STG-44 vs. PPSh-41

Reportedly the StG44 was a favorite of troops on the eastern front not only because of the enormous firepower it provided them, but because it proved to be extremely reliable in the field; extreme cold was according to the soldiers themselves no problem for the StG, whilst weapons such as the K98k, G43 & MP40 often would seize up in such severe weather. The weapon was very robust according to the troops as-well, which seems logical when you look at the construction, with lots of curved surfaces to increase strength.

 

The StGw44 alone has never had the chance to push the allies back into the sea! For that the Germans had not enough Artillery, Tanks, Warships and Aircrafts! It would have given them more losses but nothing more.

 

Respectfully I have to disagree. The only thing that would have allowed the Germans to push the Allies in to the sea in Normandy would have been the ability to dominate the skies AND the sea. As sexy and modern as the Stg was for its day it was still just a rifle and rifles do not influence modern warfare to any appreciable degree. -Not when artillery is responsible for 80% of casualties and you still have to factor in MG's, air attacks, mines, etc. The rifle's slice of the pie is just a tiny sliver in the grand scheme. The Stg cannot destroy tanks, shoot down aircraft, fire counter-battery, etc.
It had far greater defensive value in WWII than offensive in my opinion. The Germans very effectively created local superiorities in personnel and firepower by doctrinal design when attacking at any level, so the real value of the Stg was defensively on the Eastern Front with 2nd rate units stretched thinly with limited support (as per German Army plan for distribution when the rifles became available).
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Look at the numbers for those that were processed after the war. It's quite a bit more than 4 million. Look at the info I provided, read it all not just the bold print, cross reference with the dates.

And what about the StG's that would have been captured when the Germans surrendered? You also forget that as the Allies pressed deeper into Germany the LW and KM both became ground forces. I think the number of German ground troops towards the end of the war is something closer to 10,000,000. The Brits and the US captured nearly 2,000,000 in 1944 alone. I'll split the difference with you and say 8,000,000 and if a 1/4 of those had the StG and that's assuming that all of the StG's stayed in circulation and were not captured by the US, British or the Russians.

The other thing to look at is how long would it have taken for the factories making the StG to get bombed if the weapon was really that big of a game changer?

You are on this Forum with that reasoning. IF Germany could have fielded the StG in 1941 it would have had an impact anytime after 1943 and it was a zero sum gain.

I don't know what pictures your looking at; but, "robust" is not an adjective I would use to describe it. The things I have read is that the StG was very susceptible to malfunction due to dust contamination as a result of the close mechanical tolerances. The failure that plagued the K98 in the Russian winter was due to the viscosity of the lubricants, the reason the StG didn't suffer the same fate is that lighter weight lubricants were used after 1942.

 

Let's just nail my colours to the mast by saying that you'd be hard-pressed to find a bigger fan of the MP44 than me. I'm not saying 'it was a piece of c**p made of silver foil' or whatever.....but if you pick one up and examine it, relative to other WWII small arms, it's obvious that the stamped components are quite light-gauge ( also when compared to such as the AK-47 ).

From reading the personal accounts in Hans Wijers and Roland Gaul's books about the Ardennes, there's no doubt that the German troops were fascinated by the weapon. After all, it was widely considered to be at the forefront of Hitler's 'wonder weapons'. I'd certainly feel much more confident toting one in place of the 'ancient' K98k. But I've read instances too, where after a while they've been cast aside in favour of something else ; much as British paratroopers got rid of their Sten MkVs at Arnhem.

 

Hello Proeliator,

IMO, the ME-262 would have served the German war machine in the West far greater than the MP44 as the Allies had full air superiority. Sure, the Germans would have been more successful in perhaps slowing an advance to a degree but when ever the allies found themselves in a hamper, they called in air support; a luxury which the Germans did not have. Unless an MP44 was able to shoot down a P51, I fail to see how an assault rifle (as remarkable as it was) would have made any difference in solving this threat from above.

As for the Ost front, I too would be interested in looking at how the MP44 would have had a "huge impact" on this theatre as well. If we are speaking of early 44' then the Wehrmacht is already on the retreat and by mid 44' has dug into a defensive line stretching from Belarus to Ukraine in order to stabalize the front. What happened to Germany on June 22, 1944 was a catastrophe of epic proportions and IMO, the onslaught came with such speed and surprise that nothing short of a nuclear bomb would have helped the Germans halt the Red Army offensive (the only major one upto that point in 1944). Unfortuntely, not only would the MP44 not have helped the Germans against Bagration but would have back fired, as the Red Army would now be possessing a pretty significant number of them gathered from the victims...

If the assault rifle was introduced in the earlier years when the Germans were on the offensive say in 42', it would have made things far more interesting.

 

10,000,000 at any one given time ?? You're joking right?

In 1941 when Germany invaded Russia it was with a strength of some 3.4 million German soldiers, and at no point in the war did the figure in the east exceed those 3.4 million men in service. In the west & south some 2 million served at any one given time. In the period from 1939 to 1945 some 18.2 million men served in the German military.

 

Had the Germans fielded the Me262 a little earlier, in the right role as an air-superiority-fighter and in higher numbers, whilst having enough fuel for the Me262's in service to make all the sorties required to take back air superiority over europe; then yes I would agree that it would make a much bigger impact. Problem was however that fuelling the LW was a very big problem for the Germans, and without fuel the Me262s weren't going anywhere.

The reason I believe the StG44 would've made a very big difference had it been pressed into service in early 1943 with the goal of making it the std. service rifle by mid 44, replacing the K98k; is the enormous increase in firepower it provided the individual soldier. The performance of the few units who possessed early versions of the weapon in 42 and 43 were able to fight off and their way through enemy forces much larger than themselves, simply because they could pour out so much lead that the enemy were under the impression they were fighting a force 10 times its' actual size.

 

No.....The German Army (Heer) 13,600,000 throughout the war and there were 4,202,000 killed or missing that leaves us with 9,398,000 (World War II casualties - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia) There were 12,000,000+ POWs taken/processed during/after thewar. SO I am thinking 10,000,000 is a pretty close number for S&G. (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Prisoner_of_war#Germany)

So let's say there were 6,000,000 Infantry with: 3,000,000 in Russia, 1,500,000 In France and 1,500,000 in Italy/N. Africa/Med. Now let's assume that Hitler's little elves worked all night and were able to produce 2,000,000 StG's so that 1/3 of the German Infantry could wake up in the morning with a bright shiny new Sturmgewer and 300rds of ammunition. Then it would have had an effect; however, beings they would have been entered service 10-20,000 at a time I don't think the impact would have been that great.

 

If there are 3 million German Soldiers on the Eastern front, a small fraction are actually combat Infantrymen needing an Stg (even the small fraction of Infantrymen includes MG crew, grenadiers, etc). If you consider their MTOE and adjust for attrition of personnel and also consider that not every part of the front is active, you don't need anything like 3 million rifles (or 6 total for that matter). German Organization for Combat, 1944

Please take a look here for year by year strength of the German Army, the actual order of battle by year is also available:
Statistics and Numbers I doubt the Heer had 6 million combat Infantrymen in its ranks through 6 years combined.

 

Regardless of occupational specialty they are going to have a rifle available to them, wether it be a K98 or an StG.

If 10,000,000 is too many let's say 1,000,000. During it's production run 1943-1945 460,000+/- were produced and if there were only 1,000,000 troops (which is about what was at the Battle of Berlin) why didn't they have a bigger effect than they did?

 

Fuel for the Me262 wasn't that much of a problem. It's horrible reliability was. Lack of trianed pilots and the logistical support were also problems. Fielding it earlier without correcting these problmes isn't going to make much of a difference and would preclude fielding in much higher numbers.

 

The German military peaked at around 270 divisions, not all of them front line, with 4-9 rifle battalions each, mostly 6-7. Let's say 2000 battalions, 6000 rifle companies, 18,000 platoons, 54,000 squads each with about 9? riflemen. Of course there were lots more people who carried rifles, but only about half a million had as their primary mission engaging the enemy with rifle fire. So it doesn't seem impossible to equip a significant share of riflemen and key others like pioneer and reconnaissance units with StGs.

That said, I too am skeptical that StGs or any new invention would have enabled the Germans to drive the Allies into the sea etc. Indeed our troops in Normandy already often felt outgunned by the number and rate of fire of German automatic weapons - though they learned to overcome them.

 

I agree and have somewhat the same question, why not a greater effect? My answer is that in the grand scheme of WWII the impact of small arms was minimal to the overall picture. The Stg isn't terribly effective at stopping tanks or incoming artillery.

 

With that math you wind up with 486,000 troops who would have been carrying the StG which is pretty close to the number of StGs produced from 1943-45 and I think we all can agree that not every rifleman in the Heer carried a StG.

So can we close this by saying the StG would have been effective if it had been introduced earlier than 1943 and in sufficient quantities to allow for development of tactics and doctrine incorporating it's use?

 

So we've gone from 10,000,000 to 1,000,000 ? That's quite a leap...

I'd say that on all fronts the Germans had some 4.5 to 5.5 million men in service at any one given time during the war, except ofcourse for the very last part of the war in 45.

Anyway the StG was first officially introduced in 1944, and by wars end some 480,000+ had been put into service, which is quite amazing considering that this number was produced alongside the continued production of K98k's & G43's. The weapon could however have been introduced at least 1½ years earlier, in early 1943, and had it been introduced then it would've benefitted from the much higher manufacturing capacity enjoyed by Germany in the early 43 to mid 44 period, as compared to the mid 44 to 45 period; add to this that had it (StG) been introduced with the intention of replacing the K98k, then it would've been given a higher priority than it was given in mid 44, whilst benefitting from the extra resources made available through the cancellation of the majority of K98k & G43 production.

Let's assume that mass production began in Feburary 43, then considering the extra manufacturing capacity and resources made available through a decrease in K98k production, the Germans could've probably manufactured 2+ million StG's by June 44. Now of that number lets assume some 50% were shipped to troops in the east and 25% in the South, that would account for some 1.5 million rifles. The remainding 500,000 would be shipped to troops in the west. With 500,000 StG equipped troops in the west as the Allies land in Normandy on June 6th 1944, I am unsure of how far they would've come before they would've found themselves seriously outgunned on the infantry level.

 

I'm not sure artillery was the biggest killer in WWII, it is generally given that honor in regards to wars fought in the Napoleonic era, where artillery is most often claimed to have been the biggest killer of all. In WWII however, I doubt artillery was the biggest killer of them all, I actually think smallarms accounted for more casualties than did artillery in this particular conflict. In WWII I'm not sure much killed as many people as did arial bombing though....

 

Office of Medical History


1. Small arms fire accounted for between 14 and 31 percent of the total casualties, depending upon the theater of action: The Mediterranean theater, 14.0 percent; the European theater, 23.4 percent; and the Pacific theaters, 30.7 percent.

2. Artillery and mortar fire together accounted for 65 percent of the total casualties in the European and Mediterranean theaters, 64.0 and 69.1, respectively. In the Pacific, they accounted for 47.0 percent.

 

Thanks M Kenny.