Blitzkrieg

[dutchie]

Re:that whole Polish thing.

In the face of three dissenting voices, coupled with some new reservations about the integrity of the source of my 'claim', I will quietly withdraw the assertion that the Poles fought German Panzers on horseback.

I am a little out of my league here, as it has been a number of years since college, and the level of knowledge displayed here by T.I.M., Infanteer, and the ever poignant pbi leaves me at a loss for debate.

I will however watch and read your discussion with interest.

Oh, and Infanteer, I will PM you with one point that we seem to be misunderstanding each other on (but I think we actually agree on), but that will have to wait until later.


Regards and well done all,

Caeser

 

[Michael Dorosh]

I interviewed a Polish Campaign veteran who had fought also in France 1940, Italy, Russia, Normandy, the Bulge, and on to VE Day, the latter campaigns as a platoon commander of Panzer Lehr Division.  He stated without reservation that the best soldiers he ever fought against were the Poles.

Withdrawing to defendible river lines would have been political suicide as that would have left half of Poland in German hands.  The stab in the back from Russia didn't help either.  But the Polish Army was considered the best in Europe at the time as far as professionalism goes.

 

[onecat]

Just a few thoughts on the Poland Invassion and the progaganda that surrounds it.

1) Poland held on for twice as long as had been expected and had done more damage to the Germans than the combined British and French forces were to do in 1940. The Germans lost 50,000 men, 697 planes and 993 tanks and armoured cars.

2) Poland was invaded by two nations, and  held out for a month.  France lasted 6 weeks and was helped out by the UK, Poland had no help at all. At Teheran, the British and Americans agreed to letting the Russians keep all land taken from their invasion of Poland in 1939, over half their land mass.

3) The Polish Navy, which had escaped intact, consisted of 60 vessels, including 2 cruisers, 9 destroyers and 5 submarines ( one of which was the famous "Orzel") which were involved in 665 actions at sea. The first German ship sunk in the war was sunk by Polish ships. The Navy also took part in the D-Day landings . I found this fact to very interesting and have included here out of interest.

 

[Infanteer]

Not to knock the discussion too far off, but I couldn't resist on commenting on the subject of Polish military history.

A good light read is James Michener's Poland.  Although the book is a work of historical fiction, it does a good job of showing how battle tested the Polish people actually are.  From the Mongols to the Turks to the Prussians and French and last but not least, the Soviets, the geopolitical position of Poland (very similar to Germany's) puts it smack dab in the invasion route of Europe.  As a result, Poland has quite a historical involvement in many of the world's struggles.

Anyways, back to your regularly scheduled programming....

 

[pbi]

Caesar: Not meant as an attack at all: you just gave me an opening, even though I was a few posts after you. Cheers.

 

[T.I.M.]

Poland held on for twice as long as had been expected and had done more damage to the Germans than the combined British and French forces were to do in 1940. The Germans lost 50,000 men, 697 planes and 993 tanks and armoured cars.

Not to knock the Poles, who put up one hell of a fight and gave the Germans a very difficult campaign. . .  But losses in the Battle of France were indeed higher.

German casualties in Poland were around 10,000 killed and 30-40,000 wounded or missing.  Of the 1,000 armoured vehicles lost, only around 200 were complete write-offs.  The Soviets lost about 2,000 men killed and another 8-10,000 wounded or missing.

In the invasion of France and the Low Countries, Germany lost 27,000 killed, and around 120,000 wounded or missing.  The Luftwaffe loast some 1,439 planes.  I don't have numbers for armoured vehicles lost, but my gut instinct considering the damage some German divisions suffered is that they were also higher.

This doesn't detract from the Polish effort, and war myths have indeed been unkind to the Poles (and the Belgians too) portraying them as a walkover which they were certainly not.

 

[dutchie]

No worries pbi. I was really enjoying the posts by yourself, T.I.M., and Infanteer. I had some points to make, made them, and was corrected on one in particular. I have to admit that my level of knowledge on the subject of the Eastern Front is limited to 3 books (Rise and Fall.., Stalingrad, and Fall of Berlin 1945) as well as stories of the grandchild of a Polish Cavalry Officer, and one first year Histroy class (where I focused more on the Great War than WW2). The level of knowledge shown by you (and the other two) after I made my points led me to believe that I would be well served by abiding by the old motto of "Seeing as you have two ears but only one mouth, you should listen twice as much as you talk". I don't take your post (or the others) as an attack, but more as an indication that what I thought I knew could be wrong.

Having said that, from my admittedly limited knowledge, the German General Staff is regarded by most reputable Historians as of very high quality, during WW2 in particular. I feel that any claims to the contrary must be weighed against the overwhelming consensus of virtually every historically accurate (relatively) book published since WW2. In short, if you want to make claims that contradict every book I know of regarding this, you should be prepared to back your claim with some strong facts. (this is not directed at you, pbi)

Regarding my point that Infanteer and I were debating (Armour and 'blitzkrieg'): prior to the mechanization of ground forces, deep drives into enemy territory was limited to how far a soldier could march in a day/week/etc. With mechanization, the tactic of deep thrusts into enemy territory, followed by the encirclement of large troop formations was possible. I do not claim that German armour was superior, only that defence against this type of attack had not been developed. The best example of this 'Blitzkrieg' would be Operation Barbarossa, where incredibly huge numbers of Russian troops were captured, some without firing a shot. It was more the Russians inability (or unwillingness) to react to the armoured/mechanized threat that caused this, and less the 'genius' of the German General. Blitzkrieg is attributed to the Germans (and specifically Guderian) only because they were the first to have the opportunity to use it on a large scale.

 

[Infanteer]

Speaking of the Belgian's and historical myth - I've come across a few interesting tidbits on the seizure of Eben Emael.

Airborne buffs love to portray the seizure of the fortress as the feat of special operations forces and/or airborne troops.   I've went through a bunch of sources that say that this was a myth propagated to promote the Fallschirmjager.   In reality, the early airborne drop was quite ineffective; the fortress was taken by engineers who crossed the river in assault boats and were superbly supported by precision artillery fires.   The engineers went on to disable the main gun casemates and allow the follow up force to cross the river.

I anything, Eben Emael is not an example of the successful employment of Airborne forces but rather the validation of combined arms Stosstrupe tactics developed in WWI.

Having said that, from my admittedly limited knowledge, the German General Staff is regarded by most reputable Historians as of very high quality, during WW2 in particular. I feel that any claims to the contrary must be weighed against the overwhelming consensus of virtually every historically accurate (relatively) book published since WW2. In short, if you want to make claims that contradict every book I know of regarding this, you should be prepared to back your claim with some strong facts. (this is not directed at you, pbi)

That wouldn't seem to be the case from the material I've read.  Huntington, in his study of the military professionalism, gives the General Staff of Prussia in the 19th century highmarks.  He believes that in both WWI and WWII, the General Staff became a reflection of failure of military professionalism.

As well, Col. Dupuy's book on the General Staff notes that there were some fundamental structural problems to the German system of High Command.  He notes that while Moltke the Elder was Chief of the General Staff (which he was for quite some time) and Bismarck was Chancellor, the arrangement worked perfectly - as soon as Moltke retired and Bismarck was dismissed, the glaring problems began to surface (with the outcome being the toppling of the German state by Luddendorf in WWI).

TIM seems well versed on the aspects of the General Staff in the 20th century, so I'll let him address that issue.

 

[dutchie]

Interesting. I will await TIM's response.

 

[T.I.M.]

Well, to back up my points I'd suggest a number of books that cover the subject:

The best is "Inside Hitler's High Command," by Geoffrey P. Megargee, which I mentioned earlier.   This book is damning in its indictment of the General Staff in particular, and German strategic thought in general.   Another is "Hitler's Spies: German Military Intelligence in World War II," by David Kahn.   It discusses the tactical successes of German military intelligence, and talks about why the German strategic intelligence efforts failed so badly.   Another good one is "The Battle of Kursk," by David M. Glantz and Jonathan M. House, which refutes the myth that it was Hitler's interferance that caused the disaster.   It's one of the reasons I used Kursk as my example.

Many older WWII histories do in fact portray the German High Command as incredibly talented and hamstrung only by the incompetant meddling of the Nazi power elite.   However that belief - that the German General Staff had, to use Dupuy's words "a genius for war" - has been steadily eroding as new information on WWII comes to light, much from Soviet archives unavailable until the 1990's.   Calling the German General staff incompetant is actually not a particularly revolutionary argument these days, and is generally accepted by war historians.

I'd suggest reading some of the above titles if you're interested in this issue.   They'll present the facts better than I could, and you can make your own assessments of them.   I've just summarized some of the arguments in my previous posts - the books lay it out in detail.  If you can't get hold of the titles, googling the books for reviews should still give you a fair idea of what they're about, and the positions they take.

 

[dutchie]

Thanks TIM, I have a look...the one on Kursk looks particularly interesting. I've always wanted to learn more about that battle.

Regards,

Caeser

 

[Infanteer]

I think Dupuy's idea of the "Genius for War" pertains more to the professional system of officer development that Scharnhorst kickstarted as opposed to the General Staff at any particular point in time.   I think he is correct in this due to the fact that the Prussian model was adopted in some form by every other industrialized military during the 19th century.

 

[dglad]

I know this thread faded about a week ago, but I just finished a very interesting book, "The Blitzkrieg Myth" by John Mosier.  In it, Mosier deconstructs the various campaigns in Europe generally, and Western Europe particuarly.  His thesis is that the Allies and Nazis (Hitler, in particular, but not exclusively) misread the strategic realities of their contemporary environment, and the result was a series of military catastrophes that appeared to support the theories of Fuller (armoured breakthroughs) and Douhet (strategic aerial bombing).  He suggests:

-Germany went into WW2 with poor quality tanks that were were undergunned, underarmoured, underpowered and generally not well employed
-France actually had far superior armoured forces and employed them more effectively than the Germans
-Holland and Belgium, likewise, fought well against the Nazis; the Dutch in particular, effectively ravaged the German airborne and air transport capability employed against them
-Poland fought extremely well, and only really fell because "promised" assistance from the UK and France never materialized
-France fell because the breakthrough at Sedan (which Mosier contends was actually just one piece of a much broader-front offensive) caused the Allies to panic at the strategic level.  In particular, the UK strategy devolved into extracting the BEF, even though as of the Sedan breakthrough, the BEF had seen very little action and was largely intact.  He also blames the UK and France for holding back their airpower, attempting to preserve it and therefore losing it piecemeal, rather than aggressively challenging the Luftwaffe wholesale for control of the air.  The result was a series of monotonous failures of Allied (and esp UK) tactical air in the first few days of the campaign, while the Luftwaffe enjoyed air superiority and complete freedom of action for their tac air.
-that the truly successful operations were not breakthroughs a la Fuller (Mosier cites COBRA, MARKET-GARDEN and the German Ardennes offensive in 1944 as notable failures), but broad-front offensives that simply overwhelmed the defenders (e.g. the Soviet advance westwards through 1944 and 45).

These are all interesting ideas; I'm not entirely sold, however.  The Nazis did score some remarkable mechanized breakthrough and encirclement successes against the Soviets in 1941--against almost any other opponent, it probably would have been fatal.  Mosier is also very obviously a rabid Montgomery fan (!)  And I do find him a bit selective in his approach to his supporting examples, which is, ironically, something he repeatedly slams the advocates of both Fuller and Douhet for doing.  But it is a thought provoking book, worth a read if you're interested in the overall subject of "blitzkrieg".

 

[Michael Dorosh]

Who were the "Nazis"?

 

[dglad]

Who were the "Nazis"?

Pardon me for being insufficiently clear.  The Germans, then.

 

[Michael Dorosh]

I will agree on the face of it for many of the points you raise, except the employment of French armour.  The few times they massed, they did a job - look at Stonne - but even then, the Germans kept their wits about them.  Ad hoc use of the 88 FlaK as an AT weapon was sometimes the only thing that saved them, but saved they were.

How exactly did the French employ their armour "more effectively" than the Germans?  Not that I disagree that German armour employment may have been far from stellar (especially in hindsight), but I don't see how the claim is made that the French were better at it.

Incidentally, use of the word "Nazis" is rather meaningless.  The term refers to a member of the National Socialist German Worker's Party, representing a minority of the German people and in no meaningful way related to a discussion of the German military outside of 1940s propaganda newsreels. 

 

[patt]

I will agree on the face of it for many of the points you raise, except the employment of French armour.   The few times they massed, they did a job - look at Stonne - but even then, the Germans kept their wits about them.   Ad hoc use of the 88 FlaK as an AT weapon was sometimes the only thing that saved them, but saved they were.

How exactly did the French employ their armour "more effectively" than the Germans?   Not that I disagree that German armour employment may have been far from stellar (especially in hindsight), but I don't see how the claim is made that the French were better at it.

Incidentally, use of the word "Nazis" is rather meaningless.   The term refers to a member of the National Socialist German Worker's Party, representing a minority of the German people and in no meaningful way related to a discussion of the German military outside of 1940s propaganda newsreels.  

how did the word "Nazi" come about to the partys name? my history teacher doesnt know this answer either (shes part german and studied history for many years) and shes trying to figure out how this came about

 

[Michael Dorosh]

how did the word "Nazi" come about to the partys name? my history teacher doesnt know this answer either (shes part german and studied history for many years) and shes trying to figure out how this came about

Has you history teacher really given it any thought?  National Socialist German Workers Party in German is National Sozialistiche Deutsche Arbeits Partei....

 

[dglad]

I will agree on the face of it for many of the points you raise, except the employment of French armour.   The few times they massed, they did a job - look at Stonne - but even then, the Germans kept their wits about them.   Ad hoc use of the 88 FlaK as an AT weapon was sometimes the only thing that saved them, but saved they were.

How exactly did the French employ their armour "more effectively" than the Germans?   Not that I disagree that German armour employment may have been far from stellar (especially in hindsight), but I don't see how the claim is made that the French were better at it.

Oops...remember, these aren't my theses, these are points being made by the author, Mr. Mosier.  He was trying to make the point, I think, that it's widely believed that the Germans had more and better tanks than the French, and used them far more effectively, and that none of that is really true.  His essential point was that the Germans really had no significant advantage over the French in terms of armour; it was really in the air that the Germans dominated, and that was because of Allied mishandling of their own air forces.  And even this wasn't the tipping point; it was bad decisions at the strategic level that brought about the fall of France, more than German operational or tactical superiority.  He believes that if the Allies had flung their air force at the Luftwaffe, and the BEF had held and even counterattacked into the Sedan salient, that the Allies could have, at best, destroyed, and at worst, halted the German offensive.

Is he correct?  Hard to say...personally, I think that Allied strategic blunders occurred BECAUSE of German operational success, so there you go.  But I'd suggest reading the book and coming to your own conclusions about his arguments.

Incidentally, use of the word "Nazis" is rather meaningless.   The term refers to a member of the National Socialist German Worker's Party, representing a minority of the German people and in no meaningful way related to a discussion of the German military outside of 1940s propaganda newsreels.  

I guess.  I suspect that most people know exactly what is meant when they hear something like "The Nazis attacked Poland."  But, senso stricto, I'll grant that the term German is more correct.  Of course, I suppose I could always use some of the terms our Regimental "Old Boys" used when referring to the Germans, which are a lot more colourful, even if just as inaccurate (especially anatomically).

 

[Infanteer]

NAZI is an acronym of the German word National Sozialistiche Deutches Arbeitspartei (National Socialist German Workers Party).  The German language is chock full of huge compound words that get squashed down into shortened versions.

(PS: Micheal and I answered it at the same time.   Tell your history teacher that she should work on learning some basic nuances of history.)
----

Mosier's book is getting savaged on the review section at Amazon.com.

http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/customer-reviews/B0002TX59C/ref=cm_rev_next/103-5812023-9104651?%5Fencoding=UTF8&customer-reviews.sort%5Fby=-SubmissionDate&n=283155&customer-reviews.start=11&me=ATVPDKIKX0DER

 I read his first book, The Myth of the Great War, and came out unsatisfied in the end.  He puts so much into trying to prove his point that he often excludes other pertinent information.  He is an English Professor from Louisiana and many think he should stick to Chaucer.

Looking through a rough synopsis of the book, most of his info is either "no shit" stuff that is commonly known or it is selective history.  For example, looking at the points Mr Glad highlights:

-Germany went into WW2 with poor quality tanks that were were undergunned, underarmoured, underpowered and generally not well employed

We have acknowledged that fact on this thread.  No serious student of history believes that the PzrKpfWgn I or II was a rolling machine of death.  However, I would argue against the underemployed statement.  The fact that most of the Armoured forces where concentrated at the Schwerpunkt of the German attack indicates consistency in long-established doctrine and efficiency in application of meager and inferior resources.

-France actually had far superior armoured forces and employed them more effectively than the Germans/

Michael has addressed this one well enough.  Employment of French Armour has to be seen in the larger notion of their doctrine of the methodical battle.

-Holland and Belgium, likewise, fought well against the Nazis; the Dutch in particular, effectively ravaged the German airborne and air transport capability employed against them

Fought well at what level?  Do a few tactical successes contribute "fighting well", because there are numerous examples of German tactical successes in Army Group B's sector (Eben Emael comes to mind).  However, the Dutch capitulated in 5 days and the Belgians in 17, so I fail to see that their fighting abilities were decisive.

-Poland fought extremely well, and only really fell because "promised" assistance from the UK and France never materialized

I think the oncoming Soviet Army had more to do with it then the assistance for the UK and France.

-France fell because the breakthrough at Sedan (which Mosier contends was actually just one piece of a much broader-front offensive) caused the Allies to panic at the strategic level.  In particular, the UK strategy devolved into extracting the BEF, even though as of the Sedan breakthrough, the BEF had seen very little action and was largely intact.  He also blames the UK and France for holding back their airpower, attempting to preserve it and therefore losing it piecemeal, rather than aggressively challenging the Luftwaffe wholesale for control of the air.  The result was a series of monotonous failures of Allied (and esp UK) tactical air in the first few days of the campaign, while the Luftwaffe enjoyed air superiority and complete freedom of action for their tac air.

Sure, it was part of a "broad-front" offensive, but it was the intended "main effort" of their Offensive and it succeeded; doesn't this validate German doctrine, much to Mosier's chagrin?

-that the truly successful operations were not breakthroughs a la Fuller (Mosier cites COBRA, MARKET-GARDEN and the German Ardennes offensive in 1944 as notable failures), but broad-front offensives that simply overwhelmed the defenders (e.g. the Soviet advance westwards through 1944 and 45).

How about Seden, Kiev '41, some of Rommel's victories in the Desert, Stalingrad, the Soviet Encirclements of 1944.  There are numerous examples of operational successes based upon the pincer or the armoured thrust.  It seems to me that Mosier is "cherry-picking" examples to fit his thesis/