CM:Normandy - Bocage?

[Secondbrooks]

Steve knows more about that than I, but I do know that the '41 campaign resulted in horrendous casualties among company grade officers, so the policy would have been forced on them at that time regardless of what the practice was before then.

Michael

Wasn't this more problem with Waffen-SS because their "lead by example" and even reckless fighting spirit at it's early years before practice proved that it has it's bad sides, which are high casualties. Heer was more into "lead by management", which Waffen-SS started to adopt as well.

Well to my understandment ww2 in general was "war of young officer cadre", which (along NCOs) suffered relatively large casualties. But Waffen-SS at it's early time in east was specifically exposed to casualties among low-level leaders.

Chad Harrison: Now don't you start to distract him!

[John Kettler]

I think we face a bit of conundrum here, in that on the one hand, hedgerow cutters have been in CM from the beginning and were far too available as represented in the game, while on the other, thanks to Doubler et al., we have a range of other solutions--and no way to implement them, especially since Steve doesn't want to do a combat engineering sim. Made that very clear!

The game has long needed a proper command detonated charge and one with a timer, witness the desperate improvisations, such as padlocked TRPs on bridges, with the TRPs tied to naval FOs and similar, not to mention the utter lack of capability to defeat roadblocks, something an AVRE could do and did. Personally, I like the idea of the explosive breach, followed by two canister spewing Stuarts roaring in, infantry on their decks. Beyond Hollywood, yet actually done!

Even as ancient a miniatures game as Tractics had basic combat engineering capabilities modeled, bridge building, bridge blowing, roadblock creation and clearing, mines and such. Surely with what's been learned on CMSF we can have at least the basics, to include fighting positions with overhead cover? And dare we hope for properly modeled, hard to spot German gun propellant, MG-34s and MG-42s whose tracer doesn't start at the muzzle, grazing fire, ricochet fire, BARs loaded with AP, not ball and the true cover busting capabilities of the mighty Ma Deuce?

Regards,

John Kettler

[Michael Emrys]

Ah, John, you dreamer!

Michael

[Sgt Joch]

There were known problems with the US system, but the results were problably not as bleak as painted above. There appears to have been a generalized sentiment that all replacements were poorly trained and unmotivated.

For example, the Canadians had a system which was midway between the US and British. The allocation of replacements was centralized, but an effort was made to allocate replacements to Regiments from their region and to integrate them into units before going into combat. After the supply of trained infantry replacements was expended in the Normandy campaign, a retraining program was started to transfer members from other corps to the infantry. Many commanders complained about the quality of these replacements.

After one october battle where the Black Watch Battalion failed to capture a well defended position, the senior intelligence officer complained that was because the replacements received were ex-service corps members with little infantry training. poor morale, poor tactics who had arrived only hours before the battle. Yet Copp in "Cinderella Army" did a study of the battles fought by the battalion in october and found no evidence that the combat performance of companies with a high percentage of replacements was worse than companies with a low percentage. This is admitedly a small sample, but I wonder to what extent the common wisdom that replacements were lousy is based on self serving explanations rather than real evidence.

If you examine the battalion/company sized actions fought between the Canadians and Germans in 44, the quality of the infantry appears to be about even on both sides.

[Battlefront.com]

The criticisms I've seen of the US replacement system was that even in good times the replacement quality was considered lower than it could otherwise have been. Towards the end of the war the system was tweaked and, apparently, the quality level increased despite manpower shortages. To me that seems to indicate that the criticisms were valid.

BTW, I did take a quick glance at one of my reports on the German replacement system the other night. Ideally the replacement units (which I described above) fed individual replacements into their related units. Early in the war, and during periods of relative inactivity, that is probably exactly what happened. But the general trend for the war was that more and more whole unit replacements were undertaken simply because there was effectively no formation to feed manpower into.

Theoretically the Germans would keep a unit in the line as long as they could feed individual replacements in without diluting the fighting capability or exhausting the supply of ready replacements. When either of those situations came up, the units were supposed to be withdrawn for rebuilding. The reality of German losses, however, precluded either from working. I'm not sure any system could have coped with that sort of reality. The massive losses plus gross mismanagement of resources are probably more to blame for replacement problems than the replacement system itself.

Steve

[JonS]

The criticisms I've seen of the US replacement system was that even in good times the replacement quality was considered lower than it could otherwise have been. Towards the end of the war the system was tweaked and, apparently, the quality level increased despite manpower shortages. To me that seems to indicate that the criticisms were valid.

If I recall correctly, the 'tweak' included some fairly elementary man-management stuff like

* treating the replacements as adults

* given each pool of replacements some corporate identity that was retained for as long as possible

* organising and conducting training while in the replacement pool

Prior to that, the replacements had been faceless blobs, flowing through the pipe until the fell out the other end at the unit they would serve in. They were just held in camps progressively closer to the front, left to their own devices with no facilities and camp staff who didn't give a toss about them because their role was to administer the camp, not care for the men flowing through it.

If I further recall correctly, some Corps undertook initiatives like those above off their own bat, so at least once men started moving through the Corps AO they started to gain self respect, conduct training, etc. These programmes eventually were picked up by higher and higher command levels.

"If You Survive" by George Wilson and "Roll Me Over" by Raymond Gantter both have first person accounts of their time in the replacement pipe. Wilson was an officer who joined his unit in Normandy just prior to COBRA. Gantter was an OR who joined his unit in ... Jan 1945? He was in a Repple Depple in the Ardennes in the snow.

Edit: IMO Gantter's is the better read.

[Sgt Joch]

we could probably argue about this for a long time, maybe we can just agree that the Canadian Army had better quality replacements.

So how does this translate in game terms? I would think the allied troops which landed on D-Day, as well as the replacements in june-july, would be "regulars" with high/regular motivation. They have no battle experience but they have been training for years. The replacements after that would probably be a mixture of "regulars/green" with low/average motivation.

[JonS]

So how does this translate in game terms?

It doesn't, does it? I thought we were just discussing various replacement schema in the abstract?

[Sgt Joch]

The beauty of CM is that you can discuss history and then see how it can be translated into game terms.

The replacement system has an impact on scenarios and the campaign, on the quantity and quality of troops.

U.S. units would typically be at or close to full strength before they start a major battle in june-july while German units in the line would be gradually ground down by casualties and lack of replacements.

[JonS]

Oh, right - in scen design terms. Yeah, agreed. I thought you meant in terms of game design.

[Sgt Joch]

The most unusual replacement scheme I read about was used by the Poles. The 1st Polish Armored Division suffered heavy losses in Normandy and obviously had no ready access to a replacement pool. They recruited replacements from German Army POWs who were Polish....

...No idea how successful that was or if the replacements did a better job fighting for the Allies than for their former employers.

[MikeyD]

Well, some of the western outskirts of eastern Europe initially saw the invading Nazis as liberators... until it became all too apparent that they weren't. Pavel thought it was a good idea to join-up to fight 'bolsheviks' in 1941, and here he is in February1944 in a British P.O.W. camp in central Italy. Sound like just who would join the Poles in Britain in a heartbeat.

[Battlefront.com]

That and the Germans sometimes gave POWs a choice between remaining a POW (which was oh-so-much-fun if you were from the East!) or joining some sort of military unit fighting on the side of the Germans. In some cases soldiers actually wanted to do this, other times it was simply to improve their chances of survival. The results were extremely mixed.

Latvian, Lithuanian, and Estonian POWs and local recruits made some excellent infantry units. The Waffen SS recruitment from the ranks of conquered Western countries is generally considered a success, though only in the relative sense. The Ukrainians recruited for two Waffen SS units were both disasters. So on and so forth.

It was a very, very long time ago but I wrote my Senior Thesis on German recruitment of foreigners into the Waffen SS. And those were the days before the Internet and Schiffer Publishing. I had to dig pretty hard for sources in English, let me tell you

Steve

[Nicdain]

the Germans sometimes gave POWs a choice between remaining a POW (which was oh-so-much-fun if you were from the East!) or joining some sort of military unit fighting on the side of the Germans

From what I am reading in Beevor's "Stalingrad", especially for russian POWs integrated in military units on the German side, the troubles came when they were captured by their "old" comrades. Usually they were executed immediately.

[Chainsaw]

or sent to prison. Being captured by enemy forces was considered to be the same as treachery. Even russian POWs that escaped from POW camps was considered traitors, they still had allowed themself to be captured.

On the other hand I remember I read one quote where any liberated russian soldier was armed and pushed back into service (think it was under bagration in 1944 or thereabout). But normal state seems to have been that if you was captured or gaved yourself up you was a traitor and was dealt with as one.

[Battlefront.com]

The Soviets were also pretty fond of murdering partisans when they retook control. Then again, the partisans early on had a habit of murdering any agent of Stalin's sent to "help" with their efforts. Since the Ukraine wasn't exactly all that happy with the Soviet authorities before the war, it was pretty obvious to all sides that an armed and independent partisan force was a threat to re-instituted Soviet rule. A decent proportion of those partisans, BTW, were trained and armed by the Germans.

The Eastern Front is such a tangled web of competing interests and motivations!!

Steve

[Michael Emrys]

I've heard stories about partisan bands persisting in the Ukraine and Baltic States—possibly with the clandestine assistance of Western intelligence services—up until the early '60s. I don't know how true those stories are though.

Michael

[Sergei]

It's not without base, eg. in Baltic republics some individual members of the so called "forest brothers" hid in the forests until 1970's. Effective resistance against Soviet government must have died quickly, though.

The last known forest brother is Jānis Pīnups from Latvia who became a legal citizen again only in 1994. He went to the forest in 1945 as a member of resistance organization called "Don't Serve to the Occupant Army". Jānis Pīnups never had a Soviet passport and his legal status was nonexistent during the era of Soviet occupation. His hideaway was located in forest of Preiļi district, Pelēči parish. In 1994 a new passport of Republic of Latvia was issued to Jānis Pīnups and he had said that he was waiting for a moment when he could see Riga as the capital of a once more independent Latvia.

[Mikko H.]

What was the reaction in the Pentagon when they heard that Latvian pin-ups were fighting the Soviets?

[Michael Emrys]

Massed volunteers to go assist them. ("That bandoleer looks so heavy, my dear. Let me help you with it.")

Michael