High Tech German military

What's that last picture titled? "Panzergrenadiers advance to the front passing an panzer column?"

 

LOL.I bet they are happy to be on horses.

 

The Best of Blitzkrieg Pt 5

 

If I may, where the bloody heck' do you find all of these photos? You really must have a library inside of your house!

 

LOL Google is your friend and my collections over the years of perusing the web. Like I have said before I have been on discussion groups since about 1994 I think .

 

It's quite surprising that this apparently unsophisticated army conquered
Poland, France, Denmark, Norway, Belgium, The Netherlands, Luxembourg, Yugoslavia, and Greece. Not to mention the fact that they put a pretty good hurt on Russia. And had quite a run in Africa. Obviously it's not that the Germans were good warfighters, they opponents just happened to be worse than them! It's amazing that with such a backwards army such as this they did what they did...

Yours,

Bill

 

And out of those countries mentioned only two had quite large armies. You are right about the other countries though. They were smaller. Used wrong or obsolete tactics. Did not have the same morale or motivation. Bad generalships and leaders. Not as well armed or equipped nor having the same types or numbers of more modern arms and equipment. Nor the same amount of soldiers and forces. And of course as the war went on the Germans became less and less mechanised then they were before. And ulimately had to rely more and more on WWI type transport.

 

Here's an article from Time magazine dated Dec. 23, 1940.
I am sharing this article to provide contrast and a point of comparison.
It's a shame I don't have a working scanner right now to show the picture of the U.S. Cavalry charge accompanying the article. This US Army exercise was meant to show the supremacy of the horse over motorized units in 1940. It was a good demonstration but fortunately saner heads prevailed. The last paragraph of the article, I think, says it all.

Flowing Horses
A line of Army scout cars rolled out of Fort Bliss, down a rutty road, and out on the Texas plain. Behind the scout cars, a mile across the twisted land, stood file after of horsemen, hidden in the brush. The US Cavalry was about to have some fun. An officer's voice crackled in the scout-car radios. The four-wheel drives bit into the sand, the cars lunged side by side over the plain.
Back where the cavalry waited, the right hand of an officer rose, swung forward. Horses and horsemen spurted from the brush. in the scout cars, above the pattering exhausts, the riflemen heard the crying breath of horses on the run. Mounted riflemen, machine gun squads, four horse-drawn howitzers, overtook, enveloped, rushed past the cars at 20 miles per hour. The horsemen vanished ahead into a shallow arroyo, arched over the far side, rode on.
Where the desert abruptly broke and dropped down to a pitted, 40-foot slope, down the sandy ridge they leaped and slid. All along the ridge poured a river of men and horses, spilling downward and riding on. Riflemen dismounted, jerked guns from holsters. Machingunners ripped at theirr packs, vanished into the brush with the guns. Within five minutes, the squadron was deployed for battle.
"Now, gentlemen, you see what I meant," said horse-proud Major General Robert Charlwood Richardson Jr., commander of the First Cavalry Division at Fort Bliss. What he meant was that horses could "flow" over terrain where no truck, scout car or tank could go. He spent an evening last month expounding his doctrine of flowing horses and horsemen, then put on his show. He had indeed demonstrated that modern cavalry could flow off roads, through brush and sand, over ridges and through gullies which would slow or balk any mechanized force.
General Richardson's demonstration was a fine sight. But in their mind's eye his visitors could see attack planes spitting death at the horsemen on the crowded slope, or diving at them during their brief massing before they could dismount and take cover; or enemy scout cars and tanks, crawling across the boondocks toward flowing (and temporarily defenseless) horsemen.

 

And if you stop a truck you can leave it right there in the shade whereas a horse has to be fed several times a day, working or not working

 

​

 

it is quite mind boggling though because the German Designers and Inventors of World War 2 were a very innovative bunch as you can see that their war inventions were quite Global Shocking and respected. The Germans problem was Industry Power. Imagine if they had even a Third or a half of what the U.S. had?


....But thankfully they didnt because you dont know where the Jet engine programs would go, four-engined bombers, the V-3 Mountain cannon or the even the moving Island....







http://www.vincelewis.net/ultratank.html

 

Imagination,ideas ,drawings and plans did not make them anymore High Tech. Many items were thought of and concieved yet never came to fruition. They were just dreams. And did not change the fact that they were not as most people think the highly advanced mechanized army that the German propaganda portrayed them to be. As the war ground on it became even less and less mechanized.

 

What's funny is that other countries also had their share of ideas. Some were good (Tallboy, Atomic Bomb), others weren't (Pykrete carrier, The Great Panjandrum).

That behemoth above is simply stupid, it couldn't even cross a river. Crazy ideas don't win wars. Besides, with the awful mess the Geman industry was, how could that be produced? Wars aren't graphical novels.