U.S. Army vs German Army

So...the German soldier was better trained and prepared for combat than the US soldier. OK I can get behind that. But in the end the OKW surrendered due to strategic shortcomings and failed objectives.

Wouldn't it be safe to say that without proper command and management of those soldiers, all of those battle hardened troops are useless?

 

Australian NCOs are trained to a high level...we don't have the support that larger armies have, so more training, responsibility and autonomy is given to them...works well in low level engagements.

 

What the Germans had was more experience, not necessarily better training. The US began mobilizing in 1940 and did little but train until entering the war. Now, one can argue, correctly I think, that battlefield experience translates into better training because the trainers have "been there and done that." Their experience is in the current war, not the last one (to mangle the old adage). Yet, the American army (all the allied armies) did a damned fine job of absorbing the new warfare of mobility, armor, coordinated artillery nets and low level air support. They absorbed the lessons so well that they out-blitzkrieged the Germans at their own game. Allied artillery in particular was years ahead of the Germans. It could be called in far faster and with far greater precision than German artillery.

And how about that unit on unit fighting? Well, certainly any of the units that fought through Normandy were equal to or better than their German counterparts by the time of the break-out. Most of that campaign was fought down at the company and platoon level simply because the bocage forced everything down to that level. Every 2nd Lt., every Sergeant, learned tactics and command because they had to. The 1st, 29th and 30th always come to mind because they became the lead divisions in the later campaigns and all of them beat German units their own size and larger, over and over again. My God man, just read about Mortain.

I'm not as familiar with the individual British and Commonwealth Divisions, but their northern wing certainly had no problem pushing the Germans back just as easily as the Americans. Of course, they had the ozzies with them, so they were pretty damned near invincible (that was for CAC, just humor him).

It is true that some of the US divisions that came in late in the game were inferior in many ways to the enemy. That's to be expected. The Ardennes is proof of that - yet, even though those green divisions folded, the experienced divisions came in and pulverized the Germans. In a matter of weeks they completely crushed the German army in the west.

In short, I think you're trying to apply flawed arithmetic to an equation that's already been solved. Cognitive dissonance - fish and bicycles. The battles were fought, we won. We won when we outnumbered the Germans and we won when they outnumbered us.

 

Thanks for that Kodiak...humouring is all I ask for... : )

 

>I've read Muth and Hastings, and they can pretty much be summed up in one sentence...The German was superior.
Not liking someones work is all well and good, but disliking it isn't the same as debunking it. “Everyone is entitled to his own opinion, but not to his own facts.” -Daniel Patrick.

>Yet, in the end, the Allies won, and the Germans lost. Thus, in the end, any real or perceived German superiority mattered not a whit - They surrendered by the tens of thousands.
I already went over this in post #15, its a red herring and irrelevant to the discussion. My article was concerned with the quality known as fighting power, and determining which army (german or american) had more of it.

>Now...to me any way...A Kriegsmarine without ships and a Luftwaffe without aircraft rather highlights the need and necessity of gold-plated equipment. For a navy without ships is not a navy, and an air force without planes is not an air force.
You got it completely wrong. In no way was I excusing the luftwaffe or kriegsmarines failure to provide their troops with the necesarry equipment: You can take that strawman and put it right back where you pulled it from. Your tautology at the end only serves to complement your dishonesty.

When I say gold plated equipment, I am referring specifically to the over-priced, uneconomical products that are output by many defense contractors today, with the F-35 fighter being a prime example: Lockheed martins claim that the JSF would be 'affordable' was nothing but a marketing ploy to sucker gullible politicians. These weapons systems are the product of a (now corrupt) military industrial complex that is interested only in making a profit at the expense of the tax payer AND national defense. This trend was detailed back in the mid 80s by franklin spinney, who termed it as a 'defense death spiral.'

 

I'd be more impressed if you had a more extensive and deeper bibliography. Van Creveld's work was essentially a rehash of Trevor's findings, with some odd error's of Creveld's thrown in. His work on logistics is better, but also contains some interesting defects in data and analysis.

Muth I'm not familiar with, but would like to see it; Gole's review in Parameters was very positive - its been on my "to read list" for five years now. His subject is incredibly complex, so I hope he does it right, and I am surprised he apparently did in 217 pages of text. The thing is the Germans began the war over-expanded, particualrly in their officer and NCO corps and relied on make-do's such as increasing the leadership responsibilities of their NCO's. They did it by rapidly promoting promising soldiers in a sink or swim fashion...only in many cases if they sank they died. Poland, France, and the Balkans gave them a strong basis of experience to work with, and the Ersatzheer "army within an army" provided a lot of training and experiential capacity to work from, plus it was a huge advantage in terms of personnel management fighting a continental war.

Overlord, like all I have ever read by Hasting's, is simply journalistic pap posing as history. Basing conclusions on anything he says is problematic to say the least.

Joe Balkoski tells an in-depth story of a single American division. Generalizing it is also problematic. The 29th was interesting in that it had the advantage of having in its Medical rolls a psychologist who early on recognized the symptoms of battle fatigue and devised the first widespread and practical treatments. However, it took a while to catch on...as for example look at the PTSD and suicide rates in the Army today, partly as a result of failing in inculcate his, and others, findings.

DiNardo's book is dated and attempts to cover a very complex subject in 176 pages. I could only recommend it as a very basic overview.

 

With regards to the books featured in my bibliography, I cited them for different reasons. Only creveld and muths publications were used as a general reference source: The other three were cited because of specific details given in their contents.

Hastings book highlights the performance of alarm units, statistics of officers, and a couple other things.
DiNardos book highlights the heers basic training, cross branch training, and a couple other things.
Balkoskis book is useful because it talks about the command staffs, and replacement systems.

Another example of my methodology: In order to accurately summarise the initiative displayed by both armys, I needed to comb one paragraph each from three separate books. (None of which I bothered to include in the bibliography, because their contribution was so small)

 

Go see my post #20 to see the salient fact of the matter.

Now, whether the Germany Army was .01%, 1%, 100%, or even 1000% superior to the American Army, does not change the fact that it is the German Army that surrendered.

Irrelevant to the discussion?

Ok then...

The "superior" fighting power of the German Army

Yes, yes you did get it completely wrong. When your Navy & Air Force are fighting as ground pounders, you have already lost, and lost quite badly.

Are you flipping mad or something? What in the name of God's green earth does the F-35 have to do with WW2?

Since we are talking about WW2 and since we are talking about "gold plated equipment", perhaps you should read up on the US Navy's Farragut class destroyers...Rather than injecting modern US weaponry into a debate where it has no place.

 

The OP is half right in this, though he draws the wrong conclusions.

If you think it was just a matter of experience answer this:-

How long was the training given to German and US Army Officers?
How much prior military training did they have before they were accepted?

How long was the training given to German and US Non Commissioned Officers?
How much prior military training did they have before they were accepted?

 

Well first off in your initial post you intentionally chose to attack anyone that might disagree with your conclusions.

So if you don't agree with your hypothesis you are automatically "jingoistic and revisionist"?

Then you continue your peremptory attitude by stating;

I simply responded in kind after reading the attached blog that appears to be based heavily upon van Creveld's "Fighting Power". This book was first published in 1982, I first read it circa 1985 and at the time thought he made some good points, but drew some flawed conclusions and ignored many relevant factors. Also, it is a theory not a proven fact as many reputable works have been produced debunking van Creveld's thesis in the 34 years since "Fighting Power" first appeared. My opinion of the book is, that while flawed it does raise some relevant points and provides an alternate view from which to examine the subject.

I am not offended by what you wrote, I am offended by the imperious tone of your initial post.

Negative to my personal identity being intertwined with the U.S. Army and it's reputation. I am well aware of the Army's past and present strengths and failings. I am also well aware and well informed on the German Army's strengths and weaknesses. In your blog you tended to concentrate on the US Army's weaknesses and focused only on the German Army's strengths. To balance your thesis you should also examine the German systems weaknesses and what the US did right. Your initial post was not neutral and academic, again;

You do know that Dupuy himself has publicly questioned some of the conclusions van Creveld drew from Dupuy's work, right? You might want to add some of works of Peter Mansoor, Michael Doubler, Keith Bonn, and Russell A. Hart to get the opposing view.

 

If you put your proselytizing aside and actually want to discuss the merits or lack thereof of the the conclusions you have drawn; let's do it.

 

Wait, I don't know if you can handle the discussion, being a U.S. jingoist and all.

 

Yes, and I acknowledge that in the next few sentences. "Now, one can argue, correctly I think, that battlefield experience translates into better training because the trainers have "been there and done that." Their experience is in the current war, not the last one (to mangle the old adage)."

I also try to draw a distinction between those units that mobilized early and those that came online later in the war. An interesting read is anything on the 1940/41 "Louisiana Maneuvers." 400,000 troops, almost all of them completely green or from National Guard units that had been neglected since the previous war went through a series of maneuvers and mock battles over and over again, all based on reports and observations of the new tactics the German had used in 39 and 40. The maneuvers were almost laughable in some ways because even though they had mobilized the troops, much of the equipment was mocked up - plywood tank covers over trucks, etc. Yet, by the end of that long series of cartoonish mock battles, they had worked out a completely new doctrine based entirely on countering the German tactics and strategy. All of the dinosaurs that couldn't or wouldn't change were quietly retired or sent off to harmless staff positions. The officers who excelled in the new tactics became the leading figures in the war - Bradley, Patton, Clark, Eisenhower to name a few. The Divisions that participated continued to train for the next years and became the hard core of the army in Europe.

So, it's not fair to say (in a general way), that training was deficient. It is fair to say that those individual replacement soldiers that were thrown in later were often poorly trained, and certainly divisions that came online later were not on par with those that mobilized early. Yet, if you stand back and look at the big picture, you also see that Eisenhower and Bradley were very careful to use those core divisions in the critical places and as the breakthrough elements of each offensive, while the 2nd line divisions were relegated to follow-up positions.

It should also be noted that creating an army from scratch has both positive as well as negative results. This is somewhat mirrored in both the American and British/Commonwealth experience. The British army failed miserably early in the war, but the breathing space and the opportunity to reform, re-arm and retrain resulted in a rather magnificent machine. Those plumbers turned into green soldiers were now training for the new war instead of the last war. The doctrines adopted during that breathing space were now one step ahead of the German doctrine instead of two steps behind.

 

I do know that Trevor privately questioned some of Creveld's conclusions, but I don't recall he publicly did? Do you have details?

Manoor and Doubler suffer from the problem of looking only at "one side of the hill". The late Keith Bonn did better, but got so wrapped up in the tactical comparison and the unique environment of the Vosges that he missed the forest for the trees. I had a very interesting conversation with him once at the old Suitland NARA digs when he was doing his research for When the Odds Were Even and tried to point some of them out. Hart IIRC declared in his introduction to Colossal Cracks that he was going to trash the silly theories of Dupuy and the other "Germanophiles"...and then never revisited the subject in his text.

 

Kodiak old chap,

This is all fine and dandy, but you didn't answer my question.

British and American officer training is based around the basic junior officer task of commanding an infantry platoon, combined with the usual recruit training that every soldier goes through. It has to be this was because the raw material was educated civilians with some leadership potential as well as soldiers who had been picked as suitable. The result is a young officer who knows very little about the big picture, but well versed in running a platoon.

The German Army Officer training started with officer candidates who had demonstrated their competence performing the role of an NCO. In peacetime this was a year in the ranks followed by nine months at Kreigschjule. In wartime the courses were shortened but the candidate needed 15 months military service including two months in theif field as a section or platoon commander. By then time a German officer candidate reached Kregschule he was already a trained soldier and proven leader who knew how a platoon worked. At Kreigschule he was trained to command a battalion. After his special to arm training he would be posted to a unit probably back as a platoon commander. Read Siegfried Knapp's memoir Soldat which traces his progress from induction into the labour Corps in 1938 to Kriegschule.
http://usacac.army.mil/cac2/cgsc/carl/wwIIspec/number03.pdf

In the British and US Army an NCO was merely a senior enlisted man - even if the upper echelons held warrents. In wartime NCOs were promoted within a unit at the discretion of the commanding officer - with some oversight at the more senior ranks. I don't know how the US Army trained its NCOs, but inn the British Army the RSM took some promising lads for two or three weeks, arranged for them to be trainined in drills and instruction and those that passed were given a tape. Somenthing similar took place between lance corporal and sergeant. On campaign local unpaid rank would be given to a promising soldier and eventually ratified administratively. I don't think there were specific leadership courses for NCOs.

In the German Army Non Commissioned rank was a defined strata - like German society with its three grades of school. An NCO attended a three - six month residential course at an NCO school. If they hadn't attended this they were not an Unteroffizier, but some form of senior gefreiter. Have a look at German strength states. Pre D Day a fair number of Panzer divisions were over strength in soldiers but under-strength in NCOs. In the British or US Army they were all lumped together as ORs. German NCOs were given a formal military education and given more responsiblity than in the British and US Armies. The German army had far fwer officers than either of the western allies.

The reason for this difference in approach is based on the philosophical difference between the armies. The British and, possibly to a lesser extent US Armies believe that it is possible for the commander to impose order on a battlefield. E.g. Carlo D'Este's critique of the allies in Normandy is fundamentally that the battle didn't go as planned. The German approach is based on Clausewitz view of war as inherently chaotic and their doctrine and officer training is based on that assumption. One of their great military heroes was von Moltke the Elder whose battles were won "bottom up" by the tactical superiority at low level rather than any napoleonic master plan.

The significance of this matters when you try to explain exactly why the Germans were so good as this Auftragstaktik stuff and why, despite decades of claiming do do "mission command" modern armies find it hard to emulate. The German army was commanded by lots of people who had been trained to do their boss's boss's job. Given a standardised doctrine it was far far easier for German subordinates to express initiative in a constructive way.

I agree that the British and US Armies learned a lot during the course of the war. Their officer corps became much more experienced and professional. They also copied a lot from the Germans. I also agree with Terry Copp and John Buckley that the absence of formal doctrine gave allied junior commanders far more latitude for tactical innovation than ther germans who were predictable, even if hard to stop.

 

Yes, I have two maybe three quotes of his, saved from articles and/or interviews, don't remember which. I'll try find them and post them along with the original source. When I keep notes like that in my digital file I normally annotate it with source and context.

Yes, I am aware of their bias as well, that is why I suggested he add those sources "to get the opposing view."

When reading up on a particular historical subject I rarely accept as gospel the authors interpretation of the facts. I will normally read both sides and form my own conclusions. Normally, the truth, (which is still subjective due to my own subconscious biases) is an amalgamation of the two opposing positions. Even the side of the argument you might be inclined to oppose, more often than not does contain certain truths and does provide a standard against which to test the conclusions you may be forming. If they stand the test of comparison you can retain them, most often you are forced to modify your previous understanding, sometimes slightly sometimes significantly. Some of our conclusions, when compared fall short, seem forced or we can see them as logically invalid and discard them. In the end you usually end up with a fairly balanced understanding of the subject.
These historical theories and revisions of historical interpretation normally runs in cycles. You will have one historian publish with a new evaluation and/or a new theory based upon new information, if popular you'll have a number of other historians publish works that support, and expand on the that view. Then you'll have a historian publish a well sourced rebuttal to the original "new evaluation" and again you'll have an abundance of new works from the other side.

 

Maybe we're talking apples and oranges. Those NCO's and junior officers from that first 1940 call up had about three years of nonstop maneuvers and training before Normandy. Even the later divisions staffed with "90 day wonders" went through quite extensive training before being committed to battle. The 90 days just got a butter bar pinned on their collar, they still underwent much more training with the unit in the US and in England before Normandy.

Where you are absolutely correct is officers and men coming in through the replacement system, which was handled miserably. They were ill-equipped to deal with what awaited them. I think it's also true that some of the divisions committed in the summer/fall of 44 were poorly trained, thrown together and committed before they were ready. It's hard to question that call, since there was this big war going on. Still, as I pointed out earlier these units were placed in the softer positions, though the Germans didn't always cooperate with Bradley's opinion on soft zones. The Ardennes...

 

I'd love to hear them since I just don't recall any. Course, I was always surprised Trevor didn't try to sue Creveld. He sued everyone else.

Sorry, yes I guessed that; I was more giving my own POV on them for the other guy to chew on.

Indeed; its why I prefer to go to the Ur source whenever possible - the original documentation; diaries written at the time, and etc. Its one of the problems - one of - I have with Hastings. Like all journalists he never met an anecdote he didn't like and wasn't willing to repeat as if it was gospel.

Yep. Its part of what makes history fun.

 

I will find them, they're on one of my disc drives, I actually save too much stuff and don't have it well organized.

I was just trying to clarify my position on the suggestions, I didn't want him to take them as gospel, just provide another perspective.

I always enjoy your input here, your posts always seem well grounded in fact, show balance with no visible agenda, and unlike many historians you understand how to take the information you have gleaned and apply it within a firm understanding of military reality.

That's also part of the frustration. When a flawed interpretation gains popular acceptance and begins to be promulgated as gospel.

As always, I enjoy conversing with you.

 

>Go see my post #20 to see the salient fact of the matter.
Now, whether the Germany Army was .01%, 1%, 100%, or even 1000% superior to the American Army, does not change the fact that it is the German Army that surrendered.
True, but irrelevant. Did you read post #15? I'll requote it for your convenience:
Having a better army doesn't make it impossible for your nation to lose a war. The germans extraordinary performance at the tactical level couldn't alleviate all their operational and strategic deficits. Compared to germany, the U.S. had a larger and more diversified economy, a better mobilisation plan (devised by leo cherne), and had spent the first two years of the war lending money to the commonwealth. This gave them major economic stability and set the stage for the post-war boom, along with the myth that war is good for the economy.
“Though military excellence is inconceivable without victory, victory is by no means the sole criterion of military excellence. A small army may be overwhelmed by a larger one. Confronted with imposible political and economic odds, a qualitatively superior force may go down to defeat through no fault of its own. Not the outcome alone, but intrinsic qualitys as well must therefore figure in an attempt to measure military (or any other) excellence; omit to do this, and the very notion of quality becomes impossible to sustain.” -Martin van Creveld.

BTW, Otto has also hinted at the point which has consistently eluded you:
“Unfortunately for the Nazis, WW2 was not decided by the quality on a unit per unit basis. It was a conflict of economies, of finance, of industrial capacity, of workforce mobilization, logistics, intelligence and counter-intelligence, of technological advancement, and of strategic coordination amongst the belligerents. In these areas Germany performed so poorly it didn't really matter how well their troops did in the field. The Axis were especially poor in coordinating operations and in mass production.”

>Are you flipping mad or something? What in the name of God's green earth does the F-35 have to do with WW2?
Since we are talking about WW2 and since we are talking about "gold plated equipment", perhaps you should read up on the US Navy's Farragut class destroyers...Rather than injecting modern US weaponry into a debate where it has no place.
In post #1, my jibe about 'gold plated equipment' was a reference to the denizens of spacebattles.com, who constantly emphasis that more advanced equipment is better than less advanced equipment, and that the side with the better equipment almost always wins. This is an untenable position which (even if true) would make a complete mockery out of most other factors in warfare, including the strategic factors mentioned by Otto. The SBers do this in world war 2 threads, vietnam war threads, iraq war threads, all the way up to the modern day. Mentioning the F-35 was thus entirely appropriate, especially since its such a perfect example of the excesses involved with gold plated equipment.
In post #18, you entered the discussion and proceeded to put words in my mouth: According to your summary, I had conflated 'gold plated equipment' (a specific word with a specific meaning) with all equipment necessary to the function of navies and air forces. Which is a ridiculous belief that I don't actually subscribe to.

>Yes, yes you did get it completely wrong. When your Navy & Air Force are fighting as ground pounders, you have already lost, and lost quite badly.
Sorry, but as I've shown above, the misunderstanding is entirely on your end. With regards to the shortage of planes and ships, the real question we should ask is what the U.S. would have done in that position? American sailors and airmen did quite poorly when forced to pickup a rifle and fight the enemy on foot. Ideally, you wouldn't want to misuse your trained men in such a role, but sh*t happens in war... Sometimes air bases or ports get seized by the enemy, and sometimes all the ships and aircraft get destroyed (or run out of fuel). When you've suddenly got thousands of men sitting around with no real combat role, what do you do with them? Are they a liability for your side, or an asset? Something to ponder