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

[Grisha]

Andreas,

Regarding any evidence that the German Army collected war experience for the purposes of improving combat performance, good question. One way of finding out would be to see if the Germans updated their combat regulations. The Soviets updated theirs on an annual basis in direct response to new developments in combat experience.

M.Dorosh,

Ahh, so the question that started this whole thread was from a regimental perspective? Well, that changes things quite a bit - just take everything I posted and chuck it out the window Seriously though, at regimental level the war was mainly a tactical problem, and since loss ratios didn't even up between the Soviets and Germans until 1945, one could say that German effectiveness was superior to the Soviets at the tactical level until 1945. German tactical training, both in tactics and leadership, was simply outstanding and no one in WWII matched it, period. The Soviets improved vastly throughout the war, but could never equal the Germans until the last year of the war - and this had just as much to do with the drop in German training and experience as it did in the rise in Soviet training and experience.

However, it must also be said that the concern for tactics was less vital in the Red Army, because of their development of operational art. This was because operational art solved a number of the problems normally associated at the tactical level. I know, digressing yet again, but this information needs to get out. It's been 55 years in need of the telling

[gatpr]

Andreas I should have specified successful, but I thought mentioning Operation Mars and Kharkov made my point that attacks on the Germans in the early period were very rarely tactically successful. I can't believe that the effectiveness was related to better equipment. By that standard, French armor would have crushed the Wehrmacht in 1940. My belief is that simply the concept of combined arms was better understood and practiced by Germans on every front until roughly mid-1943. After that even with some improvements in equipment relative to the Allies, Panther, MG42, Panzerfaust, Panzershreck, their losses of veterans on every level were too great to overcome. This is not even considering the situation of OKH vs OKW with Hitler and his sycophants playing at empire building.

[kunstler]

aaah . . . Ok, regimental level that makes more sense then. I didn't grok the original question.

Which means not much remains from what I was saying. Hmm. Oh well. Nevermind that then!

kunstler

[ August 07, 2002, 10:26 PM: Message edited by: kunstler ]

[Michael Dorosh]

No, no, I appreciate the larger perspective as well, just thought maybe we could discuss a bit of both.

JasonC, I have to agree that small arms mattered little; I have quoted often here the Canadian infantry officer who said that most riflemen might have carried pitchforks for all the difference it would have made in action - the rifle and bayonet were just security blankets.

The Germans especially used the lMG as the basis of the section's maneuver (as did the CW infantry, but where in the CW the Bren supported the riflemen, I think the Germans had it the other way around - though in practice, I fail to see what the difference would be!)

[Tarquelne]

They mostly picked the former when things were going well, as it least it got some use out of their AFV strength. Then they resorted to the second when things were bad, and managed to make them collapse beyond bad to abysmal with some frequency (e.g. Mortain, Arracourt).

(I don't know about Arracourt, but someone dropped "Six Armies in Normandy" (John Keegan) on my head last week, and it would place Mortain (and Failse) in the "Hitler interfering" catagory. According to Keegan Kluge was considering a limited counter attack to help disengage, but Hitler pressed for a full scale annhiliate the enemy counter attack. (One of the reasons the book offers for Kluge's quick agreement is that the most famous of the bomb plots had exploded not long before, and Kluge's loyalty was being questioned.))

[ August 07, 2002, 11:54 PM: Message edited by: Tarqulene ]

[Bastables]

Originally posted by Michael Dorosh:

.

The Germans especially used the lMG as the basis of the section's maneuver (as did the CW infantry, but where in the CW the Bren supported the riflemen, I think the Germans had it the other way around - though in practice, I fail to see what the difference would be!)

The former emphasis suppression and rooting out/killing the enemy through sheer weight of fire, the latter emphases positioning for the assault. Both are drawn from differing historical appreciations by the German and British armies relative to their institutional experiences. This can be seen through the superficial adoption of firepower heavy Infantry units in Commonwealth Armies of Australia, New Zealand Singapore, Fiji and Canada (Presumably Malaysia as well, but I’ve never operated with them although older Kiwi soldiers noted there pechant for Islamic charges) yet still ending contact/fire fight drills with an assault drill. Britain oddly enough with its heavy barrelled assault rifle as the LSW have gone back to a fighting drill not dissimilar to that of WWII formations based on contested appreciations similar to your Canadian Rupert Dorosh.

Doctrine, training and arming extended even down to how those worthless infantry carried out there wistful little lives, examining differences in armament and doctrine and training of Sections highlights the differences between different Militaries and there emphasis.

[Stormhouse]

I remember a few weeks or months ago a guy wrote on this forum a essay about the blitz.

He made a very good and convincing point, the armor was not what won the war in france. Many german tanks where stuck in colums moving up to the front. He also had some numbers as to how many tanks where avaible at the front and that number was really small. What did win the war and what made a huge difference was communications. Every tank had two way radios and also some special ground troops had a direct conneciton to the planes above.

Now communication does not sound as sexy as thousands of tanks rolling and crushing the enemy. But his essay did convice me that he's onto something.

Also Guederian did start out as a signal officer so he had a very good understanding as to how important communication was.

Here is a question, how could the german army have zero intellegiance on russia. Not just the military formation but the climat and people.

The russian have a word for the muddy season called rasputin, yet the german army talked about it like it was natural disaster that only happens once every 100 years?

[Grisha]

Stormhouse,

Very good point about communication. Even at the time of the Poland invasion all German tanks had radio receivers and all command tanks, transmitter/receivers.

As for the lack of German intelligence on the Soviet Union, it's important to understand the attitude the Nazi Gov't. and German military in general had for the Soviet Union. Hitler didn't order a strategic intelligence operation on the Soviet Union until after he decided to begin plans for Barbarossa. This was mostly due to a sense of overwhelming confidence in the German military as well as a very low opinion in Soviet capabilities as a military force and a people. A good book to read on this is Kahn's Hitler's Spies. He spent eight years researching German military intelligence, using German archival records.

[JasonC]

Tarq - Since all large scale armored counterattacks involved the use of important reserves, and since the high command had to approve every use of scarce and important reserves, there is room to say "Hitler interfered" in every case from the winter of 1941 on. But that doesn't make it the real reason in any particular case.

If it were more than an excuse and the actual reason, you would find such things *not* happening *without* high command interference. But this is not what is seen. Below the scale where OKW approval was required for a counterattack, you see exactly the same things going on e.g. Lehr in the US sector in July (Bayerlein), the instant counterattack at Salerno (Kesseling), etc.

It was doctrine, and most of the army officers agreed. They honestly believed that armor was only properly employed for locally offensive action, that the initiative, mass, and local odds were essential to success with armor and could only be achieved by local offensive action. This was based on what they thought were the lessons of their period of success, and what they thought their defeated opponents had done wrong in the handling of armor defensively, against those successes.

The reality was the massing *was* still essential. Proper defensive use of armor does involve massing opposite critical points. But it was not necessary to drive into the enemy defended zone with inadequate overall odds and thus inadequate support from other arms (artillery and infantry). They made that mistake over and over, and it cannot be pinned on OKW interference alone. For that matter, many of the experienced armor hands fully agreed with impractical employments of the available armor and were just as dissappointed and surprised by its failures as OKW.

Sometimes it appeared to work, and that fed the idea that only "assuming the offensive" worked. Thus Manstein's success at Kharkov in early 1943 was not put down to fresh defensive reserves defeated overextended attackers, but to "seizing the initiative". Stopping Epsom was not attributed to simply shifting armor reserves in sufficient (massed) numbers to the threatened point, but to "counterattacking" - when in fact, tactically speaking the shift-defensive portion worked perfectly and the subsequent attacks were unnecessary and wasteful.

Much of the high command - including military officers, not just Hitler - honestly thought that a few fresh armor brigades thrown in front of Patton's entire 3rd Army in the Lorraine would repeat Manstein's results against the overextended Russians of early 1943. Rundstadt wanted a defensive reserve around Aachen instead, but was ignored as overly pessimistic and insufficiently "offense minded".

It was quite general. The more cautious, conservative, and defensive-maneuver oriented senior commanders (Rundstadt, Manstein) were regularly sidelined by an overall doctrinal fixation on the offensive as the decisive form of warfare, which had been relentlessly drilled into the entire officer corps from the interwar period on, and became an article of faith when it seemed to be confirmed by early war successes.

A modern defensive mobile doctrine was never promulgated or taught. Some commanders improvised one in the field, or minimally adapted the basically sound 1917-1918 defense in depth infantry doctrines to combined arms conditions. But resources were continually displaced from their proper role in a real mobile defense, because anything in the way of armor accumulated off the line was instantly earmarked for offensive employment.

You can't find a case where a Mortain sized force was deliberately accumulated as a general reserve *not* meant to be employed in a counterattack, but instead as a "middle linebacker", anywhere in the war from start to finish. They just did not have a sound defensive armor doctrine. Conceptually, "armor" and "defense" sounded to them like substantially opposite terms. Needless to say, this hurt them seriously when they had to conduct an overall defense with armor unit quality their longest suit.

[Tarquelne]

JasonC:

Ok. I'll accept what you say as true. However, you don't specificly address Mortain, which is the only battle I was writing of. My information is that the counter attack at Mortain was very much Hitler's baby. His idea, he freed up the forces, he "sold" the idea to Kluge, who quite possibly gave in with little argument because:

a) He knew it'd be useless. (The concieved of battle had parrellels to the German victory at Liege in WWI, and Hitler, we know, was supersiticious.

Kluge was already listening for the Gestapo at his door.

Also:

If it were more than an excuse and the actual reason, you would find such things *not* happening *without* high command interference. But this is not what is seen.

Frequency matters. For example: You give two examples, if those are the only times it ever happened then I don't think they'd indicate an actual bais in the Army.

Also, any SS attack might be of dubious value in establishing the tendency in the Army.

You might be right, of course, but it isn't as simple as seeing if a foolish below-OKW attack ever happened.

It was doctrine, and most of the army officers agreed.

There's a difference between doctrine being "attack with insufficent armor force" and "use your armor to attack." Though the the latter could certainly lead to the former.

The question is: Did most of the army officers (or at least, the ones who really mattered) consistently advocate attack with insufficent armored force, and why. Just because it was thier doctrine?

[ August 08, 2002, 03:14 PM: Message edited by: Tarqulene ]

[JasonC]

The doctrine was to use armor to attack. That lead to attacks with insufficient force once the strategic initiative had been lost, because almost the definition of loss of the strategic initiative is that the overall odds do not regularly create opportunities for attacks with sufficient force.

Whenever an armor unit could be brought off the line, it was rapidly earmarked for a counterattack. Often the original conceptions of these were as grandious as you please, enough to satisfy ideas of "sufficient force". But the overall reality of the strategic situation did not make those grandious ideas materialize.

So, when elements of five mobile divisions were rushed to the Salerno area after the invasion, they counterattacked immediately with all available armor. Actually, the division closest to the beach did so the day of the invasion - same thing with 21st Panzer in Normandy, incidentally. They had about one day of success, then broke themselves on a combined arms front attacked at negative odds, with their infantry stripped by HE firepower, etc.

When Lehr was moved from the British sector to the US sector in July, the switch was meant to halt the collapse of the existing front under the US St Lo offensive. Did Lehr put battlegroups ahead of the points of US main effort? No. Stand in reserve behind the front to play linebacker? No. It was instantly committed to a counterattack, hit about a corps with about half a division, and lost half its remaining armor in one day. It then fought defensively right through to the Cobra breakout, having squandered half its AFVs to delay 1 US division less than 24 hours.

These are not isolated cases, they are simply some of the best covered ones. When the Panzer brigades clashed with Patton in Lorraine, their tactical handling was similar. When the piecemeal Alsace counterattacks went in, they were similar. The attempts to contain the Remagen bridgehead by counterattack were similar.

I don't know why this is hard to accept. It is a very clear matter and an easy "association" mistake to fall into. The doctrine they considered successful in the first half of the war was offensive use of armor, and they thought that was the only right way to use armor. They thought their opponents had been defeated because they had not used their armor properly, in the same way. They thought they would be committing a parallel error themselves if they did not use all available armor for locally offensive actions whenever they had the chance.

They firmly believed the interwar doctrine of the offensive as the only decisive form of warfare. Some maneuverist advocates continue to sing the same song, and to praise them for having thought so, just ignoring the fact that it was wrong conceptually under the conditions faced from midwar on and did not work, to this day.

The number of commanders who consistently thought otherwise and realized there was more to mobile warfare than that, that reserves specifically of armor for specifically reactive and defensive missions were essential, you can count on your fingers. They made recommendations otherwise at various points but were not listened to. Their views were regarded as defeatist, as lacking in offensive spirit.

This reached the point of high comedy at times. The fantastically successful divisional commander of the 11th Panzer division was chastised for lacking "offensive spirit" by his army superiors after his attacks in Lorraine had reduced his division - and all other commandeered armor in the area, which came under his operational control as the last fresh unit in a long series making those attacks - to less than two dozen runners, and he therefore wanted to break off those attacks.

The general who read this lecture to him was a hand-picked protege of Rundstadt, who in turn was about the most realistic, defense minded, and pessimistic senior commander in the army. 400 AFVs are thrown in front of Patton over the course of a month and cut to pieces; the last 25 commanded by an accomplished veteran want to finally go over to the defensive, and that is considered "lack of offensive spirit".

[Tarquelne]

I don't know why this is hard to accept.

I don't know why you seem to be missing the frequent appearance of the word "Mortain" in my posts. I didn't say I don't accept what you've written (other than not-accepting that MORTAIN fits the pattern you've drawn). I just wanted to point out that there were gaps in your argument, and I hoped for further examples, and for you to fill out some of the gaps in your account....

Whenever an armor unit could be brought off the line, it was rapidly earmarked for a counterattack.

...which you did. (Reading "rapidly" as "rapidly, and without considering other options.")

They firmly believed the interwar doctrine of the offensive as the only decisive form of warfare.

Just remember "they" is a very vauge word. You do mean "Influencial officers of the W. who weren't in thier position due to Hitler's "cronyism"", right?

I know that Hitler's influence on the W. was real, but I think "How would the German Army have fought without Hitler?" to be an interesting question, and one with some usefullness for MD's questions.

They made recommendations otherwise at various points but were not listened to. Their views were regarded as defeatist, as lacking in offensive spirit.

Sounds like we're drifing back to the "How do we seperate Hitler from the W?" question...

. The fantastically successful divisional commander of the 11th Panzer division was chastised for lacking "offensive spirit" by his army superiors

...or maybe not. I'll assume his speriors didn't owe thier position to the rise of the Nazi party, and didn't have Hitler breathing down _thier_ necks in turn.

[JasonC]

No, they didn't. Rundstadt was not a "climber" that way, and one of his proteges was the one involved. Actually, Guderian and Manstein both were such climbers, which goes in rather the other direction.

I think the basic process operating was innovators vs. learner-follower-ideologues, actually. Not political-military or Nazi-nationalist or leader-underling. That is, the few men who invented modern mobile doctrine, and its early master practioners, were well aware of its limits because they were pushing them all the time and discovering them empirically. It wasn't a mass of abstractions to them, you know?

But when doctrines were handed on to others, they can calcify. Those others do not accept that their understanding of the subject is primitive, limited, tenative. They think it is obvious and that they get it. Then they run off and take purest formulations of it to extremes.

So, Guderian was not someone who did not appreciate the usefulness of massed armor on the offensive. On the contrary, he was the one who figured it out and implimented it. But when even Guderian sees, late in 1941, that pressing on is reckless and foolhardy and it is time to pull back to defensible positions for the winter, then what happens?

Defeatism is detected in him. He is insufficiently offensive minded. All of a sudden, the man who ran to the channel, around Smolensk and Kiev, is no longer properly impressed with the importance of the initiative and decision by offensive maneuver. So Guderian gets relieved. Others connive at it. He was, after all, a brash and headstrong upstart who traded on his influence with Hitler to get around or overrule his seniors.

Some of that is just the politics of bureaucratic opportunism. But the basic underlying factor is innovator who sees the limits of his new doctrine, vs. disciples who believe the marketing copy. The latter thought one last push would take Moscow, because "the offensive is the only decisive..." blah blah blah. The chapter and verse that Guderian had practically written.

Same way with Manstein. When he says that operational factors can lead to a decisive victory in the west, his plan is picked out by Hitler personally and those of seniors above him on staff are thrown out. When he says that operational factors require breaking out from Stalingrad, he is being defeatist, but some of the army at least, if not the high command or Paulus, agree with him. But when the Dnepr bend must be evacuated, who needs him anymore? A counteroffensive is just the ticket instead. Whoops, 1SS corps gets trapped and decimated; 2SS corps barely manages to get them back out. Manstein stays retired.

Or, after the magical success of pincers in 1941, the rest think they can do the same at Kursk. Guderian is the one who thinks conditions are all wrong for it. But the others have their doctrinal bromides, which say no victory without offensive use of armor to chop off and kill big hunks of the enemy army.

Or, Manstein's expert scratch-forces defense after Stalingrad is overlooked, but the ringing decisiveness of the Kharkov counterattack is remembered. So it should be easy to do the latter all over again in Lorraine, without needing the former to set it up.

Or, Rommel's scratch force counterattacks in North Africa supplied with captured fuel actually worked. The solution is simply audacity. So, launch the Bulge with a plan to just seize enough gas to run two full panzer corps. Darn, why isn't this working?

The pattern is that the originators saw the limits of applicability of their own outstanding performances. The onlookers thought it must be a simple trick, easily captured by a few doctrinal nostrums, and easily reproduced with a sufficiently cocky attitude and sufficiently breathless risk taking. It wasn't. The cult of the offensive with armor was not a magic solution to anything.

An entire additional doctrine was needed to employ it correctly on defense. The innovators saw parts of that; the non-innovators did not and did not listen to even the parts the innovators had seen, and instead thought they had "lost their nerve". (Because, of course, nerve was all they had really had to begin with, right? Nerve is easy enough to emulate).

As for "just Mortain", fine, fine. But it is a more general excuse than that affair, and the actual party of error on the subject is far wider than that general excuse wants it to be. If it could - and did - affect men of the caliber of Kesseling and Model and Bayerlein, it was not a subaltern's error, nor mere political meddling.

The army was offensive minded to the point of recklessness when it came to using armor. That may be a better error to commit than being defeatist to the point of surrender, but an error it was. And one that went deep enough to be regularly repeated on many different people's watch, at many formation levels, and to override and ignore strong contrary advice from competent officers.

For what it is worth.

[Tarquelne]

I think the basic process operating was innovators vs. learner-follower-ideologues, actually.

Sounds like a good unidentified weakness for MD's list. (And I like that it's specific enough to sidestep completely the opertiv/strategic question.)

I'd put "innovative early war" strategies as a strength, but "inability to change strategies" (or maybe "orientation") as a weakness.

Any other examples of this in other areas?

If the Luft. counts as "German Army":

The bombing campaigns perhaps? I get the impression that they were worth the effort early on, but later campaigns were either too costly or ill concieved, if not both. While the Allied - toward the end, at least - learned from experience and lauchned more effective attacks. (Of course, having huge air fleets helped.)

And if that's true (the part about the Luft.) is this simply another example of same disease effecting the tank corp - the "cult of the offensive" (thank you Jason, for restraining yourself from actually using that phrase. )

Speaking of the Luft.:

How about the "Army's" division between Heer, SS, Luft., whatever? How much/often did it impair the force's effectiveness. A weakness or not?

I don't remember if this was brought up or not yet, but: Scratch forces. At one point SAiN (the book upon which I'm basing the entirety of my expertise, remember?) mentions the German Army was very good about throwing quickly together scratch forces. True?

[ August 08, 2002, 10:43 PM: Message edited by: Tarqulene ]

[Michael Dorosh]

I have an extensive portion on my fledgling "who's who" web page devoted to the Luftwaffe Field Divisions. They were a mammoth waste of resources and delayed the refitting of several panzer divisions IIRC, while these useless followers-on were equipped with motor transport.

[Tarquelne]

They were a mammoth waste of resources

Mammoth, huh? I'd assumed it wasn't healthy, but didn't know it was that bad. Thanks. I'll go do some reading...

[Michael Dorosh]

Originally posted by Tarqulene:

</font><blockquote>quote:</font><hr />They were a mammoth waste of resources

Mammoth, huh? I'd assumed it wasn't healthy, but didn't know it was that bad. Thanks. I'll go do some reading...</font>

[Zitadelle]

M. Dorosh has it correct. Luftwaffe Division’s were born out of the manpower shortages from 1942. The German high command recommended transferring troops from the Kreigsmarine and the Luftwaffe to the army for replacements. Of course Goring wanted to control his own fiefdoms and responded with the idea of creating Luftwaffe infantry divisions- based upon the ad-hoc defensive organizational structures from 1941 (more on that if necessary). Hitler, of course loved the idea, since it fit into his game on the value of the number of divisions and party loyalty.

[sidenote, another discussion. During the end of the war Hitler demanded that undermanned divisions maintain their individual standing, and not be integrated together. Of course, this required more logistical/command structures and probably resulted in weakened units especially compared to what would have been the result of combining elements of a depleted divisions under a new division. Discuss.]

In the end 22 Luftwaffe divisions were created, and they all met nasty ends on the battlefield. Initially, they were to assigned to quiet fronts, but circumstances required that they be placed in crisis areas to stem holes in the frontlines. Based upon what I’ve read, I would argue that the divisions weaknesses were two-fold.

1)TO&E- the units were smaller and equipped like a light infantry brigade versus a division. There was also a lack of supporting units- such as recon and engineering. Supporting artillery and mobile elements were lacking; furthermore what was available was commonly captured equipment. The captured equipment was prone to breakdown and increased logistical complexity trying to provide ammunition for all sorts of calibers.

2)Command- the units’ command structures were composed of Luftwaffe officers that had little experience in combat- especially in larger organizations. Furthermore, units used some German army officers which did not have the cadre with the troops. Also, these officers weakened the available pool of officers for the army as well.

One source of this information is an article by Steven Sandman in _Command Magazine_ (“The Luftwaffe’s Field Divisions;” Fall, 1995).

[Ligur]

Zitadelle and Dorosh made me remember -45 and the 9th Parachute Division, a sad tale which epitomizes what they are talking about. I feel like recounting what I remember. This was in the final stages of the war, but nevertheless gives one a fine example of Luftwaffe personnel used as infantry*. Also included a "nasty ending," the kind I think Zitadelle is talking about.

In the march/april of -45 Göring was a frequent visitor to the HQ of Army Group Vistula at Hassleben, where he pranced around in trimmed fur, tailored uniform and golden braids, spending his time sending messages to army commanders and complaining he hadn't been saluted properly by their men.

In one planning session, he ranted about his two paratroop divisions at Oder front, describing them as übermenschen and declaring both divisions must be sent on the attack, after which "one can send the whole Russian army to the Devil." Indeed. He absolutely didn't mind the divisions weren't manned by actual paratroopers. Infact, he absolutely didn't mind about anything that has to do with the words "logic" or "reason" for that matter so I'm not surprised.

The 9th Parachute Division was commanded by General Bruno Bräuer, an elegant man who reputedly used a cigarette holder and was the former garrison commader of Crete. Instead of commanding superhuman warriors like Göering insisted, he was commanding Luftwaffe ground personnel, most of whom had never jumped out of a plane or seen action.

When the 1st Belorussian Front attacked (8983 artillery pieces, 1.2 million shells were fired on the first day, but gladly most of German front had been pulled back and the front line was manned by a skeleton crew... Who were totally shattered by the opening barrage, both physically and mentally) in the 16th of April the vaunted 9th Parachute, holding the center of the front, was the first to break.

Colonel Menke (killed when the T-34s broke through), the Regimental commander of 27th Para regiment, was unable to see through the haze after the horrible opening barrage of the morning. He could, however, guess that a collapse was taking place based on the amount of Luftwaffe personnel running west, throwing their weapons away and shouting "der Ivan kommt!" He immediately ordered a counter-attack. Hauptmann Finkler managed to scrape together some 10 men and charged out of the forward HQ of the regiment, but ran into the enemy at once. Apparently most were shot down. Finkler was able to hide under a destroyed Hetzer and later made it to Berlin.

During the morning of 17th of April the division was able to rally "a little" when armored support arrived. But the collapse started again very soon. Bräuer was completely shattered by the performance of his division and suffered a nervous breakdown and was relieved of command. Bräuer was later executed for atrocities committed under another commander in Crete. He wasn't all that lucky and I feel sorry for him. Even Göring, upon hearing of the collapse, found time to phone the Army Group Vistula HQ and demand Bräuer be stripped of command.

The division rallied in the 18th day, but when the 1st Guards Tank Army started pushing along Reichstrasse 1 in the 19th they fled again in panic, shouting "der Ivan kommt!" The recon battalion of the Nordland Division, heading for the front, encountered some of them, gave them ammunition and brought them back to battle momentarily in a succesfull counter-attack (with a very temporal effect).

Later the division was mixed in the growing mass of misery streaming towards west and by the 22th of April only fragments remained.

Small groups took part in the fighting in Berlin later but as a figting force, even considering the circumstances, the 9th Parachute didn't make a good impression.

*[edit]Zitadelle cleared me up on the actual status of the Para divisions, which had nothing to with Luftwaffe. Or somefink[/edit]

[ August 09, 2002, 02:27 PM: Message edited by: Ligur ]

[Zitadelle]

Very interesting account, and would probably make for a great CMBB scenario/operation.

However, the Luftwaffe infantry divisions should not be confused with either the Herman Goering Division nor the parachute divisions. The Luftwaffe infantry divisions were distinct, and suffered from their own problems (as discussed above) as they were understrength and badly organized/trained. The Luftwaffe 9th infantry division, for example, was mauled in February, 1944 near Leningrad and disbanded thereafter.

[Ligur]

Originally posted by Zitadelle:

Very interesting account, and would probably make for a great CMBB scenario/operation.

However, the Luftwaffe infantry divisions should not be confused with either the Herman Goering Division nor the parachute divisions. The Luftwaffe infantry divisions were distinct, and suffered from their own problems (as discussed above) as they were understrength and badly organized/trained. The Luftwaffe 9th infantry division, for example, was mauled in February, 1944 near Leningrad and disbanded thereafter.

So the Parachute Divisions Göring ranted about were not actually Luftwaffe divisions but only manned by former Luftwaffe personnel? This must have confused me.

Okay, something I didn't know... I always thought the 9th Para was a Luftwaffe division... The problems it faced seem quite similar. Durrr. Well, you learn every day (if you read the BTS boards, that is, otherwise I'm not sure). I also have to point out I'm very low on the "grog scale" and can and will mix up different arms

[Ligur]

Originally posted by Zitadelle:

Very interesting account, and would probably make for a great CMBB scenario/operation.

Yes, lead conscript/green infantry with a TO&E of a Para Div. on defence against the 1st Guards Tank Army.

A bucket of fun

[Zitadelle]

Originally posted by Ligur:

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

Very interesting account, and would probably make for a great CMBB scenario/operation.

However, the Luftwaffe infantry divisions should not be confused with either the Herman Goering Division nor the parachute divisions. The Luftwaffe infantry divisions were distinct, and suffered from their own problems (as discussed above) as they were understrength and badly organized/trained. The Luftwaffe 9th infantry division, for example, was mauled in February, 1944 near Leningrad and disbanded thereafter.

So the Parachute Divisions Göring ranted about were not actually Luftwaffe divisions but only manned by former Luftwaffe personnel? This must have confused me.

Okay, something I didn't know... I always thought the 9th Para was a Luftwaffe division... The problems it faced seem quite similar. Durrr. Well, you learn every day (if you read the BTS boards, that is, otherwise I'm not sure). I also have to point out I'm very low on the "grog scale" and can and will mix up different arms </font>

[Ligur]

I think the words infantry and field are the key here, grog scale high or low.

But the sad tale of the 9th Para nearly shattered my belief of Göring's superhuman fighting divisions. Maybe I can now believe in them again and regard the 9th Para as a freak accident! Indeed, they might have been very well equipped (I have no idea) but with Luftwaffe ground personnel as the bulk of the force... Nothing good came out of it.

If the 9th Para did so bad, I'm now starting to wonder how a Luftwaffe infantry division would have managed considering how they were built.

*grows pale*

[JasonC]

"Luftwaffe" is the whole branch of the armed services, and in wartime Germany simply means "part of Goering's fiefdom". Which includes the air force, but plenty more besides. "Infantry" is a role for ground units, and only refers to a *division* type for the "heer infantry" divisions.

The Herman Goering Panzer division, later expanded into an entire panzer corps, was simply Goering's pet mobile formation. There was nothing air anything about it, except the politician in charge of it. It was not composed of former flyers or former ground crews or anything of the sort. It was composed of picked men, was very well equipped, and a formidable panzer division. It was also unique.

The Luftwaffe Field divisions were a mid-war expedient concocted by Goering to avoid transfers of personnel out of his personal fiefdom when the needs of the war in Russia dictated that the ground combat forces be expanded, in 1942 and 1943. That could have been accomplished by starving the Luftwaffe of new personnel, by transfering existing personnel from the Luftwaffe to the Heer, or by what was actually done. Which was, to leave the manpower under Goering's control and let him build his own seperate, parallel ground force, just as Himmler got to build the Waffen SS as his own seperate ground force.

To do this, Goering transfered personnel from flak units, ground crews, and comb outs of rear area Luftwaffe positions, as well as a portion of the ordinary new drafts his organization continued to receive. But he did not have any large cadres of experienced ground combat personnel - above all of experienced officers - to man the new force.

The level of equipment he received for these Luftwaffe Field divisions was no better than, and often worse than, that available to the Heer infantry division. In part because he insisted on such a large program, in terms of the number of units he tried to equip. He was really trying to keep up with the Waffen SS, in order to avoid losing political clout within the regime. Transport in particular was scarce. On the other hand, he had plenty of Flak.

These Luftwaffe Field divisions proved a mixed bag in the field, and overall the experiment was not a success. The best of them performed about as well as typical Heer infantry divisions. Others performed poorly. Only a few remained by 1944, although one of them fought in the Normandy area, for instance.

The Luftwaffe Field division must not be confused with the Parachute (Fallschirmjaeger) divisions. Which were also under the control of the Luftwaffe, to be sure. Initially the FJ was a smaller force of picked men. Their access to the highest quality manpower, good equipment, and extensive training, made the *early* FJ an elite force. It was, however, also quite small. And it was decimated in the battle on Crete in 1941.

The remaining cadre of the old FJ formed the basis of an expanded FJ that grew alongside of, but slower than, the overall Luftwaffe force. The new few FJ formations retained something of the picked character of the old FJ, but did not see action in parachute jumps and soon lost their jump skills. They level of selectivity of the men in the FJ stayed reasonably high until 1943, when the Luftwaffe Field division experiment was recognized to be a failure.

From that point on, no new Luftwaffe Field divisions were formed. Instead, new formations within Goering's fiefdom were all *designated* "FJ". Some attempt was made to provide experienced cadres for the new formations of that name, from the existing FJ - e.g. by building a new division around one regiment from an old one (but often, an already depleted regiment).

From 1943 to the crisis of the summer of 1944, these "second generation" FJ formations ramped up, while the Luftwaffe Field divisions were burnt out, destroyed, or disbanded (a few lingering into 1944). By the time of Normandy, the existing FJ was a mixed bag. It included some formations with excellent personnel and equipment, and others that were poorly armed and poorly trained. It showed about the same range as the Heer infantry divisions, but with a larger variance (fewer middling formations, more at the high and low ends, both).

For example, the 6th FJ regiment in Normandy was a crack unit, armed as heavily as you see depicted in CM. The 5th FJ division, on the other hand, was a poorly trained formation in which only about 1/5 of the officers and NCOs had ground combat experience, only 2/3rds manned, underequipped, etc. In other words, some of the "FJ" was by then scarcely better than the poorer "Luftwaffe Field divisions" had been.

Another change in the mix occurred after the crisis of the summer. When AG Center and OB West both collapsed, all the previous manpower stops were pulled out to create fresh infantry formations to hold at the German borders. This wound up sweeping up large numbers of Luftwaffe rear area personnel so far unaffected by any of the previous developments. Many of them were transfered to the Heer. The same happened in the navy, incidentally. Some formations in the Lorraine and later in the Bulge were up to 2/3rds navy transfers. These men were brought in to the Heer and given the same training as civilians just being drafted.

FJ divisions went on being formed, but the supply to make more and more of them dwindled from the late summer of 1944 onward, as the rear area pool emptied out. The same sort of mixed bag was seen - some FJ units had accumulated long combat experience by then, and continued to receive high quality personnel (meaning young men in excellent health, well motivated, etc). Other formations fully reflected the overall fact that Germany was scraping the bottom of the manpower barrel by then.

All in all, the Luftwaffe ground forces were not an elite formation, unlike the Waffen SS. Portions of the force were, but nothing like all of it. Overall, the force showed about the range of Heer formations - a little excellent armor, some excellent infantry, some mediocre infantry, some crappy infantry. Considering the use the Heer could have made of the same resources, with its more abundant cadres of trained officers and NCOs, its burnt out formations ready to be rebuilt, etc, there is little question that the diversion as a whole weakened the overall force.

I hope that helps.