U.S. Army vs German Army

The debate has been that the German Landser was a stronger soldier at the beginning stages of the war. That changed as the war progressed.

 

Because Russian and western allied soldiers killed most of them.

 

Yup

 

You are apparently unacquainted with the words compare or comparison.

Compare - estimate, measure, or note the similarity or dissimilarity between things.
Comparison - a statement or estimate of similarities and differences.

Thus, I can compare you to rock, by stating you have similar levels of understanding of the English language or by stating the dissimilarity; the rock is more interesting to converse with.

So yes, you can in fact compare and make comparisons of the qualities of different military forces, just as you can with any other thing. Whether or not your comparison is valid is a completely different matter.

 

Yet again, of course it can.

Quality - the standard of something as measured against other things of a similar kind; the degree of excellence of something.

You can of course compare the quality of one thing with another. I highly value the quality of my discourse with my cat. I do not highly value it with you. In comparison, conversation with you is time-wasting and unproductive.

See? Comparisons of qualities. Simple.

 

So then in fact you were using as your "exemple" yet another fictive. Which, in English, means you were just making it up.

Thanks for clarifying that.

 

You're missing the point. This post is less about the soldiers and more about the organisation they trained and fought within. The different styles of organisation used by an army will yield different results, which add together to create 'fighting power.' Thats what my article is about. You keep trying to derail the thread and avoid discussion about this by saying that the germans ultimately lost the war. Thats true, but also irrelevant. Their defeat was caused by strategic factors more than anything else.

If you had opened a thread about the U.S. army and the viet cong, and tried to summarise what their difference in fighting power was, how appropriate would it be for me to barge in and claim that we don't need to worry about it, because the U.S. ultimately lost the war? You would claim (with much justification!) that I was being an obstructionist by sweeping the question under the rug.

 

I wish there was an epic facepalm emoticon I could use. You both got it wrong.

The initial thrust of the 6. Panzerarmee was blunted by the 2d and 99th Division defense of Krinkelt-Rocherath and the Krinkelter Wald. The withdrawal to the Elsenborn Ridge stabilized the situation when the 1st ID came in and tied in towards Dom Butgenbach, stopping the last 12. SS attack cold. KG Peiper and the 1. SS-Panzer were stopped by the 30th ID, elements of the 3d AD, and Corps troops dogged defense. II. SS-Panzerkorps rebounded off the St. Vith defenses, ricocheted down to Manhay against fragmented resistance, caused a lot of destruction, but ran out of steam there versus a severely depleted 7th AD and parts of the 82d Airborne, along with other odds and sods.

Much more serious was the initial penetration by 18. VGD, which smashed the 106th ID and left a hole for 116. Panzer to exploit, which then ran into the 84th ID.

Finally, the 2. Panzer and Lehr penetration got nearly to the Meuse, but was stopped cold by the 2d AD with the support of a hodge-podge of British, Belgian, Luxembourger, and French troops, plus rear-area types.

 

We've discussed this before; You can compare anything, to anything else. You can question the conclusion of the comparison, or even query the relevance of the comparison to whatever the discussion was, but you can compare anything to anything else. When the discussion is comparing two different armies, your comment is sorely lacking in tact, as well as understanding. The purpose of a discussion wrt to comparing things, is not always to reach a unanimous, irrefutable conclusion, but to increase understanding of the compared.

 

Is there proof that there ever was any intention on the part of Marshal, McNair et al to build a US Army that was superior to the German ground forces on a unit-to-unit level? From what I read, the unspoken assumption had always been that the US was to field an expeditionary force with overwhelming numbers and materiel to crush the enemy. Training was to be made as good as it could be devised in the available time to raise that army, but needed only to be good enough.

 

The "Schwerpunckt" of the thrust was led by the 1st SS, KG Peiper. That was stopped and annihilated along the Ambleve by the 30th and a collection of armored task forces from various units. Stopped there, the initial plan, they attempted to break out north behind the 12th SS as well as to the south by the 5th Panzer Army. They made little to no progress in any area after their initial plan/route was blocked.

 

Sorry, but that is based on a misapprehension. The 6. Panzerarmee "schwerpunkt" was 12. SS-Panzer on the right and 1.-SS Panzer on the left. On the left of 6. Panzerarmee, 5. Panzerarmee's "schwerpunkt" consisted of 116. Panzer on the right, 2. Panzer in the center, and Lehr on the left.

KG Peiper was the "schwerpunkt" for 1. SS-Panzerdivision, not for 6. Panzeraarmee. Yes, he was stopped by, among others, the 30th ID, the 3d AD, the 82d ArbnD, the 116th, AAA (Gun) Bn, 740th Tk Bn, and the 291st Eng (C) Bn.

 

You need to look at the story of the Victory plan, the plan for a mass expansion of the US Army, authored by a Kriegsacadamie graduate. The US Army seems to have copied the German infantry division structure and the "heavy" armoured division looks a bit like the two regiment 1940 panzer division.

Every army wants to create an army that is better than the enemy on a soldier for soldier and unit for unit level. You cannot motivate an army by telling your soldiers that their country wants them to be second best to the enemy... As with a sports team no one knows how good the enemy are going to be until the match.

The easiest way for the US Army to ensure its units were better than their German equivalents was to ensure that they were well equipped and supplied. US Artillery battalions were perhaps ten times better than their German equivalents, because they had ten times as much ammunition, possibly more so because of better communications and air spotting aircraft.

 

When you consider that between 70-75% of combat casualties are caused by fragmentation weapons, that's a huge advantage in fighting power.

 

Simple, LJAd did the math, consulted his copyrighted charts, viewed the entrails and concluded we lost the Battle of the Bulge.

 

This is very questionable .

 

Maybe you should remember that I said that US soldiers were not inferior to the Germans .

 

The attack on Monschau, Höfen, Krinkelt-Rocherath, and then Elsenborn Ridge was led by the units personally selected by Adolf Hitler. The 6th Panzer Army was given priority for supply and equipment and were assigned the shortest route to the ultimate objective of the offensive, Antwerp.[49] The 6th Panzer Army included the elite of the Waffen-SS, including four Panzer divisions and five infantry divisions in three corps.[50][51]SS Obersturmbannführer Joachim Peiper led Kampfgruppe Peiper, consisting of 4,800 men and 600 vehicles, which was charged with leading the main effort. However, its newest and most powerful tank, the Tiger II heavy tank, consumed 1 gallon of fuel to go half a mile, and the Germans had less than half the fuel they needed to reach Antwerp.[29]:age needed

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Battle_of_the_Bulge#Attack_on_the_northern_shoulder


Sorry to use wiki as a source, but I can't find anything more succinct. The attacks in the north (12th SS, etc) were indeed stopped as you indicate, but it wasn't the main thrust. That was 1st SS, rerouted through Lanzerath as the 12th and attached infantry units continued to fight to keep the main advance' supply routes open.

 

Sorry to argue with Wiki KB, but I think I will go with the 5,000-odd pages of documents we collected, along with the review by Hugh Cole and Mac MacDonald, for the ACSDB and the writing of Hitler's Last Gamble over it.

Yes, Peiper was A schwerpunkt. No, he was not THE schwerpunkt. Yes, 6. Panzerarmee was intended as the schwerpunkt, but there was no real difference between the five rollbahnen, each of which was assigned to a divisional schwerpunkt.

The bit about the Tiger is a red herring. s.SS-Panzer Abtl. 501. was assigned to 1. SS-Panzer because its Panzer regiment was so weak. Ditto for 12.-SS, which had a Heer outfit, s.Pz.-Jg. Abtl. 561. with Jagdpanthers attached to it. If it was "big tanks" that defined it, then wouldn't it be where the Jagdtiger were assigned?