course, justice is difficult, our opinions differ and rightly so. Unjustice is much easier to recognise.

War is not science. Justice matters. But of course, this is beyond the scope of CM.

Battlefront.com · December 16, 2001

Kallimakhos,

<blockquote>quote:<hr>The claim that withdrawing is the most difficult manouver needs also some commenting.<hr></blockquote>

I agree. The kind of withdrawing I spoke of was one which kept your military forces cohesive and intact (i.e. with heavy weapons). The examples you gave were not of this sort. While manpower was not totally eliminated, I think you can agree that the formations they belonged to were, at least for a time, effectively "destroyed". Large scale withdrawals (especially in less favorable terrain than in Finland) are the most dangerous and hard to accomplish military maneuvers if the end goal is to have that force remain combat effective.

Such examples of manpower trickling back to friendly lines is something which the Germans managed to do in large numbers during various operations. Either by holding out until relieved, breaking out after prolonged action, or in small units. An example of this was the demoralized 14th SS division which managed to get 1/3rd of its force back to friendly lines, even though 1/3rd were dead, and the other 1/3rd either captured or deserted.

<blockquote>quote:<hr>The single most decisive factor should also be mentioned: artillery.<hr></blockquote>

Very true.

<blockquote>quote:<hr>The Soviet artillery had manifold guns compered to Finns, but Finnish artillery was more accurate and could react very swiftly, so that more often than not Soviet attacks were broken even before they started. Despite their efforts, Russians didn't get total air suppremacy, and Finnish air recon helped a lot.<hr></blockquote>

And here is where things were VERY different in Finland compared to Western Europe. The Allies had not only superior numbers of artillery and munitions (very important!), but they also had a system of delivering artillery that had both the strategic applications similar to Soviet methods as well as the tactical flexibility similar to Finnish and German. One has to wonder how well the Finns would have done against the same number of guns but with far more tactical and counter battery flexibility than the Soviets actually had.

And of course... airpower in the West doesn't even need to be discussed. Both in terms of scale and air superiority, the Germans were totally outclassed.

<blockquote>quote:<hr>Sorry for the rant, but I believe Tali-Ihantala is one of the great forgotten battles in history, that offers many lessons or at least food for thought for all the doctrines mentioned here.<hr></blockquote>

I always enjoy reading about operations which are not as well known. However, one has to be very cautious about comparing the various fronts and nationalities to one another. There certainly is room for comparisons, but the direct ones that Tero has chosen to make are not relevant as presented. Still, very interesting topics for further discussion about doctrine in general.

Steve

Bring out your dead!

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