The German Army in the Soviet Union 1941-45 - Effective or not?

[Michael Emrys]

Originally posted by Michael Dorosh:

Good discussion on the grand strategy, so how about the tactical level? Was the 10 man squad (later 9) good or bad? Did it make sense to put the heavy weapons like MGs and mortars in seperate companies at the battalion level? How were German divisions at defending terrain once taken? That is really the kind of thing I was also interested in.

I have not yet come across anything that would shake my belief that on a squad to battalion level the German army was tactically unsurpassed up until the last four or five months of the war. At higher levels, they started losing much earlier. I don't think their artillery control ever quite came up to what the British were able to do on an average day, still less the Americans.

I think that by the end of the war it is hard to compare the skills of the armored fighters, because each side was fighting under such different conditions, but prior to 1944 I'd have to say that man for man the Germans held a solid edge. They began to lose ground as more and more of their experienced tankers got killed off and the Allied tankers finally worked out the tactics that worked for them.

Obviously they ultimately failed to hold the ground they had gained, but they were always a dangerous opponent and could bite you if you got careless.

Which brings to mind another thought. The Allied commanders are often faulted for not implementing a bolder strategy accepting higher risks for a higher, faster payoff. But as I have said, you couldn't count on the Germans to roll over at any stage of the war. They were skilled and ferocious fighters. By 1944 the Allies were on a roll, they had the war won and they pretty much knew it...as long as they didn't blow it. The war was theirs to lose, and that was possible if they seriously bungled it. So, to win, all they had to do was avoid egregious mistakes. That led them to careful, cautious play. Not terribly exciting, but it worked for them.

Michael

[Zitadelle]

Originally posted by Michael Dorosh:

</font><blockquote>quote:</font><hr />Originally posted by Michael emrys:

So what I find is that for much of the war, the Germans were superb at winning battles,

Michael

What made them superb at this?</font>

[Mammou]

A really good book to read on the structure of squads, platoons etc is "On Infantry" by John English (a Canuck BTW).

On a tactical level you can say that the German's were superior for two reasons. First and foremost is the auftragstaktik that permeated almost all levels of the CoC. That sort of flexibility was unheard of in any other army of the time. It allowed the Germans to get and keep the initiative in situations that would paralyze anyone else.

The second reason was the realization that they had a superior piece of kit in the MG-34 and were smart enough to base their lowest level tactics around using it to its fullest ability. Every other army used their squad mg (Bren, BAR, DP/DT) as the suppression weapon and their rifle as the killer. The Germans did the opposite and it was much more effective.

Cheers,

Mammou

[Michael Emrys]

Originally posted by Michael Dorosh:

</font><blockquote>quote:</font><hr />Originally posted by Michael emrys:

So what I find is that for much of the war, the Germans were superb at winning battles,

Michael

What made them superb at this?</font>

[Andreas]

Originally posted by Michael emrys:

An additional benefit of this policy became evident in the later stages of Barbarossa when due to a high casualty rate among junior officers they had sergeants leading platoons and lieutenants commanding companies.

Michael

I am never quite sure whether people who say this have a good understanding of how ranks work in the German army, at least to the time when I did my service. Not sure about you Michael, I would assume you know it, but just to make it clear for others:

Lieutenants are perfectly normal as company commanders. Once you are 'Oberleutnant' (1st Lt.) you are qualified for this.

NCOs of the ranks Oberfeldwebel or higher are not unusual as platoon commanders (usually Hauptfeldwebel though).

This has nothing to do with attrition, it is just the way it at least was in the Bundeswehr in my day. You would have grizzled old Hauptfeldwebels commanding platoons next to a fresh-faced Lieutenant on a regular basis. I would be surprised if the Wehrmacht handled that differently.

[Michael Dorosh]

Every German infantry company had two NCO platoon commanders as standard. Only one was an officer. In battle, this was very often a case of three NCOs.

The British tried to do this in 1939 with the creation of the Platoon sergeant major appointment, but it didn't fly - they wanted all officers as platoon commanders.

Germans relied on officers a lot less, and when they did, the officers got the very important jobs.

In 1933 there were 3000 officers in the Army (not counting medical and veterinary, or the 500 that transferred to the LW when it was created), in 1939, there were 105,000. Many of them were former NCOs who were commissioned - which diluted the social class system (an incidental happening, but one fully consistent with the ideas of National Socialism where class distinctions were not supposed to matter).

[ August 06, 2002, 10:21 AM: Message edited by: Michael Dorosh ]

[Grisha]

Michael Emrys,

I believe the Germans started to consider the concept of operations in WWI, using the word operativ. However, this idea wasn't picked up after the war. It was the Soviets who really put operational art together during the 1920s and 1930s in theory. But it wasn't until WWII when they were able to put it into practice. [addition]However, I do think we may be talking semantics. It's just that the Soviets were meticulous about their military-political terms and 'operations' within the context of operational art had a precise meaning

As for tactical excellence, I agree completely, nobody in WWII could compare to the Germans.

Zitadelle,

Regarding your reference to Berlin as an objective previously, I think you're referring to the Vistula-Oder operation of 12 January 1945. Actually, it was originally called the 'Vistula-Poznan' operation, but advance rates were going so well STAVKA gave the go ahead to continue onto the Oder. Still, this doesn't contradict my statement, since it turns out Soviet operational objectives ended up being conservative. With the Germans, the opposite was often the case.

[ August 06, 2002, 11:35 AM: Message edited by: Grisha ]

[Andrew H.]

Originally posted by Michael emrys:

I think we are just arguing over semantics, because I agree totally with you that the Soviets were much better than the Germans at casting their operations to serve an overall strategy. So were the Western Allies for that matter.

So what I find is that for much of the war, the Germans were superb at winning battles, but it doesn't look to me like they ever had a winning strategy. What Hitler et al were counting on was something like an unbroken string of outrageous luck. And that's not a strategy, that's just wishful thinking.

Michael

This is right, I think. The Germans were good at operations. (So were the Soviets, at least by '42). What the Germans weren't good at was strategy. Linking operations up to achieve some objective is strategy.

You can see this in Barbarossa - Germany sent three army groups in, with general instructions to capture as much territory as possible. Given the manpower and industrial disparities (i.e., the German need to win the war quickly, if it was going to be won), what they needed was a focused strategy, not just a bunch of won battles.

In Hitler's Panzers East, Stolfi argues that Germany could have won (even with the June 1941 troop dispositions) by focusing everyting on taking Moscow and then Gorki. The most obvious mistake here was weakening AG Center to aid AG South, since the territory you need to capture to actually win the war is in AG Center's area.

I don't know enough to evaluate Stolfi's specific arguments about how certain units could have pushed farther than they did, as that requires specific logistics knowledge that I lack. But Stolfi's explanation of Hitler's strategy is very interesting.

Stolfi's theory (and I don't know if it's original to him or not) is that Hitler had sort of a siege mentality, in that he felt like Germany was surrounded by enemies (true enough after 6/41, especially). Because of this fear of being surrounded, Hitler thought that the further away from Germany his enemies were, the safer he would be.

This theory explains (1) the "no-retreat" orders; (2) the sort of "broad front" strategy in the USSR; and (3) why AG center was weakened to help AG South, when center was the more important AG.

[Grisha]

Linking operations up to achieve some objective is strategy.

Forgive me, Andrew, but this sounds wrong. In Soviet terms,

Operational art encompasses the theory and practice of preparing for and conducting combined and independent operations by large units (fronts, armies) of the armed forces. It occupies an intermediate position between strategy and tactics. Stemming from strategic requirements, operational art determines methods of preparing for and conducting operations to achieve strategic goals.

- Glantz, Soviet Military Operational Art, p.10.

In the 1930s a Soviet military theorist, Aleksandr Svechin, explained Soviet military art concisely: "Tactics make the steps from which operational leaps are assembled; strategy points out the path."

So, to get back to your statement, "linking operations up to achieve some objective is operational art." Strategy is the means by which operational art is directed to achieve ultimate victory.

[Frunze]

Originally posted by Zitadelle:

However, also consider their opponents at the time (Poland, France, the Low Countries, early the British Expeditionary Force, Russia after the purges).

Right - did Germany win stunning victories as much because of their early opponents' weaknesses as their own strengths?

People have commented on how the political leadership (Hitler) interfered with good military strategy. But didn't political factors weaken many of Germany's opponents, also?

(I think the political factors in war are often overlooked, or not explicitly analyzed enough. Odd 'cause everyone agrees in theory that war is the continuation of politics by other means.)

E.g. Stalin's refusal to believe, initially, that the USSR was facing a full-scale German invasion, and to react accordingly. His policies that had turned so many non-Russian citizens of the USSR against it, to the point where some collaborated with the Germans. The purges. Etc.

(On the other hand, was the USSR's economic system an advantage in terms of being able to completely mobilize the economy for war more quickly? Despite the "national socialist" label, German industry was mostly privately owned, though with a lot of state regulation.)

Or France's internal political and class divisions: soldiers having little confidence in their political and military leadership, elements of the political and military leadership having little will to resist...just look how many of 'em ended up as collaborators.

And without Hitler and Naziism, would Germany have been politically capable of starting the war at all? Without Naziism, would Germany have been able to keep fighting so long, and sustain such heavy losses, without domestic opposition forcing an end to the war, or reducing the soldiers' will to fight? (Obviously, this should not be taken as an argument for Naziism, if anything the opposite given the death and destruction caused by the war and the decision to fight to the end.)

I don't mean to deny that the German army had some real strengths, not suprising as they'd been preparing for and intending to launch war for a longer time. (Also a political factor?)

[Gpig]

Despite the subtle differences, you two (Andrew, Grisha) are saying the same thing. (In regards to Operational art vs Operations/strategy.)

(Or at least meaning the same thing.)

Gpig

[ August 06, 2002, 01:56 PM: Message edited by: Gpig ]

[Michael Emrys]

Originally posted by Gpig:

Despite the subtle differences, you two (Andrew, Grisha) are saying the same thing. (In regards to Operational art vs Operations/strategy.)

(Or at least meaning the same thing.)

I agree. On reading Gregs definition (actually his quotation of a Soviet definition) of 'operational' I am conscious of how different it is from the one I was brought up on. The definition provided by Glantz speaks of fronts and armies. In the West, it speaks of battalions and regiments up to divisions and corps. It might be helpful to our present discussion to keep that difference of scale in mind.

Michael

[Grisha]

Originally posted by Gpig:

Despite the subtle differences, you two (Andrew, Grisha) are saying the same thing. (In regards to Operational art vs Operations/strategy.)

(Or at least meaning the same thing.)

Yes, Gpig, I do seem to be hammering away at semantical differences, but I really feel it is important to make the distinction, because this is exactly why the Germans lost on the Eastern Front. While they intuitively grasped the use of operations, German military doctrine didn't officially recognize operational art as an intermediary level between strategy and tactics. Because of that, the German armed forces operated with serious deficiencies at the operational level in the areas of intelligence and logistics. The Soviet recognition, development and practice of operational art as a distinct component of military art (namely, tactics-operational art-strategy) resulted in them possessing a significant mid-late war advantage in the conduct of warfare, much like blitzkrieg gave the Germans earlier in the war. This advantage shouldn't be considered as an immense one since the Germans did after all grasp operational art from an operations standpoint ('operations' meaning in this case the operations staff, which alongside the intelligence staff and quartermaster/logistics staff, comprised the majority of the General Staff). But because the Germans never recognized operational art as a separate distinct level between strategy and tactics, they could not correctly address their weaknesses in this regard.

Okay, I promise to make no more posts on this issue. I'm done. Apologies to all who had no interest in my insistent postings

[Michael Dorosh]

Not so fast Grisha, I am still unclear on the definitions that drove your discussion.

How do YOU define

tactics

strategy

operations

??

[Gpig]

Yes please, this is all quite informative and simply excellent.

If all of you grogs were up on a stage, I'd be down in the crowd holding a lighter above my head and wearing your 50 dollar T-shirt.

Please do go on.

Gpig

[Michael Emrys]

Originally posted by Grisha:

...the German armed forces operated with serious deficiencies at the operational level in the areas of intelligence and logistics.

Now this I would have to agree with 100%. While I think the German General Staff understood logistics well enough (they kept trying to rein in Rommel because they knew very well that they couldn't supply him well enough to maintain an offensive deep into Egypt), they never took adequate steps to rectify their shortcomings. This as much as anything led to the failure of Barbarossa.

In the field of intelligence, it is almost amazing how far they blew it, especially in strategic intelligence. British intelligence led them a merry dance from about 1940 on and the Germans never caught on. This seems remarkably lax and has led me to wonder to what extent Canaris may have been deliberately subverting his own service. Of course the Brits were bloody good. But still...

Michael

[Gpig]

Hmmm. In regards to Intel., and also straying completely off topic . .

Since the allies had such excellent intel on the Axis (what with having broken the German code) wouldn't you have thought that the top planners on the allied side pretty much felt assured of a final victory?

Kind of like knowing what the enemy were going to do before they did it?

Has there been a thread involving ULTRA that I could hasten too? Not wanting to derail this excellent thread.

Gpig

[Michael Emrys]

Originally posted by Gpig:

Hmmm. In regards to Intel., and also straying completely off topic . .

Since the allies had such excellent intel on the Axis (what with having broken the German code) wouldn't you have thought that the top planners on the allied side pretty much felt assured of a final victory?

Kind of like knowing what the enemy were going to do before they did it?

Well, there's more to it than that. It doesn't do you much good to know what the enemy is going to do unless you have the means at hand to thwart his plans.

The game that British intelligence was playing had many more layers to it than just ULTRA. They employed elaborate deception schemes to keep the Germans looking in the wrong direction and off balance. They were steadily feeding them false but credible information. A piece here and a piece there, all from different sources, and let the Germans connect the dots and feel real proud of themselves. And even when the truth finally became evident, it was never obvious that they had been misled all along, it just looked as though the Allies had changed their plans.

Michael

[Nidan1]

A glaring example of how the Germans failed miserably in the area of logistics, was the Luftwaffe's feeble attempt to re-supply the Sixth Army in Stalingrad. Of course I believe that most sane Luftwaffe senior officers knew in their hearts that they didnt have enough resources to meet the demands of the encircled Army. Goering's boastings and Hitler's blind insistence on holding on to Stalingrad when pulling back and reestablishing proper fronts would have saved all those men. Everyone says that that was the turning point in the East, but Barbarossa was doomed from its beginning due to overly extended goals and a total underestimation of the Red Army.

[Zitadelle]

Originally posted by Michael emrys:

</font><blockquote>quote:</font><hr />Originally posted by Gpig:

Hmmm. In regards to Intel., and also straying completely off topic . .

Since the allies had such excellent intel on the Axis (what with having broken the German code) wouldn't you have thought that the top planners on the allied side pretty much felt assured of a final victory?

Kind of like knowing what the enemy were going to do before they did it?

Well, there's more to it than that. It doesn't do you much good to know what the enemy is going to do unless you have the means at hand to thwart his plans.

The game that British intelligence was playing had many more layers to it than just ULTRA. They employed elaborate deception schemes to keep the Germans looking in the wrong direction and off balance. They were steadily feeding them false but credible information. A piece here and a piece there, all from different sources, and let the Germans connect the dots and feel real proud of themselves. And even when the truth finally became evident, it was never obvious that they had been misled all along, it just looked as though the Allies had changed their plans.

Michael</font>

[Olle Petersson]

Originally posted by Frunze:

But didn't political factors weaken many of Germany's opponents, also?

Yes, but not nearly to the same extent.

Churchill never ran an army, Roosevelt didn't do the detailed planning of operation Overlord.

This is the kind of influence the "little corporal" demanded to have...

Cheers

Olle

[Michael Emrys]

And this brings us to another point that is pertinent to Michael's original question. The whole Nazi grand opera was riddled from beginning to end by "magical thinking", that is, "If I want it to be so, then it must be so." All of the governments and all the national leaders were subject to this at times to a greater or lesser degree, but Hitler and his coterie were completely in its thrall. Hitler seems to have believed completely that because it gave him a charge to imagine the German soldier overcoming all adversity through shear willpower and the virtue inherent in his Aryan genes, that he could send that soldier on impossible errands with the confident expectation that he would succeed. Time and time again the German high command would commit one blunder after another because of this reliance on magical thinking. Hitler had many otherwise rational people hypnotized because of his initial luck early in the war when he overrode rational objections to his policies and succeeded in spite of them. But he finally ran out of luck when he tried to push it too far. His enemies finally got their act together and the inadequacies of the German system could no longer be concealed.

Michael

[ August 06, 2002, 03:42 PM: Message edited by: Michael emrys ]

[Grisha]

Originally posted by Michael Dorosh:

Not so fast Grisha, I am still unclear on the definitions that drove your discussion.

How do YOU define

tactics

strategy

operations

??

Excellent question, Michael, and one the Germans should've asked themselves between the wars as well. But to be fair, Soviet experiences during the Russian Civil War had a lot to do with their development of operational art. Let me quote the Soviet definitions for each:

Military Strategy

Embracing the theory and practice of preparing the nation and armed forces for war, planning and conducting strategic operations and war as a whole. The theory of military strategy studies the laws and nature of war and the methods for conducting it; and works out the theoretical basis of planning, preparing and conducting strategic operations and war as a whole.

Operational Art

Operational art encompasses the theory and practice of preparing for and conducting combined and independent operations by large units (fronts, armies) of the armed forces. It occupies an intermediate position between strategy and tactics. Stemming from strategic requirements, operational art determines methods of preparing for and conducting operations to achieve strategic goals. Operational art in its turn establishes the tasks and direction for the development of tactics.

Tactics

A component part of military science, embracing the theory and practice of preparing and conducting battle by subunits (battalions), units (regiments) and formations (divisions, corps) of various types of forces, branches of forces or specialized forces. The theory of tactics investigates the rules, nature and contents of battle and works out the means of preparing for and conducting battle.

Of course, this requires the definition of 'battle' and 'operation'. So,

FORMS OF COMBAT ACTION (BOEVYE DEISTVIIA)

</font>

• combat - an organized clash of combatant units.</font>
• blow - a short term attack on the enemy with forces or weapons (main, frontal, flank)</font>
• battle - an aggregate of combat and blows aimed at achieving operational aims or particular objectives. The basic form of army combat actions.</font>
• operations - actions conducted by large operational units (front, army); an aggregate of combat, blows and battles conducted in a theater of military operations or on a strategic (operational) axis, with mutual and interconnected aims, locations, and timing, according to a single concept or plan aimed at achieving strategic, operational-strategic or operational objectives (strategic, front, army)</font>

By looking at these definitions one could say that the Germans conducted operational, operational-strategic and strategic operations without the full[edit!] benefit of operational art. It's just that I couldn't say it this way before without these definitions, because of western military ambiguities for the word 'operation'. It would've made no sense at all

[ August 06, 2002, 04:19 PM: Message edited by: Grisha ]

[JasonC]

I will get to my own take on the question itself in a minute, but first some reactions to common conceptions already mentioned in the thread so far.

First, the German high command did not give objectives like "take Paris" to armies or armor groups and then let them decide how to do it. In fact, nobody told Guderian which way to go after he broke through at Sedan. He decided on his own that the channel ports were the right target. He had mentioned the two obvious alternatives - the channel ports or Paris - to higher commanders in the planning and wargaming stage, and suggested that the channel ports were doctrinally the correct target, based on the standard German conception that annihilation of the enemy fielded forces, not terrain or deep objectives, was the purpose of military operations.

A related point is that the Germans in Barbarossa were not operating under a plan to take Leningrad, Moscow, and the Don basin. The operation order specifically stated that the objective was to destroy the Russian army inside European Russia before it could withdraw to the interior. Fielded forces, not terrain, were the target.

And it is also incorrect to say that the German infantry failed to keep up because they weren't motorized. They did keep up, setting march records of up to 50 miles in a day, and closing the largest pockets in military history. The Russian army in existence on the day of the invasion *was* destroyed inside European Russian before managing to withdraw to the interior - Russian losses in the Minsk, Smolensk, Kiev, and Bryansk pockets combined equalled their entire prewar army.

It is just that the Russians mobilized new forces as fast as they lost the old ones, almost. So the army standing in front of the Germans in October was as large as the initial one, despite the previous one being destroyed. In the meantime, the Germans had done no more than replace losses, and in some categories had not done even that. The result was that the fielded forces ratio was about the same in the late fall as it had been at the begining, despite 10 to 1 losses inflicted on the Russians to that point.

The reason for that is purely mobilization. The Russians went to a full war economy immediately, and the Germans did not. They partially increased output by some diversions of capital spending from construction in 1941. They increased production modestly, particularly in tanks, in 1942 after seeing the losses of the Battle of Moscow. But it was not until Stalingrad showed them that the Russians were going to field a force with an extra digit on it, and that whole army groups could be destroyed in the space of single seasons, that they pulled out the stops. They still didn't bother e.g. to include women in the civilian labor force.

Fundamentally, all of that was a case of what the wags call "victory disease". Meaning a reckless overconfidence caused by previous cheap successes. These played into existing prejudices of the German high command, in the army as well as in the political leadership. They also played into the desire to win war on the cheap through cleverness and technical means, instead of through brute force, economic might, etc.

If the Germans had added as much to their forces in the six months before the invasion, and during the first 18 months of the war in Russia itself, as the Russians did - or as the Germans later did in 1944 for example - then their 10 to 1 battle successes might have meant something. Their military doctrine was correctly focused on destruction of the enemy force. But the enemy force was conceived as a "stock", a standing one-off entity, not a continually renewed stream. And the means used to do it was thought of as the existing armed forces, with supplies and replacements and machinery meant to maintain it in being despite losses - not thought of as a stream of weaponry and manpower continually hurled at the enemy.

This was the fundamental error of the Germans, and it was an error of grand strategy, based on the mirage of "cheap" victory through magical maneuver multipliers.

When Grisha says they did not have an operational scheme, it is only half true. They did string together their battles to secure their objective. Their objective, however, was usually destruction of the force in front of them - not terrain, and not focused on what would happen after that, or on the flow of new enemy forces. Thus they strung together the Minsk, Smolensk, and Kiev operations perfectly well. They did not simple drive off to Moscow thinking they would win the war in one push (as, indeed, some maneuver revisionists have later advocated, in my opinion foolishly).

They in fact got into trouble when they deviated from that plan with Typhoon, making a territorial objective (Moscow) the focus instead of destruction of Russian forces. When they did that, they set pincers too far apart for mutual support - Guderian in the south and Hoth in the north, for instance. They wound up attacking on converging lines beyond the range of serious threat of link up, which gave the Russians interior lines without threatening operational encirclement.

The more basic problem with Typhoon, however, was that unreality had set in and the conditions at the front were no longer seriously understood at the higher staff levels. They did not understand how much the front line situation had changed since the last easy successes of September. They mistakeningly believed that while their own forces were becoming worn out, that the Russians must be even worse off because of the lopsided pounding they had been dishing out to that point.

But in fact the Russian forces were new - the Siberians, and newly mobilized formations - equal in numbers, and the Germans were the ones worn down by then. The Germans had fewer running tanks, lower infantry strength, etc, than at the start - despite 4 months of lopsided victories. The reason simply being they had no reinforcement stream to speak of. There were plenty of reports of the strength of the Russians ahead of them, but they were discounted because all previous positions had crumbled rapidly, and because the leaders wanted to believe that final success was right around the corner.

The right thing to do at that point was of course to go over to the defensive and mobilize the economy. German losses to that point were light, though they started upward in October. The Russians had lost an enourmous force; the Germans had only lost a little mobilization time. There was nothing seriously wrong with German logistics that a little operational caution could not have fixed. (Moving forward dumps still accumulated at the railway gauge changeover point between Minsk and Smolensk, refitting worn tanks, issuing proper winter clothing, etc. All would have been easy enough without trying to support the Typhoon push).

That was not done because it involved admitting partial failure, admitting not mobilizing earlier was a mistake, limiting aims, upgrading estimates of Russian fighting ability, facing a longer and much more dangerous war, etc. Only the school of hard knocks taught those lessons - and only half of them, until Stalingrad.

There was a related German failing that mattered at that point. German doctrine was offensive minded to an extreme degree. And while many have seen in that part of the formula of their success, in fact it was a weakness, which reared its head at particularly critical times. Knowing when to stand on the defensive is one of the most difficult but important judgements in modern mobile warfare. The Germans were quite bad at it, consistently erring on the side of reckless unprepared attacks that squandered their reserves and left them open to powerful counterstrokes.

Examples are Typhoon, Stalingrad, Kursk, El Alamein, Tunisia, Salerno, Lehr in Normandy, Mortain, Lorraine, the Ardennes, and Alsace. Some of these lost only half an armor division; some of them lost entire army groups. They did not have a proper defensive mobile warfare doctrine. Their existing defensive doctrine was sound enough, dating from 1917-1918, but they did not fold armor into it. Instead they regarded armor as a branch that could only be effectively employed offensively, which was simply false. They consistently underestimated the importance of strong armor reserves, and "shot the bolt" of such reserves as they managed to gather prematurely. This was due to a faith in the initiative, traditional in the German staff since the 19th century, as well as to limited ideas about armored warfare "set in concrete" by their early war successes.

Some lower level commanders knew better, and a few higher level ones, at least some of the time. They were not listened to, and their scope of action was unduly restricted. Examples are Manstein's defensive success in the south after Stalingrad, where he was not allowed to save 6th Army but after it was lost was given rein to conduct first the retreat and then the Kharkov counterattack, Guderian counseling against Kursk, von Rundstadt advising against the Ardennes attempt and noting that it was impossible on the scale planned, etc.

Obviously the "hold at all costs" nonsense was ridiculous. One fellow mentioned how German commanders were successfully because of their operational flexibility, so long as they fufilled their orders. In the early successes, perhaps - although the degree to which they simply received no guidance at all from higher HQs, and simply made up even their goals as they thought made sense, would probably stun even the most resolute proponent of that scheme of command. But later in the war, three star generals needed centralized approval to move single battalions 5 miles. Nor did this result even in centralization of command. No one actually had full responsibility for anything; everything was a divided muddle dictated by political reliability issues.

Why did they fight well anyway, as they obviously did? Mostly because the officer corps was singularly talented and because the basic thrust of their training had been largely correct (but for the errors already mentioned). Meaning, annihilation battle by flanking actions, flexible tasking, combined arms integration, staff planning of fire support, etc. The bread and butter tasks of officers from captain to one-star general were on the whole performed very well. They had good TOEs, if haphazard supply of the items listed on them.

It wasn't technology, and the highest levels of doctrine (what people are trying to mean with terms like blitzkrieg and maneuver warfare) were the places they made very large unforced errors, as well, to be sure, as some strong decisions part of the time (e.g. Manstein's France plan, Guderian's use of the Sedan breakthrough, the whole 1941 series through Bryansk, the fall 1942 offensive until past the Don, Manstein's operations after Stalingrad). Other powers were similarly mixed at that level, though the Russians probably made fewer "unforced errors" at that scale, from Stalingrad on, than the Germans did. It certainly was not the origin of whatever edge the Germans still possessed.

Part must be simply survivorship and training as a result of past successes. Most of the Russians in higher positions in 1942-1943 had only recently reached their ranks, because the previous army had been destroyed and the new and then larger one created out of practically nothing. The Americans were similarly green through at least Italy. The Brits needn't have been, but in practice were, until about the same point. The prewar BEF had been relatively small, many new techniques needed to be mastered, and old commanders were regularly relieved through the years of defeat. I am speaking of the mid level officers, the "field" grades, not the line privates.

Logistics was abysmal by western standards, but the rail system was reasonably efficient and made up for a lot. Infantry was not motorized, but could be switched rapidly between fronts by train when necessary. The rebuilding and training command practices worked out by mid war were sound, and continually produced new crops of useful divisions. Too late for the 1941-42 period when they might have mattered most in Russia, but the stream that provided rebuilt the front after many a front line disaster.

One man's opinions.

[Michael Emrys]

Originally posted by Zitadelle:

Furthermore, and much like the Americans breaking the Japanese code "Purple," not the entire message could be deciphered and there still might be code words that were questionable (e.g., the Japanese designation for Midway island).

There is a little confusion here. The Japanese Purple code was their diplomatic code and could be read quickly and in its entirety by the code breakers. The code used to transmit messages about the upcoming Midway battle was JN-25 which was much more problematical, largely due to the fact that it was altered at frequent intervals requiring it to be cracked again through a laborious process.

Michael